Americans want change. Yet Republicans have somehow backed Democrats into defending the status quo — or sounding like it, anyway.
That’s because President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and their underlings have managed to frame recent events as a binary choice: Either you like the ongoing mass destruction and trampling of the Constitution by the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or you support keeping government as it is. It’s a false choice, obviously. But Democrats and other Trump critics have done a poor job articulating that failure in logic and the existence of a third option: actually fixing things.
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So let’s talk through how Trump’s critics can get to Door No. 3.
In recent years, trust in institutions, including government, has plumbed record lows. Meanwhile, the share of Americans dissatisfied with the way the country is headed has remained high. Voters’ frustration with the status quo (economically, politically, socially) and their urge to burn it all down are why Trump won in November.
To be clear, there are lots of problems in government. Some federal IT infrastructure dates back to the disco era. It’s hard to fire low-performing staff and recruit some of the best talent. The government imposes plenty of useless regulations that make it harder for businesses to build, plan and grow, and colorful examples of government waste abound.
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But Trump and Musk’s destruction in no way resembles an antidote to these issues.
However bloated the government bureaucracy might be, the solution is not indiscriminately firing nuclear weapons inspectors, Head Start staff, law enforcement officers or air traffic controllers. (Yes, mere weeks after multiple deadly airplane crashes, Trump is canning hundreds of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration.) Nor does it seem wise to grant Musk and his DOGE goons access to the Treasury’s sensitive payments system or your personal taxpayer data in order to cut “waste, fraud and abuse.”
Likewise, when American voters expressed frustration with health-care costs, they were presumably not seeking to cut funds for cancer research (as this administration has tried to do). They didn’t vote for public health agencies to suppress research on bird flu or to fire disease trackers, in the middle of bird flu and measles outbreaks. Or to remove seasonal flu vaccine campaign materials from government websites as hospitalization rates for the illness hit a 15-year high.
That’s because President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and their underlings have managed to frame recent events as a binary choice: Either you like the ongoing mass destruction and trampling of the Constitution by the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or you support keeping government as it is. It’s a false choice, obviously. But Democrats and other Trump critics have done a poor job articulating that failure in logic and the existence of a third option: actually fixing things.
Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter
So let’s talk through how Trump’s critics can get to Door No. 3.
In recent years, trust in institutions, including government, has plumbed record lows. Meanwhile, the share of Americans dissatisfied with the way the country is headed has remained high. Voters’ frustration with the status quo (economically, politically, socially) and their urge to burn it all down are why Trump won in November.
To be clear, there are lots of problems in government. Some federal IT infrastructure dates back to the disco era. It’s hard to fire low-performing staff and recruit some of the best talent. The government imposes plenty of useless regulations that make it harder for businesses to build, plan and grow, and colorful examples of government waste abound.
Follow Catherine Rampell
But Trump and Musk’s destruction in no way resembles an antidote to these issues.
However bloated the government bureaucracy might be, the solution is not indiscriminately firing nuclear weapons inspectors, Head Start staff, law enforcement officers or air traffic controllers. (Yes, mere weeks after multiple deadly airplane crashes, Trump is canning hundreds of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration.) Nor does it seem wise to grant Musk and his DOGE goons access to the Treasury’s sensitive payments system or your personal taxpayer data in order to cut “waste, fraud and abuse.”
Likewise, when American voters expressed frustration with health-care costs, they were presumably not seeking to cut funds for cancer research (as this administration has tried to do). They didn’t vote for public health agencies to suppress research on bird flu or to fire disease trackers, in the middle of bird flu and measles outbreaks. Or to remove seasonal flu vaccine campaign materials from government websites as hospitalization rates for the illness hit a 15-year high.
