The State Department on Friday announced a $7 billion arms sale to Israel, circumventing the congressional review process, according to Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee....This is just a show of pure force. Aid for Israel would have sailed through Congress. John Fetterman would have begged the Republican majority to allow him to co-sponsor the bill. In November, Bernie Sanders tried to block a $20 billion aid package, but only 19 out of 100 senators voted to reject any portion of the outlay.
During the standard congressional review process, the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are notified of the arms sale and given time to raise concerns and ask questions. But even with questions outstanding from Meeks, the administration pushed forward with the sale.
“This move is yet another repudiation by Donald Trump of Congress’ rightful and legitimate oversight prerogative,” Meeks said in a statement Friday. “Furthermore, (Secretary of State Marco) Rubio has failed to provide adequate justification or documentation for bypassing the Congressional Committee review process.”
It's clear that the Republican majority in Congress won't do a thing to prevent the dismantling of America's constitutional checks and balances -- the GOP is winning and Republican members of Congress are still getting paid, so what's not to like, as far as they're concerned?
Since we don't have a functioning Congress anymore, here's a very simple bill I'd file on Monday if I were a congressional Democrat.
WHEREAS the majority of members of the party controlling both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate have concluded that Congress no longer needs to perform its duties as laid out in the Constitution of the United States; andThe wording might not be perfect and, technically, Congress can't be disbanded with a simple bill -- a constitutional amendment would be necessary. But the Constitution is effectively suspended right now. This just makes it all official.
WHEREAS these legislators have chosen to cede their power entirely to the Executive Branch; therefore, be it
Resolved, that the United States Congress is hereby disbanded.
I realize that proposing a bill like this would be a cheap stunt, but I think a few cheap stunts would be a good idea for Democrats right now. They have the potential to become man-bites-dog stories, and even if the stories aren't written with an air of seriousness, they might get some attention. Also, it's a better look for Democrats to mock Republicans once in a while instead of howling in agony every time they do something. The agonized howls are an appropriate response, but at some point you have to look like the bratty kid who's daring the teacher to send him to the principal's office -- at least for a moment, you, the brat, seize power.
And speaking of brattiness, here's something simple we all can do:
Print out this cover, from a magazine the president takes very seriously. It depicts Elon Musk, not Donald Trump, behind the Resolute Desk.
Place it in an envelope and mail it to:
President Donald J. TrumpOr maybe to:
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington DC 20500
President Elon MuskHow grumpy will Trump be if a million of us do this?
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington DC 20500
I'd give a sizable contribution to anyone willing to erect billboards in all fifty states that say ELON MUSK IS PRESIDENT. That would piss Trump off.
It would also focus America's attention on Musk's growing unpopularity. The Washington Post reports:
Constituents have flooded the phone lines at the U.S. Capitol this week, many of them asking questions about billionaire Elon Musk “feeding USAID into the wood chipper” and his access to government systems....Democrats should be in Just Asking Questions mode. Their public statements should be: What are they doing with this data? Will they cut off your Social Security check if you helped your kid make a poster for Black History Month ten years ago and posted about it on Facebook?
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said the Senate’s phones were receiving 1,600 calls each minute, compared with the usual 40 calls per minute. Many of the calls she’s been receiving are from people concerned about U.S. DOGE Service employees having broad access to government systems and sensitive information. The callers are asking whether their information is compromised and about why there isn’t more transparency about what is happening, she said.
“It’s asking for a lot of clarification,” Murkowski said, noting that Alaska has a high concentration of federal workers.
“It is a deluge on DOGE,” said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minnesota). “Truly our office has gotten more phone calls on Elon Musk and what the heck he’s doing mucking around in federal government than I think anything we’ve gotten in years. ... People are really angry.”
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said he’s been hearing from constituents “constantly” on DOGE and Musk. “We can hardly answer the phones fast enough. It’s a combination of fear, confusion and heartbreak, because of the importance of some of these programs.”
And: The Constitution says all these spending decisions have to be approved by Congress. Maybe you think it's good they're cutting red tape, but here's the problem: If this can break these laws, they can break any law. They can get into your bank account and take all your money. They can tell your employer that you voted for Obama once or that you or someone in your family is gay or trans. Is that what they plan to do? We really don't know. But we do know that they do whatever they want, because the Republican majority in Congress won't stop them, and they don't care if what they're doing is illegal because they think they're above the law.
Okay, that's earnest and agonized. Maybe the insolent version is this McSweeney's humor piece, written in Elon Musk's voice. What if someone posted an edited version of this on social media as if it was an actual pronouncement from Musk?
... consider the waste and bloat in how the US government used to give away taxpayer dollars via an overcomplicated system of lobbying, tax breaks, and bloated contracts. This will become much more optimized once I force the entire US population to pay a 5 percent transaction fee to conduct Social Security transactions on X, The Everything Website (20 percent if they have pronouns in their bio)....This is what the right would do if the parties were reversed: rewrite this slightly and post it on social media, with the words ascribed to Musk. Use bots to amplify these posts alleging that Musk actually plans to impose a 5 percent transaction fee to conduct Social Security transactions on X and intends to put every citizen’s Social Security number on a public Google Sheet. Which he might really do! So we should let the rumors spread.
We are also hustling to streamline and reduce redundancy in how Americans’ privacy is violated. Experian breaches, dark web data brokers, unregulated social media, Chinese PLA hacking? Who has time for it all? Now, we can get this done in one fell swoop by putting every US citizen’s Social Security number on a public Google Sheet administered by the nineteen-year-old who programmed Grok’s sense of humor.
My record speaks for itself. I have led X, which will now be crowdsourcing air traffic control via live posts, to become incredibly efficient at serving up pornographic Adolf Eichmann memes.
(Edited to remove a musical portion of this post that seemed inappropriate.)
