Probably everything Elon Musk is doing right now is illegal. We need to stop him and generally slow down Musk and Trump’s actions so that normal legal systems can deal with their attacks on and hostile takeover of our government.
On Sunday night somewhere around 50,000 people watched this action call sponsored by the Working Families Party, MoveOn, Indivisible, National Nurses United (NNU), National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and Court Accountability. You can watch it here:
In it, they lay out actions you should take this week, summarized in this note from Indivisible:
… We cannot fix everything by fighting back, but we won’t fix anything unless we try. I will end this the same way I ended our comments on the call last night. Remember: Trump has no mandate for this. What he is doing is not just cruel, corrupt, chaotic, and unconstitutional -- it’s also deeply unpopular. And as long as we live in a constitutional republic, doing deeply unpopular things for extended periods of time is hard to sustain in the presence of organized opposition. Our job right now is to organize that opposition -- and we need you to take action to do it. …
- Show up at your senators’ offices. This week, we’re asking Invisibles all over the country to plan visits to your closest US Senate offices to push your senators to take a stand against Trump’s lawless overreach. The ask will be slightly different if your senator is a Democrat or Republican. We’ve put together a full toolkit here explaining the strategy, messaging, and logistics. Dozens of visits have already been scheduled. See if there’s a visit happening near you. And if there's nothing close by, grab some friends, organize a visit, and register it here.
- Call your Republican senators and demand they vote NO on Russell Vought’s confirmation.* Trump’s funding freeze wasn’t his idea. It wasn’t even Elon Musk’s idea. It was the brainchild of Russell Vought, who wrote an entire chapter of Project 2025 on how the OMB can bypass Congress (and ignore the Constitution) in order to implement MAGA’s extreme agenda. If confirmed to lead the OMB, Vought would control federal spending and abuse his power to choke off government programs and agencies that don’t align with MAGA ideology. The Senate will vote on his confirmation this week, so make sure they hear from you right away (calls are better than emails, but if you find your senators’ voicemail is full, you can also send them an email using this tool).
- Rally at the Department of the Treasury on Tuesday, February 4, at 5pm. This one is for folks who are in DC or who can get to DC -- on Tuesday afternoon, a broad coalition of groups will be peacefully protesting the handing over of massive amounts of sensitive data and the payment systems for our entire federal government to an unaccountable, unelected far-right billionaire. Musk has been given seemingly unchecked power to remove career civil servants, sabotage agencies like USAID (risking millions of lives), and treat the US government like one of his corporate acquisitions. Pissed off? Show up.
P.S. -- With social media companies bending the knee to Trump, Project 2025 purging the government of dissenters, and corporate media companies caving in the face of speech-chilling lawsuits, it’s never been more important to invest in organizations you believe in that are willing to speak out and defy autocracy. Please consider chipping in with a monthly or one-time donation to help us keep up the fight.
* Throughout the day, the Senate phone system has been crashing. Hopefully the issue is resolved by the time you read this, but if our call tools fail to connect, go to your senators’ websites, visit their contact sections, and you’ll find numbers for their in-state offices. You’ll be able to reach them via those numbers.
Visit your Senators (even Republican ones) and demand they live up to their oath of office and stop the illegal activity going on right now. If you can’t get through to their Washington office, call their local offices or send an email. If you have Democratic Senators, urge them to slow down business in the Senate and vote against the worst appointments:
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr for Secretary of Health and Human Services
- Russell Vought for OMB (main author of Project 2025 and up for a vote later this week)
- Kash Patel for FBI Director
- Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence
And call these Democrats and thank them for showing up yesterday at USAID, speaking out, and trying to enter the closed building:
Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia
Sen. Chris Van Hollen
Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii
Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey
Reps. Jamie Raskin and Johnny Olszewski of Maryland
Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia
Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota
P.S. Paul Krugman’s newsletter is must-reading today: What the Musk is Happening? This is a taste, but read the whole thing:
… Yesterday Elon Musk, after spending the weekend denouncing the U.S. Agency for International Development as “evil,” a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America,” and a “criminal organization,” announced that the agency was being shut down. Now, Musk isn’t the president — at least I don’t think he is; he isn’t even a government official.
But Donald Trump has confirmed the move, which is illegal and unconstitutional. No qualifying language, no “might be” or “some say” evasions, please. Congress passed a law establishing USAID as an independent agency, and the president can’t abolish it unless Congress passes new legislation to that effect. …
