Elon Musk is no less elected than any one of the thousands of federal bureaucrats who’ve exploited the administrative state to circumvent Congress and unilaterally implement new laws from the executive branch for decades. But when Musk — now deputized by the democratically elected president to rein in the leviathan of an unchecked bureaucracy — embarks on his crusade to eliminate wasteful spending, Democrats suddenly claim the nation is on the verge of a “constitutional crisis.”
“We are at a point where we are basically on the cusp of a constitutional crisis,” Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said the same thing that night.
“We really do have a constitutional crisis,” Booker said in response to a question about whether Trump might triumph over activist judges.
“We’ve got our toes right on the edge of a constitutional crisis here,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on MSNBC one day later.
“That’s the new buzzword,” Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany said this week, with Musk’s unelected status seemingly at the heart of Democrats’ complaints. House Democrats even introduced the “Nobody Elected Elon Musk Act” on Monday as lawmakers fume outrage over the tech entrepreneur’s recent moves to gut taxpayer waste from unaccountable agencies.
“It may be the case that Donald Trump is so full of confidence that he thinks he can wave his wand, and whatever he wants to happen will happen,” Senator Warren said on prime-time television on Monday night. “And particularly, Elon Musk would like nobody to notice that he just wants to get rid of them before he launches his new financial product.”
Democrats are desperate for the courts to stop the newly elected administration from delivering on the mandate given by voters after the president campaigned with Musk on a platform of government efficiency.
“In recent days dozens of lawsuits have been filed against the Trump administration by Democrat attorneys general and various left-wing groups. These groups have carefully selected their venues, ensuring the lawsuits come before rabidly anti-Trump activist judges,” reported Federalist Senior Editor John Davidson. “So far, the tactic seems to be working. As of this past weekend, eight different rulings from the federal bench have temporarily halted the president’s executive orders.”
But Democrats are concerned their latest round of lawfare targeting their political opponents in the executive branch may not work in every case.
“My view right now is the courts are where we are hanging on to our constitutional structure,” Warren said. “They still have the power to hold everybody else in this country in contempt if they do not follow lawfully issued court orders.”
The Massachusetts senator, however, was eager to “commend” Biden on circumventing judicial blocks on student debt payments characterized as “forgiveness” when Democrats controlled the White House.
“Let me be very clear, President Biden has the legal authority to cancel student-loan debt,” Warren said in 2023, accusing legal efforts to derail the payments as “baseless.”
President Joe Biden bragged about his success in circumventing the judicial branch on student loans months later.
“Early in my term, I announced a major plan to provide millions of working families with debt relief for their college student debt,” Biden said at a speech in California. “And the Supreme Court blocked it. But that didn’t stop me.”
Nor did the courts stop Biden from engaging in all kinds of executive overreach, with unelected bureaucrats passing new rules such as strict emissions standards and agency censorship of American speech.
While Democrats used Congress’s vague laws to expand the federal government’s role under the executive branch, Musk is merely using them to shrink the agencies as a presidential designee. The proliferation of the administrative state upheld by activist judges is the constitutional crisis Democrats themselves created.
