Wednesday, February 12. Several of our members have lost their homes; more have been displaced while they remediate the smoke / ash damage. (There’s a listing of GoFundMe pages on our web site for those who need assistance.) That makes it hard to dive into the starkly political, even as President Trump and his minions seem, on a daily basis, to do ever more outrageous deeds aimed at dismantling core functions of our government. Worse, we seem powerless to stop the assault on norms and standards that both sides of the aisle had long taken for granted.
But are we really powerless? Well, yes and no. In the short term, yes, sadly, we pretty much are. We can, and should, protest; we can, and should, urge Congressional opposition. We can, and should, support Democrats and the Democratic Party institutions and small-d democratic organizations. As one person said, it’s a time to organize, not agonize. But, in the short term, don’t expect that to have much effect.
For now, our last resort is the federal court system, and that, thankfully, still seems to be working. Numerous stays have been issued. In all likelihood, much of what the President is trying to do unilaterally, and quickly, will be overturned. Yet longer-term, however, much of what he wants to do can be done legally. For example, unilaterally firing the Inspectors-General won’t fly. But he can give Congress 30 days notice, with some vague reasonable sounding justification, and then fire them legally. Similarly, previously committed grant funding will have to be honored, but new grants cycles can unilaterally be cancelled.
The issue of spending approved, but not yet obligated, funds is actually pretty interesting, and has not been well covered by the mainstream media. Congressionally approved spending clearly cannot unilaterally be blocked by the President, and the courts are extremely likely to uphold that basic canon. However, the President can introduce rescission resolutions to pull back those funds.
Those resolutions are “highly privileged” in Congressional parliamentary speak. That means, in the House, they can’t get bottled up in Committee (even though the Reps control all the Committees). Once reported out of Committee, the resolution is “in order” at any time, with debate limited to 2 hours, and only a majority is required to pass the resolution. In the Senate, debate is limited to 10 hours, so it is exempt from the filibuster rule, and again only a majority is needed to enact it. Each House can amend the rescission bill, reducing the budget by less, or even more, than was proposed, even extending the rescission to cover other agencies and functions. If the bills approved by the two Houses differ, they go through a standard Conference Committee which produces a single compromise bill that both Houses can agree on. Once both Houses approve the bill, the President may sign or veto it.
That provides an entirely legal, and appropriate, mechanism to allow the President to cut back already approved spending before it goes out the door. (Interestingly, between 1976 and 2000, Congress approved 461 separate rescission bills; Bill Clinton was the last President to propose one, and they haven’t been used since.) With control of both Houses, such a bill would surely pass. It’s involved, and a bit time-consuming, and requires a degree of specificity that Elon Musk apparently can’t be bothered to deal with, but it would legally and appropriately achieve everything the President is trying to do.
On a longer-term basis, I would look in two directions: at President Trump’s results, and at forthcoming special elections. Both are likely to undermine his support and, perhaps, undermine his policies as well.
On the results front, we’re already seeing wisps of hope (although one feels rather guilty hoping for bad news for the American economy and American families). Gas prices are up; egg prices are up. Inflation is up 0.5% for the month, raising the annual rate to 3.0%, which of course the President blames on Joe Biden. Consumer confidence is down, which is particularly relevant because the Administration is trying to focus, economically, on reducing the yields on 10-year Treasury bills, which control consumer credit and mortgage interest rates. Lower consumer confidence, higher inflation, tariffs all drive Treasury prices down and interest rates up, exactly the opposite of what the Administration has set as their goal.
Federal grants and support to a host of recipients – state, local, governmental, private – are going to be cut, one way or another. That will lead to increasing disillusionment with the Trump administration, increasing grass-roots protests, especially in red states who actually receive a disproportionate share of government grants.
Government funding expires in mid-March, only one month away, and the House and Senate are nowhere close to consensus on a reconciliation bill or a continuing resolution to keep the lights on, or what to do about the debt limit, which we have already exceeded. Janet Yellin, Biden’s Treasury Secretary, was already into “extraordinary measures” to work around that pesky debt ceiling; now Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has that hot potato.
Thus, by the end of March, we may be in the middle of a government shutdown. We will certainly have seen more inflation, more price increases, more turmoil in the labor market and probably the stock market as well. That will set the stage for several critical special elections that, at best for the Reps, let them keep their meager 5-seat majority, and at worst, actually flip the House.
That’s not as outrageously hyperbolic as it sounds. Three weeks ago, there was a special election in Iowa for a State Senate seat. The Republican incumbent, elected by 62% in 2022, had resigned to accept appointment as Iowa’s Lt. Governor (the previous Lt. Gov. resigned in September to become head of the Iowa Banker’s Association). President Trump carried that district in 2024 by nearly 60%. But in the special election, albeit with a much lower turnout, the Democratic candidate, Mike Zimmer, flipped the district, winning with 52% of the vote. What makes this even more interesting is that Zimmer’s Senate District 35 is entirely within Congresswoman Marianette Miller-Meeks’ Congressional District. You may recall that Miller-Meeks won by 800 votes. If Zimmer’s Senate District had voted in November as it did in January, Miller-Meeks would have lost her Congressional seat.
It is fair to say that the much smaller turnout in these special elections means their results are not particularly predictive of the results in a November general election. But there are two Florida special elections scheduled for April 1, and the New York special election won’t be far behind. Those special elections will be facing the same dynamics as the Iowa special – low turnout, President Trump is not on the ballot, potential buyer’s remorse setting in. In fact, in all likelihood, conditions will be significantly worse by then.
One of the Florida districts – Matt Gaetz’s old district – is overwhelmingly Republican. But the other Florida district, and the New York district, are not much more Republican than the Iowa Senate district. So if Democrat Joshua Weil from the Florida 6th, or the yet-to-be nominated Democrat from the New York 21st District, comes knocking at your door, send them a few dollars. Joshua Weil, in particular, seems well positioned to be as viable a candidate as we could hope for in that Republican district (especially when the Republican candidate doesn’t even live in the District).
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