Musk Is A Symptom. Trumpism Is The Disease

Elon Musk is not responsible for armed, masked federal goons kidnapping innocent human beings off our streets and rendering them to Central American gulags--but given the obsession Congressional Democrats have for Musk, you'd never know it. Their failure to put the focus where it belongs--on Trump and his minions--is allowing Trump to consolidate his autocracy bit by bit, day by day. Democrats and everyone else who values individual liberty need to focus relentlessly on the real enemy...before it's too late.

According to The Hill, Democratic New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez raised a staggering $10 million in the first quarter of 2025. She accomplished this while on a country-wide journey with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for their "Fighting Oligarchy" tour. Not surprisingly, a frequent target of their stump speeches was multi-billionaire Elon Musk and his constitutionally dubious "DOGE" entity.

But while "AOC" and Sanders consistently drew low- to -middle five-digit audiences even in reliably Republican states like Idaho and Utah with their overtly class warfare rhetoric, the underlying premise and ultra-wealthy targets of their verbal attacks are not the reason why human beings are be snatched off the streets of American communities and rendered without due process to a de facto concentration camp in El Salvador.

AOC and Sanders are hardly alone in their failure to focus on the root cause of our current national nightmare, but their well-publicized, politically theatrical roadshow is a high-profile manifestation of the misguided priorities of one element of the fractious anti-MAGA coalition.

And for the most part, just about all of Trump's political opponents remain back on their heels because of the speed and scale of his assaults on institutions designed to thwart his quest for unlimited executive power and the freedom to crush political opponents or disfavored groups at will.

One of the few recent exceptions to this political paralysis was provided by Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who became the first member of Congress to actually go to El Salvador to try to free Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man wrongfully deported to El Salvador earlier this spring.

Van Hollen is especially well positioned in the Senate to exert real leverage over Trump and El Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele. Van Hollen is the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies on the Senate Appropriations Committee, as well as being a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

By refusing unanimous consent and subsequently engaging in a filibuster on any foreign affairs related funding or nominations important to Trump, Van Hollen would be speaking to Trump in the only language America's would-be dictator understands: the language of power. Overcoming a filibuster requires 60 votes in the Senate...and if Senate Democrats were united in the effort Senator Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) would never have the 60 votes needed to break the filibuster.

Indeed, this is one pathway to stopping Trump's lawless mass deportation efforts, his attacks on universities, the legal profession, the press, and so on. Such an approach would no doubt lead to hysterical, baseless attacks by Trump's nativist TV and online echo chamber. But with the latest poll showing Trump's disapproval ratings rising rapidly, Democrats should be emboldened to launch this kind of badly needed head-on legislative attack on Trump's unconstitutional agenda.

In the wake of what many Democrats and other Trump opponents viewed as a sellout during the 2025 continuing resolution fight in March, the question is whether Van Hollen, or any of the rest of his Senate Democratic colleagues, are willing to use the very real power they have to bring all Senate action to halt in order to force Trump to cease his illegal kidnappings and renditions under the Alien Enemies Act as well as his open defiance of federal courts over the matter.

If you live in a state with one or more Democratic or nominally politically independent Senators, tell them to refuse unanimous consent on any Trump-desired legislation or Trump nominees until he obeys federal court decisions barring his unconstitutional acts. Also, tell your governor to ban participation by state or local law enforcement personnel in any ICE, HSI, or FBI operations being carried out under Attorney General Pam Bondi's facially unconstitutional Alien Enemy Act enforcement memo of March 14, 2025.

REMINDER: You can get 30% off my new book about past episodes of unconstitutional surveillance and political repression, the Triumph of Fear, by going directly to the Georgetown University Press website and using the code TGUF...and this code can be used by anybody, so spread the word and thanks for being a Sentinel subscriber!