TOI correspondent from Washington: The first contours of a constitutional crisis and a potential civil war, at least on the legal front, are sharpening in America. A federal judge in New York issued an emergency order on Saturday prohibiting Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing personal and financial data of millions of Americans kept at the Treasury Department, after Attorneys General from 19 Democrat-run states sued to stop the intrusion.
Delhi Election Results 2025
Initiated by New York AG Letitia James, the attorneys general said the president had given “virtually unfettered access” to the federal government’s most sensitive information Musk’s young DOGE aides who are now “attempting to access government data to support initiatives to block federal funds from reaching certain disfavored beneficiaries.”
Separately, another federal judge issued a restraining order pausing the administrative leave of 2200 USAID employees and the withdrawal nearly all of the agency’s overseas workers, as the US legal system kicked in to constrain the Trump effort to dismantle the traditional norms of governance the President sees as deeply flawed and corrupt.
Other court rulings this week have blocked Trump moves to freeze federal spending and overturn birthright citizenship, even as the President is expanding his blitz against Democrats with what his supporters characterize as a “flood the zone” policy aimed at overwhelming them on many fronts.
On Friday, Trump announced, among other steps, that he is sacking members of the board of trustees for the storied Kennedy Centre in Washington DC and naming himself chairman. Maintaining that the current trustees “do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” Trump smacked down on the center recently featuring “Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth,” and asserted, “THIS WILL STOP.”
Opening new fronts almost every hour, Trump also fired the head of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Colleen Shogan, a Biden-appointee and the first woman to serve in the post. The President has reportedly been miffed by the agency’s role in the Justice Department’s investigation and prosecution over classified documents kept at his Mar-a-Lago home after his first term, although Shogan was not in charge at the time.
For that matter, Trump extended his pique against the former President himself, revoking Biden’s security clearance and classified briefings in a payback for what Biden had done to him.
Fired up by a MAGA base celebrating the dismantling of what it sees as the entrenched establishment in Washington DC, Trump acolytes virtually defaced the USAID lettering stenciled in granite at the entrance of its HQ, cheered on by Elon Musk, who also celebrated with an “RIP” message the demise of the Consumer Forum Protection Board (CFPB), whose head Rohit Chopra was fired by Trump earlier this week.
So intense and vitriolic is the resentment and pressure from the base towards the establishment that the Trump dispensation is avoiding any reminders about USAID being heartily backed during his first term by the President’s own daughter Ivanka, and the Senator-turned Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said the institution was vital to America’s interests.
The virtual sacking of long-established government institutions and programs is triggering alarms from Democratic lawmakers, liberal activists, and commentators about an ongoing coup and an upcoming constitutional crisis. Many are rushing to courts finding temporary reprieve and succor largely in Democratic-governed states amid a widening political schism in America.
On Friday, the Washington Post, long an establishment sentinel whose current owner Jeff Bezos is now a Trump supporter, said the term constitutional crisis “recalls some of the most perilous moments in American history, from the Civil War to Watergate.” Trump aides dismissed the talk as overheated and overblown.