Progressive lawmakers condemned Donald Trump and Elon Musk on Monday, pointing to the attempted shuttering of the foreign aid agency USAid and the accessing of the treasury department’s federal payment system as the markings of a “constitutional crisis”.
After Musk declared that he was working to shut down USAid, Democratic members of Congress tried to enter the agency’s Washington headquarters but said they were turned away on the orders of Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge). USAid staffers were also locked out of the building on Monday, as the White House confirmed plans to merge the agency with the state department.
Addressing reporters outside the USAid headquarters, Representative Ilhan Omar, a Democrat of Minnesota, accused Trump and Musk of attempting to “take away the constitutional power of Congress”, which has the authority to allocate federal funds.
“We are witnessing a constitutional crisis,” Omar said. “We talked about Trump wanting to be a dictator on day one, and here we are. This is what the beginning of dictatorship looks like. When you gut the constitution and you install yourself as the sole power, that is how dictators are made.”
The clash at USAid came one day after news broke that Musk’s associates had received access to the treasury department’s federal payment system, potentially exposing the sensitive personal data of millions of Americans. Democratic lawmakers reported receiving a deluge of calls from constituents expressing alarm over the possibility that their personal information might have been jeopardized.
“Donald Trump has given unprecedented power over the federal government to an unelected, unaccountable billionaire,” Representative Greg Casar, a Democrat of Texas and chair of the congressional progressive caucus, said in a statement. “Progressives will fight this in the courts, on the House floor, and with every tool at our disposal until Elon Musk is out of our government and no longer putting taxpayers, the sick, and the elderly at risk.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat of Massachusetts, sent a letter to Trump’s new treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, on Sunday to demand answers for his role in allowing Musk’s team access to the payment system. She warned that such access “puts the country at greater risk of defaulting on our debt, which could trigger a global financial crisis”.
“It is extraordinarily dangerous to meddle with the critical systems that process trillions of dollars of transactions each year, are essential to preventing a default on federal debt, and ensure that tens of millions of Americans receive their Social Security checks, tax refunds, and Medicare benefits,” Warren wrote. “The American people deserve answers about your role in this mismanagement, which threatens the privacy and economic security of every American.”
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat of New York, described the intervention of Musk, who spent more than $290m on the 2024 election, as a “five alarm fire” and a “grave threat to national security”.
“This is a plutocratic coup. If you want the power, run for office and be chosen by the people,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a social media post. “Short of that, this is an exercise in vigilantism.”
