As President Donald Trump and Elon Musk attempt to systematically dismantle the United States government, agency by agency, they are working to eliminate vast numbers of employees, removing public data and institutional knowledge, and reportedly accessing sensitive government records and personal information of American citizens. In response, many grassroots Democratic voters are demanding to know what their party’s elected leaders are doing to stop them.

There appears to be a growing sense among some on the left that top elected Democrats are out of touch, unable or unwilling to grasp the severity of what some say is a constitutional crisis and others are simply calling a “coup.”

And while a few House and Senate Democrats this week showed up at the Washington, D.C. offices of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and were denied access, and others held a press conference, few elected Democrats appear to have understood this extremely volatile moment — or at least publicly communicated what is actually going on.

RELATED: Dems Blocked From Entering USAID Offices: ‘Illegal and Corrupt’

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) has been leading the battle against President Trump and his director of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk.

For the uninitiated, here’s how The Washington Post summed up recent events on Tuesday.

“U.S. government officials privately warn Musk’s blitz appears illegal,” the headline reads. “The billionaire’s DOGE team has launched an all-out assault on federal agencies, triggering numerous legal objections.”

“Over the past two weeks, Musk’s team has moved to dismantle some U.S. agencies, push out hundreds of thousands of civil servants and gain access to some of the federal government’s most sensitive payment systems,” The Post reported. The paper noted that “many of these moves appear to violate federal law, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, one audio recording, and several internal messages obtained by The Washington Post. Internal legal objections have been raised at the Treasury Department, the Education Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the General Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the White House budget office, among others.”

Financial Times’ columnist Ed Luce, on MSNBC Wednesday morning, put this moment in starker terms.

“This is a coup that’s happening. It is happening here. It’s happening now,” he declared, as Mediaite reported. “So I think this requires a far more radical and drastic sort of rethink of what the Democrats’ democratic strategy should be.”

On Tuesday morning, Senator Murphy spoke with MSNBC political analyst Anand Giridharadas, who praised him as a “real leader” who started “early” in the Trump-Musk battle.

Giridharadas said that “the Democrats’ transition from being asleep during a coup to being awake during a coup is a trend in the right direction — being awake is certainly preferable to being asleep, and some of that, you know, I think Chris Murphy has been someone who’s been a real leader early in this.”

READ MORE: ‘Blind to What’s Happening on His Watch’: Rubio Slammed After ‘Cheap Shot’ at Aid Groups

“But at the end of the day, the Democratic Party right now is completely leaderless,” he lamented. “There’s no real clear sense of fight. You still have these messages of, well, ‘we gotta trust in God,’ or well, ‘we’ll pass a law to regulate the Treasury.'”

“There’s no understanding that this is a very serious concerted an anti-constitutional coup being waged by very determined actors.”

Senator Murphy shared his concerns—and plan—with Giridharadas.

Giridharadas told Murphy he thought the Senator’s “present-level thinking about the future of the Democratic Party…has been clearer and starker and more honest.”

But he also charged, “I would imagine that 90% of people watching this right now feel profoundly undefended by the Democratic Party.”

Murphy replied, “I do think that people understand that we are the minority party. We don’t run the White House, we are the minority in the House and in the Senate, but we need to act like a real opposition party in the middle of a constitutional and democracy crisis.”

And he offered a plan for his colleagues and grassroots Democrats.

“That means we should not be moving forward nominees or legislation in the United States Senate. Democrats should not be giving votes to nominees or to legislation in the United States Senate until Republicans get serious about this crisis. Democrats should not help Republicans raise the debt ceiling in order to pass their massive tax cut for billionaires and millionaires.”

“Democrats should be leading public gatherings all weekend, all across the country to bring Americans out to show Republicans if they will pay a price. And then Democrats need to speak in really stark terms about what is going on here.”

Calling it “a billionaire power grab,” Murphy said, “I think Elon Musk is trying to steal our money, is trying to steal our data. I think Elon Musk is shutting down the USAD because he wants to do deals with China and make more money. And and I know that there are some in the Democratic Party that, you know, don’t like jumping to conclusions, that there are some of the Democratic Party that don’t like to call out specific billionaires for what they are doing to all of us, but this is a moment in which we’ve got to engage in very, very simple and strong terms about what is happening.”

“Side by side with being a true opposition party in the Senate, using our tools to make life difficult for complicit Republicans, and then going out there and leading a a public engagement, which is I think the next step that we have to do, don’t just fight on the inside, go fight on the outside.”

On social media, Murphy added, “We still have the power to stop this billionaire power grab, but Democrats need to act like our democracy is weeks away from disintegrating—because it is.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

I laid out this morning what a real opposition can look like at this moment of crisis. We still have the power to stop this billionaire power grab, but Democrats need to act like our democracy is weeks away from disintegrating – because it is. pic.twitter.com/XSxX05QXVR

— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 5, 2025

READ MORE: ‘You Will Have Blood on Your Hands’: GOP Senator, a Physician, Condemned for RFK Jr. Vote

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is facing backlash after criticizing charity workers and nonprofit organizations striving to deliver essential, lifesaving supplies—humanitarian aid such as food and medicine—to those in desperate need. According to The Washington Post, Secretary Rubio went so far as to suggest that these organizations are intentionally obstructing their own efforts to score a “political point.”

“Secretary Rubio blamed aid groups for failing to navigate Trump’s freeze on foreign aid, saying they are either too incompetent to apply for exemptions or deliberately sabotaging their work to make a ‘political point,'” Washington Post diplomacy and national security reporter John Hudson wrote.

“I issued a blanket waiver that said, if this is life saving programs … if it’s providing food or medicine or anything that is saving lives … you’re not included in the freeze,” Rubio told reporters (video below), according to Hudson. “I don’t know how much more clear we can be than that.”

The U.S. Secretary of State “added that if an aid group [is] receiving funds from the United States and “does not know how to apply a waiver, then I have real questions about the competence of that organization -or I wonder whether they’re deliberately sabotaging it for purposes of making a political point.”

READ MORE: ‘You Will Have Blood on Your Hands’: GOP Senator, a Physician, Condemned for RFK Jr. Vote

Experts sharply criticized Secretary Rubio, suggesting he failed to grasp that while aid groups can apply for waivers, those applications cannot be reviewed or approved if no one is working at USAID.

Rubio was made acting head of USAID by President Donald Trump. USAID is expected to be folded into the U.S. State Department, although experts question the legality of such a move.

Derek Martin is the founder of Pathfinder Research. He previously conducted “supply chain counterintelligence at the National Security Agency (NSA), where he further developed his investigative skills and protected critical government IT infrastructure from foreign threats.”

Pointing to a Politico article that reports the Trump administration is putting “thousands” of USAID employees on “forced leave,” Martin responded to Rubio’s remarks by saying: “Might be hard to apply for waivers with all agency staff on forced leave.”

Politico also cited a senior USAID official who “said the agency’s human resources department said in a meeting Tuesday morning that it had already revoked system access for more than 1,400 staffers — an indication that many more are being put on leave than those previously announced.”

“That’s in addition to hundreds of USAID contractors who have been laid off or furloughed in recent weeks. The contractors lost their jobs in part due to an ongoing freeze on foreign aid imposed by President Donald Trump and his aides, who are making moves to fold USAID into the State Department.”

READ MORE: ‘Why on Earth Should We Believe That?’: Top Dem Doubts Claim Musk Has Only Limited Access

Dylan Williams, Vice President for Government Affairs at the Center for International Policy, noted that “Trump put out overbroad orders that Rubio failed to coherently operationalize, resulting in mass confusion at nearly every point in the aid supply chain — and now Rubio is calling those trying to make sense of it incompetent or malicious.”

Refugees International president Jeremy Konyndyk served in both the Obama and Biden administrations in senior USAID positions, including “as USAID’s lead official for COVID-19,” according to his bio:

“He oversaw USAID’s multi-billion-dollar COVID-19 assistance portfolio, led the design and implementation of the administration’s Global VAX initiative, and coordinated the U.S. government’s global donations of hundreds of millions of vaccine doses. He later served as the administration’s lead official for the global MPox response. He also served on the Biden-Harris transition teams for the Departments of State and Health and Human Services.”

“A very cheap shot by Rubio to accuse the NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] of politicizing this, when the breakdowns are in fact coming from the (willful?) dysfunction within the administration,” Konyndyk charged.

He also called Rubio’s remarks a “very damning admission,” and said it “makes clear he’s blind to what’s happening on his watch.”

“Why aren’t waivers going through? Because @USAID staff (not by the NGOs) have to request them case-by-case from State, and DOGE has now purged all those personnel.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

NEWS: Amid reports that exemptions to President Trump’s aid freeze are failing—causing HIV clinics in Africa to shut down, suspending demining efforts in Cambodia, and disrupting malaria prevention programs—Secretary of State Rubio, as @John_Hudson notes, blamed aid groups, and… https://t.co/hvNWdxWRsM pic.twitter.com/hlgVfA5O6i

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) February 4, 2025

READ MORE: Dems Blocked From Entering USAID Offices: ‘Illegal and Corrupt’

Image via Reuters

U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a physician with a record of working to help the uninsured and underinsured, on Tuesday voted in committee to confirm anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to become President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy, an attorney and not a physician, has never managed an enterprise anywhere near the scale of the $1.6 trillion department that encompasses over a dozen vital agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The final floor vote on Kennedy’s HHS nomination is expected to come next week.

Directly or indirectly, HHS’s decisions touch every human being in the United States.

Senator Cassidy had hinted, some believed, as The New York Times had reported, that he would vote against confirming Kennedy, after he posted a biblical passage on courage to social media this weekend:

pic.twitter.com/kGXVtZTPkj

— U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (@SenBillCassidy) February 2, 2025

Cassidy’s vote has been seen as pivotal for Kennedy’s confirmation.

Kennedy has been labeled a conspiracy theorist who “continues to push the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism,” the BBC reported. He has said: “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.” He also has spent years advocating against vaccines, and has a financial interest in having vaccines perceived as dangerous, and has a financial stake in anti-vaccine lawsuits.

READ MORE: ‘Why on Earth Should We Believe That?’: Top Dem Doubts Claim Musk Has Only Limited Access

“Kennedy has not only gained a public following for his outlandish claims, he has also made a lot of money broadcasting them. And he could stand to make more from his anti-vaccine crusade as America’s top health official — the kind of brazen self-dealing that’s become all but normalized in Trump’s America,” Vox‘s Dylan Scott reported.

Despite Kennedy’s history, however, Senator Cassidy on Tuesday told Americans that if confirmed, RFK Jr. and he “will meet regularly,” and the HHS Secretary would meet quarterly with the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. And he said Kennedy committed to giving the HELP Committee 30-day notice if he wants to change vaccine monitoring programs.

“These commitments, and my expectation that we can have a great working relationship to make America healthy again, is the basis of my support,” Cassidy announced (video below).

On social media media Cassidy added: “I’ve had very intense conversations with Bobby and the White House over the weekend and even this morning. I want to thank VP JD specifically for his honest counsel. With the serious commitments I’ve received from the administration and the opportunity to make progress on the issues we agree on like healthy foods and a pro-American agenda, I will vote yes.”

Backlash against Cassidy has been swift.

READ MORE: Dems Blocked From Entering USAID Offices: ‘Illegal and Corrupt’

“Having very intense conversations with a liar is not a good way to discover the truth,” wrote The Atlantic’s James Surowiecki, author of “The Wisdom of Crowds.”

“You are a coward,” charged Fred Wellman, an Army veteran of 22 years who served four combat tours, and is now a political consultant and the host of the podcast “On Democracy.” “What did they threaten you with? This Administration never keeps promises. Why are you such a spineless fraud? Just disgraceful. You’ve gotten your footnote in the history books as a weak man who surrendered when challenged. Nobody remembers the cowards.”

“Our Republican Party has fully turned into the soulless United Russia party and act identical to the communist politburo,” observed Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and an expert on Russian intelligence.

“Rarely does somebody get to flush two essential oaths, Hippocratic and Constitutional, down the toilet at once. May history remember you for this accomplishment,” noted former Obama and Biden administrations official Jesse Lee.

“You’re a doctor who just voted for an anti-vax conspiracy theorist. You’ve made children less safe. You’ve made Americans less safe. This is your legacy,” declared political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen.

“Disgusting. I feel for anyone who had him as a Doctor—or a Senator. Kennedy is the most unqualified, disqualified, radical and ridiculous nominee for this role in history. Anyone who votes for him has no integrity,” wrote veterans’ activist Paul Reickhoff.

“You are a moral coward. When children die because they are unvaccinated for measles and polio, you will bear responsibility. When people die from a pandemic because the CDC has been hollowed out, you will have blood on your hands. Shame,” said The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Watch the video below or at this link.

Watching Bill Cassidy reveal the commitments that RFK Jr gave him — for instance, a pledge to provide Senate a 30-day heads-up on any planned changes to vaccine safety monitoring programs

Strikes me that these commitments wouldn’t be needed if the health secretary wasn’t RFK Jr pic.twitter.com/JME59dyjjt

— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) February 4, 2025

READ MORE: ‘Do We Have a King?’ Trump and Musk’s Moves Signal ‘Constitutional Crisis,’ Experts Warn

Image via Reuters