As Constitutional Crises Mount, Mainstream Media Sleepwalks Into Autocracy

When President Donald Trump announced an unprecedented freeze on federal grants and loans last week, some of the most prominent U.S. news outlets proved themselves largely uninterested in whether it was legal. Meanwhile, a few braver journalists called out the move as the constitutional crisis that it was.

When Democratic attorneys general rushed to challenge the move in court, with positive results, Trump rescinded the order. But the crisis is hardly over.

On the contrary: Elon Musk, the unelected centibillionaire who threw Nazi salutes at the inauguration, has wrested control of the Treasury Department’s payment system after forcing out its most senior career civil servant, David Lebryk. As CNN reported, the Treasury takeover happened after Trump’s team had repeatedly asked about the department’s ability to stop payments, to which Lebryk had insisted, “We don’t do that.”

These payments include things such as Social Security checks, tax refunds, federal employee salaries and contractor payments. It’s more than $5 trillion a year, a fifth of the U.S. economy. The database Musk and his tech bro allies in the non-congressionally approved “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) have access to also contains enormous amounts of sensitive personal information for most Americans, including Social Security numbers. And Musk and a 25-year-old former employee have access to the code that controls the payment systems, allowing them to make irreversible changes to it, according to Wired.

At the same time, Musk has infiltrated the General Services Administration and the Office of Personnel Management — two other rather obscure and nonpolitical but hugely consequential agencies that manage federal offices, technology and employees.

‘An idea that crosses party lines’

Instead of appropriately pushing the increasing lawlessness and opacity to the forefront of their reporting, the New York Times and Washington Post largely buried these stories, downplaying their earth-shattering break from democratic norms.

As Musk took over the Treasury system, the Times did point out:

Control of the system could give Mr. Musk’s allies the ability to unilaterally cut off money intended for federal workers, bondholders and companies, and open a new front in the Trump administration’s efforts to halt federal payments.

And yet somehow this story struck editors as Page 13 material.

Meanwhile, a piece by the Times‘ Michael Shear published online the same day was deemed front-page material, causing even seasoned media critics to spit out their morning beverage at its breathtaking ability to bothsides the situation: “Beneath Trump’s Chaotic Spending Freeze: An Idea That Crosses Party Lines.”

Shear wrote that Trump is simply “continuing a mostly failed effort by a long series of presidents and Congress” to “somehow reverse the seemingly inexorable growth of the federal government, an issue that resonates with some Democrats as well as most Republicans.” He thus clearly communicated that he is not up for the task of reporting on this administration.

The Times published Musk’s Treasury takeover on Page 18, under the rather nonchalant headline: “Elon Musk’s Team Now Has Access to Treasury’s Payments System.” The subhead read:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Mr. Musk’s representatives at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending.

And hey, don’t worry, the article suggests:

Mr. Musk’s initiative is intended to be part of a broader review of the payments system to allow improper payments to be scrutinized, and is not an effort to arbitrarily block individual payments, the people familiar with the matter said.

At the Post, readers got language like, “The clash reflects an intensifying battle between Musk and the federal bureaucracy,” and “it is extremely unusual for anyone connected to political appointees to access” the payment systems. (In fact, it appears to be unprecedented.)

‘Reminiscent of Stalin’

There is another way to do journalism. It’s called connecting dots, asking questions, not accepting anonymous claims of benevolent intent — and helping people understand the gravity of the situation when unprecedented end-runs around democracy are happening before our very eyes. And it’s heartening to see quite a few news outlets engaging in it.

For instance, Wired has been doing a tenacious job following Musk’s assault on the government, connecting the dots between his actions and explaining the dangers to the country. It broke the news that Musk workers from his various companies had taken over management positions at the Office of Personnel Management — well before Trump’s nominee to take over the OPM has even had a confirmation hearing. Its subhead noted: “One expert found the takeover reminiscent of Stalin.”

Wired explained that the installation of AI experts at OPM suggests a forthcoming effort to use AI on the reams of data it has access to in order to target federal employees for removal.

Regarding the GSA infiltration, Wired reported:

The access could give Musk’s proxies the ability to remote into laptops, listen in on meetings, read emails, among many other things, a former Biden official told Wired on Friday.

“Granting DOGE staff, many of whom aren’t government employees, unfettered access to internal government systems and sensitive data poses a huge security risk to the federal government and to the American public,” the Biden official said. “Not only will DOGE be able to review procurement-sensitive information about major government contracts, it’ll also be able to actively surveil government employees.”

Wired again put that danger (“the potential [for Musk minions] to remote into laptops, read emails, and more”) into its subhead — unlike the Times‘ muted headlines.

‘Incredibly dangerous’

Others are also raising alarms in their headlines, as at Rolling Stone: “Elon Musk’s Attempt to Control the Treasury Payment System Is Incredibly Dangerous.” The subhead explained: “Trump and Musk could use sensitive Treasury information to punish their enemies. Worse yet, they could break America’s payment system entirely.”

The piece, by Nathan Tankus, pointed out that there are glaring reasons to disbelieve administration claims about this being about “improper payments,” such as:

At 3:14 a.m. Sunday, Musk pledged to shut down supposedly “illegal payments” to Global Refuge, a faith-based organization that exists to provide “safety and support to refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants from across the world.”

Tankus also points out what the Post and Times don’t, which is that the seizure of the payment system means Trump and Musk

can just impound agency payments themselves. They could also possibly stop paying federal employees they have forced on paid administrative leave, coercing them to resign.

Even in bigger media, some critical voices could be heard. CNN‘s Zachary Wolf asked some appropriate journalistic questions: “Has [Musk] taken an oath, like the federal workers he apparently has plans to fire, to uphold the Constitution? … What are Musk’s conflicts of interests?”

Accessories to the coup

The Washington Post put news about Musk’s takeovers on the front page Tuesday as it reported on Trump preparing an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education, which Musk has apparently also infiltrated. But it still managed to sound rather sanguine about the threat: “The expected executive order would not shut down the agency, as there is widespread agreement in both parties that doing so would require congressional action.” Despite reporting daily on actions Trump and Musk have taken that have usurped congressional authority, the paper still seems to believe — and want readers to believe, against all evidence — that our Constitution’s constraints on executive power continue to hold.

And the New York Times finally published an article taking a deeper look “Inside Musk’s Aggressive Incursion Into the Federal Government,” as the headline stated. Still, it seemed to find it difficult to use language in its early framing paragraphs any stronger than to say that Musk’s actions “have challenged congressional authority and potentially breached civil service protections,” as it explains in the third paragraph. These moves are “creating major upheaval,” the fifth paragraph allowed, and the sixth said it “represented an extraordinary flexing of power by a private individual.”

The piece was not published in the print newspaper the next day; FAIR has yet to see it rise to the top of the paper’s homepage.

As Musk and Trump continue to behave like kings, it’s incumbent upon news media to not just report on their actions, but put them in the proper context for the public to understand the threat level they represent; otherwise, we can’t respond appropriately.

That kind of reporting takes real bravery in the kind of moment we are in: Musk has already (falsely) called it a crime to reveal the names of those working for him at the agencies DOGE is targeting, which Wired and others have done. The Trump-installed D.C. attorney general has obsequiously promised Musk to go after those who identify his underlings — and to prosecute “anyone who impedes your work or threatens your people,” according to New Republic.

While that might sound laughable, media outlets have already paid Trump handsome settlements to settle lawsuits that should have been seen as similarly laughable . When prominent news outlets won’t summon the courage to vigorously oppose this descent into autocracy, they are accessories to the coup. We must demand better from them, and support the outlets and journalists doing the critical work we as citizens require to defend our democracy.