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Bottom Line Up Front: You can't bring a strongly worded letter to a knife fight. Our federal governments mechanisms for self correction have been irreparably decimated. This article makes that case and offers solutions at the end. It also outlines the 5 primary destructive mechanisms used by republicans to turn the federal government into a complicit arm of their intended single party rule Federal courts ruled Trump administration actions unlawful in 2025. The violations continued. Inspector general firings: illegal, not reversed. Military deployments to cities: illegal, not stopped. Fund impoundments: illegal, not released. The Attorney General ordered the Department of Justice to drop charges against a political ally in exchange for policy concessions, causing career prosecutors to resign rather than comply. Federal law enforcement has been purged of non-loyalists. Federal job interviews now screen for MAGA loyalty as a hiring requirement. The fact is, legal rulings mean nothing when they can't be enforced. One side is violating constraints while consolidating power. The lesson to be learned is that you don't defeat authoritarians by playing within the rules they've abandoned. What follows documents the highest-impact constraint removals from 2025. Every violation follows a pattern: a constraint existed, was violated, courts ruled the violation unlawful or the statutory violation was documented, the violation continued and achieved its objective, the constraint is dead. The Trump administration withheld at least $410 billion in congressionally-appropriated funds between January and September 2025, representing roughly 6 percent of the federal budget. The Government Accountability Office issued multiple formal findings that the administration violated the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, the law created specifically after Nixon's abuses to prevent presidents from refusing to spend money Congress appropriated. By September, GAO had 39 to 46 active impoundment investigations. In late August 2025, Trump submitted a rescission request for $4.9 billion in USAID funding with deliberate timing: so late that the mandatory 45-day Congressional review period would expire after the September 30 fiscal year end, effectively canceling the funds without Congressional approval. When GAO found violations, the administration ignored the findings. When federal courts ordered fund releases, the administration appealed or slow-walked compliance. On republicans orders, OMB Director Russ Vought used apportionments, the mechanism for scheduling spending throughout the fiscal year, to simply refuse to release funds. The Supreme Court's 1975 Train v. New York decision held presidents lack authority to withhold appropriated funds. The Impoundment Control Act that same year made the prohibition statutory. Neither mattered. Any (republican) president can now withhold hundreds of billions in appropriated funds, face GAO findings of illegality, ignore those findings, and continue withholding, since nobody is going to "make them" follow the law. On January 24, 2025, at 9 PM on a Friday night, the Trump administration eliminated the oversight infrastructure by firing at least 17 inspectors general simultaneously via two-sentence email. The terminated officials included the Agriculture IG investigating Elon Musk's Neuralink, the Small Business Administration IG who chaired the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, the Defense IG, and 14 others overseeing agencies controlling trillions in federal spending. The email cited "changing priorities" with no substantive rationale. No 30-day advance notice was provided to Congress as required by the Inspector General Act of 1978. Federal Judge Ana C. Reyes ruled on September 24, 2025 that the firings were unlawful. The Inspector General Independence and Empowerment Act of 2022 requires "substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons" for removal. None was provided. Yet Judge Reyes declined to reinstate the fired inspectors general. The firings were illegal, but the illegality had no remedy. The fired USAID Inspector General was terminated February 11, 2025, the day after releasing a report critical of the administration's humanitarian aid disruption. The post-Watergate reform framework created inspectors general as independent watchdogs, removable only for cause with Congressional notice. The 2025 mass firing with no cause, no notice, a judicial ruling of illegality, and no reinstatement demonstrates that constraint no longer functions. The $71 billion in taxpayer savings IGs identified in fiscal year 2024 through fraud detection disappears when the investigators are fired. Oversight of executive branch corruption becomes functionally nonexistent when overseers can be terminated at will. Career prosecutors with impeccable credentials have now resigned in waves, many leaving resignation letters documenting weaponization and politicization of the Department as precisely why they could no longer serve. Southern District of New York, February 14 to 15, 2025: Danielle Sassoon, the Acting U.S. Attorney who clerked for Justice Scalia, resigned. So did Hagan Scotten, an Assistant U.S. Attorney who had clerked for two conservative justices. At least five additional prosecutors resigned in a 36-hour period. Their resignation letters explained the reason: the White House had ordered the DOJ to drop corruption charges against NYC Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for Adams assisting with immigration enforcement. A federal judge stated everything about the case "smacks of a bargain: Dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions." Scotten's resignation letter captured the crisis: "I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me." Sassoon stated the orders were "inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor." The White House found the fool or coward Scotten predicted. The charges against Adams were dropped. Michael Ben'Ary, a career prosecutor leading the Abbey Gate bombing case, was fired in October 2025. He posted a note on his office door stating DOJ leaders are "more concerned with punishing the President's perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security." Attorney General Pam Bondi formalized the new regime with a February 5, 2025 memo referring to DOJ attorneys as "the president's lawyers" rather than lawyers representing the United States. It states attorneys who refuse to sign briefs due to personal political views will face discipline including firing. The post-Watergate DOJ independence framework established that the White House doesn't order specific prosecutions or dismissals, career prosecutors make charging decisions based on evidence, and U.S. Attorneys exercise independent prosecutorial judgment. The Brennan Center documented in August 2025 that DOJ accountability mechanisms have collapsed. The merit system was converted to a loyalty system through Executive Order 14171, signed January 20, 2025 on Trump's first day in office. The order stripped civil service protections from employees in policy-influencing positions. By April 18, 2025, the Office of Personnel Management proposed a rule affecting an estimated 50,000 workers, roughly 2 percent of the civilian workforce. The order's language reveals the norm violation: "Employees are required to faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability, consistent with their constitutional oath and the vesting of executive authority solely in the President. Failure to do so is grounds for dismissal." This inverts the civil service principle. Career employees served as government professionals working for the American people under laws passed by Congress, with protections against political retaliation precisely so they could resist unlawful orders. That's over now. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 and the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 established that federal employees are hired and fired based on merit, not political loyalty, with due process rights including appeal rights. The impact multiplies when combined with Merit Systems Protection Board destruction. Trump fired MSPB Chair Cathy Harris and demoted Vice Chair Ray Limon, leaving the board with one Republican member and no quorum. By May 2025, 11,166 appeals sat pending with no board to hear them. Presidents can now designate tens or hundreds of thousands of career civil servants as policy-influencing, strip their due process rights, and fire them for insufficient loyalty. The post-Pendleton merit system, the firewall preventing government jobs from becoming patronage positions, has been eliminated. Trump ordered 700 Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June 2025, overriding California Governor Gavin Newsom's objections. The stated reason was protests against immigration raids. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled on September 2, 2025 that the Trump administration violated the Posse Comitatus Act and the deployment rationale was "contrived." The judge found there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law. In August 2025, Trump ordered federal takeover of DC Metropolitan Police and deployed National Guard troops to Washington. Over 2,100 arrests were made. Uniformed and armed National Guard troops patrolled Metro stations, tourist sites, and neighborhoods. The DC Attorney General filed a federal lawsuit calling it "forced military occupation." The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 restricts the military's involvement in domestic law enforcement. Trump's rhetoric framed political opposition as insurrection, claiming the need to "liberate Los Angeles" from "migrant invasion" and depicting the "nation under siege." Presidents can now deploy federal troops to cities with Democratic leadership, claim rebellion when civilian protests occur, override governors' objections, and appeal adverse court rulings while maintaining deployments. Acquiescing to the current legal asymmetry doesn't restore norms or satisfy authoritarians. It demonstrates constraints can be violated without consequences, inviting escalation. I'll make it very clear, Trump and republicans will never be satisfied. They'll never have enough power. They'll never allow things to return to how they were before after how much power they've been able to capture. We can still win, if we want it more and we are ready to actually accept the reality that things have changed and we can never go back. They've brought a gun to a knife fight and made it illegal to fight back. You don't beat authoritarians by playing by rules they've abandoned while they consolidate power. Do you think there are punches Republicans aren't pulling? Do you think they haven't already taken the gloves off? We can't decide our responses based on whether our resistance would be legally bulletproof when we're in a nakedly rigged game. The stakes are too high to keep losing. The comprehensive constraint removal documented here reveals why federal-level resistance has become largely ineffective. The institutional antibodies against authoritarianism have dissolved. State-level action becomes the arena where constraints still function and victories remain most achievable. State governments control their own law enforcement, prosecutorial systems, civil services, and budgets. State attorneys general can prosecute federal officials who violate state laws. State legislatures can create non-tax revenue streams eliminating dependence on federal financial systems while also building economic resilience against federal mismanagement. Interstate compacts can coordinate policy across blue states without federal involvement. The soft secession framework recognizes this reality: when federal constraints are eliminated, state-level independence becomes the only path for protecting democratic governance and delivering material improvements to voters' lives. References Brennan Center for Justice. (2025, August). The Department of Justice's broken accountability system. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/department-justices-broken-accountability-system Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. (2025). Fiscal year 2024 annual report. https://www.ignet.gov/ Executive Order No. 14171, 90 Fed. Reg. 8625 (Jan. 20, 2025). Federal News Network. (2025, April 23). Trump administration estimates 50,000 federal employees will lose civil service protections. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2025/04/trump-administration-estimates-50000-federal-employees-will-lose-civil-service-protections/ Government Accountability Office. (2025, August 5). Department of Health and Human Services—Application of Impoundment Control Act (Report No. B-337203). https://www.gao.gov/products/b-337203 NBC News. (2025, February 14). Seventh DOJ official resigns, warns Trump could use charges as leverage over NYC mayor Eric Adams. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/seventh-doj-official-resigns-warns-trump-use-charges-leverage-nyc-mayo-rcna192240 NBC News. (2025, September 2). Judge rules Trump illegally deployed National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-rules-trump-illegally-deployed-national-guard-l-rcna224779 NPR. (2025, January 25). Trump uses mass firing to remove inspectors general at a series of agencies. https://www.npr.org/2025/01/25/g-s1-44771/trump-fires-inspectors-general Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia. (2025, September 4). Attorney General Schwalb sues to end illegal National Guard deployment in DC [Press release]. https://oag.dc.gov/release/attorney-general-schwalb-sues-end-illegal-national Sassoon, D. R. (2025, February 12). Re: United States v. Eric Adams [Resignation letter]. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25526481/sassoon-letter.pdf Scotten, H. (2025, February 14). Resignation letter. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/resignation-letter-from-assistant-united-states-attorney-for-the-southern-district-new Storch v. Hegseth, No. 1:25-cv-00387 (D.D.C. Sept. 24, 2025). Train v. City of New York, 420 U.S. 35 (1975). U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations. (2025, September 9). Trump is blocking $410+ billion in funding owed to communities nationwide [Press release]. https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/ |
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