With the March 14 expiration of the latest continuing resolution, we are again staring down the barrel of a government shutdown. Congress has failed its core constitutional duty to fully fund the government on time every year since 1996, but this time is fundamentally different. The Trump administration’s relentless destruction of the federal workforce and its insidious and unconstitutional elimination of critical public services represents a second, de facto government shutdown that lawmakers must address.
With devastating speed, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have been deconstructing the government without congressional authorization. They have arbitrarily fired tens of thousands of civil servants, unilaterally frozen approved funding, failed to enforce laws, and effectively halted and sabotaged the work at agencies dealing with everything from public health and education to consumer protection, foreign aid, law enforcement and scientific research.
