"Solidarity is the antidote to fascism": Progressives organize Treasury protest over Musk takeover

The resistance to President Donald Trump and his efforts to impose austerity by decree has been rather muted, and even reported as dead, liberals shell-shocked by November seemingly burned out before the second term even got underway. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., head of the Senate Democratic caucus, told Semafor over the weekend that his strategy is to essentially wait for Trump to "screw up," urging his fellow Democrats not to engage in every bit of outrage and focus instead on trying to derail the president's most unqualified Cabinet picks while letting the likes of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent get confirmed with broad bipartisan support. "Musk is inside the Treasury right now with his cadre of flying monkeys and we don't know what they're doing," Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin said on Sunday's call, referring to reports that the Tesla CEO has brought in a group of 20-somethings from his private businesses to help him slash apart the federal budget. What Trump and Musk appear to be doing, Levin said, is "not just cruel and corrupt and chaotic and unconstitutional, it's also deeply unpopular — and as long as we live in a democratic republic, doing deeply unpopular things for an extended period of time is really hard to sustain in the presence of organized opposition." The plan, accordingly, is to show up and protest at the Treasury Department on Tuesday night, 5 p.m. local time, to draw attention to Musk's control over the federal government's payment system — control that Musk claims he has already used to illegally suspend congressionally authorized payments to religious groups that assist with refugee resettlement and to completely dismantle USAID, the federal agency responsible for international humanitarian assistance.