{"id":5,"date":"2026-11-02T11:07:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T11:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/?p=5"},"modified":"2026-11-02T11:07:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T11:07:00","slug":"congressional-democrats-step-up-fight-against-elons-shadow-presidency-philsugar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/?p=5","title":{"rendered":"Congressional Democrats Step Up Fight Against Elon\u2019s Shadow Presidency | PhilSugar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gathered outside the
\nheadquarters of the US Agency for International Development in downtown Washington, DC, on Monday, a fiery group of congressional Democrats debuted what felt like a new\u2014and potent\u2014message: Elon Musk is acting as an unqualified shadow president, and he\u2019s breaking the law along the way.
\nThe
\nunelected South African tech billionaire
\nannounced Monday that he and Trump were
\nshutting down
\nUSAID, which distributes billions of dollars annually in international humanitarian aid to approximately 130 countries\u2014the top recipient in fiscal year 2023 was Ukraine\u2014and employs more than 10,0o0 people,
\naccording to
\nthe Congressional Research Service (CRS).
\nEstablished
\nby an executive order signed by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, the agency \u201cprovides assistance to strategically important countries and countries in conflict; leads U.S. efforts to alleviate poverty, disease, and humanitarian need; and assists U.S. commercial interests by supporting developing countries\u2019 economic growth and building countries\u2019 capacity to participate in world trade,\u201d the CRS states. To Musk, though, it\u2019s
\na \u201c
\ncriminal organization
\n\u201d and \u201c
\nradical-left political psy op.
\n\u201c
\n\u201cWe spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,\u201d Musk
\nposted
\non X early Monday. \u201cCould gone to some great parties. Did that instead.\u201d
\nHundreds of USAID staffers were
\nreportedly
\nlaid off last week following Trump\u2019s
\nexecutive order
\n, issued on Inauguration Day, ordering a 90-day freeze on foreign aid. Over the weekend, two top USAID security leaders were
\nreportedly
\nput on administrative leave after trying to stop DOGE sugar dating matching process<\/a> staffers from accessing the agency\u2019s secure systems. Ten Democratic senators from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
\nwrote
\nin a letter Sunday to newly confirmed Secretary of State Marco Rubio that \u201csecurity guards present at the facility were threatened when they fake sugar dating profiles<\/a> raised questions\u201d about DOGE staffers trying to gain entry.
\nThree US officials
\ntold
\nCBS News earlier that USAID will be merged into the State Department and will sustain significant cuts to the workforce, but that it will maintain a humanitarian function. ABC News first
\nreported
\nthat Rubio is now its acting administrator. In the Oval Office, President Trump
\nclaimed
\nof the agency and its workforce: \u201cI love the concept, but they turned out to be how to start sugar dating Philippines<\/a> radical left lunatics.\u201d Staffers at the agency were
\nreportedly
\ninstructed to stay home on Monday, and its website is down.
\nIn response to real sugar babies Philippines<\/a> all this, high-ranking congressional Democrats
\nstaged
\na last-minute news conference to draw attention to the agency\u2019s critical work and what they called Musk\u2019s \u201ccrime\u201d in trying to dismantle it. Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) summed up the utter mess of the past several days in his opening remarks: \u201cMusk and his band of unelected acolytes at DOGE have locked out USAID employees from their offices, improperly sugar dating account security<\/a> accessed highly classified information, purged the agency of its nonpartisan leadership and thrown the agency into chaos through a concerted campaign of harassment and intimidation of its employees.\u201d Beyer alleged that Musk and his acolytes\u2019 actions \u201cseverely harm our national security\u201d; \u201cput thousands of children around the world at immediate risk of starvation, disease, and death\u201d; and sideline \u201csome of our finest civil servants who work tirelessly every day to make the world a better place.\u201d
\nSen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) called closing the agency \u201can absolute gift to our adversaries\u2014to Russia, to China, to Iran, and others, because AID is an essential instrument of US foreign policy and US national security policy.\u201d He pointed to a post on X from former Russian president and \u201cPutin stooge\u201d Dmitry Medvedev, who
\ncalled
\nthe decision to shutter USAID find sugar daddies Philippines<\/a> a \u201csmart move by @elonmusk.\u201d
\n\u201cElon Musk may get to be dictator of Tesla, and he may try to play dictator here in Washington, D.C., but he doesn\u2019t get to shut down [USAID],\u201d Van Hollen said, adding that the attempt to shutter the agency was \u201cplain illegal\u201d and that doing so would take an act of Congress.
\nSen.
\n@ChrisVanHollen
\n: "Trying to shut down the Agency for International Development by executive order is plain illegal."
\npic.twitter.com\/aXbkrFIGhF
\n\u2014 CSPAN (@cspan)
\nFebruary 3, 2025
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk,\u201d shouted Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), to cheers, \u201cand that\u2019s going to become real clear.\u201d
\nOn the heels of a
\nNew York Times
\nreport
\npublished Sunday that was based on interviews with more than 50 Democratic leaders and alleged that best sugar dating sites Philippines<\/a> the party was struggling to land on a coherent message, Monday\u2019s news conference seemed remarkably unified in its focus around the dangers of Musk as shadow president and Trump\u2019s isolationist, \u201cAmerica First\u201d ethos. And given that a
\nQuinnipiac University poll
\nreleased last week showed that most registered voters\u201453 percent\u2014disapprove of Musk\u2019s role in the Trump administration, and a January Associated Press-National Opinion Research Center poll
\nfound
\nthat a majority of Americans don\u2019t want Trump relying on billionaires or family members for policy advice, congressional Democrats may be onto something in making Musk a top target.
\nThe lawmakers also made sure to point out the litany of illegal activities Trump and Musk have undertaken in only\u2014
\nchecks notes
\n\u2014two weeks in office. (See also: Trump\u2019s attempt to end birthright citizenship, which a federal judge temporarily blocked, as my colleague Isabela Dias
\nreported
\n, as well as his
\neffort to freeze billions of dollars in federal funding
\n, which two other federal judges also
\ntemporarily blocked
\n. And if Musk uses the access his team at DOGE was reportedly recently granted to the Treasury\u2019s payments system to control government spending,
\nthat
\nwould also be illegal, sugar dating ID verification Philippines<\/a> as my colleague Pema Levy
\ncovered
\nSunday.)
\nThe Monday press conference was not the only resistance Democratic lawmakers mounted to Musk\u2019s latest moves. They also
\ntried
\nto enter the USAID headquarters on Monday, only to have federal law enforcement officials block their entry.
\n.
\n@SenatorAndyKim
\nat USAID: "I talked to the security guard just in there. He said sugar daddy wealth<\/a> he has been given specific orders to prevent employees of USAID from entering the building today. I just find that to be absolutely ridiculous. This is no way to govern."
\npic.twitter.com\/ixdFDLqGps
\n\u2014 CSPAN (@cspan)
\nFebruary 3, 2025
\nSen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) also
\nsaid to
\nthe
\nWall Street Journal
\nthat he would put a \u201cblanket hold\u201d on all of Trump\u2019s Cabinet nominees until the Davao sugar daddy<\/a> agency is back up and running. \u201cI will do maximal delays until this is resolved,\u201d Schatz told the newspaper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gathered outside the headquarters of the US Agency for International Development in downtown Washington, DC, on Monday, a fiery group of congressional Democrats debuted what felt like a new\u2014and potent\u2014message: Elon Musk is acting as an unqualified shadow president, and he\u2019s breaking the law along the way. The unelected South African tech billionaire announced Monday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions\/11"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}