How to Win the USAID Fight
Rules for Democrats.
First up: Sarah and I argued about everything on the Secret pod today. The show is here.
Second: An update on yesterday’s story about the confusion surrounding Trump’s (maybe?) firing the head of the National Archives. There had been conflicting reports about Trump having quietly fired the archivist of the United States and replaced her with Marco Rubio. When I talked to sources at NARA, they said that Archivist Colleen Shogan was still in her office. Later in the day, ABC News, which first broke the story, walked it back, confirming that Shogan was still in the job—but that replacing her has been the subject of “extensive discussions at the White House.”
1. Dear Democrats
Don’t ever do this again:
Chuck Schumer should not be the face of your party. Leading chants is imbecilic. Showing up outside a building is nonsensical. People don’t care about buildings. They care about stories.
Further: You are not winning and have no chance to win anything for 21 months. Your message is absurd on its face.
Your job as Democrats is to lead the opposition to Trump, which means making Trump unpopular. Right now there are only two engine governors on Trumpism: The courts and his popularity. You can’t influence the courts, but you do have input on public opinion. Stop wasting it.
First rule of fight club: Pick your opponent. Ultimately you need to drag Trump’s numbers down, but right now he’s riding high. Elon Musk is a softer target.
Musk is a deeply unappealing human. He is inextricably linked to Trump. And his popularity is already moving downhill. Best of all, Musk doesn’t have Trump’s intuitive grasp of demagoguery. Trump knows how to bob and weave. When Musk gets punched in the mouth, all he does is bleed.
Second rule of fight club: Find good ground. USAID does not look like good ground. It’s a massive program. It’s mostly about foreign aid. It’s a process story. Musk thinks it’s a great place to make a stand.
But you can turn it into a trap for Musk if you’re smart. Ignore the process aspects. Don’t talk about moral obligations. Arguments about creating strategic advantages for China aren’t going to get you anywhere.
What you can do is personalize it.
Third rule of fight club: Personalize everything.1 Are you a Democratic officeholder? Great. Buy a plane ticket to Nairobi.
When you get there, go to the Mathare settlement and talk to people who are going to die because Musk shut off their HIV medication when he closed down USAID. Get out your phone and take video of these conversations. Post them on YouTube, TikTok, Insta—everywhere.
Tell the real stories of actual people who are going to die because of Elon Musk. It won’t be hard to find them. This isn’t an actuarial game where programmatic cuts will, at some future date, result in an increased death rate for nameless, faceless people. You can find the actual human beings who are going to die. You can talk to them. You can share their stories and ask your fellow Americans, “Is this what you voted for?”
When you’re done in Nairobi, hop a flight to South Africa and go to Vulindlela—east of Lesotho. Go find Asanda Zondi and interview her. The New York Times was able to do it; surely you can too?
Asanda Zondi received a startling phone call last Thursday, with orders to make her way to a health clinic in Vulindlela, South Africa, where she was participating in a research study that was testing a new device to prevent pregnancy and H.IV. infection.
The trial was shutting down, a nurse told her. . . .
When Ms. Zondi, 22, arrived at the clinic, she learned why: The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded the study, had withdrawn financial support and had issued a stop-work order to all organizations around the globe that receive its money.
There are many other people—real people—you can interview. The Times has helpfully given you a starting point:
The Times identified more than 30 frozen studies that had volunteers already in the care of researchers, including trials of:
malaria treatment in children under age 5 in Mozambique
treatment for cholera in Bangladesh
a screen-and-treat method for cervical cancer in Malawi
tuberculosis treatment for children and teenagers in Peru and South Africa
nutritional support for children in Ethiopia
early-childhood-development interventions in Cambodia
ways to support pregnant and breastfeeding women to reduce malnutrition in Jordan
an mRNA vaccine technology for H.I.V. in South Africa . . .
In England, about 100 people have been inoculated with an experimental malaria vaccine in two clinical trials. Now, they no longer have access to the clinical trial staff if that vaccine were to cause an adverse reaction in their bodies.
Go find these people. Especially the children. Interview them, on camera. Share their stories with America.
Donald Trump and JD Vance aren’t going to respond by saying, “These Untermenschen deserve to die.”
But you know who just might say that out loud? The ketamine-addled billionaire and his menagerie of 20-year-old incels.
If you’re a Democrat, that’s a contrast you embrace. Keep telling these stories and connecting them to Musk until he defends himself by saying something absolutely ghoulish. Make him radioactive, and let him dangle around Trump’s neck.
Because at some point, Musk’s negatives will start to contaminate Trump’s public standing. And then Trump will either have to live with it or cut Musk loose. Which would create a new set of problems for the president.
There are other fissures to exploit. Franklin Graham runs a charity called Samaritan’s Purse, which gets $90 million from USAID. Graham says that he has gotten an exemption from the Trump administration for his ministry to keep getting its USAID money.
But Catholic Relief Services was not so lucky. They’ve already started laying off employees and shutting down relief programs. Go interview current and former Catholic Relief Services employees and ask them to describe the programs they’ve had to shut down and share the stories of the desperate people the are now leaving behind.
Present this side by side with Samaritan’s Purse and ask why Musk spared Trump’s Protestant minister buddy, but not the Papists?
Go on offense. Start telling stories. Stop holding press conferences in Washington. And for the love of all that’s holy, put Chuck Schumer in a closet.
But wait—there’s actually one more opportunity for Democrats. And it’s scheduled to arrive in a couple of weeks . . .
2. Power Nexus
This week Josh Marshall pointed out that House Democrats will have one (1) moment of real leverage over Trump: the budget / debt ceiling vote.
Trump cannot pass either without Democratic help.
So Democrats have this one chance to extract something meaningful from him.2 And Marshall knows exactly what it should be:
The standard should be no help on the budget or the debt ceiling until the lawbreaking stops. Period. End of story. No wilding gangs marauding through the federal government. End the criminal conduct. Period.
That’s it. No nuance.
There are many terrible things Trump and his supporters can do by passing new laws. They can shut down USAID, the Department of Education, FEMA. Whatever. They can do a ton of other horrible things. They can try to take away everyone’s health care to fund tax cuts for his billionaire friends, as they are in fact intending to do. All of that is terrible but legal if they can put together the votes. They are in the majority. Joe Biden passed big legislation with tighter margins. What they are doing now, on the contrary, is not only brazenly illegal but an overt and undeniable violation of the federal constitution. When that stops then Democrats will consider helping on the budget and the debt ceiling. And they can negotiate on particulars. But nothing until the lawbreaking stops.
This. 👆
How do you operationalize such a deal? That’s where Dems would need to be creative. You can’t just . . . take Trump’s word for it, can you? But that’s how elected Democrats earn their pay: Figuring out binding legislative solutions to situations where two parties have divergent interests.
However they do it, ending lawless government should be the Democrats’ only acceptable compromise.
Tuesday night, Sarah and I have a live to chat with our founding members about what’s next for The Bulwark and we’ll answer questions too. Leave us your thoughts and questions here.
If you want to attend this first Founders Town Hall of 2025, upgrade your membership today. We’ll send out location link on Tuesday.
3. Da Bears
Virginia McCaskey died yesterday:
Virginia Halas McCaskey, the longtime owner of the Chicago Bears and the daughter of George Halas Sr., who created the team and was one of the founding fathers of the N.F.L., died on Thursday. She was 102 and had spent her entire life around the team going back to the 1920s.
The Bears, who announced her death on their website, did not list a cause or specify where she died.
Mrs. McCaskey attended nearly every Bears game for decades. She witnessed eight of the Bears’ nine league titles (their first championship was in 1921, before she was born and when the team was named the Staleys), as well as its only Super Bowl championship, in January 1986. . . .
Mrs. McCaskey never took her front row seat to N.F.L. history for granted.
“All the opportunities I’ve had, all the privileges I’ve had, all the miracles I’ve watched — I’m just very grateful,” she said in “A Lifetime of Sundays,” a 2019 documentary celebrating the N.F.L.’s 100th anniversary. “I can’t think of a better life.” . . .
Virginia Marion Halas McCaskey was born on Jan. 5, 1923, in Chicago, the eldest child of Mr. Halas and Minnie Bushing Halas, who died in 1966. By then, Mr. Halas had already made his name as a football player and coach and had even played briefly for the New York Yankees, in 1919. The following year, he was hired by the A.E. Staley food starch manufacturer in Decatur, Ill., to run the Staleys, the company’s football team.
What a life. Read the whole thing.
By now you’ve probably guessed that I’m just restating Saul Alinsky: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
Unless Democrats are willing to refuse to give any help and let Trump and Republicans own the chaos. I’m not advocating that, but I’m not not advocating it, either. I’m open to all ideas here.
I served with heroic USAID personnel in Iraq & Afghanistan
Dems should go find those whose sons & daughters served and start taping commercials.
American heroes don’t always wear uniforms.
You want to personalize USAID cuts? What about the farmers who just lost a big customer? Highlighting cuts to good heartland Americans will go far, too.