How to brace for Friday Night Massacres

Getting our democracy through the next 206 weekends

Before the Trump era, arguably the single-most scandalous episode for the modern presidency happened on one evening in the fall of 1973.

On October 20th, a Saturday, Richard Nixon ordered the attorney general to fire Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor investigating Watergate. The attorney general refused and resigned. Nixon then ordered the assistant attorney general to do so; but he also refused and resigned. Finally, Nixon found someone — Solicitor General Robert Bork — willing to fire Cox.

It was a turning point, for Nixon and for the country. The impeachment process against the president began 10 days later. And so, forever, the Saturday Night Massacre held a singular place of infamy.

That is, until Trump. This administration seems to have embraced Nixon’s spirit of reckless impunity — but on a weekly basis. Only now the massacres tend to happen on Friday nights, not Saturday.

In the first Friday Night Massacre, Trump purged 17 inspectors general (which is against the law) late at night, clearing out the independent watchdogs whose job it is to monitor for waste, fraud, and abuses in the federal government.

In the second Friday Night Massacre, he abruptly fired dozens of DOJ prosecutors who were involved in criminal cases against January 6th insurrectionists.

We don’t know what we’ll see tonight.

All of this is likely strategic. Elon Musk tweeted the logic: “Very few in the bureaucracy actually work the weekend, so it’s like the opposing team just leaves the field for 2 days! Working the weekend is a superpower.”

Put aside the characterization of public servants as enemies for a second. Note how this isn’t just about hiding something shameful from the media: It’s attempting to force through massive and illegal actions quickly, over the weekend. So that by the time Monday rolls around and legislators, reporters, and judges are back at their desks, it’ll be more likely we’ll all simply take those changes as fait accompli.

This is the era of the Friday Night Massacres.

How to respond to Friday Night Massacres

First, name it to tame it. Get the public to see the pattern before it happens, even at the risk of speculation. Talking about and focusing on potential threats before they drop on Friday night — especially in the media, online, and on the on the floor of Congress — can deflate the “shock and awe” impact. It also helps reveal how predictable the authoritarian playbook really is.

Read more: The Authoritarian Playbook

Second, be loud about what you’re going to do about it. Don’t just explain why the massacre is bad and illegal. Start proposing countermeasures. Litigation, hearings, protests, even plans for how to eventually restore the critical functions gutted, all of those can help maintain focus and not give in to the illusion that it’s too late to stop what’s happening.

Third, don’t buy into irreversibility. Yes, Trump can cause a huge amount of lasting damage even in just a couple days with authoritarian actions (just look at the long-term consequences of his attempted gutting of USAID). Yes, the opposition lacks sufficient power — right now — to block most of these things quickly or on their own. But neither of those things mean what he does is permanent. Even with the harm done, walking some or all of the illegal action back through lawsuits, legislation, advocacy, or organizing is critical, if only for the sake of the rule of law.

Put simply: Trump hopes that events will move so fast after a Friday Night Massacre that, by Monday, we’ll all just decide there’s nothing we can do and accept the abuse.

That doesn’t have to be true. Don’t give that up so easily.

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Both storylines of this moment are accurate

There are two competing stories for what’s happening right now.

On one side, there’s the story you get from basically every legal and political science scholar on Bluesky¹ explaining clearly that we’re in the middle of a full-blown constitutional crisis. It goes something like this:

“Elon Musk, despite not being elected or appointed to any role, has taken direct control of the federal government and is transforming it by fiat with no regard for Congress, the Constitution, or the rule of law. This is a coup and should be treated as such. The old constitutional order is gone and everything now is about what comes next.”

For a version of this storyline, I recommend Jamelle Bouie’s sobering piece: There is no going back.

On the other side, the panic, fear, and nausea those sentences cause you to feel is exactly what Trump is aiming for.² Trump and Musk want to project the illusion of a coup, so we need to be careful to not always take them at their word. This storyline goes something like this:

“Donald Trump is a uniquely weak and unpopular lame duck, so he is playing a king on TV. He has no path to meaningful policy change through legislation — nor even a real policy agenda beyond the theatrical cruelty of deportations, purges, pardons, and tariffs. Therefore, we should be careful to not play into his hand.”

Ezra Klein summarizes this storyline well: Don’t believe him.

Here’s the truth.

Both of these stories are true. Donald Trump is uniquely, historically weak. That weakness is contributing to the risk that he and the people around him will push us into a constitutional crisis from which we can’t recover. Certainly, Trump has made it clear he will likely not allow anyone to be held accountable for any ongoing lawbreaking. Look what he did for the January 6th insurrectionists.

If we get stuck between these two storylines — if we fail to reconcile them — then the slow-motion, chaotic self-coup will succeed. Trump will go from playing a king on TV to truly becoming one.

So what do we do about this tension? A few tips:

Respond forcefully, but not impulsively. Every erosion of our constitutional order that Musk (and Trump’s other loyalists) manage to drive through weakens our democracy as a whole. Each constitutional violation needs to be resisted with the political and institutional power the opposition still has.³ But we’re most likely to succeed in overcoming Trump’s flailing attacks with careful, strategic responses, not flailing of our own.

Slow unlawful actions down. Do everything we can to slow the process down. That way, the media, the courts, and the opposition have a better chance of keeping up with the firehose. Delay is not just about running out the clock, it’s also about checking the “shock and awe” strategy and giving everyone else time to respond. (This is especially important for people in positions of real power in government — for instance, some minority party inspiration here.)

Play offense, not just defense. Trump and his allies, in justifying their power grabs, want to drive the spotlight towards certain issues — like foreign aid — that they likely think are politically advantageous for them. When it comes to messaging, the opposition doesn’t need to accept their frame. “Foreign aid” may not necessarily be popular, but I’m willing to bet “mass deaths from ebola” are also pretty dang unpopular. (As Jonathan V. Last says, “personalize everything.” Get on a plane to Nairobi if you have to.)

Trump’s political superpower is that there are so many outrageous things to focus on that all of the scandals just wash together. We can’t change this dynamic, but we can respond to it by focusing on the clearest, most tangible storylines (for instance, “an unelected billionaire has self-appointed himself king” is not difficult to convey).

Focus on the rule of law. Trump’s deliberately chaotic, throw-everything-at-the-wall strategy makes it hard to know what to pay attention to. At some point, we all need to choose which things we’re going to follow closely. So where should you put your focus?

For me, it’s the Constitution. That’s the ultimate ballgame. I’m focusing on (a) Congress’ ability to pass laws and hold the purse strings, regardless of what the presidency wants; (b) the courts and their ability to tell the president, “no, that’s unconstitutional;” and (c) all our collective freedom to criticize those in power. If Trump and Musk get to the point where neither Congress nor the courts nor public opinion play any check on their power — where the Constitution is just words on paper — then we will have lost our democracy.

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Keep an eye on independent agencies

Dig a little deeper, and Trump’s attacks on the federal government are actually a couple things at once. There’s the war of attrition against the civil service, which is mostly focused on the biggest and most visible parts of the federal government. Places led by a Senate-confirmed secretary that the president can fire at-will. These attacks — which are mostly aimed at simply hollowing out the federal workforce and putting cronies in position to weaponize the government — are in full-swing.

But there’s another category of attacks that’s only just brewing. This is Trump’s assault on independent agencies.

The apparent goal here isn’t just replacing nonpartisan civil servants with loyalists, it’s about eliminating the very idea that any part of the government is not directly at the president’s disposal to use as he wishes. Per Jared Davidson:

The starting point for any such discussion of the potential shock waves and ill-effects of any novel restriction on independent agencies has to be the Federal Reserve, perhaps the classic example of why expert independent agencies are necessary. The Federal Reserve controls the nation’s monetary policy by setting the federal funds rate, a job that requires political insulation so that the political temptation for politicians to run an expansionary monetary policy does not lead to runaway inflation that makes all Americans poorer. And the nation loses when those political safeguards fail — as they did during the 1970s when President Nixon pressured the Federal Reserve into improvidently lowering rates before the 1972 election, which resulted in a decade of stagflation and saw interest rates hit over 19% before inflation was cured.

But the Federal Reserve is far from the only expert independent agency that promotes the long-term public good. Indeed, while public attention can focus on the independent agencies frequently in the news — such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission — many other independent agencies do critical work for the public good that could be imperiled if they are staffed with political lackeys rather than insulated subject matter experts.

In other words, it’s crucial that the public, courts, and Congress push back on any effort to politicize and thereby decimate independent agencies. Absent that, there could be dire consequences for the health and well-being of everyday Americans.

Read more here.

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What else we’re tracking:

• Yesterday, a court paused the so-called “Fork in the Road” offer. To get timely analysis on future coercive efforts towards the federal workforce, make sure you’re subscribed to our Dear Civil Servant series.

• What does it mean for a president to impound funds? That’s the crux of almost everything happening right now (and it’s also clearly illegal). Read all about impoundments here.

• I recommend this piece by the Washington Post’s Karen Karen Attiah on how to talk about ongoing efforts to target “diversity” in the federal government. Call it what it is: "resegregation."

• One of the DOGE staffers who had gained access to the US Treasury’s central payments system resigned after the Wall Street Journal reported he had advocated racist and eugenicist beliefs on social media.

• Senate Democrats spent all night on Wednesday holding the Senate floor to protest Russ Vought, Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget and the chief architect of an anti-constitutional power grab to allow bureaucrats to rob Congress of its power over the purse (read more here). Republicans confirmed him anyway.

• The Knight Institute’s Jameel Jaffer has an excellent explanation of what’s going on with all the media outlets settling bogus lawsuits with Trump. (Hint: It’s not that they were likely to lose.)

• After the Trump Administration’s aggressive actions targeting trans Americans this week, it’s worth re-reading this from last year — Sohini Desai and Justin Florence on: Why are autocrats so fixated on trans people?

• Yesterday, we sued to challenge the re-christened Schedule F on behalf of the Government Accountability Project and the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE). Read more about the lawsuit here.

• If you’re looking for a tracker of all the other ongoing litigation, Just Security has you covered.

• This Isaac Chotiner interview with Senator Brian Schatz is very much worth your time.

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What you can do to help:

Keep calling your Senators. Regardless of where you live. It works. They’re listening:

1. Starter pack here if you’re just joining the party.

2. See our advice on this dynamic from before Inauguration Day: How to pay attention.

3. Opposition is not zero sum, so I recommend being careful to focus your attention more on the autocratic threat and less on critiquing the specific tactics others are using to respond to that threat (assuming, of course, they are responding forcefully).