Donald Trump’s Enabling Act
The Enabling Act of 1933 was a law that ceded power to the German Cabinet, and thus the Chancellor Adolf Hitler, to make and enforce laws without the involvement of the Reichstag or the President Paul von Hindenburg. By allowing Hitler to override the checks and balances in the German Constitution, the Enabling Act marked the beginning of the transition from the democratic Weimar Republic to a totalitarian dictatorship in Nazi Germany. It was euphemistically called (in German, of course) the “Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich.”
Because Hitler had recently given a speech emphasising the importance of Christianity in German culture, Reichstag member and Catholic priest Ludwig Kaas advocated voting in favour of the act. As further evidence to trust Der Fuhrer, Kaas also cited Hitler’s written guarantees not to abuse this power.
In the spirit of the Enabling Act comes a heavily partisan continuing resolution to avert a US government shutdown. The bill cedes enormous power to Trump and Musk. It is frankly a scandal that some Senate Democrats are considering voting for the bill in their headlong desperation to ensure that the government doesn’t shut down. This is myopic thinking.
“There are members of Congress who have won Trump-held districts in some of the most difficult territories in the United States,” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters, “who walked the plank and took innumerable risks in order to defend the American people … just to see some Senate Democrats even consider acquiescing to Elon Musk. I think it is a huge slap in the face, and I think that there’s a wide sense of betrayal.”
“This continuing resolution codifies much of this chaos that Elon Musk is wreaking,” AOC told CNN. “It sacrifices and completely eliminates congressional authority … to review these impulsive Trump tariffs, removes all of the guardrails, all of the accountability measures to ensure that money is being spent in the way that Congress has directed for it to be spent. This turns the federal government into a slush fund for Donald Trump and Elon Musk.”
Which is, of course, finally the point. It was only a matter of time before Congress started to officially turn their power over to Trump and Musk. It turned out they didn’t need anything so dramatic as a Reichstag fire. All that was needed was another mundane annual shutdown fight.
“This is not a bill that would simply continue the funding levels of the government for the next half a year,” Senator Adam Schiff said on “X” late on Thursday, “this is a power giveaway to an executive already drunk with power. This would embolden the president to continue tearing down government services, closing social security offices, illegally withholding funds, illegally seizing more and more authority from the US Congress. But worst of all, in my view, is we would be giving it to him. It’s one thing for those who aspire to dictatorship to take power, it is another to knowingly give it to him.”
This is the thin end of the wedge, the point when the slippery slope of dictatorships start to get slippery indeed. All Democrats and Republicans with remaining brain cells should join Senator Shchiff, who concluded, “I’m a hard NO on the Republican spending bill. When a wannabe dictator is trying to seize power, it must not be given to him. Not without a fight.”
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.