Republican Congressman Slams Trump’s “Out of Control” Executive Orders

A Republican member of Congress thinks that Donald Trump’s executive order spree has gone too far.

Representative Troy Balderson, whose district comprises areas in central and southeastern Ohio, said Thursday that the president’s orders are “getting out of control,” adding that Trump and Elon Musk are exceeding their authority.

“Congress has to decide whether or not the Department of Education goes away,” said Balderson at the Westerville Area Chamber’s business luncheon. “Not the president, not Elon Musk. Congress decides.”

Balderson said that he respected Trump, the need for executive orders, and the right to investigate government agencies, but that “Congress has to do their work.” The congressman was endorsed by Trump since his first run for Congress in 2018, in a district that has voted Republican going back at least 46 years, so his opinion shows that Trump’s actions are becoming unpopular even among Republicans.

Trump’s new commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, confirmed Wednesday that the president plans to make cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, all programs that are popular with Republicans as well as Democrats. If Trump follows through on those cuts, Republican voters in areas like Balderson’s district could lose patience with Trump and the GOP by the time the 2026 midterm elections come up, and perhaps even in 2028.

Representative Robert Garcia hit back at threats from the Department of Justice and criticized the agency for trying to “silence” lawmakers speaking out about Elon Musk.

Earlier this week, Garcia received a letter from the DOJ regarding comments he’d made on CNN about opposing Musk’s takeover of the federal government. “What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy,” Garcia said.

Ed Martin, the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, had responded as if the California Democrat might’ve made an actual threat on the DOGE czar’s life.

On a recent episode of the IHIP News podcast, Garcia wasn’t buying it.

“We as members of Congress should have the right to oppose an administration that we disagree with,” Garcia said during the Thursday episode.

“It’s important for folks to be able to know that Democrats need to be in a fight. This is a fight that we’re in for our very democracy. And the fact that the Trump DOJ now wants to silence members of Congress, because we’re actually willing to take on Elon Musk is quite dangerous.”

On the podcast, Garcia insisted he hadn’t used fighting words, and that the government was attempting to silence his dissent.

“And I think that that’s something we’re really, really concerned about—that the Department of Justice has essentially said we cannot use metaphors, we cannot use figures of speech, we cannot talk about actually fighting the policies of the Trump Administration. And if we do so, we’re going to face prosecution,” Garcia said.

“So, incredibly disturbing. But we’re not going to be silenced. We’ve got to push back, and this is a moment for us to be really tough and aggressive.”

A Republican congressman was booed and heckled incessantly at his own town hall Thursday, as Trump’s sweeping federal cuts have begun to hurt the very same Republican constituents who voted for them.

At his town hall in Suwanee, Georgia—in a district Trump won by 22 points—Representative Rich McCormick was faced with hundreds of voters who were deeply disturbed by his complicity—as well as the rest of the Republican Party’s—in allowing Elon Musk and DOGE to transform the federal government in just weeks.

One person told McCormick he had done a “disservice” to his constituents. “You don’t think I’m going to stand up for you?” the lawmaker replied, as the town hall booed him. Another pressed McCormick on what he’ll do to “rein in the megalomaniac in the White House.”

McCormick’s comments on Medicare and Medicaid also drew immediate backlash. “If you don’t do something with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which is 75 percent of our budget—”

This comment, a far cry from the Republicans’ earlier promise not to touch these programs, led to an uproar from the crowd, as some constituents even yelled out “no it isn’t” in response to the 75 percent line McCormick rattled off. Others implored him to tax billionaires rather than cut programs that people use every day.

“If you cut all of your military, and all of your discretionary spending, you still have a shortfall. We are heading towards a cliff,” McCormick continued before being overpowered by angry citizens again. “Google it right now,” he implored.

When asked about the hundreds of Atlantia-based CDC employees working on bird flu recently fired by DOGE, McCormick had the gall to tell the crowd that many of them were easily replaced by AI.

“Why is a supposedly conservative party taking such a radical, and extremist, and sloppy approach to this?” one constituent asked pointedly.

“I’m in close contact with the CDC,” McCormick replied. “They have about 13,000 employees…. In the last couple of years, those probationary people, which is about 10 percent of their employee base … a lot of the work they do is duplicitous with AI.”

This led to another string of boos and jeers from his constituents. McCormick got to be so bothered by the heckling that he compared his own base to January 6 insurrectionists, telling the crowd they were similar to “Jan. 6ers who are yelling just as loud as you.” This led to another round of boos.

Scenes like this one may become more and more common as Trump and Musk sign checks that lower level Republican politicians have to cash.

Even the nation’s most salacious conservative tabloid can’t get behind Donald Trump’s recent Kremlin talking points.

The New York Post issued a front page rejection Friday to the president’s recent claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy—a democratically-elected wartime leader—is a “dictator.”

“This is a dictator,” the Post headline read, pasted over an image of a deflated Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Post’s multipage spread focused on 10 “Ukraine-Russia war truths” that the paper claimed Americans were ignoring “at our peril.” They included facts that Putin started the three-year war, that Putin “invaded” Ukraine in pursuit of “conquest,” that Ukraine is fighting for its independence, that Zelenskiy is not a dictator, and, perhaps most importantly, that Putin is.

“Putin is a dictator,” reported the Post. “Putin has ruled Russia with an iron KGB fist since coming to power in 1999. He has ruthlessly quashed independent media, ended free and fair elections, crushed civil society and killed his political opponents. And not just inside Russia, but around the world. People who live inside Russia and express any opposition to the war are imprisoned.”

Over the last week, the White House has continued to relegate Kyiv to the sidelines of a potential peace deal that will decide Ukraine’s future. The U.S. and Russia opened discussions at a meeting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday seeking a conclusion to the bloody conflict, but the assembly conspicuously excluded Ukrainian leadership.

While speaking at a NATO summit last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth explicitly outlined that the Trump administration’s peace talks with Russia had taken several bargaining chips “off the table.”

That included Ukraine’s possible NATO membership (something the military alliance had promised in 2008), the possibility of a U.S. presence in Ukraine to enforce postwar security guarantees, and the end of NATO missions to Ukraine. He also added that it would be “unrealistic” for Ukraine to return to its pre-war borders, effectively ceding land to Moscow.

The announcement came as a complete 180 on American and NATO policy regarding the eastern European country, and left U.S. allies and defense experts reeling. The deal, per Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, amounted to Russian propaganda and was practically “written in the Kremlin.”

On Friday, Politico noted that Trump had caved to Russian talking points several dozen times, closely aligning the U.S. president with the foreign dictator.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, Steve Bannon decided to perform a Roman salute, commonly associated with Nazi Germany.

Bannon subtly made the gesture during his speech at the conference, raising his right arm with his palm outstretched, facing downward to cheers from the audience.

“The only way that they win is we retreat, and we’re not going to retreat, we’re not going to surrender, we’re not going to quit. Fight, fight, fight!” Bannon said, extending his arm into the salute. “Amen!”

The move is a reminder of Elon Musk’s own apparent Nazi gesture at Donald Trump’s inauguration last month. Like Musk, Bannon supports far-right political movements around the world, including the AfD party in Germany. But unlike Musk, Bannon is on the outside of the Trump administration, and is in fact in the midst of a feud with the tech mogul, even calling Musk a “parasitic illegal immigrant” in a recent interview.

“He wants to impose his freak experiment and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, tradition or values,” Bannon told the conservative website UnHerd on Tuesday.

So why did Bannon make the gesture Thursday at CPAC? Is he worried that Musk is stealing some of his neo-Nazi followers? Is he sending the message that he’s the real neo-Nazi, unlike the DOGE leader? It remains to be seen what Bannon’s angle is, but one can be sure it’s based a racist, fascist worldview.