The bureaucratic response to dictatorial over reach is not to respond with public statements, but merely to do what bureaucracies have been so good at for so long—slowing things down and messing them up. The move fast and break things crowd may not have entirely reckoned with the numbing force of a 3 million strong federal bureaucracy.

I think we will see the rise of a sullen, grinding commitment to resistance. In the courts, in small businesses, in the military, and possibly most crucially, in the bureaucracies, to restrain these gangsters as much as humanly possible. Is there still enough institutional heft to buy us time to build up a counter attack? 

Trump's already walked back on his nutso payment freeze, approval rating has gone down 7 percent already, and it's going to go lower. People don't like his lead policies. They don't like the J6 pardons, they don't like tariffs, they don't like the Elon Musk thing. Court challenges will rise and rise again, like a whack a mole game played in ten dimensions. But the questions remain: How far into Caligula-land is TrumpCo ready to go? What will happen in the rank and file military when they're ordered to violate existing laws? What will FBI offices do? CIA stations? The NSA?