Joni Ernst Chooses Fascism

Who needs Senate prerogatives when you can have whiteness instead?

As you’re probably aware at this point, Elon Musk is unilaterally, illegally, and unconstitutionally making massive cuts to federal programs. In doing so, he’s (again unilaterally, illegally, and unconstitutionally) seizing Congress’ appropriation power. Congress is supposed to vote on a budget and decides what programs and departments are funded. If the president—or the president’s billionaire sugar daddy and boss—ignores Congress and just makes spending decisions himself, then Congress is irrelevant, and we don’t have a democracy. We have a monarch (or a monarch and his orange stooge/front person.)

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You’d think that Congress would be upset at having its constitutional prerogatives overridden; why go through the trouble of running for Senate just to be the lickspittle of some billionaire shithead? But so far, Congressional Republicans have seemed eager to lick and spittle at the boots, and the ass, of Elon Musk. Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, for example, said she was happy to have Musk make budgetary decisions and overrule Congress and the Constitution. “If it’s expenditures that the majority of American people don’t agree with, that the president doesn’t agree with, we’re glad to see it gone.”

NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie responded on bluesky, “Someone tell Ernst that neither the president nor Musk embodies the American people and that if they want to cut funding they should work with congress to pass a bill.” Another blueskier was even more direct: “Republicans have abdicated the appropriations power because apparently they're too ignorant or too zonked out of their gourds to understand the situation that they're in.”

It's weird to see politicians rushing to divest themselves of power. It makes sense to think that politicians like Ernst simply don’t understand what they’re doing, and need their Constitutional powers and privileges explained to them.

I don’t think Republicans are exactly motivated by ignorance, though. Instead (and I doubt Bouie would disagree with this), Republicans have embraced an alternative theory of power and accountability that is radically at odds with the Constitution and with democracy. That theory of power and accountability can be succinctly summarized as “fascism.”

The Fuhrer and the Volk

In constitutional democracies like the United States, power and legitimacy derive from the populace as expressed through the vote. In order to preserve the power of the ballot, and in order to protect the inalienable rights of majorities and minorities, the US Constitution provides for a range of institutional checks and balances—congress, the president, and the judiciary are all supposed to provide oversight and limitations on each other, and so are federal and state governments.

No one person, or institution, speaks for the voters; rather voters elect a range of representatives, and those representatives negotiate on policy within a Constitutional framework. The voters wield power, but the assumption is also that the voters need to be protected from power. Or to put it another way, those in power need to be accountable to voters, and that accountability is ensured in part by regular elections, and in part by making sure that different institutions elected by voters in different ways are accountable to each other.

Again, democracy is built on accountability; those in power are supposed to serve, or work for, voters. Joni Ernst is supposed to represent her constituents. She has a responsibility to them, and to the Constitution, to provide oversight of the president, and of the president’s billionaire boss Elon Musk.

Fascism, however, has a different theory of authority. Under fascism, the leader is not accountable to voters. Voting for fascists is superfluous and decadent, not least because voters often include people who vote against fascism, or are of the wrong race, ethnicity, and/or gender. Instead, the leader for fascists embodies the will of the volk (ie. of white people) through an intuitive spiritual connection. There is no need for elections and no need for polls because whatever the leader chooses is what the people choose (or, more precisely, is what the people should choose.)

Ernst of course doesn’t quite come out and say that Trump understands the American people better than they understand themselves. But that’s the clear subtext. When she says, “If it’s expenditures that the majority of American people don’t agree with, that the president doesn’t agree with, we’re glad to see it gone,” she’s saying that voting is superfluous. The people are not represented by their representatives in the legislature, and are not protected by Constitutional checks and balances. The only thing that matters is what the majority of American people agree with, and the way you tell what the majority of American people want is by listening to what the president wants. The president speaks for the volk; Musk speaks for the president. Whatever they want is whatever should be. Everything else is just decadent democratic shilly-shallying.

White supremacy is fascism

It may still seem odd that democratically elected Senators would be eager to abandon their own political power in order to serve as Elon Musk’s barely tolerated vassals. No doubt some have doubts or are not happy with the situation. They may be worried about primary challenges; they may fear MAGA death threats.

But I think the deeper reason that people like Ernst bend the knee is that they are committed to the politics of white identity and white supremacy, and they believe that their political goals are better served under fascism than under democracy.

This was the finding of a study I reported on a few years back by political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M titled "White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy." To quote myself briefly:

Their study finds a correlation between white American's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy.

The US over the last 60 years or so has enfranchised Black voters and has become more open to immigrants. At the same time, white birthrates have declined—a common trend in affluent countries. Demographic trends suggest that the US may be minority white sometime before 2050, which is in the lifetime of many now alive.

White voters becoming a minority would erode white power and make the politics of white supremacy increasingly unstable—in a democracy. That’s an existential threat for the Republican party as now constituted. Yes, even despite the much touted claims of inroads among Latinos in the last election cycle.

The solution is pretty obvious; abandon democracy. Voters can’t be trusted. Best to turn to fascism, which can preserve a white supremacy under siege.

Ernst wants white power more than she wants Senate power

Ernst is a Senator, and you’d like to think she’d have some commitment to the democratic institution of the Senate.

But Ernst is also white, and (more importantly) has devoted her life to a party of white identity and white supremacy. Republicans—including Ernst—have built their party and their identity on the political rule of whiteness, which is intertwined with the political rule of wealth. Forced to choose between the Senate and whiteness, Ernst, and most Republicans, have cheerfully, and with few qualms, chosen whiteness. They believe that their political project, and their own political power, are both more secure under fascism than under democracy. So they have opted for fascism.

Trump and Musk are (like most fascists) clumsy shitheads with little strategic sense and a sweeping contempt for their allies as well as for their enemies. It is possible that they will overreach in ways that will alienate some Republican Senators and make them remember that they took an oath to the Constitution.

But I think it’s important to recognize that Ernst is not really confused about her responsibilities. She’s deliberately betraying them because, like Trump and Musk, she thinks that the United States should be governed in accordance with the spiritual afflatus of the white volk, rather than in accordance with the democratic Constitution. We are in our current fascist mess because the Republican party as a whole—not just Trump, not just Musk—is increasingly committed to fascism. That means even Senators don’t really want a Senate. They want a Fuhrer.