THE CHAINSAW WIELDED on stage by Elon Musk may have been a bit on-the-nose as a metaphor for his DOGE team slashing their way through federal departments and budgets, but Sen. Ed Markey isn’t going to complain about the symbolism.
“It’s almost a perfect example of how they’re viewing everything. The least precise instrument that you could have to deal with a problem is a chainsaw, not a scalpel,” Markey said on The Codcast. “Not going in and doing an analysis; just chop the whole thing down. So we know that there is a chainsaw to democracy which is being applied.”
Since President Donald Trump returned to office there has been a firehose of news, with voters and officials alike scrambling to stay on top of it. Massachusetts officials warn that sweeping cuts to departments and programs like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) could devastate the state’s “meds and eds” economy and imperil its residents’ lives.
A recent UMass Amherst/WCVB poll found the president sitting at 32 percent approval versus 64 percent disapproval among Massachusetts residents polled, with 74 percent of respondents saying they wanted their congressional delegation to push back if the administration’s actions conflict with the Constitution.
Markey and his fellow Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren have been almost entirely reliable votes against the president’s nominees, with just one exception: their former colleague Marco Rubio, unanimously confirmed as Secretary of State. Markey says he plans to vote no on every single future nominee.
“I think our initial thought was perhaps Marco Rubio could be a restraining force on the worst impulses of Donald Trump in his foreign policy,” Markey said. “But it’s pretty clear that Trump is off the rails, in terms of saying that Ukraine invaded Russia and just continuing to go all the way down the line in his crazy foreign policy pronouncements since the confirmation vote on Marco Rubio. So if I could go back and reexamine the Marco Rubio vote at this point, I think it’s pretty clear that there are no constraints on Trump.”
Congressional Democrats are in somewhat of a bind, without control of the House or Senate, let alone the executive branch of federal government. They’re facing agitated party activists and governors, asking them to be a meaningful check on executive power.
Even as Markey and his colleagues hit the streets with press conferences and public statements decrying the cuts as reckless and damaging – and try to force Republicans to take “votes that show the American people that they stand with the billionaires and not with working families” – it’s mostly up to courts and congressional Republicans to back-stop executive overreach before the midterm elections in just under two years.
The senator, at 78 years old, is seeking re-election in 2026 and repeatedly emphasizing that he has “always been the youngest guy in the room when it comes to new ideas.” There is so far little polling on his 2026 race, with no challenger lined up, but the UMass Amherst poll found that in a hypothetical match-up between Markey and former Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, respondents split evenly between Markey, Baker, and unsure.
With midterms in his sights, Markey believes that Trump and Musk are overplaying their hands and risking red state support along with endangering critical research and programs.
“When Trump and Musk ordered the freeze on NIH funding, that obviously triggered great concern in Massachusetts – because we are at the top of all states in terms of the per capita amount of funding which goes to our state,” Markey said. “But the same thing is true in North Carolina. The same thing is true in Missouri, in Texas. So there comes a point where if they decide to follow Trump blindly, they’re harming their own states.”
It’s early days yet, Markey said, but Republican senators and representatives are already dealing with pushback from their constituents over cuts to the Park Service, USAID, food stamps, and early learning programs, among others.
“My feeling is that Congress is a stimulus response institution,” Markey said, “and there’s nothing more stimulating than thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people protesting that what you are doing is harming them at home and therefore jeopardizing that Republican’s ability to hold their seat in 2026.”
For more with US Sen. Ed Markey – on the midterms, direct impacts on Massachusetts from Trump cuts, and whether more should be done to support the next generation of Democrats – listen to The Codcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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