A Letter From Thomas Jefferson's Ghost
Thinking about how one of our most famous founders and drafter of our Declaration of Independence would think of our moment from beyond the grave.
To my fellow citizens of these United States,
I write with grave concern from beyond the veil of time. The circumstances you now witness - a Congress that volunteers its own irrelevance, an executive that brazenly defies the law, and private interests seizing control of public administration - would have astounded even the most pessimistic among my contemporaries. Have you forgotten so thoroughly the principles upon which our republic was founded?
Let me speak first of this novel arrangement you call 'DOGE' - a mechanism by which private commercial interests gain unprecedented control over the operations of government itself. This merger of private appetite and public power represents everything we sought to prevent when designing your Constitution. In my time, we understood that the greatest threat to liberty came not from direct tyranny, but from the subtle corruption of republican principles through such unholy alliances.
More troubling still, I observe that the figure granted such authority simultaneously demands courts compel private enterprises to support his personal ventures. By what republican principle do you justify granting public authority to one who shows such naked hostility to private freedom? We who threw off the yoke of the British East India Company understood well how private commercial interests, once granted public authority, rarely restrict their own appetite for control.
The East India Company's power rested not merely on its economic might, but on its ability to make citizens dependent upon its infrastructure for daily commerce. Your technology companies have achieved something far more comprehensive - control not just over trade, but over the very means by which citizens communicate, organize, and participate in civic life. When we fought against the Company's power, citizens could still gather in taverns and town squares without its permission. What forums for resistance remain truly independent of private control in your time?
Your Congress - that body we established as first among equals, explicitly charged with checking executive authority - now offers theories about why electoral victory negates the need for constitutional constraint. Such logic would have astounded even the most ardent royalists of my time. For what purpose did we place the legislative power in Article I, if not to ensure the people's representatives would stand as bulwark against precisely such concentrations of authority?
When I penned our Declaration, asserting the right of the people to alter or abolish governments destructive to their liberty, I could scarcely have imagined a legislature that would actively participate in dismantling the very safeguards we established against tyranny. Yet here you stand, watching your representatives surrender powers we fought a bloody revolution to secure.
Consider how your Congress responds to executive overreach. When we placed the power of confirmation in legislative hands, when we gave Congress control over the public purse, we did not do so as a courtesy to be extended or withheld based on electoral outcome. These were essential mechanisms for preventing precisely the kind of merger between private interest and public power that you now witness.
I observe with particular alarm how rapidly this DOGE enterprise proceeds in seizing control of public administration. Within mere weeks of its creation, it demands access to systems controlling trillions in public funds, while Congress - that body we established specifically to control the public purse - watches in willing silence. The speed of these changes is not accidental; it is designed precisely to prevent the kind of organized resistance that might emerge were the transformation more gradual.
In my time, we understood that a citizen's independence required some degree of self-sufficiency - typically through ownership of productive land. How then do you maintain democratic citizenship when your very ability to communicate, to conduct commerce, or to participate in civic life depends entirely on private infrastructure controlled by a handful of individuals? The plantation owner who depended on the British East India Company for his economic survival could hardly exercise independent judgment regarding its political influence. You face a similar but far more comprehensive dependence on private infrastructure today.
We understood that citizens who depended entirely on others for their livelihood could never exercise truly independent judgment in matters of governance. This principle guided my vision of an agrarian republic. Yet I observe that your citizens now depend on private enterprises not merely for their sustenance, but for their very ability to participate in public discourse. How can republican virtue survive when the basic acts of citizenship - speaking with fellow citizens, sharing news, organizing political action - require the permission of private interests?
In my correspondence with Madison, we spoke often of corruption not merely as individual misconduct, but as the systematic perversion of public power to private ends. The DOGE enterprise represents precisely this form of corruption - not simply in its daily operations, but in its very design. When we separated powers between branches of government, we sought to prevent exactly this kind of amalgamation of public authority and private interest.
Let me speak plainly of something that particularly troubles my spirit: The speed with which your representatives surrender powers we secured at great cost in blood and treasure. When this Senator Cornyn suggests that electoral victory grants unlimited appointment power, he demonstrates how thoroughly the understanding of constitutional government has decayed. We did not fight a revolution against monarchy only to have our own representatives theory away the very checks and balances we established to prevent its return in new form.
I wrote to Madison that 'the earth belongs to the living.' By this I meant each generation must secure its own liberty - that no constitution, however well-crafted, could preserve freedom without the active participation of those it governs. This principle becomes even more vital in your age of rapid technological transformation. When the very nature of citizenship changes with each new innovation, when the mechanisms of political participation are constantly reimagined by private interests, each generation bears an even greater responsibility to establish new protections for ancient liberties. Yet I observe your generation not merely failing to secure new protections against novel threats to liberty, but actively surrendering the protections we established.
This transformation of citizens from independent actors into dependents of private platforms creates the very conditions that enable systemic corruption. When the basic acts of political participation require the blessing of private interests, those interests gain unprecedented power to shape public discourse itself. They need not exercise this power openly to achieve their ends; the mere possibility of its exercise shapes behavior in ways that corrupt republican governance at its foundation.
Your Congress maintains powers that would astonish those who suggest they are helpless before executive authority. They could, tomorrow, deny funds to this DOGE enterprise. They could refuse confirmation to appointments. They could exercise oversight that would check this dangerous merger of private appetite and public power. That they choose not to do so reflects not lack of authority but lack of will.
I must speak with particular urgency about the nature of this crisis, for I observe a peculiar paralysis among those who should most vigorously defend republican principles. Your Democratic Party, which claims some distant lineage from the party I founded, appears strangely mute in the face of this constitutional emergency. They seem more concerned with the minor mechanisms of policy than with the fundamental transformation of governance occurring before their eyes.
Consider the recent actions of your outgoing president, issuing preemptive pardons to shield public servants from potential prosecution. While the instinct to protect those who have served faithfully is understandable, such actions ultimately weaken the very institutions they aim to defend. We designed your system of justice to withstand political pressure, not to be circumvented at the first sign of its approach. When leaders create separate classes of citizens immune from legal scrutiny, they erode the foundational principle of equality before the law.
I note with particular alarm how your citizens direct their protests primarily toward the executive branch, as if the solution to executive overreach lies in appealing to executive restraint. This fundamentally misunderstands the design of your Constitution. The people's primary recourse against tyranny lies not in beseeching the executive to limit itself, but in demanding Congress exercise its constitutional duties.
Let me address directly those who now occupy the chambers we designed for the people's representatives. What strange theories you advance to justify your own irrelevance! When we placed the power of confirmation in legislative hands, we did not intend it as mere ceremony to validate electoral victory. We understood, through bitter experience, that unchecked appointment power leads inevitably to the corruption of public office into private instrument.
To the people, I must speak with particular urgency: When Congress forgets its purpose, when it actively participates in its own diminishment, the duty of defending republican government falls to you. Not through appeals to executive restraint, but through direct pressure on your legislative representatives. The steps of Congress must become your destination.
When I declared that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, I spoke not merely of resistance to tyranny, but of the active exercise of civic virtue in defense of republican institutions. The crisis you now face demands such virtue. Your Congress surrenders its authority not through force of arms but through willing abdication - an abdication that can only persist with your silent consent.
Consider the actions of your incoming president, who brazenly invites to his inauguration the leader of a company operating in defiance of your laws. This is not mere policy disagreement - it represents a fundamental breach of the presidential oath to faithfully execute the laws. When a president-elect uses the very ceremony of assuming office to signal his intent to defy the Constitution, you face not an impending crisis but one actively unfolding before your eyes.
The systematic corruption I discussed with Madison - the perversion of public power to private ends - now operates at unprecedented speed and scale through your digital platforms. When private interests control not just commerce but the very means of political organization, when they can shape public discourse itself through invisible algorithms, they need not seize power directly. They need only maintain the infrastructure of dependence, letting corruption flow naturally from the architecture of control they have created. This is why patience in the face of such corruption is particularly dangerous - each moment of delay allows this architecture of dependence to become more thoroughly embedded in the fabric of your society.
To those who counsel patience, who suggest waiting to see how these changes play out, I must speak with particular force: We did not design your Constitution to be a passive instrument. Its checks and balances require active defense by both representatives and citizens. When Congress forgets this duty, it falls to the people to remind them - forcefully and repeatedly - of their constitutional obligations.
Your modern political consultants may counsel strategic patience, but we who designed this system understood something they seem to have forgotten: Republican government, once surrendered, is not easily reclaimed. The time for defending constitutional governance is not after its mechanisms have been dismantled, but while they still exist to be defended.
Let the marble halls of Congress echo with the voices of citizens demanding their representatives fulfill their constitutional duties. For if you fail to act now, while the mechanisms of republican governance still exist, you may find yourselves lamenting their loss in a nation no longer recognizable as the republic we established.
The comfortable assumption that "it can't happen here" is being proven wrong with stunning speed. Those who counsel patience, who suggest we should wait to see how these changes play out, misunderstand the fundamental nature of institutional collapse. By the time the consequences become undeniable, the mechanisms for reversing course may no longer exist.
You are watching, in real time, the transformation of American governance from a constitutional republic into something more dangerous and unstable. The speed of this transformation isn't accidental—it's strategic. Those dismantling democratic institutions understand that rapid changes can overwhelm normal resistance before it has time to organize.
Remember this: The defense of liberty has never been easy or without personal cost. When we pledged our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the cause of independence, we understood the gravity of that commitment. The preservation of republican government sometimes requires individuals to bear difficult burdens for the greater good of the constitutional system.
Your task now is no less vital, no less urgent than ours was then. The crisis you face may not come with the sound of cannon fire, but it is no less existential to the republic we founded. Every day you spend debating whether you're in a constitutional crisis is another day you lose in defending against it. The crisis isn't coming. It's here.
Act now, with the urgency this moment demands. Let your voices ring out in the halls of Congress, in your state legislatures, in every forum where the people's will can be heard. For if you do not, you may wake to find that the republic we bequeathed to you has slipped away, not with a bang, but with the quiet acquiescence of those charged with its defense.
With grave concern and urgent hope, Thomas Jefferson