I think we’re seeing a lot of culturally rooted assumptions about the nature of government bubbling to the surface. There’s a lot of people who subscribe to progressive managerialism, which was championed by Woodrow Wilson. This is the dominant culture of knowledge workers. What Trump is doing is deeply upsetting to them. They will invoke things like records laws or the Impoundment Act or whatever, but nobody gets this worked up about laws requiring paperwork. They’re upset at the idea that you could just have a president who runs the executive branch however he wants regardless of what the civil service wants.

Most Americans, by contrast, are populists, either left-populists or right-populists. The breach of orderly practices doesn’t get them worked up. Look at how AOC frames what’s going on. She doesn’t talk about paperwork violations—her supporters wouldn’t care. She accuses Musk of robbing the Treasury, threatening to stop social security payments, etc. I don’t think those things are true, but it’s the kind of thing that would move her populist supporters to action.