Passing into the second week of the Trump II presidency, the incoming administration’s pattern of anti-democratic aggression, disinformation, and political vandalism has continued apace, even as the flurry of activity has been inherently difficult to keep track of, and as the Democratic opposition and mainstream media have failed to contextualize this unprecedented wave of illegal and malign activity. Nonetheless, a big picture is in fact discernible. The new president and his allies are acting to radically reshape the nation in the arenas of government, social relations, economics, and foreign policy:
— waging war on American democracy by attempting to degrade and subvert the federal government, with the aim of centralizing supreme power in the presidency
— implementing a deeply reactionary social policy that seeks to establish white supremacy, misogyny, and trans hatred as the law of the land; and the white supremacist motivation is evident as well in the continued threats of massive deportations of immigrants and Trump’s assertions that children of immigrants do not automatically have citizenship (in clear contravention of the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship provision).
— engaging in extreme economic protectionism that seems poised to deeply damage the United States economy by upending long-standing trade relations with close partners (Canada and Mexico in particular, but also major western European countries as well) in the name of validating Trump’s monomaniacal focus on tariffs as the route to national greatness,
— conducting a rhetorical war on American allies that seems to have the goals of divorcing the United States from long-standing alliances (particularly European allies and NATO), positioning the United States to dominate its allies in the Western Hemisphere (particularly Mexico and Canada), and inexplicably creating opportunities for both China and Russia to run riot in their areas of the world, and even beyond (particularly in the case of China)
Any one of these areas would rightly justify a massive political and public backlash to Trump II; taken together, they amount to a war on the American society and democracy that demands a full-scale mobilization by the majority. Trump has not only exceeded his mandate, he and his allies are using propaganda and disinformation to justify a crime spree against the citizenry’s rights, freedoms, security, and wealth (both collective and personal).
On multiple fronts, beginning with what has been described as an effort to neutralize the federal government, Trump and his allies have been breaking the law, often to the point of violating basic constitutional provisions. An executive order to freeze all federal spending on grants caused chaos for hundreds of vital programs, then was both blocked by a Court and supposedly rescinded by the administration — yet statements from the president’s press secretary indicated that the administration was still asserting the right to halt authorized spending that it opposes. The usurpation of Congress’ basic role in authorizing and specifying how money is spent could not be more direct, or the consequences more dire should Trump and his allies somehow prevail in their court challenges.
Over the past several days, we’ve gotten reports of another massively consequential attack on the rule of law in the realm of federal spending and administration, as minions of Elon Musk have apparently been working to seize control of the U.S. Treasury’s ability to spend money. If I’m reading things right, it appears that they are actually gaining control of the actual means by which the U.S. government issues — or withholds — payments. If this sounds unprecedented and insane, it is. It seems of a piece with the administration’s efforts to block spending it does not favor, and the involvement of people who are apparently not even government employees but lackeys of a Trump loyalist offers more evidence that Trump and his allies are implementing an illegal initiative to obey the plain letter of the law and the Constitutions’s separation of powers. Indeed, the scope of the lawbreaking is so vast as to constitute an ongoing coup against the United States — one aimed at demolishing Congress’s role in governance and shifting to the presidency all discretion over how the federal budget is spent.
It’s also notable that Trump’s more general attack on the rule of law continued this last week, not only in the various illegal efforts to subvert the functions of the federal government, but also in his continued efforts to seek “retribution” against those who defended the United States against his 2020-21 insurrection and the 1/6 attack on the Capitol. Trump’s surrogates have now begun pushing out Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents involved in investigating and prosecuting those insurrectionary crimes. As with the pardons of the Capitol attackers, Trump is turning the powers of the federal government against itself, in an effort to bless criminals and patriots and to defame actual patriots as criminals.
On the social engineering front, Trump and his allies accelerated their push to roll back the civil rights of millions of Americans. Conducted under attacks on the bogeyman of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) policies, there’s been a multi-pronged effort to establish state-sanctioned white supremacism and misogyny across both the federal government and American society. With Trump attempting to promulgate bans on trans minors’ ability to seek medical treatment, drunkard Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth eliminating the Pentagon’s endorsement of diversity (including an explicitly racist banning of observations of Black History Month and a goal of removing women from combat roles), and other government agencies’ banning of DEI initiatives, the goal of reinstating the primacy of white, patriarchal supremacy has been at the forefront. Yet the reactionary ends of these attacks were made most explicit by the president himself in his deranged response to the collision between a passenger jet and a military helicopter near the Washington Airport last week. Before any investigations had even begun, Trump was blaming “DEI” for the tragedy, all but explicitly said that only white men are qualified to be pilots, and for good measure offered a grotesquely eugenicist vision of America by suggesting that the disabled are not capable of carrying out high-demand jobs.
This weekend, Trump levied 25% tariffs against Mexico and Canada on the basis of his accusations that both countries are ripping off and exploiting the United States, only to call them off after they’d barely been in effect for a day. With this declaration of economic war against allies deeply integrated into the U.S. economy, Trump claims to be striving for a revival of American manufacturing, even as actual economists warn of the catastrophic damage that they could well inflict on all three companies’ economies (including by provoking retaliatory tariffs by Canada and Mexico). Notably, Trump appears to have finally dropped his lie that other countries would pay for the tariffs, saying on social media that they may well cause pain to American consumers. This unexpected turn towards truth should be seen as an effort to prepare Americans for the sticker shock they’re going to see, but also as more evidence that Trump sees even his supporters as necessary victims in a deranged vision to validate his 19th century economic nostrums - and to enrich his corporate allies by giving them cover to raise prices on American consumers.
Finally, on the foreign relations front, Donald Trump made clear that his threats to obtain Greenland and magically incorporate Canada into the United States are no passing fancies. Social messages this weekend even seemed to appeal directly to Canadians, as Trump claimed that country’s citizenry would be safer under American protection (memo to Canada: not true), even as he continued to lie that Canada is an unapologetic economic aggressor against the U.S. Such musings are also closely tied to the imposition of tariffs on Canada, as they concretize the notion that the United States is in a state of economic war with our northern neighbor. Meanwhile, discussions among European leaders on how to strengthen the continent’s security have apparently been set off by an understanding that Trump’s determination to take Greenland from Denmark is far more serious than many initially thought, and that a Trump II presidency has marked the U.S. as a dubious ally.