donald-trump – Progressive Without Apology

A Disappearing Government

What is most important about the second Trump administration is not everything Trump is doing with his flurry of executive orders–it’s what he won’t do. As the debate continues non-stop as to whether America has lost its democracy, one thing gets lost in the back and forth–Trump is so busy wielding the power of the federal government to push his radical philosophical agenda that he isn’t serving his constituents. The Trump administration wastes time and energy rooting out “wokeism” and targeting DEI initiatives for trans people. In the meantime, the federal government is disappearing. It is hard to know whether or not we will look back on this moment and see America as having lost its democracy, or if we are still at a point where our institutions will hold. But for millions of people who depend on the federal government it is a mute point. For many, the debate about loss of democracy is in essence pointless. Whatever happens to American democracy in the future, irreparable harm is being done today. There are those who cannot wait four more years for the government to step up and meet their needs.

Conservatives have long pushed for a smaller government that interferes less in the everyday lives of the American people. But this is different. Conservatives and progressives alike believe that the purpose of government is to serve the people, not an ideology. This isn’t about smaller government; it is about refusing to govern. The Trump administration believes it has the right to use the disappearance of the federal government as a powerful cudgel in suppressing speech it doesn’t like. Take NIH funding for breast cancer at Columbia University. The Trump administration is holding research hostage because of real or perceived anit-Semetism. The point of this conflict is not whether Columbia hasn’t done enough to address anti-Semetism. The Trump administration is free to believe that Columbia needs to do more to address anti-Semitism, and to take action because of that belief. It does not have the right to prevent millions of women from benefiting from lifesaving advances in research because he disagrees with someone’s ideology.

Let us argue that rooting out the incredibly vague idea of “wokeism” really ought to be a national priority. At this point, however, the conflict becomes one of means and end. However important the end, the means by which to achieve that end isn’t to withhold government funds for things that logically need to be priorities.

Now, often, when someone is unwilling to toe the MAGA line, the Trump administration threatens that the government will withdraw from the lives of its people. Such disappearance and hostage taking is far more destructive than the literal disappearance of some of Columbia’s students. It is the dangerous idea that rather than the federal government having the best interests of its people at heart, it functions only to bring about ideological change. It is the most destructive and unwise kind of intimidation. Democracy or no democracy, it must be stopped.

Careful What You Wish For

It will all come down to one thing–whether or not people begin to wish they had been more careful what they wished for. Allegedly, Trump is fulfilling his campaign promises. In reality, as the full extent of Trump’s tariffs become clear, and as the effects of what Trump and Musk are doing in the name of “efficiency” begin to hit home, people are beginning to second guess exactly who they put in power and why.

Tariffs look good on paper. But, in the era of social media, “low propensity voters” may not have read the fine print. The fundamental question remains: will the tariffs work to do the things that voters wanted them to work to do? It increasingly looks like the answer to this question will be “No.” Trump’s tariff gamble may pay off. But then again it might not. The American economy is now slowly slipping ever closer to recession.

Meanwhile, Trump and Musk are busy filling a power vacuum created by the fact that nothing ever gets done in America, no matter how much money gets thrown at the problem. Just about everybody believes the government needs to be more efficient. Really, if you didn’t believe this I would have to say you have your head in the sand. We need to review regulations. But that doesn’t mean chaotically and cruelly terminating tens of thousands of hard working federal employees. This isn’t fixing things. It is making a bad situation worse.

Trump got into office by correctly diagnosing the problem. What people couldn’t see was that his cure was even worse than the disease. It is what is so often true in life. No matter how bad a problem is, the most radical response is never the best one. What is actually needed is a plan to reform government–without taking a chainsaw to American executive infrastructure. America needs a strong, but measured, middle-of-the-road approach to making government work again. It can’t come from either party alone; it will have to come from both.

And that gets to the real heart of the problem. There will be no answers until the branches of government begin to work together again. What is needed is the exact opposite of the unfettered executive branch Trump is seeking. The governmental breakdown is the result of the different branches being so at odds with one another that nothing can get done.

If Trump wants to assert more power over the executive branch because he thinks that a stronger executive will lead to greater efficiency, more power to him. But his constant attempts to undermine the other branches of government only create chaos and further weaken the ability of the government to work together to meet the needs of the American people. Trump is telling the American people they are getting what he promised them. But he is lying in one critical way. He promised answers. The only thing he is prepared to deliver is an attempt at getting more power for himself.

The Death of Civic Virtue

Monumental amounts of time have been spent by pundits and pollsters across the political spectrum in an attempt to understand what Democrats did wrong this election cycle. They have found reason after reason, each one assuming it was somehow a failure to reach out to the right demographic. However, It would be wrong to think of the phenomenon of Trump as simply the failure of one political party to reach one particular demographic. Instead, what we are seeing is the death of civic virtue in America.

The founding fathers made it clear that if America was to keep its democracy, it would have to find a way to ensure that its citizens believed in the common good. In order for a democracy to function it is necessary for enough of the electorate to be engaged and be willing to look beyond their personal financial interests to focus on the health of the community as a whole. This isn’t to oversimplify the problem by saying there is something wrong with the electorate, it is to say that one must approach the problem of Trump as something more than just one political party winning or losing an election.

If you look closely and listen hard, one theme emerges. Trump was voted into the White House by citizens who were disengaged, rarely voted and consumed very little news. Much of the news they were consuming came from“journalists” who traffic in conspiracy theories. These disaffected voters largely voted for Trump because they believed that his policies would benefit them personally, or because they found his toxic masculinity charismatic. For the most part, they were conned.

Over the years, there has been a slow wearing away of a truly engaged electorate, citizens who truly care about the wellbeing of others, who are voting the way they are for the right reasons. Democracies don’t work when all people ask is, “What’s in it for me?” Democracies need good journalism, critical thinking about the issues, and adept response from citizens when critical norms are violated. Democracy cannot thrive, or even survive, if too many voters vote on the basis of their attraction to toxic masculinity, or because they are working poor and have no time or energy to devote to really understanding the issues. The guardrails of a democracy ultimately do not reside within the judicial branch, or any other branch of government for that matter. The only real guardrails in a democracy are an informed and engaged electorate.

The MAGA movement has a vision for America–a scary, dark vision that must not be allowed to come to fruition. But the greatest problem America faces is a breakdown in the fundamentals of citizenship. The inability and unwillingness of the American people to cultivate civic virtue has eroded American democracy and left it open to attack from within. The only way out now is to galvanize a generation to be what the founding fathers knew citizens in a democracy need to be.

What is America?

If you take a step back and look in on Trump from the outside, Trump is fundamentally un-American. The things that make America a unique, in some sense exceptional, democracy are the exact opposite of what Trump says and does.

Being an actual American means taking certain things for granted:

Does anybody remember the American revolution? The whole point was no kings. The founding fathers produced a document designed to be as much of a bulwark against tyranny as any document that anybody could possibly come up with. You do what you know they intended (no technicalities), even when you think it’s inconvenient.

You don’t like what the courts tell you, you think it’s unjust. Maybe you’re right. You will be given due process. You will have your day in court, no matter how good or bad you are. You have the right to appeal. Take it all the way to the Supreme Court if you need to. But you don’t have the right to snub your nose at a judge who rules against you. It’s called the law.

What about the idea that it is better to have a criminal go free than to imprison an innocent person. America believes in having human rights in its prisons. We don’t hire dictators to violate people’s human rights as a way to intimidate unaccompanied children who have walked across jungles for a shot at the American dream. We need to have a border and it needs to be illegal to just walk across it. But, they want a better life. If I lived in their countries I might want a better life. Fundamentally, immigration is good. For most of us, our ancestors did it.

The press says things about you you don’t like. There’s the first amendment. It’s a free country. Nobody has the right to slander, but stop whining when people exercise their freedom of speech.

We should be allies with people who want to be our allies and enemies with people who want to be our enemies. The Canadians should like us!? We should attack when provoked, when we need to do so for our own safety. Don’t tread on me. But we should not go into the world senselessly intimidating or starting conflicts with people who want to be our friends. In other words, we don’t start fights, we finish them.

Other people matter. Yes, we don’t always have enough here. But there is always someone worse off than you are. It’s wrong to just not give a shit. When refugees come here you donate something because at least you’ve never had to worry about ending up a refugee. Good people are good no matter how they got here.

There’s no such thing as a self-made man (or woman). If you make it big you give back, you pay your fair share, you are grateful for all the things your nation did for you.

Whatever happened to the well-thought-out, nuanced opinion that seeks to see both sides of the conflict. The opinion that isn’t extreme on either side; the seeking for common sense solutions. So, I deliberately digress. This is my opinion of Trump’s immigration policies.

A truly American response to Trump’s refusal to follow a court order to “turn the planes around if necessary”–people are innocent until proven guilty. The people on that plane did not have their day in court. They are gangsters, you say. They are suspected gangsters. What kind of country would America be if it didn’t give a day in court to everyone suspected of being a gangster? The Philippines maybe. And, no, I won’t just take ICE’s word for it that they will only deport criminals. They actually have a very bad track record for getting law-abiding taxpayers caught up in their dragnets.

I have nuanced attitudes about law-abiding taxpayers with no papers. Yes, on the one hand, we need borders. Just leaving people here undocumented is a band-aid on a broken immigration system. The presence of so many undocumented workers is disrupting the labor market. However, that is often because they are so easily exploited. On the other hand, what Trump is doing makes no sense. First, he needs the military, then says he needs to detain families. Which is it?

In my own life, there are people committing crimes a whole lot worse than not having papers. I wish my government could make these crimes a priority. Some fool stole my trombone out of my storage unit. It was worth next to nothing but had great sentimental value. A few years later, the rear wheel of my bike got stolen. This was approximately $100 to replace–a lot of money, really. Then, sometime later, my apartment building has a laundry room that was open all the time. There is no lock on the outside door. My landlord had problems with homeless people trying to sleep in the laundry room. Now, the door is locked and we have to have a key. In each case, what could my local cops do? Nothing. They don’t have the manpower. Theft is on the rise in my community, so is homelessness and we, like everybody, have an opioid epidemic to deal with. Do I really want my local cops focusing their energy on people whose only real crime is working too hard at jobs other people refuse to do? especially if it makes it harder for them to deal with crimes like theft? No.

As for the Federal government, I have nothing against finding gangsters from other countries and sending them back where they came from. That’s just common sense. But the Feds have a long history of not being able to separate the sheep from the goats. So rather than deporting people who have become an indispensable part of the tax base, they should learn how to conduct an immigration raid where they only catch criminals.

America is losing the things that make America America, and nobody seems to be responding. What people can’t seem to see is that Trump is not just a threat to American democracy, he is a threat to American identity.

Take a Deep Breath

Being alarmist isn’t going to do us any good. In fact, we are playing into DOGE’S hand. It is disappointing to see reputable news outlets beating the drum of alarm and catastrophizing when what we really need is to remain level-headed. The chances of DOGE destroying Social Security are next to nothing. Too many people are dedicated to their jobs, and even Trump isn’t going to allow something that 71 million Americans depend on to crash and burn. Long before that happens, people within the agency will warn him of the political consequences of his radical ideologies. Just as Trump listens to the stock market when he rails about the benefits of tariffs, when the time it takes to process a Social Security claim becomes untenable, Trump will have to put a check on Musk’s power. Yes, this time there aren’t people around Trump to act as guardrails. But this means that Trump is set to politically self-destruct. In a strange way Trump going after Social Security might be a good thing. It’s his greatest mistake.

People hate chaos. When it comes to things like retirement benefits, they expect their government to be able to respond. There are too many members of Congress who have to listen to too many of their constituents who are too scared that the government they rely on in their everyday lives is ceasing to function. This isn’t why voters put Trump in the White House. Dysfunction was not his mandate. The American people will simply not tolerate, for instance, half an hour wait times to talk with a human being. They will not put up with being told that a process that is notoriously too long already is going to take yet more time. Social Security can be relied on. Millions of people do and should. But the agency has had problems for years. The one thing that Trump has right in that there is a need for reform. But it is the exact opposite of what Trump and Musk are doing. SSA has needed more staff for decades. It has needed a process that is more streamlined and timely for years.

Not only do millions of people get Social Security, millions more assist people who get the benefits–people who work with the disabled and low-income senior citizens in particular. Their frustrations with the program’s problems were set to boil over before Trump. If things get even worse there will be an open revolt. Non-governmental organizations from all over the country will demand the situation be rectified long before things get bad enough that benefits will stop.

Social Security is one of the best ideas that America has ever had. However, change is needed at the agency–in the exact opposite direction DOGE is taking. People can and will understand this. Trump can play to his base. But he is not powerful enough to ignore the entirety of the American people. If he tries, it may be the thing that at last brings him down.

The Magician

They say that magic is mostly sleight of hand–directing the focus of your audience away from something while you seem to do the impossible. If this is true, Trump is a political magician. His speech to Congress was full of attention grabbing emotional pleas, and a litany of tragedies he has rectified. We heard what would keep his audience focused on how he is or has or will do things that others have found impossible. All the while Trump hoped nobody noticed just how unreal his so-called accomplishments are.

The war in Ukraine will end within a few days. Trump will wave a magic wand and an intractable conflict will magically disappear. All he needs is for Zelensky to do his bidding. Trump single-handedly solved the border crisis. Legislation and comprehensive reform were always unnecessary. And let’s not forget Gaza. A conflict that has raged unresolved for decades can be solved with a simple plan in just a few months.

But for everytime Trump seems to work his magic there is something he does not want us to see–something he hopes we will be too distracted to notice. He asks us not to notice that his magical end to the Ukraine conflict will perpetuate Russia’s ascendancy as a dictatorial power in Europe. He appoints a child survivor of a brain tumor to his secret service detail and asks us to forget that his DOGE has cut funding for overhead in NIH grants, gutting their ability to perform life saving cancer research, calling it “wasteful.” Trump tries to convince us that we need not notice that his plan to “solve” the Israel-Hamas conflict would mean forcibly displacing millions of people from their homeland. Focus on the “Riviera of the Middle East,” not on the wishes of the Palestinian people, or the wishes of their neighbors. All of those problems can be fixed later.

Trump ascribes magical qualities to bullying. If Canada wants to maintain its sovereignty then he’ll just put traffits on them. In the Middle East, he claims that the Palestinians won’t want to go back. Translation: he’ll just intimidate them into leaving. If he doesn’t get his way in Ukraine, Zalensky won’t get military support. Trump thinks bullying will get him whatever he wants with ease. We are asked not to notice the long term negative consequences of angering both enemies and allies.

More than anything Trump distracts us from his true character. “Focus on how I’m a tough guy. Watch me deliver on promises to take control. Forget I’m a felon, a rapist, the leader of an insurrection,” says Trump.

“They said it couldn’t be done.” say Trump supporters. It hasn’t been. Trump’s magic answers are illusory. They are at best a band-aid, at worst a sleight of hand distraction from real solutions. If his acolytes are not wrong to follow a man who is divorced from democratic values, they are foolish to believe in someone who thinks he can pull a rabbit out of a hat.

The Most Important Branch at This Moment

There is no way to adjudicate our way out of another Trump presidency. The issues we face are just too fundamental to be handled through the courts alone. Once an individual has the kind of grip Trump has on his base, it is very difficult to restore and maintain democratic guardrails. Much more than just lawyers and precedents will be needed if we are to do something meaningful and get to the heart of Trump’s executive overreach.

There really are not three co-equal branches of government. The constitution makes it clear that the legislative branch is the most significant, because it most directly represents the will of the people. The forefathers simply did not intend for the courts to have this kind of role in democracy under these kinds of circumstances.

The Supreme Court may be wrong about presidential immunity, but they have a perverse point. The Justice Department going after a former president is not the way the founding fathers would have preferred us to deal with a man like Trump. Not to say that Jack Smith’s work wasn’t important, but it was an imperfect way of addressing the problem. Trump should have been impeached.

The question is what to do when members of congress forgo their constitutional responsibilities. America is facing a constitutional crisis that the forefathers anticipated but knew could be very difficult to advert. Government simply cannot function without congress’s oversight role. However, critically, simply because Democrats are narrowly in the minority doesn’t mean that they cannot fulfill their role as direct representatives of the people.

Trump is convinced that he has a broad mandate for radical change. This “mandate” is a smokescreen. Trump won the popular vote by a whopping 1.5%. It is not that the entire American population has given Trump permission to do whatever he wants. The people who sent Trump to the White House asked specific things of him. So far he seems to be delivering on those promises.

However, it is an issue of just how extreme Trump has become. One of the things about surrounding yourself with yes men is that you lose perspective about how extreme you have become in relation to the outside world. Trump will go too far for that 1.5% of voters who maybe wanted economic change but didn’t necessarily vote for radical overhauls. When the effects of Trump’s policies hit home some critical group of voters will regret Trump. One of two things is going to happen: either the negative consequences of Trump’s nihilistic approach will become untenable, or Trump will be forced to back off. At that moment, progressive legislators must be there.

There is a role for the judicial branch when it comes to the threat Trump represents, but it is far more important for Democrats in congress to keep fulfilling their constitutional responsibilities, despite being in the minority. Legislatures do more than just vote, they also give voice to the American people. Never has that sacred duty been more important.

Who Knows About Efficiency?

Government workers will be facing, especially over the long term, some of the worst consequences of the new Trump administration. For them, change means not only the end of a career, but also a feeling of helplessness as they watch years of hard work being dismantled right before their eyes. As they are forced to leave, and as the risk of the government unraveling grows ever greater, the voices of these workers will and can become crucial in combating the chaos that is bound to ensue in a second Trump presidency. These are the people who know all too well, and better than anyone else, just how much damage is really being done to the rule of law and the ability of the American government to meet the needs of the American people. It is they who most understand that you cannot treat the Federal bureaucracy like an entity whose sole goal is making money. Yes, reforms to the bureaucracy are needed, but not by corporate executives. Changes need to come from the people who are doing the day to day work of the government, who have the expertise to know best how to deal with waste, fraud, and abuse.

The realities of responsible cuts to government spending are extremely difficult. Rather than waste, fraud, and abuse; most programs are serving a purpose and doing so in a reasonably efficient manner. Cutting government spending will mean reevaluating priorities–a notoriously difficult process.

Simply shutting down entire departments with no regard for the functions those departments have, will not, in the long run, seek to balance the budget; it will only sow chaos. You can shut down a department, but you cannot shut down the need that those government departments and their employees help fulfill. Some other way of filling the void created by this absence will eventually emerge. The only thing “gained” by the wholesale abdication of the responsibility of a government to its citizens is a power vacuum. Trump can cut whatever he likes; but people will find a way to get the things they need from their government. Denying citizens access to critical functions of their government is a recipe for chaos and will accomplish nothing else.

Civil Servants are not perfect people and they are dealing with a system badly in need of reform. However, there is no other group of people who can better tell us how to streamline government: what is most critical, what we can afford to let go, and how we can inject fiscal discipline into an admittedly broken system. If Trump really wants to tackle inefficiency he should start by listening to federal workers, not declaring them to be the enemy. He is demonizing the very people who could most help him reach his stated aim.

“Efficiency” is a smoke screen. What Trump really wants is a government non-responsive to the needs of common American citizens. Hopefully, eventually, the people who voted for him will come to that realization.

What if You Get it Wrong?

One thing is utterly lost on DOGE. The federal government is not a corporation. He is unable to understand that a government agency does more than just spend appropriated money. Government agencies have very specific purposes–intangible purposes. USAID, for instance, its purpose is American soft power. The problem is that you can’t put a dollar value on that, and therefore in Musk’s mind it has no purpose. But government is about all the things in life that you can’t put a dollar value on.

Take something as seemingly economic as farm subsidies. Being from a rural state I have seen Washington politicians convince themselves that things like crop insurance are solely economic matters. Anybody who lives here will tell you differently. The politics of farm subsidies is about what kind of farming we will have–the life and death of the family farm. What seems to be a matter of mere money is in actuality an existential fight about what it means to be a farmer. Money is not the point.

All of government works this way. Things that seem to be about dollars and cents are really about the things that cannot be bought and sold. By ensuring the government meets the needs of vulnerable populations, Social Security protects our democracy. The Education Department provides oversight, ensuring kids have the resources they need to learn. Expertise is a resource that cannot be bought.

The biggest problem with Mr. Musk is recklessness. When SpaceX fails a rocket blows up. When the government fails, a generation of children are not able to function as workers and citizens. A “move fast and break things” approach may work in the corporate world where the worst thing that could happen is for your venture to go bankrupt. But if the government goes bankrupt there is a lot more at stake than man never making it to Mars. Millions of people will have their lives impacted in really serious ways. I am all for reform. Washington does need to be shaken up. But no one has the right to just put a stop to the business of government. If Twitter shuts down while Musk remakes the company people can’t Tweet. If Musk shuts down USAID for a while millions of people who rely on emergency food aid will be in danger of dying of hunger.

What we have never heard from anyone in the Trump team is an acknowledgement of the terrible responsibility that rests on their shoulders. These people may be the smartest people in the room in Silicon Valley, but that doesn’t mean they are psychologically equipped to deal with a situation in which mistakes cannot be made, and where you have to get it right the first time. We can live without Twitter. Millions of people here and all over the world cannot live without the American government. With power comes responsibility. Have Trump and Musk ever, in their hubris, ever stopped to consider the consequences if they get this wrong?

More Than Just Four Years

I would say that we are in for a long four years, but it is going to be a whole lot harder than that. Whatever happens in the next election cycle, irreparable damage is being done to American democracy as we speak. Taking a look at the people Trump has gathered around him, it is sobering. For one thing, impeachment will not be enough. Even if we find a way to oust Trump we will still be stuck with his nominees, not to mention that now the world’s richest man has better access to sensitive Treasury payment systems than career employees. Now that Trump has a group of powerful acolytes who are in the business of remaking government, it is going to be really hard to put a stop to the damage being done.

This is not a moment to hunker down and wait. It is a moment for action. The Democratic Party is floundering after being unable to block a raft of dangerous nominees to the most important offices in the land. That isn’t to say that people aren’t trying. Time and again members of the committees demanded yes or no answers to yes or no questions. Time and again they received none. A good example–Pam Bondi hedging, unwilling to say that Biden won the 2020 election, constantly attempting to interrupt and talk about her “experiences” in Pennsylvania.

Clearly, there are a lot of Americans who are not fooled. This was a close election. The margins in the Senate are small and razor thin in the House. But enough people have been taken in to give Trump enough power to form an administration. The question is if, over time, voters will see that the people Trump is putting in power are not who they say they are.

For one thing, we can hope that voters will realize they did not elect Elon Musk. Hopefully, those who voted for Trump will see that he is abdicating his power to unelected oligarchs. Trump and Musk are taking a huge risk. Trump’s promises to wrest America from the deep state may yet blow up in his face. If their “reforms” cause something to go seriously wrong with the government on Trump’s watch, Trump will have trouble blaming someone else for the mess. But this is the hard way. If America goes down this road there will be a lot of destruction left in the wake of Trump’s administration. The greatest hope we have is that Trump’s administration will crash and burn without taking the entire American government down with it.

Musk is right–this is indeed a fork in the road for America. It will come down to the values of each individual acting collectively. It will be a test of American values. The people will have to decide whether or not they want their democracy, or if they are going to abdicate their role as citizens because of the false promises of a man and a movement attempting to destroy American democracy.