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Which Crisis

I am being told (it’s all over the news) that there is an “affordability crisis” in America, and that I should be happy because the presence of this “affordability crisis” is good for Democrats as we move closer and closer to the mid-term elections. But I am not impressed. I don’t want to minimize the economic pain that many people are feeling because of the current economic climate. Farmers, small business owners, certainly the working poor have all been let down by the people in government that are supposed to be working for them and not raising money for the next election cycle.

Much of that economic pain can be attributed to Trump. The way Trump thinks–his inability to think through the long term consequences of his decisions, his belief that he can bully his way out of any problem, his unwillingness to see both the benefits and the necessity of cooperation–is a recipe for financial disaster. But we must step back and remember; Trump’s disastrous handling of the economy is a symptom of a broader disease, and as much as the economic pain may be real, it belies deeper and more fundamental crises.

For example, while Americans are distracted trying to make ends meet, the situation in Ukraine is devolving literally by the day. A simple cease fire agreement to not hit energy installations could not hold for more than three days. Trump and Zelensky have a rapidly deteriorating relationship as Zelensky finally loses patience with Trump’s propensity to venerate dictators. With ships getting blown up in the territorial waters of EU, and, more importantly, NATO member states, the chances the war could spread are growing day by day. Americans support Ukraine. But they are struggling to make ends meet. This isn’t a moment when they want their government wasting money. It does us absolutely no good to send aid to a country and only support it half way. If we are going to support Ukraine, we should do so whole-heartedly, in a way that will bring an end to the war. Otherwise we are throwing good money after bad in a half-hearted response which fails to resolve the crisis.

And that’s not the only crisis in the news that urgently needs to be addressed. Once again, we are reminded that we have a crisis in gun violence, as a 16-year-old somehow got his hands on a gun and started shooting at an elementary school. Americans say they want sensible gun control, and, yet, nothing happens. The crisis persists; people forget about it; we go back to focusing on other things. But the crisis is no less real and no less acute for our disregarding it. Gun violence in all its forms will ultimately take lives. Families and communities will be devastated. The consequences will run far deeper than the “affordability crisis,” yet chances are this crisis won’t be top of mind this election cycle.

When we finally hear about a motive for the school shooter chances are it will be in large part untreated mental illness. This was a crisis when I was a kid in the 1980’s. It had led to a crisis in homelessness. I’m 50 now and the crisis in mental illness has persisted unabated all of my adult life and more. If anything, things are worse today, with hospitals and residential facilities closing and the severely mentally ill getting treatment in prisons. We know the system is broken, and we know what to do to fix it, but the crisis continues.

And don’t forget the ongoing crisis that’s behind the “affordability crisis”–the war in Iran. This crisis has existed since the beginning of the Islamic Republic. For almost 50 years, people have attempted to solve the problem of the Iranian regime. We got close with the Iran nuclear deal, then Trump made the disastrous mistake of pulling out. It is easy enough to say we want an end to the war. But do we really want to do what it takes to put an end to the crisis? Do we want a superficial quick fix to our economic problems or a lasting solution that means we won’t have to be back dealing with the same crisis again and again?

And if we really want to make the inability of people to make the dollar stretch our sole focus, why don’t we try to actually do something about working poverty and helping family farms and small businesses. Take this opportunity to address the inherent inequalities in our economic structures, find out why family farms are failing and what government can do to help; and find some way, some how, to make sure that if you work a 40 hr week, you can afford to make the rent.

I could go on. I could list a hundred different crises that are just as important as the “affordability crisis.” I am not saying the economic problems facing the country aren’t important–they are. But the current difficulties are in large part symptomatic. Treating the disease will be hard. Granted, much of the economic pain we are feeling is the result of weak leadership from a man who does not belong in power. But previous administrations going back generations have contributed to the problem as well. Taking this opportunity to solve the underlying problems and really address the root of the crisis will take leadership and political courage. It will take the wisdom to know which crisis is truly the most important.

We Shouldn’t Be Surprised

When it comes to immigration it is important not to get too forgetful. America likes to think of itself as a nation of immigrants, and in many ways it is, but it also has a long history of exclusion and hostility toward those among us not born on US soil. The problem is that America has not left behind its history of nativism. It never will. Even as America is a nation of immigrants, it is equally a nation with a history of xenophobia. And there is no way to escape that history. At this moment we must embrace that difficult history and learn from it. Otherwise we risk not only repeating history, but making a new and very sad chapter in the American story. It doesn’t have to be this way, but we can only change the course of events by acknowledging to ourselves where America has been. Only then can we truly take control of our future.

All of the problems with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol all boil down to one thing–something we have seen before in our history–zelotry. This is the worst thing that can possibly get into a government agency. No good ever has come or ever will come of it. Every time America has had that toxic mix of nativism and zealotry the outcome has been bad for its democracy. The problem isn’t policy. Policy can be dealt with. But when ICE agents go about the business of enforcing policy with such almost religious fervor that it causes them to fire into a car five times simply because someone is trying to interfere with them making an arrest–then we are in trouble.

If history teaches us one thing it is that we are in for the long haul. The hope that a new administration will take over and simply put a stop to all of this may prove illusory. Zealotry has a self-prepetuating momentum. Once it begins it moves on its own. Having said that, history does also show us some hope. Chances are the zealotry will wear itself out. People will tire of the extreme and come back to the middle. And hopefully America will once again remember that it is a nation of immigrants as it has after other periods of xenophobia. That isn’t to say that we should sit on our hands and do nothing. But in many ways we may end up riding out the storm.

We have, however, a lot to say about how long that storm will last. The thing about xenophobia is that it is impractical, especially in the current age. ICE can act with almost cultic zeal in detaining people and demonizing those of us who wish they would calm down and think it through a moment, but they can’t change the laws of supply and demand. We need immigrants; and the harshest, most nativist policies aren’t going to change that. The economic realities are such that there will be more immigration–legal or otherwise. We need immigrants to care for an aging population and offset our low birthrate. And that’s just to start with. The question will be not if but how we integrate immigrants into our economy and society. Because as long as their labor is needed, and it will be, immigrants will come.

And this is what the current administration doesn’t understand. Trump and his cronies think that disregarding people’s rights and an overall climate of cruelty will solve the problem of illegal immigration when what is needed is attention to the big picture economic forces that draw people here in the first place. America’s immigration problem will be solved when, by understanding and respecting the laws of supply and demand, the market forces people are responding to are made to change. Zealotry will prove to be futile.

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.

How’s He Doing?

If you ask Trump, his lackeys, or his supporters how things are going they are bound to tell you that things are looking up. I have more hope. Actually, Trump is running into problems left and right, with more storms brewing. If you step back and think about it, there’s a big list:

For all his talk of government efficiency, DOGE has been very inefficient in their record keeping. As reported by the New York Times, their website has been riddled with falsehoods, exaggerations and stupid mistakes. More than once they have had to take down receipts off their wall and massively revise downward what they have saved.

So far, Trump has done absolutely nothing to address the issue that got him elected: food inflation. While he has been distracted with culture war issues and berating war-time presidents, food prices are actually up slightly. This is mostly due to high egg prices, which is due to avian flu and price gouging. He now says he is going to do something about the problem, but, in reality, his unelected “special government employee” terminated people responsible for monitoring the problem and developing a vaccine; then scrambled to rehire them, slowing the response and worsening the crisis. Trump says that the USDA and the CDC will have all the resources they need, but Iowa Public Radio has reported staffing shortages at the USDA main office in Ames, Iowa. These are the people in the middle of developing a bird flu vaccine. The USDA and CDC are left trying to combat an epidemic while being gutted. It simply is not possible. Trump’s solution to the problem is more of the same. Which means more federal funding for more dead chickens and more boots on the ground at the UDSA. So much for the price of eggs. Not to mention the fact that this could become the next pandemic.

As for “drill, baby, drill” nobody is doing it, and probably no one is going to. Oil companies want tight supply and high demand. They’re making good profits. They are going to exercise “capital discipline”– meaning not investing in what will become excess capacity. They (unlike Trump) know that the future demand for oil is probably going to go down as the rest of the world tackles climate change.

Then there is the Ebola epidemic already occurring that DOGE “accidentally” cut finding to. What Musk doesn’t seem to understand is that if someone makes a “mistake” with a global health crisis, which Ebola could become, you risk hundreds of thousands if not millions of people dying. This is no time for “accidents.” It is time to give decent people who really know what they are doing the resources they need and let them do their jobs. These are people risking their lives trying to keep the next pandemic from hitting America. They needn’t take orders from a man whose greatest responsibility was an unmanned rocket.

Closer to home, at least one child is now dead due to the policies of one of Trump’s controversial cabinet picks. There is now a measles outbreak in Texas within a community with historically low vaccination rates. Kennedy is falsely asserting that such outbreaks occur every year. In reality, measles was nearly eradicated in the US by 2000. Only now, as conspiracy theories have led to lower vaccination rates, has it made a resurgence. Meanwhile, the CDC refuses to listen to the vaccine experts responsible for creating our yearly flu vaccine. Last year that vaccine saved 3,700 lives and prevented 6 million illnesses, according to the CDC.

And, the EPA has angered its own people by dropping a lawsuit against a chemical company poisoning the children of a majority Black community with a mutagenic carcinogen. Apparently ensuring these kids don’t die young from cancer is “wasteful” and too “woke.” They’re the victims of a purge of anything called “environmental justice.”

At the same moment, Trump’s lackeys in Congress wasted time putting forward a bill they knew Democrats would vote down which did, amongst other things, take power from the NCAA over policy decisions surrounding transgender athletes. Of the approximately 500,000 athletes in the NCAA less than ten identify as transgender.

All the while, on the world stage, Trump has now managed to start a trade war, with our closest ally, that inevitably will spur inflation and has rattled stock markets. Why? Trump seems to have forgotten that far more drugs flow from the US into Canada than the other way around.

His ideas for Gaza have created pushback not only because his proposals are in violation of international law, but as his own followers have pointed out, turning Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East” is inevitably going to require billions of investment in nation building and American boots on the ground.

Lastly, Trump’s strongman tactics toward Zelensky may seem like a power play from “The Art of the Deal.” But his geopolitical protection racket is quickly causing Trump to become a pariah on the international stage. Trump’s “America First” agenda may prove less popular when people see the cruelty with which he addressed Zelensky.

Trump is more vulnerable than he realizes. He can’t spin straw into gold. However intimidating his actions may seem now, he has already begun to falter. For all the power that Trump believes he wields through his flurry of executive orders, in reality he is being forced into court and losing right and left. Is it really “strength” to put oneself in the position of having to disobey a court order and create a constitutional crisis in order to advance one’s agenda?

For all his “flooding the zone” Trump’s first weeks in office have created the confusion and chaos that nearly got him removed from office the last time around. Trump says he came into office much more prepared this time. He did. But no amount of preparation can change the fact that Trump’s entire ethos is one of entropy.

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.