Bob Sheak, Feb 24, 2025

Officially, Trump won the presidential election. He did so by the smallest margin in decades. However, he acts as though voters gave him an unprecedented “mandate.” He even says that he now has King-like power, that is, he is above the law, the Constitution doesn’t matter, and he and his partner, the billionaire Elon Musk, can do as they please in accessing government records, firing government workers, and reducing or eliminating government agencies and programs. There is some opposition. Their actions incite legal actions against what they are doing, polls go against them, and voters who supported Trump now gather to express their dissatisfaction with the mindless and harmful firing of thousands of government workers and the impacts on programs people care about. Trump and Musk do this seemingly without any concern about the consequences for communities and people. They appear set on creating a society without Constitutional guardrails, rather they want a society that reflects the arbitrary power that exists in authoritarian governments like Russia and Hungary. Indeed, Trump’s friendly relationship to Putin is well known. Craig Unger wrote a book about it: “The House of Trump House of Putin (publ. 2018).

Here are some examples, as of Feb 24, 2025.

1 – Many of Trump’s early actions are unpopular.

Dan Balz, Scott Clement and Emily Suskin report that a Post-Ipsos poll finds many of Trump’s early actions are unpopular (https://washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/20/trump-poll-unpopular-post-ilpsos). Here’s some of what they report.

President Donald Trump has opened his second term with a flurry of actions designed to radically disrupt and shrink the federal bureaucracy, but reviews from Americans are mixed to negative on many of his specific initiatives, and 57 percent say he has exceeded his authority since taking office, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll.

Overall, 43 percent of Americans say they support what the president has done during his first month in office, with 48 percent saying they oppose. Those who strongly oppose outnumber those who strongly support by 37 percent to 27 percent.
Trump’s initiatives have drawn numerous lawsuits attempting to block or slow his progress, along with claims from critics that he lacks the authority to do many of the things he has proposed. While most Americans agree with the view that he has exceeded his authority, 40 percent say he has the power to do what he’s doing.

About 2 in 3 say Trump should have to get approval from Congress to freeze funding for programs previously approved by Congress and past presidents.
The best and worst things Trump has done, in respondents’ own words:
“Hiring Elon Musk to gut the government. Elon Musk may be a brilliant man, but he is not good working with people and does not know what he is doing quite frankly.”

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2 – Trump believes he is above the law

Check out Benjamin Oreskes article for more on Trump’s self-conception as being a “king” (https://nytimes.com/2025/02/19/us/politics/trump-king-image.html)

The Common Dreams’ staff cite Trump’s “quoting Napolean,” as the president “Openly Declares He’s Above the Law” (https://commondreams.org/news/trump-quotes-napolean). The article was published on Feb. 16, 2025. They write,

“Fears that the United States is in the midst of a constitutional crisis—or something significantly worse—intensified Saturday after President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post that “he who saves his country does not violate any law,” a variation of a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.” They may be, the staff write, “[t]he single most un-American and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an American president.”

The president’s post appears on X, “the platform owned by billionaire shadow government leader Elon Musk—[and] came as his administration continued its sweeping and destructive assault on the federal government and workforce, running roughshod over the law in the process.”

They continue. “Trump, his handpicked Cabinet officials, and Musk have also disregarded or openly attacked the other two co-equal branches of government, accusing judges who have moved to halt or limit the new administration’s actions of being Democratic partisans.”

3 – Trump’s Executive Orders Build Toward Dictatorial “Unitary Executive” Power

C.J. Polychroniou argues in an article on Truthout, Feb 21, that Trump’s flood of executive orders build toward “Unitary Executive Power,”
(https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-executive-orders-build-toward-dictatorial-unitary-executive-power). Here’s some of what he writes.

“During his first month in office, President Donald Trump has signed a plethora of executive orders that have proclaimed a dramatic expansion of the powers of the executive branch. In his latest, issued on February 18 and entitled Ensuring Accountability for all Agencies, Trump aims to bring all independent federal regulatory agencies under the direct control of the chief executive.” He seems to have little concern with the law in this regard.”

Polychroniou continues.

“David M. Driesen, university professor at Syracuse University College of Law, says that Trump’s executive order to curb the authority of independent agencies is illegal and that the president is using unitary executive theory to establish a dictatorship. In the interview that follows, Driesen addresses Trump’s recent actions as well as the debate over unitary executive theory — a legal theory which says that the U.S. president can rule over the executive branch with absolute power. In two recent cases the far right Supreme Court has signaled increasing openness to this theory, once considered a fringe interpretation of the Constitution. Legal scholars and advocates, including Driesen, are now sounding the alarm that Trump’s seizure of dictatorial executive power may succeed with the court’s approval.”

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4 – Trump and Musk fire thousands of workers in the Executive Branch

Hannah Natanson, Lisa Rein and Emily Davies report that “the Trump administration fires thousands for ‘performance’ without evidence, in messy rush”
(https://washingtonpost.com/nation/20-25/02/17/trump-fires-federal-workers-performance).

“This account of how the Trump administration’s firings played out over the weekend, sowing pain and chaos, is based on interviews and messages with more than 275 federal workers, as well as dozens of government records and communications reviewed by The Post.”

“Contrary to Trump’s claims, the Washington Post journalists find that “many probationary employees targeted in latest Trump cuts across agencies had excellent ratings; legal challenges are expected.”

They continue. “Many federal government employees were dismissed over the holiday weekend as managers confronted a Trump administration demand to fire workers by Tuesday. In group texts and in online forums, they dubbed the error-ridden run of firings the ‘St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.’”

“The firings targeted new hires on probation, who have fewer protections than permanent employees, and swept up people with years of service who had recently transferred between agencies, as well as military veterans and people with disabilities employed through a program that sped their hiring but put them on two years’ probation. Most probationary employees have limited rights to appeal dismissals, but union heads have vowed to challenge the mass firings in court. The largest union representing federal workers has also indicated it plans to fight the terminations and pursue legal action.”

All of this mayhem reflects an administration racing “to execute a vision Trump and billionaire Elon Musk have touted for a leaner, reshaped government. The latest wave of personnel actions already prompted an administrative complaint on behalf of workers at nine agencies, adding to more than a dozen legal tests of Trump’s power filed one month into his term.”

“Firing employees en masse with the same claim of poor performance is illegal, said Jim Eisenmann, a partner at the Alden Law Group, a law firm specializing in litigation by federal employees. It violates federal law covering career civil service employees, he said.” Meanwhile, federal workers in an increasing number of agencies are being terminated, including “at the Interior Department, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Energy Department” as well as at Education, the Small Business Administration, the FAA, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Transportation Department, the Veterans Administration, and more. This means that vital government services will become less available.

This can have catastrophic effects. With fewer workers in Air Control, the next airline disaster is more likely (https://commondreams.org/news/federal-aviation-administration). Access by vets to health care is being reduced (https://prospect.org/health/2025-02-19-va-secretary-doge-middle-finger-to-vets). Access to nuclear weapons data is less secure (https://counterpunch.org/2025/02/19/a-whole-lot-of-nuclear-madness-in-one-week).

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5 – Trump’s foreign policy shifts toward Russia and other autocratic states and fascist political parties

Patrick Healy, a NYT Opinion columnist, interviews Masha Gessen and Bret Stephens on Trump’s first month in power, focusing on his “use of power on the world stage, “how Trump would like to pursue a foreign policy with imperialistic implications, and in close relations with Vladimer Putin (https://nytimes.com/2025/02/21/opinion/trump-putin-ukraine.html). Here are excerpts.

Patrick Healy: Bret, Masha, you’ve both written powerfully for years about Russia and the West, totalitarian states, Vladimir Putin, the Ukraine war and Donald Trump’s use of power. We are one month into Trump’s presidency, and the West seems at the beginning of a potentially significant realignment: Trump is starting to align with Putin over Europe; Trump is repeating Putin’s lies about Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky being a “dictator” who caused the war; and foreign allies and Republican leaders seem weak or pliant in the face of Trump. What is all of this adding up to? Are we seeing a realignment among the United States, Russia and Europe?

Bret Stephens: It might be premature to draw firm conclusions. But, for now, I’d say the word “realignment” feels much too weak. “Reversal” comes closer to the mark. A reversal in our vision of who counts as a democrat or a dictator. A reversal in who counts as a friend or an adversary. A reversal in our approach to the domestic politics of allied states. A reversal in the overall direction of our post-World War foreign policy, which was about supporting embattled or enfeebled allies, promoting economic liberalization, embracing democracy (or at least non-totalitarian states), favoring open societies over closed ones. It’s a world turned upside down.

“Another thing: It feels that Trump is seeking to turn America into a predatory state. The casual demand that Denmark relinquish Greenland. The not-so-casual demand that Ukraine hand over much of its mineral wealth. The surly threats to Panama, whose president is as pro-American as they come. The deal to return desperate Venezuelan refugees to the socialist dictatorship from which they fled in hunger and desperation. The joking (or not) about turning Canada into a 51st state; the unilateral and unprovoked trampling of trade agreements, like the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement he negotiated in his first term as a replacement for NAFTA.”

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6 – Resistance of the Trump/Musk attacks on Democracy

Meanwhile, there is resistance to the Trump/Musk attacks. Here are two examples.

Bernie Sanders tour to “fight oligarchy.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders is on a tour of the country to expose the anti-democratic moves of Trump and Musk. Julia Conley reports that thousands are attending Sanders gatherings (https://commondreams.org/news/bernie-sanders-donald-trump).

“After addressing more than 3,400 Nebraska residents in Omaha Friday evening, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Saturday made his second stop on his National Tour to Fight Oligarchy—telling Iowa City, Iowa residents that “Trumpism will not be defeated by politicians inside the D.C. Beltway.”

“For better or worse, that is not going to happen,” said the Vermont Independent senator, whose broadly popular policy proposals have long been dismissed by Democratic leaders as unrealistic and radical while President Donald Trump has increasingly captured the attention of the working class Americans who would benefit most from Sanders’ ideas.

“‘It will only be defeated by millions of Americans in Iowa, in Vermont, in Nebraska, in every state in this country, who come together in a strong grassroots movement and say no to oligarchy, no to authoritarianism, no to kleptocracy, no to massive cuts to programs that low-income and working Americans desperately need, no to huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country,’ said Sanders.”

“Today in America,’ Conley writes, ‘we are rapidly moving toward an oligarchic form of society where a handful of multibillionaires not only have extraordinary wealth, but unprecedented economic, media, and political power,’ said Sanders in Iowa City, which like Omaha is represented by a Republican U.S. House member who narrowly won reelection last November and has faced pressure to reject the GOP budget plan. ‘Brothers and sisters, that is not the democracy that men and women fought and died to defend.’”

“Jeremy Slevin, a senior adviser to Sanders, reported that in Iowa City, the senator gave ‘not one, not two, but three different speeches to overflow crowds,’ with 2,000 people lining up to see him speak ‘on a freezing cold day in a Republican district.’”

State Attorney Generals fight back

Here are excerpts from a statement by Wisconsin’s Department of Justice.

“MADISON, Wis. – Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul today announced Wisconsin is joining a coalition of 19 states in filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration to stop the unauthorized disclosure of Americans’ private information and sensitive data. The lawsuit asserts that the Trump administration illegally provided Elon Musk and the so-called ‘Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)’ unauthorized access to the Treasury Department’s central payment system, and therefore to Americans’ most sensitive personal information, including bank account details and Social Security numbers. This expanded access could allow Musk and his team to block federal funds to states and programs providing health care, childcare, and other critical services. With this lawsuit, the coalition is seeking to stop the Trump administration’s new policy that illegally grants DOGE, Musk, and others access to Americans’ confidential information and the U.S. Treasury’s payment systems.

“‘Wisconsinites expect the federal government to treat their Social Security numbers, bank account information, and other sensitive personal details with the highest level of protection and confidentiality—and that obligation doesn’t go out the window just because Elon Musk says it should,’ said Gov. Evers. ‘Giving political appointees access to our most personal information like this is illegal. That’s plain as day.’”
Concluding thoughts

Trump, Musk their rich and ideological allies, have taken control of key pillars of government and want to use their power to curtail or destroy opponents. Their vision appears to be of a country under autocratic control, where the rich and big corporations benefit from low taxes, minimal regulation, and the privatization of everything from which they can profit. It’s not clear how far they will go in their efforts to destroy democracy and increase the profitable opportunities for their rich and powerful allies, but as of now it appears they have few if any limits. Whether citizens can mount effective social movements and political campaigns and stop the Trump/Musk shedding of the Constitution, the laws that protect ordinary citizens, and the programs that offer necessary services remains to be seen.

At the same time, polls indicate dissatisfaction with what they are doing, state governors and other state officials and citizens are speaking out against the Trump/Musk attempts to replace arbitrary and corporate efforts to reduce government’s independence and resources.