Bob Sheak, March 26, 2025

Trump’s anti-democratic response to losing the 2020 presidential election

Trump has long been an authoritarian. Anne Gearan and Josh Dawsey report that “Trump has been fixated on overturning the [2020] election for weeks, making hundreds of calls to allies, lawyers, state legislators, governors and other officials and regularly huddling with outside lawyers Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and others” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-election-capitol-building).

According to The January 6 Report of The House January 6th Committee,

“the Trump complaint about a rigged election involved ‘62 separate lawsuits between November 4, 2020 and January 6, 2021, calling into question or seeking to overturn the elections results. Out of 62 cases, only one case results in victory for the President Trump or his allies, which affected relatively few votes, did not vindicate any underlying claims of fraud, and would not have changed the outcome in Pennsylvania” (p. 210).

Making no headway in the courts, Trump called for his followers to gather at the Capitol to stop the presidential certification process.

Gearan and Dawsey continue.

Trump fed “his base through twitter that the election was rigged against him, even before he lost the election on November 3. He asked his right-wing supporters to come to Washington for a rally on December 6, when a joint-session of Congress was convening to take the final step to sanctify Biden’s victory.” It was at this rally, including some 30,000 people, that Trump told the crowd to march to the US Capitol building.

The costs of the Jan.6 riots

Trump’s crowd broke into a riot not long after getting to the Capitol. Emily Cochrane and Luke Broadwater report on the costs of the January 6 attacks on the Capitol (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/us/politics/capitol-riot-damage.html).

“The top operations and maintenance official of the United States Capitol told lawmakers on Wednesday that the costs of the Jan. 6 attack will exceed $30 million, as his office works to provide mental health services, increase security and repair historical statues and other art damaged in the riot.”

They also write: “Far more difficult to ascertain is the psychological burden on the hundreds of Capitol Hill staff members, many of whom sheltered in place as the mob broke through doors and windows and ransacked the building.

“…counseling and consultation services in 2021 would increase by 65 percent over 2020 and by 200 percent as compared to more typical recent years,”

Trump embraces the rioters

Immediately after the Jan. 6 attack, Trump sought to distance himself from the attack, saying those who broke the law should be held accountable. But over the next few years, a new narrative emerged, and Trump soon began openly signaling his support for Jan. 6 rioters, calling them ‘hostages.’” (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/13/us/politics/trump-jan-6.html).

Trump in the White House again – the pardons

One of Trump’s first acts after barley winning the 2024 presidential election with the help of voter suppression and with less than 50 percent of the popular vote was to pardon over 1,500+ prisoners who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, claiming falsely that they had acted peacefully and that any violence was carried out by left-wing provocateurs.

Ryan J. Reilly refers to some of the evidence (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-set-pardon-defendants-stormed-capitol-jan-6-2021-rcna187735). Here’s some of what he writes.

“Trump commuted the sentences of individuals associated with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who were convicted of seditious conspiracy. He then issued ‘a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021’ a category that included people who assaulted law enforcement officers.”

Reilly quotes Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who was speaker of the House during the attack.

“‘It is shameful that the President has decided to make one of his top priorities the abandonment and betrayal of police officers who put their lives on the line to stop an attempt to subvert the peaceful transfer of power,’ she said in a statement. ‘Despite the President’s decision, we must always remember the extraordinary courage and valor of the law enforcement heroes who stood in the breach and ensured that democracy survived on that dark day.’”

Now, as President again, Trump wants to compensate the rioters

Martha McHardy reports on Trump’s comments on March 26, 2025 to create a “compensation fund” for Jan.6 rioters (https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-january-6-riot-compensation-2050582).

Efforts to reduce the size and impact of government

At the same time, Trump, his partner Elon Musk. Along with DOGE (Musk’s young team, The Department of Government Efficiency) are rampaging through agencies in the federal government with the alleged goals of ridding agencies of waste and fraud and to reducing the national debt. But this goal of reducing the national debt is unachievable as long as they don’t increase taxes on the rich. And they are doing just the opposite, by planning to reduce such taxes. The implicit rationale is called “trickle-down economics” in which government spending and regulation are reduced, while big corporations are supposed to fill the subsequent employment gap.

Widespread protests and court actions have forced the Trump government to order some federal workers to return to their offices. However, as Shannon Bond and Jena McLaughlin report for NPR, workers are finding “shortages of desks, Wi-Fi and toilet paper” (https://www.npr.org/2025/03/26/nx-s1-5338945/federal-workers-return-to-office-chaos).

“Earlier this month, a Department of Agriculture employee who works remotely was given a list of possible locations for their upcoming mandatory return to office. One location was described as a ‘storage unit.’”

“Confused, the employee drove to the address, which turned out to be, in fact, a storage facility. When the employee asked the facility’s owner why it might show up on a list of federal office spaces, the owner laughed and told the employee that the federal government does rent a unit there — to store a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service boat. It doesn’t have heat, windows or power.

“The USDA employee notified their supervisor, but hasn’t heard back. NPR spoke to 27 current employees at more than a dozen federal agencies for this story. All of them requested their names be withheld for fear of reprisal from the Trump administration for speaking out.

“Federal workers have been ordered back into offices only to face shortages of desks, computer monitors, parking and even toilet paper. Others are still waiting to find out if they will be assigned to a building near where they live or asked to relocate across the country in the coming weeks.

“Some civil servants say the return-to-office mandate feels like an indirect way to get them to quit, and flies in the face of a years-long push by the federal government, predating the COVID pandemic, to encourage teleworking.”

“Cumulatively, the rush to bring workers into federal offices is taking a toll across the country, federal employees told NPR, with few apparent benefits for efficiency, cost savings or productivity.”

“Many employees at agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and the Bureau of Land Management have turned up at offices that don’t seem equipped for the influx, they told NPR.”

The great economy will have to wait after all

Once in office, Trump reversed his promises of a great economy. He admitted that the problem was more difficult to solve than he anticipated and that it would take time to solve the inflation and other economic problems that beset the country.

But is the wait worth it?

Ben Casselman, writer for the New York Times, disputes the views of Trump and his administrators who claims that any costs of a bad economy will in time be worth it (https://nytimes.com/2025/03/18/business/economy/trump-recession-tariffs-inflation.html).

For example, “Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, has said Mr. Trump’s policies are ‘worth it’ even if they cause a recession. Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, has said the economy may need a ‘detox period’ after becoming dependent on government spending. And Mr. Trump has said there will be a ‘period of transition’ as his policies take effect.”

Casselman continues. “Such comments may partly reflect an effort to align political statements with economic reality. Mr. Trump promised to end inflation ‘starting on Day 1’ and declared, in his inaugural address, that ‘the golden age of America begins right now.’

“Instead, inflation has remained stubborn, and while Mr. Trump has been in office less than two months, economists warn that his tariffs are likely to make it worse. Measures of consumer and business confidence have plummeted and stock prices have tumbled, attributable in large part to Mr. Trump’s policies and the uncertainty they have caused.”

More on Trump’s economy

Economist Dean Baker thinks that Trump’s economic policies on tariffs and also on closing government agencies will hurt the economy, contrary to what Trump promised his constituents (https://counterpunch.org/2025/03/13/the-trump-musk-recession-because-they-can). Here’s some of what Baker writes.

The dire effects of Trump’s tariffs

“‘While a recession may not be fully baked into the cards at this point,’ Baker writes, ‘the risk is evident and it’s almost entirely coming from Donald Trump’s policies. First and foremost are the costs associated with his import taxes (tariffs), or at least the threat of tariffs.”

Baker continues. “The impact of Trump’s threats should not be underestimated. If you were an auto executive trying to decide whether and where to expand capacity right now, what would you be doing? Would you look to continue to take the lowest cost route and further integrate your operations with Canada and Mexico? That would be a pretty bad choice if we have high taxes on imports from these countries….”

“Alternatively, you could go the MAGA route and invest in the United States. This would mean you would have far higher costs and likely be wiped out if the tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports came down at some future date. Alternatively, it is possible President Xi, or some future Chinese leader, would make a visit to Mar-a-Lago and we would be able to buy high quality Chinese EVs for $17,000. Again, you would be wiped out.

“Needless to say, the smart move here is to put off any major new investments until Donald Trump figures out what he wants to do with tariffs. And even then, it would probably be smart to limit investments, since we know Trump can change his mind at any time, depending on who shows up at Mar-a-Lago. Most industries are not as thoroughly integrated into the world economy as the auto industry, but almost all have some degree of integration, so we can expect many companies putting off investment plans to see where things go. This means that even without actually imposing new tariffs, Trump is already hurting the economy.”

The Smashing Government Route to Recession

Baker continues. “Donald Trump’s tariff games are just one possible route to recession; the other is Elon Musk’s DOGE team attack on the government. If there was ever any doubt, it is now clear that this outfit has nothing to do with increasing government efficiency.

“They show up at government agencies without even knowing what the agency does. They then do large-scale layoffs without knowing what the fired workers do. When they find out what they do, they often have to hire them back, as happened with air traffic controllers and workers keeping our nuclear weapons safe. There is no evidence that Musk or his ‘super-high IQ’ DOGE boys have ever spent five minutes reviewing the evidence of waste and fraud that has been assembled by Government Accountability Office or the various agency inspector generals, most of whom have been fired by Trump.

“But the direct impact of Musk’s job cuts on both the budget and the economy are likely to be small. The bigger impact is the uncertainty they have created in large sectors of the economy. This is most evident with medical research and universities more generally. Their funding streams through fiscal year 2025 (which ends October 1) and later have been called into question by Musk and Trump’s actions. Many of them are cutting back hiring, and even retracting job offers now that funding streams are no longer secure.

Hits on health care

“The uncertainty is also hitting the larger healthcare sector,” Baker points out, “which has been the major source of job growth in the last two years, accounting for more than one-third of the February job growth. Hospitals, nursing homes, and other providers can no longer be sure of their funding streams going forward, therefore they are likely to be far more cautious in hiring.

“This will also be true for state and local governments which now have no idea when Donald Trump will arbitrarily decide to cut off a flow of federal money. These cutoffs may be illegal, but no one knows what the courts will decide and when and if Trump will respect the Constitution. As a result, state and local governments also have to be careful in their hiring and spending more generally.”

Fewer tourists to America

“‘Most immediately,’ Baker notes, ‘we are likely to see many fewer foreigners coming to the United States, as it comes increasingly to be seen as a ‘shithole country.’ Foreign tourists spent almost $170 billion in the United States last year (line 339). This is likely to fall sharply as foreigners can no longer count on any of the rights that they would have been accorded in prior years. This applies not only to darker-skinned people, but even to lighter skinned types who for whatever reason run afoul of immigration officers.

“The United States is also likely to be a less attractive tourist destination more generally as our national parks get run down due to large-scale layoffs, air travel becomes less reliable, and even weather forecasts become more uncertain due to mass layoffs at the weather bureau. Most people probably didn’t think of park
rangers as the ‘Deep State,’ but apparently Donald Trump did.

Foreign students will go elsewhere

“Foreigners spent almost $60 billion on tuition at US colleges and universities (line 341) last year. We can expect this also to fall sharply as schools can no longer promise their foreign students protection against arbitrary actions by immigration officers.

Investors will go elsewhere

“Also, the rule of Mar-a-Lago will make the United States a much less attractive place to invest more generally. Businesses will look to invest in Europe, Japan, Latin America, India, and possibly even China, as countries that have greater respect for the rule of law. This should further dampen investment in the United States.

Trump’s Appetite for Revenge Is Insatiable

Peter Wehner considers this issue in an article published by The Atlantic, March 20, 2025 (https://theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/political-enemy-retribution-efforts/682095).

“During his first official campaign rally for the 2024 Republican nomination, held in Waco, Texas, Donald Trump vowed retribution against those he perceives as his enemies.

“‘I am your warrior,’ he said to his supporters. ‘I am your justice. For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.’”

In the first sixty days of Trump’s second term, we have begun to see what Trump’s retribution looks like.

“The president fired the archivist of the United States because he was enraged at the National Archives for notifying the Justice Department of his alleged mishandling of classified documents after he left office following his first term. (The archivist he fired hadn’t even been working for the agency at the time, but that didn’t matter.) He also fired two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission, a traditionally independent regulatory agency, in violation of Supreme Court precedent and quite likely the language of the statute that created it. (Both members plan to sue to reverse the firings.)

Wehner continues. “Trump stripped security details from people he had appointed to high office in his first administration and subsequently fell out with, including General Mark Milley, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, the former diplomat Brian Hook, and the infectious-disease expert Anthony Fauci. The National Institutes of Health, where Fauci worked for 45 years, is being gutted by the Trump administration. The environment there has become ‘suffocatingly toxic,’ as my colleague Katherine J. Wu reported.
Trump has sued networks and newspapers for millions of dollars. His Federal Communications Commission is investigating several outlets. And he has called CNN and MSNBC ‘corrupt’ and ‘illegal’—not because they have broken any laws, but simply because they have been critical of him.”

“Trump has also come after the legal profession, expanding his attacks on private law firms and threatening the ability of lawyers to do their job and private citizens to obtain legal counsel. U.S. Marshals have warned federal judges of unusually high threat levels as Elon Musk and other Trump-administration allies ‘ramp up efforts to discredit judges,’ according to a Reuters report. On his social-media site, Musk has attacked judges in more than 30 posts since the end of January, calling them ‘corrupt,’ ‘radical,’ and ‘evil,’ and deriding the ‘TYRANNY of the JUDICIARY.’”

“Earlier this week, Trump targeted a federal judge, James E. Boasberg, who ordered a pause in deportations being carried out under an obscure wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Trump, who ignored that court order, called the judge a ‘Radical Left Lunatic’ and demanded his impeachment. (Chief Justice John Roberts responded to the president’s attack with a rare public rebuke.) Trump and his supporters are clearly looking for a showdown with the judicial branch, which could precipitate a constitutional crisis.”

Wehner continues.

“But that’s hardly where the efforts at intimidation end. Trump’s antipathy for Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was on vivid display a few weeks ago, when the president berated Zelensky in a televised Oval Office meeting.

“Trump’s hostility toward the Ukrainian president, whom he referred to as a ‘dictator,’ is explained in part by his long-standing affinity for totalitarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin, who invaded Ukraine three years ago. But it almost surely also has to do with Trump’s embrace of a conspiracy theory that Ukraine intervened in the 2016 presidential election in an effort to defeat him. (In fact it was Russia, not Ukraine, that interfered in the election, and on behalf of Trump.)

“Last Friday, in the Great Hall of the Justice Department, the president described his adversaries as ‘scum,’ ‘savages,’ and ‘Marxists,’ as well as ‘deranged,’ ‘thugs,’ ‘violent vicious lawyers,’ and ‘a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government.’”

Trump controls the Justice Department, just as he has control over other agencies in the Executive Branch. “As if to underscore the point, Attorney General Pam Bondi, who called Trump ‘the greatest president in the history of our country,’ said she works ‘at the directive of Donald Trump.’ The Justice Department is Trump’s weapon for revenge. And his appetite for vengeance is insatiable.”

The threat

“The threat this poses to American democracy is obvious…. They can target innocent people, shut down dissent, intimidate critics into silence, violate democratic norms, act without any statutory authority, sweep away checks and balances, spread disinformation and conspiracy theories, ignore court orders, and even declare martial law.”

Concluding thoughts

While Trump acts like a dictator, and while his administration and Republicans in Congress and across the country support what he does, there are innumerable anti-protests erupting in red states and blue states, against the Trump/Musk policies. Their effects are not yet known. Nevertheless, they are occurring and generating widespread opposition.

Sarah D. Wire documents the widespread protests against Trump and Musk (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/03/20/activists-ramp-up-rallies-opposing-trump-administration/82237839007). She writes:

“In just two months since Trump took office and began a sweeping effort to restructure government by firing tens of thousands of federal employees, closing entire departments and shutting local offices for agencies like Social Security, activists have ramped up their efforts as well, with lessons learned from a fight that began in Trump’s first term. Protests have accelerated across the country as Trump has rolled back protections for green card holders, asylum seekers, transgender people and federal workers.”

“In February alone, more than 2,085 protests took place nationwide, according to the Crowd Counting Consortium, a joint project of Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut. That’s an increase from 937 protests in February 2017, the first full month of the first Trump administration….

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.”

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.”

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).

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.”

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.