A president with great power, repression, amid growing resistance

Bob Sheak, Jan. 24, 2026

Arlene Sheak edited

The president is an embarrassment to the US, but more importantly, he is an unprecedented danger to democracy and a threat to peace in the world. He often claims he is for peace, but he is quick to utilize the military abroad and authorizes the largest military budget in American history – and in the world. He also aggressively authorizes the deployment of federal law-less enforcers into cities across the U.S, particularly “Democratic” cities.

All the while, he acts and speaks erratically. He makes up his own “truths.” He sees himself as an all-powerful leader, an autocrat or dictator. He enriches himself and his family. The New York Times Editorial Board reported that Trump had pocketed $1,405,500,000 in 2025

(https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/20/opinion/editorials/trump-wealth-crypto-graft.html).

His power is unfortunately rooted in his control of the executive branch of the U.S. government, including the military, an array of federal agencies, ICE, along with the Republican Party, support from the rich and corporations, a conservative majority in the Supreme Court, and his base of tens of millions of right-wing Americans. His policies are having detrimental effects on many Americans.

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His mental instability

Harold Meyerson contends that the president has “become psychotically megalomaniacal (https://prospect.org/2026/01/20/25th-amendment-time–mad-king-donald).

“Age, narcissism, and megalomania now determine Trump’s actions and, alarmingly, the domestic and foreign policy of the United States.

“Today, which marks the first anniversary of Trump’s reassuming the duties of the presidency, it’s clear that the conventional wisdom was profoundly and disastrously wrong. Age, narcissism, and megalomania now determine Trump’s actions and, alarmingly, the domestic and foreign policy of the United States.

When the consequences are confined to his ordering up monuments to his assumed greatness—stamping his face on coins, engraving his name on government buildings, sizing his ballroom to dwarf anything else in D.C.—they can be dismissed as relatively harmless outbursts of ridiculously overindulged self-love.

“But when, as he told The New York Times earlier this month, he views the only constraints on his actions to be his own sense of propriety and morality, rather than the Constitution that presidents are sworn to preserve, protect, and defend, then we’ve been shuttled into a different form of government than the one we’ve assumed we’ve lived in for the past 250 years: a monarchy, at least as Trump himself sees it.”

Meyerson gives this example, regarding Trump’s bizarre reason to annex Greenland. “The president Bottom of Form

Tcited his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize as a reason he wants to seize Greenland. Just believing that he was in any sense qualified for the prize itself should have been evidence enough of his derangement. He surely feels wounded when anyone dares to tell him the truth about himself, as the Nobel Peace Prize committee unknowingly did when they gave the award to somebody else.

“But his determination to seize Greenland—already disgraceful, deplorable, and altogether addled even before his Nobel deprivation message—has become proof positive of his narcissistic megalomania, now that he’s linked his determination to his wounded ego.”

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Trump’s meandering speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland

Erin Mendell and Shashank Bengali report on this for The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/us/politics/trump/davos-speech-takeaways.html). Here are some highlights of what they report.

“In remarks that stretched for over an hour, Mr. Trump lashed out at NATO in front of fellow members of the military alliance and lobbed criticism at the leaders of several nations, Somali immigrants in the United States, wind power and more.”

Denmark and Greenland

“Mr. Trump referred to Greenland, which he has insisted the United States must control for reasons of national and international security, as ‘cold and poorly located.’ He has argued that China and Russia could seek to exploit it, and said on Wednesday that granting U.S. control of it was ‘a very small ask.’” He ruled out using military force, but threatened European leaders who oppose such a U.S. annexation, telling them ‘We will remember.’”

Trump’s veiled threats pushed the long-established trans-Atlantic alliance “to the brink.”

Here are examples of other points Trump mentioned.

He spent several minutes arguing that European nations have hurt themselves by trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while reveling in his efforts to block and dismantle renewable electricity plants in the United States.
After referring to Greenland, a territory with a population of nearly 60,000 people, as a “piece of ice,” he appeared to confuse it with Iceland, a Nordic island nation, when talking about a dip in the stock market this week.
He said he had received a call from Karin Keller-Sutter, Switzerland’s president at the time, pushing back on an initial 30 percent tariff. “And she was very repetitive,” he said, adding, “She just rubbed me the wrong way.” After that call, Mr. Trump said, “I made it 39 percent.”
Mr. Trump drew some gasps when he directly criticized Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada. Canada is historically one of the United States’ staunchest allies.
Mr. Carney said in a speech at Davos on Tuesday that the era of U.S. hegemony could be over, calling the current moment “a rupture.” Though he didn’t mention Mr. Trump’s name, there was no mistaking his meaning.

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His Falsehoods

Falsehoods Fueled Trump’s First Year Back in Office

Linda Qiu does a fact-check of Trump’s falsehoods in 2025

(https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/us/politics/trump-falsehoods-fact-check-first-year-year.html). There is no surprise here. Trump has a long-history of stretching the truth and outright lying.

In the first year of his second term, President Trump has cited an arsenal of falsehoods, baseless claims and distortions to justify significant policy changes on the economy, immigration, trade, executive power, and foreign policy.

For example, Trump claimed that he would transform the economy from the “worst” to the “best” and that his tariffs would bring back manufacturing companies to the U.S. Contrary to this claim, Qui writes,

“The manufacturing sector shed 63,000 jobs from January 2025 to December 2025. Construction spending in manufacturing has also declined. Economic activity in the sector in general contracted for 10 consecutive months in 2025, according to a longstanding survey by the Institute for Supply Management.”

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Billionaires and Corporations gained a lot in Trump’s first year back in the White House

Derek Seidman considers who gained the most during Trump’s first year, Jan 20 2026 (https://truthout.org/articles/who-gained-the-most-during-trumps-first-year-billionaires-and-corporations). Seidman is a writer, researcher and historian living in Buffalo, New York. His research finds that billionaires and corporations did well 2025. Others find that the average American struggled just to pay the bills.

Seidman writes,“Big banks saw their stocks skyrocket by 29 percent during Trump’s first year.”

“…major industries and their billionaire leaders who rule over us all — from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, Big Oil to Big Crypto — have profoundly benefited from the administration’s first year. Many of these corporate actors have cozied up with Trump through piles of campaign and inauguration contributions, as well as donations to his White House ballroom project.

“They’ve been the big winners over the past year, raking in billions from a policy agenda overseen by Trump and his administration stacked with billionaires and industry-friendly regulators.”

Here’s one of Seidman’s examples.

‘Wall Street and its coterie of financial oligarchs have been prime beneficiaries of Trump’s first year. This is especially true of big banks, which saw their stocks skyrocket by 29 percent in 2025.

“The bullishness around banks springs largely from Trump’s lax regulatory regime.

This includes the weakening of antitrust oversight, to the glee of big banks profiting from ramped-up mergers and acquisitions, and the appointment of corporate-friendly regulators to key financial cabinet and oversight roles.”

“One major beneficiary of these policies is Jamie Dimon, the longtime billionaire CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the U.S.’s biggest bank.

Dimon — who appears to be chumming up with Trump after years of tension — raked in around $770 million in 2025 through a “combination of salary, bonuses, dividends, stock grants and appreciation in his allotment of the bank’s shares,” whose value rose 34 percent last year, according to The New York Times.

‘Other bank executives — at Citi, Goldman Sachs, Capital One, and more — have also massively cashed in.’

Seidman writes,

“Tech corporations and billionaires have been major beneficiaries of Trump’s first year, with their stocks and revenues soaring, as the president has adamantly backed their core interests, including turbocharging the construction of data centers that power artificial intelligence (AI), gutting state-level AI regulations, cutting limits of AI chip exports, and approving chip exports by chipmaking behemoth Nvidia to China.”

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Trump is hardly a president who advances peace in the world

Katrina Vanden Heuvel and John Nichols consider Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine,” Jan 13 2026 (https://www.thenation.com/article/society/donroe-doctrine-venezuela-maduro). Here’s some of what they write.

“Trump, acting very much as a European king of old, attacked Venezuela as this edition of The Nation went to press. His move represents a brazen violation of international law that destabilizes global security and seizes Congress’s exclusive authority to declare war. Military force is justified only in response to a clear, credible, and imminent threat to  the security of the US or its treaty allies. Venezuela, whatever its internal dysfunctions or its connections to drug trafficking, poses no such threat.”

They continue.

“While Trump and his allies tried to justify naked aggression as part of a convoluted strategy to target ‘narco-terrorism,’ Representative Pat Ryan (D-NY), a former Army intelligence officer who served two combat tours during the Iraq War, declared, ‘No matter what they say, it’s always oil.’ Ryan was not alone in recognizing echoes of the WMD claims of former president George W. Bush, and how that blood-for-oil war went so horribly awry. In his first bid for the presidency, Trump positioned himself as something of an anti-war Republican. That was always a cynical gambit, and Trump is now exposed as an economic imperialist who learned nothing from Iraq and who is willing, as Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) noted, to embark on a career of empire that risks the lives of US troops to make ‘oil companies (not Americans) more profitable.’”

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The growth of reckless domestic law-less enforcement: ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Bill Chappell considers “How ICE grew to be the highest-funded U.S. law enforcement agency (https://www.npr.org/2026/01/21/nx-s1-5674887/ice-budget-funding-congress-trump). Here’s some of what he reports.

“Just 10 years ago, the annual budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, was less than $6 billion — notably smaller than other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security. But ICE’s budget has skyrocketed during President Trump’s second term, becoming the highest-funded U.S. law enforcement agency, with $85 billion now at its disposal.

“The windfall is thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted last July. After hovering around the $10 billion mark for years, ICE’s budget suddenly benefited from a meteoric spike.

Chappell quotes Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan policy institute.

“With this new bill and other appropriations, it’s larger than the annual budget of all other federal law enforcement agencies combined….”

Chappel continues. “ICE is now the lead agency in President’s Trump immigration crackdown, sending thousands of agents into U.S. communities. As its funding and profile has grown as part of those efforts, ICE has come under increasing criticism for its officers’ actions, from masked agents randomly stopping, questioning, and detaining people and thrusting them into unmarked vehicles to the recent

“Under the 2025 law, ICE has a $75 billion supplement that it can take as long as four years to spend, along with its base budget of around $10 billion. If the agency spends that money at a steady pace and current funding levels continue, it would have nearly $29 billion on hand each year. That essentially triples ICE’s total budget from recent years.

“To give that large number a sense of scale, consider that the Trump administration’s 2026 appropriations request for the entire Justice Department, including the FBI, stands at a little over $35 billion.

“The Trump administration has set lofty goals for ICE, aiming to deport 1 million people each year. And the One Big Beautiful Bill Act also allocates $45 billion for ICE to expand its immigration detention system — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said last June that the agency will be able to hold up to 100,000 people in custody daily. By comparison, the federal Bureau of Prisons currently holds over 153,000 inmates.

“As of Nov. 30, 65,735 people were held in immigration detention, according to the data tracking project Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

With those metrics in mind, ICE went on a hiring spree in 2025, fueled by its bigger budget. In just one year, the agency says, it ‘more than doubled our officers and agents from 10,000 to 22,000.’ (The Office of Personnel Management, which tracks federal workforce statistics, is only updated through Nov. 30 and does not reflect any hiring made by the DHS in the last quarter of the year.)

“According to the DHS, ICE received 220,000 applications in 2025, thanks in part to a generous incentive package with perks like a signing bonus of up to $50,000, disbursed over the course of a five-year commitment, and up to $60,000 in student loan repayment.

“ICE is still on that hiring spree, looking to hire deportation officers in at least 25 cities around the U.S., according to a job listing on the USA Jobs website that will remain active through the end of September. The starting salary for an ICE deportation officer in the Enforcement and Removal Operations division, or ERO, ranges from $51,632 up to $84,277.”

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More Americans have come to oppose Trump’s ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement force

Joe Lancaster reports on this and how support for abolishing ICE is surging (https://reason.com/2026/01/20/as-ice-cracks-down-support-for-abolishing-it-surges).

Lancaster writes, “Earlier this month, the death of Renee Good at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross brought overly aggressive federal law enforcement into public view. As a result, more Americans than ever now think we should get rid of it.”

He continues, “More Americans now support the abolishment of ICE, in a major change since July and in Donald Trump’s first presidency,” Forbes‘ Mike Stunson wrote last week, “as the fatal shooting of Renee Good by a federal officer has led to a wave of backlash against the agency.”

Stunson who “cited a January 2026 poll conducted by The Economist and YouGov, which found that 46 percent of respondents support abolishing ICE, with 43 percent opposed. The same poll found 50 percent felt Good’s shooting was “not justified,” while only 30 percent said it was justified.

“A separate poll by Civiqs found 43 percent of respondents support ending ICE, with 49 percent opposed. Notably, though, this represents a dramatic shift since only a few months ago. In September 2024, only 19 percent supported, and 66 percent opposed, abolishing the agency.

“It was also the highest number in favor of abolition, and the lowest number against, since Civiqs began asking the question in July 2018, when the #AbolishICE movement began in earnest. (At that time, respondents favored keeping the agency intact by a 2–to–1 margin.)

‘And an Associated Press/NORC poll shows 61 percent of Americans now oppose Trump’s handling of immigration; as recently as March 2025, respondents were evenly split.

“The reason for the shift is clear: Americans are suddenly confronted with the reality of what ICE is doing, and they don’t like what they see.”

What do they see?

“Trump has deployed 3,000 federal officers and agents to Minneapolis this month, the largest operation in DHS history,” Nick Miroff wrote last week in The Atlantic. “Many of the ICE officers and Border Patrol agents are outfitted in tactical gear and wear body armor and masks, and they’re using the technological tools that the department acquired to protect the country’s borders: surveillance drones, facial-recognition apps, phone-cracking software. Powered by billions of dollars in new funding, they are making immigration arrests and grabbing protesters who try to stop them.”

Stunson continues.

“The results are plain to see: ICE officers assaulting U.S. citizens, smashing windows and dragging them from their cars, going door-to-door without a warrant or even reasonable suspicion. In October, ProPublica reported ICE had arrested at least 170 Americans—in many cases using considerable force—including some who were detained for multiple days without being allowed to contact their families or an attorney.”

Stunson adds, “Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology found that ICE has scanned the driver’s license photos of one in three American adults and could access the driver’s license data of three in four American adults.”

An alternative

“Leaving immigration restrictions more to the states would bring us closer to the Constitution’s original meaning,” agrees George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin. “We may not be able to fully restore the original meaning of the Constitution on this score. But abolishing ICE and shifting more law enforcement resources to state and local governments would bring us closer to it. It would also simultaneously curtail ICE abuses and reduce crime.”

“The U.S. went nearly its entire existence without ICE; it could do so again. And the more that Americans become familiar with the agency and see what it does, the more they seem to agree.”

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Jack Smith’s Testimony on Trump’s Indictments

Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer report on Jack Smith’s defense of his Trump indictments during House Hearing (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/us/politics/jack-smith-trump-testimoney-congress.html).

“Jack Smith, the special prosecutor who twice indicted Donald J. Trump, defended his investigation in a tense and long-awaited appearance before a House committee on Thursday — flatly accusing Mr. Trump of causing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.”

Smith said, “No one should be above the law in this country, and the law required that he be held to account,” Mr. Smith said in his opening remarks. “So that is what I did.”

“The hearing posed significant risks to Mr. Smith, who has said he believes Mr. Trump and his appointees will seize on the smallest misstep to investigate, prosecute and humiliate him. House Republicans had made it clear that they would make a criminal referral to the Justice Department if his testimony revealed serious inconsistencies or misstatements.”

“‘Our investigation revealed that Donald Trump is the person who caused Jan. 6, that it was foreseeable to him and that he sought to exploit the violence,’ Mr. Smith said, sitting alone at the witness table with a water bottle, legal pad and white ballpoint pen.”

Jack Smith told the committee that he believed his investigations had gathered proof beyond a reasonable doubt that would have led to President Donald Trump’s convictions on charges of mishandling classified documents and seeking to unlawfully overturn his 2020 election loss, if he had not won last year’s presidential election.

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Concluding thoughts

I have written enough, though it is hardly all that could be written. The central point is that we are stuck with a president who looks at America and the World as something he can manipulate and, in the process, does great harm. And there are signs he is mentally unstable.

There is hope.

Democrats are doing well in recent state elections. People are demonstrating against his anti-immigrant, anti-democratic deployment of ICE forces. Trump’s poll ratings are down. Many countries are resisting his threats on tariffs and military interventions. Then, not the focus here, there are the yet to be released Epstein files.

The president abuses power

Bob Sheak, Oct 28, 2025

On Oct. 18, an unprecedented 7 million or more Americans joined in a reported
2,600 rallies across the country to express opposition to Trump’s self-serving
ambitions and abuse of power. The millions who rallied said loud and clearly that
they don’t want a King as president. Over his second presidency, Trump has often
acted something like a king, or as a president who is above the law. Worrisome, he
dominates the Republican Party, has support from 30% of so of the population in
MAGA, has numerous allies among the rich and powerful corporations, and can
often count on the Supreme Court.
In this post, I identify some of the evidence that supports Trump’s anti-democratic

thirst for power.

Behaves like a “king”
Chris Walker offers some evidence (https://truthout.org/articles/trump-says-hes-
not-a-king-a-majority-of-americans-believe-he-wants-to-be). He is a news writer
at Truthout, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin.
In his article, Walker cites statements by Taegan Goddard, who manages the
site Political Wire. Goddard says it only took a minute to come up with examples
of how Trump has acted like a king. Goddard wrote:
“He’s raised taxes without approval from Congress; He’s canceled programs that
were duly enacted into law; He’s directed prosecutors to charge his political
opponents despite little or no evidence; He’s deployed National Guard troops over
the objections of state governors.
“Each of these actions reflects the kind of unchecked, unilateral power that
America’s founders rebelled against,” Goddard opined. “In fact, the list reads like
an updated version of the Declaration of Independence’s grievances against King
Walker also points to new polling that shows that most Americans are worried
about the functioning of U.S. democratic norms, and that they do not want Trump
to act as a king. He cites a poll, “52 percent of Americans believe Trump wants to

be a king, with only 36 percent saying they don’t believe he wants to be a king. In
a separate question, 85 percent of respondents said they don’t think Trump should

be a king, either.”

Deployment of troops just to “Democratic” cities
He has found various dubious justifications for deploying National Guard troops in
only Democratic cities and threatening the constitutional rights of Americans.
George Cassidy Payne writes on how the White House is waging war at home
((https://commondreams.org/opinion/trump-wages-war-on-us). The article was
published on Sept. 26, 2025. Here’s some of what he writes.
“President Donald Trump has treated the US military less as an instrument of
national defense than as a personal tool for enforcing political will. National Guard
units have been deployed to Washington, DC, Los Angeles, and other cities under
circumstances that critics argue constitute intimidation rather than legitimate
security operations. Citizens and green card holders have reportedly been detained
without clear legal authority, raising urgent questions about the erosion of civil
liberties. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense has been rhetorically rebranded
as the Department of War, signaling a broader offensive posture not just abroad,
but potentially at home.”
Payne notes that the deployment of National Guard forces to US cities reflects
“the militarization of domestic governance.” Trump has framed these deployments
as necessary for “security,” yet the timing, targets, and accompanying
rhetoric—such as memes depicting him as a cavalry commander in Apocalypse
Now—signal political theater intended to intimidate and assert personal authority
over the citizenry.”
He is exercising anti-democratic orders and advancing “executive orders,
emergency declarations, or selective enforcement” and enabling the National
Guard and other government agents to engage in “illegal detention of residents,
militarized policing in domestic spaces, emergency declarations used to bypass
Congress, all examples of authoritarian rule.
“The consequences for democracy are tangible, Payne writes. “Norms are eroded
incrementally: The legitimacy of elections is challenged, opposition figures are
threatened, and civil liberties are subordinated to political calculation. Militarized

Democracy does not collapse in a single moment; it atrophies when citizens fail to
defend institutions designed to protect them.”
The central question for Payne is this: “Will Americans exercise the tools the
Constitution provides to resist authoritarian drift? The blueprint exists, but it
requires active defense. Democratic institutions are not self-sustaining; they
depend on the vigilance, courage, and collective action of citizens. Failure to act
risks normalizing domestic militarization and the gradual erosion of civil liberties.
In this sense, Trump’s presidency is both a warning and a test. It challenges us to
confront the vulnerabilities of our political system, to insist upon accountability,
and to recognize that democracy is not merely procedural, it is relational,
contingent on a society willing to defend it against those who would wield power

as an instrument of personal dominion.

Talks about a third term
Trump continues to toy with the unconstitutional idea of being a third-term
president, which would mean ignoring the 22nd Amendment. Kristen Welker and
Megan Lebowitz are among those reporting on this story
(https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-third-term-white-house-
methods-rcna198752). Their story was published in March 30, 2025. Here’s some
of what they write.
“President Donald Trump did not rule out the possibility of seeking a third term in
the White House, which is prohibited by the Constitution under the 22nd
Amendment, saying in an exclusive interview with NBC News that there were
methods for doing so and clarifying that he was ‘not joking.’”
“‘A lot of people want me to do it,’ Trump said in a Sunday-morning phone call
with NBC News, referring to his allies.”
“When asked whether he has been presented with plans to allow him to seek a third
term, Trump said, ‘There are methods which you could do it.’”
Welker and Megan continue.

“The White House has amplified Trump’s comments likening himself to royalty,
posting a picture of a fake magazine cover depicting the president with a crown
after the administration shot down congestion pricing in New York City.
“The White House’s post to X quoted Trump’s previous comments on Truth Social:

‘LONG LIVE THE KING!’”

Says the greatest threat is “the enemy within”
Trump has said that that the greatest threat to the United States is the “enemy
within,” by which he seems to refer to Democrats and anyone else who opposes
him or doesn’t like him.
He says he “hates” Democrats and would, at least, like to marginalize them
politically. He has a list of those he wants to punish by having his Justice
Department manipulate and distort the law. They are, in his words, “the enemy
within,” Michael Klare considers this anti-democraticTrump plan
(https://thenation.com/article/politics/trump-hegseth-military-war-diversity).
Klare is the Nation’s defense correspondent, is professor emeritus of peace and
world-security studies at Hampshire College and senior visiting fellow at the Arms
Control Association in Washington, DC. Most recently, he is the author of All Hell
Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change.
“The generals and admirals who traveled from their posts around the world to
Quantico, Virginia, last month to hear from President Trump and Secretary of War
(as he now fashions himself) Pete Hegseth have been training for over a dozen
years to fight and overcome China and or Russia in an all-out, high-end conflict.
“… they were told to put all that aside, and to dismantle the diversity measures
they had long embraced, while also mobilizing for the ‘war within.’
“Without actually coming out and saying it, Trump indicated that the primary focus
of US strategy would now shift from a focus on war with other great powers to
combatting narco-cartels in Latin America and leftist ‘insurrectionists’ in US
cities.” And without evidence, he got specific.
“Many US cities are safe, he claimed, ‘but it seems that the ones that are run by the
radical-left Democrats—[look] what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New

York, Los Angeles—they’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them
out one by one.” Then, facing the assembled officers, he added, “This is going to
be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too. It’s a war
from within.”
“Trump then went on to describe major Democratic-governed US cities like those

four and Portland, Oregon, as ‘war zones,’ requiring military intervention.

Arbitrarily orders the demolition of the East Wing
He has arbitrarily ordered that the East Wing of the White House be demolished.
David E. Sanger has reported at length about this. Sanger covers the Trump
administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times
journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy
and national security challenges.
In this article, Sanger emphasizes two “lessons” that capture what Trump has done.
“First is the permanence of the act — once torn down, it is hard to imagine that the
East Wing will ever be re-created. For President Trump, of course, that was the
point. He learned that lesson in his New York real estate days, when he was known
to bring out the wrecking balls to turn a vision into a fait accompli. Once his $300
million ballroom rises in its place, he may be betting that how it got there will be
all but forgotten.
“But perhaps more important, and more telling, is how Mr. Trump went about it:
the initial claim that his new ballroom would not be ‘touching’ the White House,
and the absence of notice when that changed. Then, the elaborate descriptions by
White House officials of the legal loopholes that made it perfectly fine to destroy a
wing of the people’s house without consultation about whether Mr. Trump’s

90,000-square-foot ballroom was worth the historical or architectural trade-offs.”

Concluding thoughts
There are plenty of reasons to support the millions of Americans who rallied
against Trump on “No King” day. In this post, I have considered just a few of the

prominent reasons. It is not hopeless. Recent polls indicate that a majority of
Americans are critical of Trump and what he is doing as president. And millions of
Americans are suffering financially, in part because of the effects of the president’s
tariffs and the Republican Party’s efforts to cut government programs, with the
firing of tens of thousands of federal workers. Writing in The Atlantic Magazine,
David A. Graham offers some hope
(https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/12/2026-midterms-trump-
threat.684615).
“The most important defense against losing our democracy is the same thing that
makes it a democracy in the first place: the people. An engaged electorate,
demanding clean elections and turning out in force, has been the strongest and
most consistent bulwark against Trump. “It is going to require that every single
American do everything in their power to ensure that elections happen, to ensure
that they are free and fair, and to push back on this extremism,” Skye Perryman,
the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, told me.”

Trump’s dubious claim for compensation

Bob Sheak, Oct 23, 2025

The Washington Post quoted Trump on Tuesday, Oct. 21, that “the federal government owes him ‘a lot of money’ for prior Justice Department investigations into his actions and insisted he would have the ultimate say on any payout because any decision will ‘have to go across my desk’” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/21025/10/21/trump-fbi-justice-department-47b2c9ac-aed0-11f0-ab72-a5fffa9bf3eb_story.html). The implication is that Trump thinks he can use the power of his office and his control over the Justice Department to ensure that he will be given this money. And it is a substantial amount of money.

The Post story further explains the issue in question.

“Trump’s comments to reporters at the White House came in response to questions about a New York Times story that said he had filed administrative claims before being reelected seeking roughly $230 million in damages related to the FBI’s 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago property for classified documents….”

The flaw in Trump’s views of the case is that he did break federal law when, after the end of his first presidency, he took boxes of public documents to his Florida private estate. At the time, there were news stories about the case. One of the news reports was written by CNN journalists Kaitlan Collins, Kevin Liptak, Katelyn Polantz, Sara Murray, Evan Perez, Gabby Orr and Dan Berman, CNN, Aug 9, 2022 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/10/21/trumlp-fbi-justice-department/4 7b2c9ac-aed0-11f0-ab72-a5fffa9bf3eb_story.html). Here are excerpts.

“The FBI executed a search warrant Monday at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of an investigation into the handling of presidential documents, including classified documents, that may have been brought there, three people familiar with the situation told CNN.”

”The search began early Monday morning and law enforcement personnel appeared to be focused on the area of the club where Trump’s offices and personal quarters are, according to a person familiar with the matter.

“The FBI’s search included examining where documents were kept, according to another person familiar with the investigation, and boxes of items were taken. Following the National Archives’ recovering of White House records from Mar-a-Lap..”

It’s worth noting, as Collins and her colleagues point out,

“Christina Bobb, Trump’s attorney, said the FBI seized documents. ‘President Trump and his legal team have been cooperative with FBI and DOJ officials every step of the way. The FBI did conduct an unannounced raid and seized paper,’ Bobb said.”

“The National Archives, charged with collecting and sorting presidential material, has previously said at least 15 boxes of White House records were recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort – including some that were classified.”

The journalists also note, “It is a federal crime to remove classified documents wrongly.”

———-

Ali Velshi’s book, The Trump Indictments: The 91 Criminal Counts Against the Former President of the United States (publ. 2023), includes one having to do with the documents (pp. 54-57). Here is some of what Velshi reports.

“1. Defendant Donald J. Trump was the forty-fifth President of the United States of America. He held office from January 20, 2017, until January 20, 2021. As President, Trump had lawful access to the most sensitive classified documents and national defense information gathered and owned by the United States government, including information from the agencies that comprise the United States Intelligence Community and the United States Department of Defense.

“2. Over the course of his presidency, Trump gathered newspapers, press clippings, letters, notes, cards, photographs, official documents, and other materials in cardboard boxes that he keeps in the White House. Among the materials Trump stored in his boxes were hundreds of classified documents.

“3. The classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United Cto a foreign attack. The authorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the Untied States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.”

Velshi makes other points, including this one: “On August 8, pursuant to a court-authorized search warrant, the FBI recovered from Trump office and storage rooms at the Mar-a-Lago Club 102 more documents with classification markings.”

———-

Concluding thoughts

Given the official record of Trump’s handling of classified documents, it appears that his demands for $230 million in compensation border on the absurd. However, the question remains whether in the present context, in which he and his party have something like total control over the federal government, he may get away with it.

Republicans put the interests of the rich over the majority. They disregard the healthcare system in crsis

Bob Sheak

Reasons for and effects of the government shutdown

The country is in shutdown because the Democratic Party wants to ensure that the Affordable Care tax credits are extended, while Trump and the Republicans refuse to discuss the issue until the government is opened. However, whenever it comes to a vote, the Republicans are expected to reject the Democratic proposal.

Selena Simmons-Duffin writes for NPR that the tax credits make “ACA [Affordable Care Act] health care premiums affordable for many Americans” (https://npr.org/1025/10/12/nx-s1-5570849/shutdown-aca-health-care-tax-credits}.

She explains. “The tax credits that make ACA health care premiums affordable for many Americans don’t expire until December, as Republican lawmakers note. But Democratic lawmakers want to see them extended before enrollment begins Nov. 1, and they have made that a condition of voting to reopen the government.” The Democrats fear that Trump and the Republicans will not extend the tax credits, which otherwise continue into 2026.

“It’s not just a battle over political messaging,” Simmons-Duffin writes. “These are real health insurance marketplaces where real people — 24 million of them — buy coverage. The amount the federal government picks up for their monthly premiums makes a big difference.” She identifies “5 things to know about the healthcare fight behind the shutdown.” (1) She refers to polls indicating that a majority of respondents favor extending the tax credits. (2) The issue is urgent since open enrollment starts Nov. 1. (3) Premiums are set to shoot up next year.

(4) “When researchers at KFF analyzed 2026 insurance filings, they found that premiums will double for many consumers next year. ‘On average, we’re expecting premium payments by enrollees to increase by 114% if these enhanced tax credits expire,’ says Cynthia Cox, director of the Program on the ACA at KFF.

Sky-high premiums might drive people to risk it and go uninsured, she says. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 4 million people will become uninsured in the next few years if the enhanced tax credits expire.”

(5) “The subsidies are expensive for the government. The subsidies that kept costs down for consumers cost the federal government a lot of money. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it would cost the government $350 billion over the next decade if the enhanced subsidies were extended permanently.”

Simmons-Duffin adds: “Conservative groups that have always opposed the Affordable Care Act are against the enhanced subsidies. A coalition of groups recently argued in a letter to the president that the enhanced tax credits were meant to be temporary during the COVID-19 pandemic and that extending them will exacerbate rising health care costs.” They dismiss the harm that will cause so many people to be priced out of the healthcare market.

One of the principal arguments invoked by the Republicans is that the national debt of some 37 trillion dollars makes it irrational to add more to that debt. The truth is that Republican President and Congress are principal actors in raising this debt. Their tax cuts for the rich are so much greater than the tax-credit issue now at stake makes their argument ridiculous. Consider the following evidence reported on April 10, 2025 (https://budget.senate.gov/ranking-members-newsroom/press/news-cbo-analysis-shows-republican-tax-giveaways-add-52-trillion-to-national-debt-over-30-years).

“At the request of U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, the independent, nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a new projection showing that the tax giveaways in the Senate Republicans’ budget proposal will add $52 trillion to the national debt over the next 30 years. The previous projection for the cost of extending the Trump tax law and the Republican leadership’s attempt to use a budget gimmick, known as “current policy baseline,” was $37 trillion over the 2024-2054 period.

This new projection follows recently released data from the Joint Committee on Taxation showing a new estimate that the Republican plan to extend the 2017 Trump tax law will cost $5.5 trillion including interest over the next decade. The budget resolution Senate Republicans passed last week allocates an additional $1.5 trillion for tax giveaways. This brings the total potential 10-year cost of the Republican tax plan, which will overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy and corporations, to more than $7 trillion.

“It has taken over 249 years, since the Founders signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, for the U.S. to accumulate nearly $37 trillion in debt – and today the Republicans want to use a budget gimmick to add an astronomical $52 trillion to our debt with one bill with one intention: to fund massive tax giveaways for billionaires,” said Senator Jeff Merkley, Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee. “For 30 years, Republicans have been changing the rules to give tax cuts to the wealthy – and families have been stuck paying the bill. Republicans who claim to care about fiscal responsibility should be outraged and doing everything they can to stop it. This is the Great Betrayal of working families across the country.”

———-

The current Republican agenda is far-reaching

The current political fight reflects a broader goal of the Trump administration, namely, to diminish the size and power of the federal government generally and to create a presidency with extraordinary power, that of a “king.” Coral Davenport and her colleagues provide a detailed and insightful analysis of this anti-democratic vision (https://nytimes.com/2025/09/29/us/politics/russel-vought-trump-budget.html). She highlights the role of Russel Vought, the White House budget director, in this project. Vought is a central figure in Trump’s administration when it comes to budget issues. Here is just a little of what Davenport writes.

“Now Mr. Vought, 49, is leveraging the shutdown of the federal government to further advance his goals of slashing agencies and purging employees. In a series of social media posts on Thursday, Mr. Vought said the administration had delayed or halted about $8 billion in what he called “Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda,” a move that affects projects in 16 states, most of which are led by Democrats. He also paused about $18 billion in approved infrastructure funding for two major transportation projects primarily in New York City, whose state delegation includes Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader.

Just before the shutdown, Mr. Vought’s office had told agencies to prepare for mass firings unless Congress could strike a deal to keep the government open.”

———-

US Healthcare System Is in Crisis

James K. Elsey, MD, FACS analyzes how the US health care system as a whole is in crisis (https://facs.org-articles/bulletin/2025/february-2025-volume-110-issue-2/us-healthcare-system-is-in-crisis). The article was published on Feb. 5 of this year. Dr. James Elsey is a professor of surgery at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, and Past Vice-Chair of the ACS [Affordable Care Act] Board of Regents.

Bear in mind, Trump, Vought, and the Republicans want to cut overall government healthcare spending, along with other government programs they don’t like.

Here is some of what Elsey writes.

“During my 44 years of active surgical practice, I have witnessed numerous, significant, and onerous progressive changes that threaten the quality, safety, accessibility, and affordability of medical care in this country. Sadly, it has evolved into a highly corporatized system controlled by a decreasing number of increasingly powerful conglomerates where profit is often the main metric of performance and success. The stark realities of this dark devolution create daily difficulties for patients trapped in this harsh and inequitable system.”

His patients are commonly more concerned about the costs of a procedure. They ask: “How can I pay for this? Will I lose my house or my job? How fast can I get back to work?,” followed, all too frequently, by comments like: “There is no way I can afford this. I don’t have access to that level of deductible. This will bankrupt me.” And, periodically, they would come to this decision: “I just can’t proceed, doctor. This will put my family in the street. I’ll just tough it out and take my chances.”

Elsey continues. “There is something deeply and fundamentally wrong with this increasingly common situation where the accessibility of healthcare, which I believe should be a basic human right, is determined by one’s financial station in life. For this to be occurring in the most affluent country in the world is not just wrong, but in my opinion, abjectly amoral.”

“This system leaves too many people out resulting in 26 million uninsured and 43 million underinsured.³In fact, recent World Health Organization metrics suggest that the US does an incredibly poor job with healthcare delivery, with the US ranked 37th overall to comparable Western country metrics and last among the 11 highest-income countries.⁴ These rankings are not surprising when you consider the fact that the US healthcare delivery system consumes 17% of our current gross domestic product and is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy accounting for 66.5% of total US individual monetary defaults.^5,6

Placing Profits over Patient Care

“The US healthcare system handicaps business competitiveness with a crippling 160% increase in employer healthcare costs in the last 20 years, which averages about $14,000 per employee.” Elsey writes.⁷ “This system also causes downward pressure on employee wages resulting in a 8.9% inflation adjusted decrease in employee household income.⁸ In addition, it requires many Americans and their families to line up in fields for humanitarian healthcare events mirroring the activities of many third-world countries as well as requiring increasing numbers of citizens to use the ER as their default medical care.

“This default is fragmented, costly, inefficient, and a generally poor method of providing care with a total lack of continuity. This healthcare model also drives significant racial disparities in the availability and quality of care, and in the outcomes for these patient populations.

“Currently the US, compared to similar Western countries [all of which have some form of universal healthcare] has the lowest life expectancy at birth, highest reported maternal and infant mortality, highest hospitalization rate from preventable causes, highest death rate for avoidable and treatable conditions, highest suicide rate, and highest chronic disease burden rate in the world.⁹

“Our system lacks an emphasis on primary and preventive care. We strain under a dysfunctional payment system. It is plagued by a costly and onerous liability industry, and it has fallen prey to the detrimental policies of the medical industrial complex and corporatized care.”

———-

Concluding Thoughts

The Trump-Republican justification for not negotiating on an end to the shutdown reflects a dubious view of the causes. Rather than suggesting that their phony concern with the nation’s fiscal issues is what drives them, the evidence indicates they want what right-wing politicians have always wanted, less government spending on healthcare and other programs for Americans, expansive deregulation, and any other policy to improve profits for big corporations and the rich.

A hateful president

Bob Sheak, Oct. 3, 2025

This article provides five examples that illustrate this hatefulness.

#1 – The Central Park Five

Here are extracts from Wikipedia’s account (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_jogger_case)/

The Central Park jogger case (sometimes termed the Central Park Five case) was a criminal case concerning the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a woman who was running in Central Park in Manhattan, New York, on April 19, 1989.^[1][2] Crime in New York City was peaking in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the crack epidemic surged.^[3][4] On the night Meili was attacked, dozens of teenagers had entered the park, and there were reports of muggings and physical assaults.^[2]

Six teenagers were indicted in relation to the Meili assault. Charges against one, Steven Lopez, were dropped after Lopez pleaded guilty to a different assault. The remaining five—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise (known as the Central Park Five, later the Exonerated Five)—were convicted of the charged offenses and served sentences ranging from seven to thirteen years.^[5]

More than a decade after the attack, while incarcerated for attacking five other women in 1989, serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed to the Meili assault and said he was the only actor; DNA evidence confirmed his involvement.^[6] The convictions against McCray, Richardson, Salaam, Santana, and Wise were vacated in 2002; Lopez’s convictions were vacated in July 2022.”

Donald Trump took out ads in major newspapers for $85,000, urging that the boys suffer the death penalty. Even after they were exonerated, Trump did not publicly admit his mistake.

Tyler Page reports on the case (http://nytimes.com/2025/09/22/us/politics/trump-kirk-memorial-hate.html).

“After five teenagers were accused of assaulting and raping a young female jogger in New York City in 1989, Mr. Trump called for New York State to bring back the death penalty and told reporters, ‘I want society to hate them,’ according to a book on the president by Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter. (The men were later exonerated.)”

#2 – Trump vows retribution against his opponents (e.g. Democrats and critics).

During the campaign for a second presidential term, Trump told his supporters that HE is their retribution, as reported on July 25, 2025, by Jacob Knutson (https://democracydocket.com/analysis/trump-administration-weaponization-government-targeting-political-opponents).

“At a political conference in Maryland two years ago, Trump told hundreds of his supporters that he would be a tool of vengeance should they return him to the White House.

“‘I am your retribution,’ Trump said before repeating it again for emphasis.

Trump’s now returned to the White House, and he is fulfilling his promise.

From the Department of Justices to the most peripheral federal agencies, Trump and his political appointees are weaponizing the bureaucracy to go after hundreds of the president’s political opponents and public officials who attempt to hold him accountable.

“To carry out this effort, Trump has obliterated the longstanding firewall protecting the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other agencies from being used for political ends.

“The use by Trump of the massive resources of federal law enforcement against his political opponents threatens fair elections and aims to intimidate public officials out of using their positions to hold Trump accountable. As such, it represents perhaps his most chilling move yet to undermine democracy.”

#3 – Trump’s remarks at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service

Tyler Pager reports on some of what Trump said at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service (http://nytimes.com/2025/09/22/us/politics/trump-kirk-memorial-hate.html. Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.

“As tens of thousands of people mourned the conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Sunday, President Trump made a seemingly unscripted remark that summed up the retribution campaign that has come to define his second term.”

“‘I hate my opponent,’ Mr. Trump told the crowd at the memorial in Arizona, ‘and I don’t want the best for them.’”

“He spoke just minutes after Mr. Kirk’s widow, Erika, said she forgave her husband’s killer. Here is what she said.

“I forgive him because it was what Christ did, and it is what Charlie would do,” she said. “The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the Gospel is love and always love.”

Pager continues. “‘At a time where the nation desperately needs to be bringing down the temperature, you’re saying he authentically doesn’t want to bring it down, or you’re saying that he authentically hates half of America,’ said Sarah Matthews, who was Mr. Trump’s deputy press secretary in the first term until breaking with him over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. ‘It just goes to show that’s what his mantra has always been. It’s just all about division and feeling like a victim and wanting to hate his opponents and get retribution.’”

#4 – Trump posts tawdry videos of Democratic Leaders Schumer and Jeffries after he met with them and ahead of the government shutdown

Kit Maher reports on this for CNN (https://cnn.com/2025/09/29/politics/trump-ai-generated-video-schumer-jeffries-shutdown). Here is some of what Maher writes.

“As the US government barrels toward a shutdown, President Donald Trump shared a racist video on social media, which appears to be AI-generated, depicting House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a sombrero and a mustache and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speaking in a fake voice.

“Jeffries and Schumer met with Trump just hours before at the White House to discuss the looming shutdown.

“In the video, Schumer is depicted as arguing for undocumented immigrants to get ‘free healthcare’ because minority voters hate Democrats and they could use the votes in the next election.

“As mariachi music plays in the background of the video, the fake Schumer voice says, ‘There’s no way to sugar coat it: Nobody likes Democrats anymore.’

“The fake voice goes on to echo false GOP claims about Democratic policies and slam liberal leaders as ‘woke.’”

“The video was posted on Trump’s X account as well his official Truth Social account.”

Responses

“Shortly after Trump posted the video, Jeffries wrote on X, ‘Bigotry will get you nowhere. Cancel the Cuts. Lower the Cost. Save Healthcare. We are NOT backing down.’”

“Schumer followed moments later, commenting on X, ‘If you think your shutdown is a joke, it just proves what we all know: You can’t negotiate. You can only throw tantrums.’”

“‘More than 20 million Americans are on the brink of experiencing dramatically increased premiums, co-pays and deductibles because of the Republican refusal to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits which benefit working class Americans,’ Jeffries said. ‘Working-class Americans, their health care, that’s what we’re fighting to preserve, to defend and to strengthen.’”

#5 – Trump is particularly focused on punishing Democratic cities and states

White House Uses Shutdown to Maximize Pain and Punish Political Foes

By Tony Romm, New York Times, Oct 1, 2025

(https://nytimes.com/2025/10/01/us/politics/white-house-shutdown-punishment.html). Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.

Here are excerpts from the article.

“The Trump administration took steps on Wednesday to maximize the pain of the government shutdown, halting billions of dollars in funds for Democratic-led states while readying a plan to lay off potentially droves of civil servants imminently.

“The moves by the White House appeared both unprecedented and punitive, underscoring the risks of a fiscal stalemate that had no end in sight. It also evinced how President Trump might try to leverage the government-wide closure to achieve his agenda, slash the budget and exact revenge on his political enemies.

“In a series of social media posts, Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, said the administration had paused or moved to cancel the delivery of about $26 billion in previously approved funds across a range of programs, describing the money as wasteful or in need of further review.

Here’s one of Romm’s examples. “The timing seemed to be no mere coincidence, nor were Mr. Vought’s choices of location. He said the administration was terminating one tranche of funds, totaling about $8 billion, because it was ‘Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda,’ a move that affected projects in 16 states, most of which are led by Democrats.”

Romm continues. “In a second instance, the Trump administration paused about $18 billion in approved infrastructure funding for two major transportation projects primarily in New York City, whose state delegation includes Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader. The two men have been frequent targets of Mr. Trump’s personal attacks, and the Transportation Department said the money would be held pending further review.

“Mr. Vought’s budget maneuvers marked an attempt to formalize Mr. Trump’s threat from a day earlier, when he described a shutdown as a ‘good’ opportunity to cut federal agencies, programs and benefits he disfavors in ways that would harm Democrats. He said at the time that it could include another round of mass layoffs targeting ‘a lot’ of government workers.”

Thus, “many federal employees are now furloughed, while others, including military service members and airport baggage screeners, are forced to report for work without pay. While those employees will eventually get back pay, there is no clear indication of when that might happen. Scores of critical government services are also halted or reduced significantly.”

Hours after Mr. Vought pledged to revoke some climate-related funding, the Energy Department offered scant details about its cuts. The agency said it had terminated 321 awards for more than 223 projects, claiming the investments did not ‘advance the nation’s energy needs’ and were not economically viable.’”

“Overall, the government is already expected to employ 300,000 fewer workers by December than it did in January. The substantial decline reflects a series of firings, layoffs and induced resignations that date back to the start of the president’s term, and the work of the cost-cutting campaign orchestrated by the Department of Government Efficiency.”

Concluding thoughts

In a March article for The Atlantic, Peter Wehner writes that “Trump’s Appetite for Revenge Is Insatiable” and he is doing what he can to satisfy this morally twisted urge (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/us/politics/white-house-shutdown-punishment.html). Wehner reminds us that “No one can say they didn’t know.” Indeed, “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.”

Wehner notes, “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.’”

“The threat this poses to American democracy is obvious,” Wehner writes. He continues. “A president and an administration with a Mafia mentality can create a Mafia state. 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.”

An alternative

Later in the article, Wehner refers to a book by Václav Havel, “written as president of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic,—a playwright, human-rights activist, and dissident whose words shook the foundations of the Soviet empire—meditated on politics, morality, and civility. He emphasized, again and again, ‘the moral origins of all genuine politics.’

“Some people considered him naive, a hopeless idealist, but he pushed back. ‘Evil will remain with us,’ Havel wrote, ‘no one will ever eliminate human suffering, the political arena will always attract irresponsible and ambitious adventurers and charlatans. And man will not stop destroying the world. In this regard, I have no illusions.”

“Havel went on: “Neither I nor anyone else will ever win this war once and for all. At the very most, we can win a battle or two—and not even that is certain. Yet I still think it makes sense to wage this war persistently. It has been waged for centuries, and it will continue to be waged—we hope—for centuries to come. This must be done on principle, because it is the right thing to do.”

Havel later wrote:

“So anyone who claims that I am a dreamer who expects to transform hell into heaven is wrong. I have few illusions. But I feel a responsibility to work towards the things I consider good and right. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to change certain things for the better, or not at all. Both outcomes are possible….

Our republic and its ideals are supremely good causes. We should strive to protect them, which begins by speaking out for them, and by trying to do, in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, what Havel did during his ennobling and consequential life: to once again give depth and dimension to notions such as love, friendship, compassion, humility, and forgiveness. To refuse to live within the lie. And to awaken the goodwill that is slumbering within our society.”

Trump wants all the power and riches he can get out of the presidency

Bob Sheak, August 22, 2025

The record shows that Trump will do anything to get and retain presidential power, regardless of their effects.

2020 Election

When he lost the 2020 election to Biden, he encouraged his supporters to intervene in the congressional certification process and to stop it, so that electors favorable to him would count the votes.

Thousands of his followers came to the Capitol on January 6, 2020, to carry out his wishes. Then, amid the rioting, he waited over three hours before telling his thousands of rampaging followers – he called them patriots – to stop their rioting and go home. Some 1,500 of them were eventually imprisoned.

2024 Election

When the electoral votes were counted after the 2024 presidential election, Trump ended up with a very narrow, and controversial, victory over the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris.

The authors of the book titled 2024 argue that Harris lost primarily because then-president Biden took too much time before deciding to give up his presidential run, leaving her with too little time to put together an effective campaign. (Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf, 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America).

Trump ascendant

On Trump’s first day in the White House (January 20, 2025), he ordered outrageously that the 1,500+ rioters who were serving time in a federal prison for the Jan. 6 riots to be released. This is an indication of how he sees little value in the law. Indeed, Thom Hartmann argues that “Trump wants to turn America into a police state” with Trump as all-powerful leader who now even wants to use military forces to takeover Democratic cities, which he describes without evidence as crime-ridden places (https://commondreams.org/opinion/trump-creating-police-state). Hartmann’s article was published on August 10, 2025. Here’s some of what he considers.

Trump has initially focused on Washington D.C., “despite the fact that crime in Washington DC is at a 30-year low and the city already has the largest police force, per capita, of any municipality in America.”

Hartmann continues. “A leaked memo from inside the Department of Homeland Security reveals what many of us feared but hoped we were wrong about: that the military is no longer a last resort in American governance. It’s now the first tool. A central player. A political weapon, just like in Russia.” The memo

“was written, circulated, and discussed at the highest levels of DHS and the Department of Defense and it spells out, in clinical, terrifying language, a plan to normalize and expand the use of the United States military within our own country, on our own soil, against our own people.”

“The memo, obtained by The New Republic, outlines a coordinated strategy to embed military forces into immigration enforcement not just at the border but across American cities. It calls for replicating the recent Los Angeles deployment ‘for years to come.’ It uses phrases like ‘homeland defense’ and paints immigration threats as akin to Al Qaeda or ISIS. It pushes for ‘new ideas’ on how DHS and DoD can work together on ‘national security’ threats inside the United States.”

For example, Trump ordered “4,000 National Guard troops — federalized, not state-controlled — into Los Angeles to back up ICE raids. He followed that with 700 active-duty Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines.”

The memo includes the following.

— Urges DHS to persuade top military brass to view immigration enforcement as a ‘homeland defense mission.’

— Seeks to embed armed, kill-trained military personnel inside ICE and CBP to ‘increase information sharing’ and support ‘nationwide operational planning.’

— Frames transnational gangs and cartels as equivalent to Al Qaeda, a dangerous, dishonest leap that pretends to justify extreme, deadly force.

— And it admits, in its own words, that due to the ‘sensitive nature’ of the meeting it documents, minimal written policy or background’ should be preserved.

Translation: They know what they’re doing is legally and morally criminal. So they’re minimizing the paper trail.”

Hartmann adds: “Joseph Nunn at the Brennan Center warned that this could create a permanent ‘domestic Forever War,’ a campaign of endless militarization justified by fear and manufactured crises. Soldiers — including armed, masked ICE agents answerable only to the president — terrifying civilians on their own streets and in their own homes: a military occupation of The United States of America.

“This isn’t just Trumpism. This is textbook authoritarianism in the mold of Putin’s Russia and Orbán’s Hungary. It embodies the early stages of all the horror stories of 1930s Europe.”

“That’s not just a skirmish over jurisdiction. That’s an open attack on the sovereignty of states, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution. That’s a president saying, ‘Your Guard is my army now.’”

Hartmann warns us, “unless we act — loudly, urgently, relentlessly — it will become a permanent force in American civic life. Not a protector of freedom, but a tool of control, just like in Orbán’s Hungary or Putin’s Russia.”

————-

Deployment of Troops into Washington D.C.

Nick Turse reports for the Intercept on August 12, 2025 on Trump’s use of Troops for policing in Washington D.C. and in other Democratic cities (https://theintercept.com/article/politics/trump-dc-military-deployment-civil-war). He notes that “Trump’s Use of Troops for Policing Hasn’t Been Seen Since America Was Ruled by a King.” Here’s some of what he writes.

“The United States crept closer to becoming a full-blown police state yesterday when President Donald Trump made good on a promise to further militarize the nation’s capital. Trump threatened to employ similar tactics in cities across the country as the Pentagon evaluates plans for a ‘Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force’ composed of hundreds of National Guard troops poised to surge into American cities.”

Trump’s made-up justification

Turse continues. “‘Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals,’ Trump said at a White House news conference on Monday (Aug 11), painting the city [falsely] as a hellscape filled with ‘drugged out maniacs’ and ‘caravans of mass youth’ who ‘rampage through city streets’ day and night. ‘I’m deploying the National Guard to help reestablish law, order and public safety in Washington, D.C.,’ he declared.”

Contrary to Trump, “Justice Department figures show violent crime in the nation’s capital is at a 30-year low.”

“‘If we look at both practically the way the Trump administration is using the military around the country and also formally, in what they are asserting about their authority — the ability to use the military anywhere, anytime, for any purpose — it’s absolutely unprecedented,’ said Joseph Nunn, an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice’s liberty and national security program who focuses on the domestic role of the U.S. military.”

“Approximately 800 National Guard soldiers were activated as part of the ‘D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force,’ with about 100 to 200 of them supporting law enforcement at any given time, according to a statement provided to The Intercept by the Army.”

“D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said she did not believe it was legal ‘to use the American military against American citizens on American soil’ at a press conference on Monday evening.”

Turse continues. “The National Guard deployment is one facet of Trump’s efforts to put the District of Columbia under federal authority; he also declared that he is temporarily taking control of the city’s police department. Hundreds of officers and agents from more than a dozen federal agencies — including the FBI; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Drug Enforcement Administration; Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and the U.S. Marshals Service — have also fanned out across Washington in recent days.”

Trump “said Attorney General Pam Bondi would oversee the federal takeover of the capital’s Metropolitan Police Department and, with Hegseth at his side, added that he was prepared to send the military into Washington ‘if needed.’”

“In a Monday memorandum, Trump directed Hegseth to coordinate with governors of states and “authorize the orders of any additional members of the National Guard to active service, as he deems necessary and appropriate, to augment this mission.”

What will the courts decide?

Turse reports, “This is the second time this summer that Trump has deployed troops to a Democratically governed city. A federal trial began on Monday in San Francisco to decide whether Trump violated the law by deploying National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June without the approval of California Gov.r Gavin Newsom.

For now, it’s government policy

“In his first seven months in office,” Turse writes, “Trump has overseen the deployment of around 20,000 federal troops on American soil, including personnel from the National Guard, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marines, according to the Pentagon. But the true number of troops deployed may be markedly higher. U.S. Northern Command has no running tally of how many troops have been deployed around the country.

“These federal forces have been operating under Title 10 authority, or federal control, in at least five states — Arizona, California, Florida, New Mexico, and Texas — in service of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda.

“Around 5,500 troops — Marines and California National Guard members — have also been deployed to Los Angeles since early June. The forces were sent to LA over the objections of local officials and Newsom.”

“‘Though the rhetoric is sometimes different, from Los Angeles streets to ICE detention centers to our nation’s capital, President Trump is repeatedly acting to turn the National Guard into the first-choice implementers of his authoritarian agenda,’ Sara Haghdoosti, the executive director of Win Without War, told The Intercept. ‘Whether it is assaulting immigrant communities or seizing control of law enforcement in DC, his goal for these deployments is the same: using state violence to strip power, safety, and dignity from people. Members of the National Guard should be under no illusions about what they’re being sent to do in Washington.’”

“On Monday, Trump took aim at numerous cities led by Democratic mayors in states with Democratic governors, threating authoritarian power grabs similar to his effort in Washington. ‘If we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster,’ Trump said. ‘You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don’t even mention that anymore. They’re so far gone,” said Trump. “We’re not going to let it happen. We’re not going to lose our cities over this. And this will go further.’”

————-

Trump’s Worst Crimes, Dangers, and Destructions Are Yet to Come

Ralph Nader offers an overview of Trump’s effects of his anti-democratic plans and actions in an article for Common Dreams, Aug 9,2025 (https://commondreams.org/opinion/trump-attacks-on-democracy-institutions).

“The worst crimes of Donald Trump and dangers to America from the unstable, monomaniacal, lying outlaw in the White House have yet to come. He is not satisfied with tearing apart our country’s social safety net for tens of millions of Americans (e.g., Medicaid and food program cuts); wrecking our scientific/medical systems, including warning people about pandemics. He is, by wrecking FEMA et al, failing to address the impact of mega-storms, wildfires, and droughts; and allowing cybersecurity threats to increase while giving harm-producing big corporations immunities from the law, more subsidies, and more tax escapes. Recall how he always adds to his attacks on powerless people that ‘This is just the beginning.’”

“He just took the next step in his march to madness and mayhem by announcing more concentration camps holding immigrants, arrested without due process, for deportation to foreign countries that want U.S. taxpayer cash for each deportee.”

Immigrants play a crucial role in the U.S. economy

Recent immigrants are crucial to millions of small and large businesses. Consider who harvests our crops, cares for our children and the elderly, cleans up after us, and works the food processing plants and construction sites. Already, businesses are reducing or closing their enterprises – a political peril for Dangerous Donald.

“If all immigrants to the U.S. from the last ten years, documented and undocumented, went on strike, our country would almost shut down. Yet Trump, who hired 500 undocumented workers for just one of his construction sites in New York, and had similar laborers at his New Jersey golf course, promises deportations of millions more.

“Always bear in mind the self-defined characteristics of corporatist Trump’s feverish, hateful, outlaw mind: (1) He has declared he ‘can do whatever he wants as President,’ proving his serial violations of law and illegal dictates every day; (2) He always doubles down when indicted, convicted, caught, or exposed, falsely accusing his accusers of the exact transgressions they are reliably charging him with; (3) He brags about lashing out at criticism with foul defamatory invectives; (4) He never admits his disastrous mistake; (5) He boasts that he knows more than leading experts in a dozen major areas of knowledge (see, “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All”); and (6) He asserts that every action, policy, or program he launches is a spectacular success – the facts to the contrary are dismissed. He is gravely delusional, replaces realities with fantasies, breaks promises that are made to defer any reckoning or accountability, and, like an imaginary King, finds no problem with saying ‘I rule America and the world.’”

————

Concluding thoughts

The evidence shows that Trump is a destructive and delusional force in the U.S. and worldwide, that is, when he can get away with such behavior. As one recent example, Steve Benen reports that Trump, who avoided the draft during the Vietnam War, has declared himself a “war hero” (https://msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/problems-trump-declaring-war-hero-rcna226096).

Currently, his poll numbers are low among Independents and Democrats, reflecting his counterproductive tariff policies, his past relations with Jeffrey Epstein and the criminal acts on very young girls (see

https://theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/07/inside-white-house-trump-epstein-strategy/683604), his support of cutting the staff of federal agencies and services, his reckless and often lawless anti-immigrant policy, and the unequal impacts of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, with its huge tax benefits for the rich.

It is good that the polls are against Trump but there is also a need for more people to combine their criticisms with political engagement.

Trump’s costly and disruptive policies

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.”

Trump-Musk attacks on democracy

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.

It’s a dangerous time, epitomized by the President

Bob Sheak, Jan 25, 2025

Trump intended his second inaugural address to be uplifting and unifying, though it is riddled with questionable claims, downright lies, and is hardly unifying. (See a transcript of the address at: https://nytimes.com/2025/01/20/us/politics/trump-inaugural-speech.html.)

As of Jan. 20, his first day in office, he began implementing many of the policies to which he referred in the address as well as in speeches during the presidential campaign, and, in some cases, over many years. There are some issues that he avoided discussing; for example, whether he will issue a federal ban on abortions. By the end of his first days in office, he issued hundreds of “executive actions,” many of which will be contested in courts (https://apnews.com/article/what-has-trump-done-trump-executive-orders-f061fbe7f08c08d81509a6af20ef8fc0). Here are some examples of Trump’s actions and anticipated actions and the effects. They threaten to destroy the tenuous democracy that we know, and replace it with a authoritarian system that is the antithesis of democracy.

He has not unified the country

He asserts in his inaugural address, for example, “National unity is now returning to America” and “I [Trump] want to be a peacemaker and a unifier.” His rhetoric and actions belie such claims. Rather, his views have been and continue to be disruptive and anti-democratic, more to generate fear and ignorance rather than relief or understanding.

The vote count does not support Trump’s claim that his victory reflects national unity. The 2024 presidential vote indicates that the presidential vote was close and that there are 75+ million Americans who voted against him, 77+ million who voted for him, and, according to data from the University of Florida Election Lab, “an estimated 89 million Americans, or about 36% of the country’s voting-age population [who] did not vote in the 2024 general election” (https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-11-15/how-many-people-didnt-vote-in-the-2024-election#google_vignette).

His bizarre notion that he is the country’s savior

With respect to the earlier attempt on his life, he says, “I was saved by God to make America great again.” In Trump’s view, he is America’s savior. If people do what he wants, America will thrive. This pseudo-religious self-characterization is arrogant and even psychopathological. But millions of Americans voted him into the White House. Indeed, the largest segment of Trump’s base are Christian Nationalists who believe America should be viewed as a right-wing evangelical Christian country, disregarding the constitionally-based separation of religion from politics (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/07/christian-nationalists-embrace-trump-as-their-savior-will-they-be-his).

Here’s another report on Trump’s beliefs by Ken Bensinger of the New York Times (https://nytimes.com/2024/01/11/us/politics/trump-god-video-pastors-iowa.html).

“A viral video praising former President Donald J. Trump has offended a key Iowa constituency in the lead-up to next week’s critical Iowa caucuses: faith leaders.
The video, which Mr. Trump first posted to Truth Social last Friday and then played before taking the stage at several rallies in Iowa over the weekend, is called ‘God Made Trump.’ In starkly religious, almost messianic tones, it depicts the former president as the vessel of a higher power sent to save the nation.
“God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,’ so God gave us Trump,” begins the video….”

Trump wants to increase US production of fossil fuels, ignoring or denying the climate effects

Trump notes in his inaugural address that America “has the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on earth and we are going to use it.” As is well known, he has long rejected the scientifically-proven realty of a growing climate crisis that is caused mostly by fossil fuels (80%). Nonetheless, if he has his way, there will be more fossil fuels extracted and utilized in America and liquified natural gas exports will go up.

In an in-depth article for The Guardian, Oliver Milman and Dharna Noor report on the Trump’s executive orders boosting fossil fuels (https://theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/22/trump-big-oil-energy-priorities-explained). Here’s some of what they write.

“Through a flurry of executive orders, a newly inaugurated Donald Trump has made clear his support for the ascendancy of fossil fuels, the dismantling of support for cleaner energy and the United States’ exit from the fight to contain the escalating climate crisis.

“‘We will drill, baby, drill,’ the president said in his inaugural address on Monday [Jan. 20, 2025].

‘We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have – the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it. We’re going to use it.’

Milman and Noor continue. “Trump has promised to cut Americans’ energy costs in half within a year and he claimed removing all restraints on drilling for ‘liquid gold’ will achieve this, even though the US is already producing more oil and gas than any other country in history.”

There is little place for climate treaties, wind or solar energy, and electric vehicles in Trump’s energy plans.

Milman and Noor write: “Climate treaties, wind energy and electric vehicles are not part of this vision, with Trump signing orders to ditch or stymie them.” Trump ignores scientists who say “the world must urgently move away from fossil fuels to avoid the ever-worsening impacts of the climate crisis, as evidenced by last year being the hottest ever recorded and Los Angeles suffering ruinous wildfires.

The energy oligarchs invested in Trump’s presidential campaign and are now being rewarded, as Milman and Noor point out.

“It was a good day, though, for the fossil fuel executives who poured tens of millions of dollars into Trump’s election campaign. Some celebrated a few blocks away from the inauguration in Washington at a party where they sipped champagne and nibbled on pastries with Trump’s face on them.

“Trump declared a “national energy emergency” on Monday – part of a spate of actions meant to boost the already-booming fossil fuel industry. Invoked under the National Emergencies Act, the order aims to unlock an array of executive powers to fast-track the production and distribution of energy.”

Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the green non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council, says there is no energy emergency. Rather, there is a “climate emergency.”

And despite the existential threat of fossil-fuel-driven climate disasters, “Trump has again initiated the U.S. exit from the Paris climate deal, a non-binding agreement to avoid the world hitting temperatures that would deliver disastrous heatwaves, floods and storms upon societies and economies already strained by extreme events. In joining just three other countries – Yemen, Iran and Libya – outside the Paris process, the world’s second-largest carbon emitter is walking away from this shared goal while also halting funding for poorer countries at most risk of climate-driven calamities.”

Trump also overturned two of Joe Biden’s attempts to restrict fossil fuel development. One, which the former president put forth earlier this month, meant to withdraw swaths of the US coasts from future oil and gas drilling, including the entire US east coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, parts of the Pacific coast and portions of Alaska’s Bering Sea. Another 2023 order limited drilling in nearly 3m acres of the Arctic Ocean in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska….”

Make the U.S. military ever more globally dominant

Trump points out in his inaugural address that America has the world’s ‘strongest military’ and he plans to make it even stronger by increasing military spending. It is well known outside of Trump’s circles that we have an inflated and wasteful military budget that needs to be reduced.

William Hartung, an expert on military spending and its effects, substantiates this point in many articles, including this one in Counter Punch
(https://counterpunch.org/2024/02/28/war-is-bad-for-you-and-the-economy). Here’s some of what he writes.

“…the opportunity costs of throwing endless trillions of dollars at the military means far less is invested in other crucial American needs, ranging from housing and education to public health and environmental protection. Yes, military spending did indeed help America recover from the [1930s] Great Depression but not because it was military spending. It helped because it was spending, period. Any kind of spending at the levels devoted to fighting World War II would have revived the economy. While in that era, such military spending was certainly a necessity, today similar spending is more a question of (corporate) politics and priorities than of economics.

“In [recent] years Pentagon spending has soared and the defense budget continues to head toward an annual trillion-dollar mark, while the prospects of tens of millions of Americans have plummeted. More than 140 million of us now fall into poor or low-income categories, including one out of every six children. More than 44 million of us suffer from hunger in any given year. An estimated 183,000 Americans died of poverty-related causes in 2019, more than from homicide, gun violence, diabetes, or obesity. Meanwhile, ever more Americans are living on the streets or in shelters as homeless people hit a record 650,000 in 2022.

Extending and sealing off US territory

Trump is hardly a unifier or peacemaker in the U.S. or abroad. He wants to acquire Greenland and retake control of the Panama Canal. He wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. He has even said that he would like to annex Canada as the 51st state. And he has toyed with the idea of using the military to invade Mexico to stop the flow of immigrants into the U.S. He will withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Peace Accord. And has opened up the door to removing the U.S. from NATO.

In an article in Foreign Policy, Alexandra Sharp delves into what we know about Trump’s foreign policy (https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/21/donald-trump-executive-orders-day-one-us-immigration-who-tiktok). Here’s some of what she writes.

“U.S. President Donald Trump hit the ground running for his first day in office on Monday, signing 26 executive orders and issuing a slew of other promises intended to prioritize Washington’s interests on the global stage. ‘The golden age of America begins right now,’ Trump vowed at the start of his inaugural address.

“Among his first acts, Trump declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, fulfilling a key campaign pledge to curb migration. To address border security, he ordered the deployment of troops; resumed construction of the border wall; reinstated the ‘Remain in Mexico’ program, which forces asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico during immigration proceedings; and shut down the CBP One app, a Biden-era program that allowed some migrants to enter the United States legally through an appointment lottery system. Trump also designated cartels and foreign gangs as ‘global terrorists’ in an effort to expand government efforts to combat human trafficking and drug smuggling.”

“To drive home his America First approach, Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” implemented a 90-day pause on U.S. foreign development assistance, and signaled his intention to leave the World Health Organization within 12 months” [He has already pulled America out of WHO.]

Trump also ordered the United States to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement in a major blow to global efforts to limit climate change.”

Attempting to end birthright citizenship

Sharp continues.

“In addition, Trump directed federal agencies to stop recognizing birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented migrants, a right guaranteed under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Attorneys general for 18 states, the city of San Francisco, and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging the order.

A Line-by-Line Breakdown of Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Executive Order

Elie Mystal offers a “line-by-line” breakdown of Trump’s birthright Citizenship Executive Order in an article for The Nation, Jan 22, 2025
(https://thenation.com/article/politics/trump-birthright-citizenship-executive-order).

Mystal starts out arguing that “Almost every sentence of the order is wrong, misleading, or flagrantly unconstitutional.” Here’s more.

“I cannot tell you the worst thing Trump did in his first hours—“the worst” is a subjective assessment largely based on how close you are to the people Trump would like to harm. There is, however, one executive order that attempts to nullify an entire constitutional amendment by fiat, so that is the one I have decided to focus on.”

“Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship”—better known as the birthright citizenship executive order—attempts to cancel the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. Getting rid of constitutional amendments via executive order is new, and, for me at least, “the worst.”

“Nearly every line of this order is wrong, misleading, or flagrantly unconstitutional. To appreciate the depths of racism and lawlessness embedded within it, you need to read every line. Lawyers have done that, and a lawsuit has already been filed attempting to stop the order. But I believe every single person in this country who is not a mouth-breathing racist deserves to understand just how despicable this thing is. I want you to be able to fight the racists in your family, chapter and verse, on this unmitigated piece of trash.”

Mystal considers Trump’s order in depth. Here are highlights.

“Section 1. Purpose. The privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift.”

“This is simply wrong. Citizenship is a privilege, but it is not a “gift.” It’s not bestowed by individual benevolent white folks when they happen to be in a good mood. Birthright citizenship is a right, one that has been enshrined in the organizing document of our country.

“There is a legal process for taking away rights, but that process has nothing to do with the bigoted orders of an aging despot. Taking away the right to birthright citizenship requires nothing less than a constitutional amendment. Trump wants you to forget that by pretending that citizenship is a gift.”

“The Fourteenth Amendment states: ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.’ That provision rightly repudiated the Supreme Court of the United States’s shameful decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), which misinterpreted the Constitution as permanently excluding people of African descent from eligibility for United States citizenship solely based on their race.”

Mystal continues.

“Even if the courts do get around to ‘stopping’ the order, Trump controls the military. He controls the State Department and the Justice Department. He controls the Social Security Administration. I don’t have a lot of belief that he will follow a court order on this, even if the courts order him to stop.

“All I can do is tell you that the order is unconstitutional, and racist, and obviously so. The people who support this order are wrong, and racist. The journalists who promote and normalize the order are wrong and racist. This order violates one of the fundamental principles of the United States, and people should react to it like it does”.

Pardoning insurrectionists

On January 20, 2025, his first day as president, Trump pardoned 1,500 or 1,600 people who were imprisoned for their violent participation in the Jan. 6 insurrection. This is a reflection of Trump’s “big lie,” that is, despite the overwhelming evidence, he denies that they engaged in destructive actions on Jan. 6 and continues to insist they were wrongly punished and incarcerated.

Dan Barry and Alan Feuer analyze “How Trump Inverted the Violent History of Jan. 6 (https://nytimes.com/2025/01/05/us/politics/january-6-capitol-riot-trump.html).

“In the wake of the attack on the Capitol, Mr. Trump’s volatile political career seemed over, his incendiary words before the riot rattling the leaders of his own Republican Party. Myriad factors explain his stunning resurrection, but not least of them is how effectively he and his loyalists have laundered the history of Jan. 6, turning a political nightmare into a political asset.

“What began as a strained attempt to absolve Mr. Trump of responsibility for Jan. 6 gradually took hold, as his allies in Congress and the media played down the attack and redirected blame to left-wing plants, Democrats and even the government. Violent rioters — prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned — somehow became patriotic martyrs.”

The violence

The facts tell a different story. Barry and Feuer give this well-documented account of events.

“That day [Jan. 6, 2021] was an American calamity. Lawmakers huddled for safety. Vice President Mike Pence eluded a mob shouting that he should be hanged. Several people died during and after the riot, including one protester by gunshot and four police officers by suicide, and more than 140 officers were injured in a protracted melee that nearly upended what should have been the routine certification of the electoral victory of Mr. Trump’s opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Trump explains away the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, pardons the insurrectionists, and wants to punish those who investigated those who were incarcerated

“But with his return to office,” Barry and Feuer write, “Mr. Trump now has the platform to further rinse and spin the Capitol attack into what he has called ‘a day of love.’ He has vowed to pardon rioters in the first hour of his new administration [which he has done], while his congressional supporters are pushing for criminal charges against those who investigated his actions on that chaotic day.”

When asked about the reframing of the Capitol riot, and whether Mr. Trump accepts any responsibility for what unfolded on Jan. 6, his spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, instead referred in a statement to the “political losers” who tried to derail his career and asserted that “the mainstream media still refuses to report the truth about what happened that day.” She added, “The American people did not fall for the Left’s fear mongering over January 6th.”

“The Republican-controlled Senate acquitted him of incitement, but its leader, Mitch McConnell, declared him ‘practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day’ — a sentiment apparently shared by most Americans, with nearly 60 percent saying in polls that he should never hold office again.”

The denial

Barry and Feuer write, “Before the Capitol had even been secured, Representative Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, was asserting on Twitter that the events had ‘all the hallmarks of Antifa provocation.’ Hours later, the Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham was telling viewers that ‘there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.’ And by morning, Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, was claiming on the House floor that some rioters ‘were masquerading as Trump supporters and in fact were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.’ (Mr. Gaetz would become President-elect Trump’s first choice for attorney general before being derailed by scandal.)

“According to M.I.T. Technology Review, this fabrication was repeated online more than 400,000 times in the 24 hours after the Capitol attack, amplified by a cast of MAGA influencers, Republican officials and members of Mr. Trump’s family.”

Through the spring and summer of 2021 [and into the present], Mr. Trump’s Republican allies sought to sow doubt and blame others.

Glorifying the rioters

“Amid the conspiratorial swirl of antifa agitators and deep-state plots, a related narrative was gaining traction: the glorification of those who had attacked the Capitol. Instead of marauders, vandals and aggressors, they were now political prisoners, hostages, martyrs. Patriots.”

“At a mid-January rally in Florence, Ariz., he [Trump] described the Jan. 6 defendants as persecuted political prisoners. Later that month, in Conroe, Texas, he promised that if he was re-elected, and if pardons were required, ‘we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.’”

“His efforts seemed to be working. By mid-2022, an NBC News poll found that fewer than half of Americans still considered Mr. Trump ‘solely’ or ‘mainly’ responsible for Jan. 6.”

Indictments

“In August 2023, Mr. Trump was indicted twice on charges of interfering with the 2020 election results: at the state level, for illegally seeking to overturn the results of the election in Georgia, which he had narrowly lost; and at the federal level, for conspiring to impede the Jan. 6 certification of Mr. Biden’s election.

“A subsequent court filing by Jack Smith, the special counsel leading the federal investigation, cited Mr. Trump’s steadfast endorsement of the rioters and of the prison choir, ‘many of whose criminal history and/or crimes on January 6 were so violent that their pretrial release would pose a danger to the public.’ The former president, it continued, ‘has financially supported and celebrated these offenders — many of whom assaulted law enforcement on January 6 — by promoting and playing their recording of the national anthem at political rallies and calling them ‘hostages’”

Promising Payback

“An emboldened Mr. Trump has already indicated that his presidential agenda will include payback for those who declared him responsible for the Capitol attack. He has said that Mr. Smith ‘should be thrown out of the country,’ and that Ms. Cheney and other leaders of the House select committee — ‘one of the greatest political scams in history,’ his spokeswoman, Ms. Leavitt, said — should ‘go to jail,’ without providing evidence to warrant such extreme measures.

Creating a paramilitary force

Joan Walsh reports in an article for The Nation on Jan. 23, 2025 on how Trump liberates his own paramilitary force (https://thenation.com/article/politics/trump-january-6-pardons-paramilitary-force).

She writes: “Convicted felon Donald Trump, also known as our 47th president, unleashed such tyranny, cruelty, and idiocy on his first day in office that I can’t tell you which of his moves is ‘worst.’

“Trump’s quick move to pardon or commute the sentences of roughly 1,600 January 6 prisoners has to be at the top. It’s like he just liberated his own paramilitary force. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 18 and 22 years in prison, respectively, got out Tuesday. They and others who helped plan the violent insurrection [of Jan. 6, 2021] are now back on the streets.”

If I were being charitable, I might say this is one rare example of Trump showing loyalty to others. Just as Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts made sure Trump didn’t have to pay for inciting the January 6 riots, so did Trump bestow his own special form of ‘immunity’ on his followers who were charged for that bloody day. He continued to call them “hostages.”

Trump declared at a Tuesday night news conference, “they have already served years in prison and they’ve served them viciously,” Trump declared at a Tuesday night news conference. “It’s a disgusting prison. It’s been horrible. It’s inhumane. It’s been a terrible, terrible thing.”

Walsh continues her report. “At least three Jan. 6 defendants pleaded guilty to assaulting Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officer Michael Fanone, who reportedly “suffered a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury during the attack” and was forced to retire from the police force. Daniel Rodriguez pleaded guilty on Feb. 14, 2023 to tasing Fanone, as well as other charges. Another defendant, Kyle Young, pleaded guilty on May 5, 2022 to assaulting Fanone, as he ‘held the officer’s left wrist’ and ‘pulled’ Fanone’s arm away from his body.’ During the attack on officers in a Capitol tunnel, Young also ‘held a strobe light toward the police line and pushed forward a stick-like object.’ A third man, Albuquerque Head, pleaded guilty to dragging Fanone into the crowd of rioters, yelling ‘I got one!’ Rodriguez was subsequently sentenced to more than 12 years in prison, while Young received more than seven years and Head was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison.”

“The Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police… criticized the pardons and commutations, not only those of the January 6 prisoners but also of individuals whose sentences President Joe Biden commuted, saying they were “deeply discouraged” by both presidents’ actions. “The IACP and FOP firmly believe that those convicted of [killing or assaulting law enforcement officers] should serve their full sentences,” the groups said in a joint statement.
Maybe the most poignant testimony on Tuesday came from former Capitol Police sergeant Aquilino Gonell, who shared the messages alerting him when every convicted felon he’d testified against got released.

“Each email and call log is a different violent rioter who assaulted me in the tunnel. If you are defending these people who brutally assaulted the police, maybe you ARE NOT a supporter of the police and the rule of law to begin with. If you did you would want accountability.”

“On Patriots.Win, a Trump-boosting website, at least two dozen people hoped for the executions of Democrats, judges, or law enforcement linked to the January 6 cases, Reuters reported. “They called for jurists or police to be hanged, pummeled to death, ground up in wood chippers or thrown from helicopters.

“Gather the entire federal judiciary into a stadium. Then have them listen and watch while the judges are beaten to death,” one wrote. “Cut their heads off and put them on pikes outside” the Justice Department.

“Jacob Chansley, known as the Q-Anon shaman, had already served his three years in prison. But he celebrated his pardon this way: ‘NOW I AM GONNA BUY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!!’”

Concluding thoughts

We are now at a moment in history, when Trump and his allies are in control of many of the pillars of government, both houses of the U.S. Congress, many courts including the Supreme Court, and the White House. He has even been bestowed by the Supreme Court with legal “immunity” while he is president. Trump and his allies can, so it seems, act with impunity and not suffer any penalty. It remains to be seen whether they will succeed.

In his book, The Reactionary Spirit, Zack Beauchamp suggests that Trump’s forces can be stymied, diverted, or slowed down. He writes:

“The contest for democracy’s future is…different in some respects from the one previous generations faced, but at its heart the struggle is the same. It is a conflict over whether democracy’s champions are as committed to equality as its rivals are to hierarchy. Previous generations of democrats showed that they were up to the challenge. The great question facing all of us today is whether we are” (p.246).

Examples of genuine reforms

Timothy J. Heaphy also offers a hopeful statement in his book, Harbingers.

“To fix our broken democracy, we should pursue three basic goals. First, we should do all we can to encourage people to participate and make it easy for them to vote, stay informed, and voice their concerns.

“Second, we need to find ways to teach and model constructive engagement, giving people the tools to sift information, pursue and consider alternative points of view, and listen to and learn from their fellow citizens. This should start early in public schools that help young people navigate the systems by which they receive information and encourage them to pursue the first goal of participation.

“Finally, we need to create systems for Americans to come together in common purpose – working together in service to their communities and finding ways to help one another” (p. 226).

Democrats have momentum, but there are challenges

Bob Sheak, Oct 4, 2024

The odds that Kamala Harris will defeat Trump in November have improved, but there are challenges. In this post, I refer to the polls, Harris’ policies, the debates, trends that favor Harris/Walz, Trump’s anti-democratic agenda, and concerns about the Electoral College.

I -The polls

Andrew Howard reports on the polls and how Harris and Trump are deadlocked in every battleground state (https://politico.com/news/20124/10/02/harris-trump-polls-00182150). Here’s some of what he writes.

“Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump remain neck and neck in all seven battleground states, according to new polls released Wednesday.

“The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter’s Swing State Project surveys, conducted by a bipartisan team of pollsters, shows Harris between 1 and 3 points ahead in five of the states, easily within the margin of error. In a sixth state, North Carolina, Harris and Trump were exactly tied.

“Harris leads Trump in Michigan by 3 percentage points, and she also leads by 1 or 2 points in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“Trump is leading by 2 percentage points head-to-head in Georgia.

“In each of the states, the result is statistically unchanged since the last iteration of the survey in mid-August.”

“While Harris is virtually tied with Trump, Democrats running in other key statewide races have more significant leads across the map.

Senate races

“In Senate races, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego leads his GOP opponent Kari Lake in Arizona, 54 percent to 41 percent; in Michigan, Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin leads former Rep. Mike Rogers, 50 percent to 46 percent; Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen leads Republican Sam Brown in Nevada, 53 percent to 40 percent; Democratic Sen. Bob Casey leads Republican Dave McCormick, 52 percent to 45 percent, in Pennsylvania; and Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin holds a 2-point lead over GOP nominee Eric Hovde in Wisconsin.

“And in the North Carolina gubernatorial race, Josh Stein leads Mark Robinson, whose vulgar comments on a porn website were reported last month, 59 percent to 35 percent.

II. Harris’ policies

April Rubin offers a summary of the proposals (https://axios.com/2024/09/06/kamala-harris-policy-proposals-economy-abortion-immigration).

————————————–

Some of the major proposals Harris has announced or backed, across policy areas:

Economy

First-time homebuyers could receive a $25,000 tax credit as a shortage of available homes keeps prices high under an economic plan Harris outlined in August.

Harris also pitched tax breaks for homebuyers who build starter homes and those who rehabilitate older housing stock.

Capital gains tax of 28% could affect wealthy Americans, a pitch more than 10 points lower than what Biden has proposed.

This marked a move to the center,Axios’ Hans Nichols reported.

A small business tax credit could expand tenfold from $5,000 to $50,000.

She proposed reducing barriers to getting occupational licenses across state lines with a goal of 25 million new small business applications in her first term.

A ban on grocery price gouging could mirror existing state laws, although Harris hasn’t provided details on this policy.

38 states prohibit companies from increasing prices during emergencies.

On child tax credits, new parentscould receive $6,000 during the first year of their child’slife.

The earned income tax credit would expand for lower-income adults who aren’t raising kids.

Taxes on tips could be eliminated, in a rare policy position where Harris copied what Trump has promised service and hospitality workers.

Such a policy could incentivize workers to push harder for more tips, Axios’ Emily Peck reported.

Health

Abortion and reproductive care have been central to Harris’ campaign.

She said she would sign a law to restore Roe v. Wade, which protected federal abortion access, though incompletely as women across the U.S. faced barriers to accessing abortion and states could still enact strict bans.

The campaign kicked off a 50-stop bus tour focused on reproductive rights, zeroed in on battleground states. It started in Florida on Tuesday.

Programming at the Democratic National Convention in August reflected a frank approach to discussion abortion rights by platforming women who shared how bans impacted them, Axios’ Ivana Saric reported.

Out-of-pocket drug costs would cap at $2,000 per year for everyone and insulin copays at $35 per month.

Immigration

New security measures at the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico would be funded under a bipartisan border proposal that Harris said she’d support.

Trump, earlier this year, successfully urged congressional allies to oppose the bill.

Her stance on the border and immigration has flip-flopped from previously held, more liberal policy positions, Axios’ Alex Thompson and Hans Nichols reported.

Migrants would largely be barredfrom seeking asylum under the bipartisan proposal, CNN reported.

Energy

Fracking could survive under a Harris presidency.

She said last month in her first formal interview with CNN as the nomineethat she wouldn’t ban fracking, a reversal from a position she held during her first presidential run.

Reality check: A fracking bill would take an act of Congress that is unlikely anytime soon, Axios’ Ben Geman reported.

Foreign policy

Harris called for a hostage and ceasefire deal during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July. While her tone has been perceived as more critical of Israel than Biden, she’s been playing a similar balancing act.

Harris said during her DNC keynote speech weeks later that said she would “always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself.” She said she and Biden were working to secure a deal and protect Palestinians’ “right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.” [But the US continues to provide Israel with the weapons it needs to continue the attacks on Palestinians in Gaza.]

The pro-Palestinian activists, including the Uncommitted National Movement, have protested at the DNC and at her campaign rallies.

—————————————

III – The debates

#1 – Harris vs. Trump

Kamala bested Trump in their debate, as reported widely after the debate. For example, NPR’s Domenico Montanaro reports that it wasn’t even close (https://npr.org/2024/09/11/g-s1-22023/debate-harris-trump-takeaways).

Here are 3 takeaways reported by Montanaro.

(1) This debate wasn’t close.

“Harris was far more dominant than Trump, from beginning to end. She called him ‘weak and wrong,’ inverting the political cliché that ‘strong and wrong’ beats ‘weak and right.’ Harris answered questions, then redirected and baited him on a host of issues.

“She got under Trump’s skin — something he usually tries to do — by saying that people at his rallies leave ‘early out of exhaustion and boredom,’ painting him as out of touch and a bad businessman for inheriting $400 million ‘on a silver platter and then filed for bankruptcy six times,’ and chiding him for being ‘fired by 81 million people’ in the 2020 election and now being ‘confused’ about losing.

“Harris addressed policy, including tax breaks for small businesses and parents and touting her idea for a first-time home-buyer credit for down payments. She repeatedly said, ‘I have a plan,’ while Trump was left saying, ‘I have concepts of a plan’ when it comes to replacing the Affordable Care Act.”

“Trump made the unusual move for a presidential candidate to go into the spin room after the debate and talk to reporters. That’s not something that’s normally done when someone has a good debate. That’s usually reserved for low-polling primary candidates, who felt they didn’t get enough time or attention during the debate.”

(2) The spotlight should now be on Trump’s incoherence and general lack of any serious grasp on policy.

“With a more-than-competent performance from Harris Tuesday, Trump’s lies, meandering, conspiracies and often general incoherence was made even more glaring.

“He wandered through conspiracies about, not just the election, but also about who is currently president (Joe Biden), the usual about immigrants who (aren’t actually) coming from “mental institutions and insane asylums” and the newly unusual (and debunked) about immigrants who (are not) “eating the dogs” or “cats.”

(3) Trump was on the defensive and evasive, even on issues that should benefit him — and didn’t land much, if anything, that stuck.

“Harris had Trump on the defensive from the get-go on the economy (about his tax cuts and tariffs), his jobs record, his handling of the pandemic and Jan. 6. There were times, even on immigration, when Trump decided to address a Harris attack instead of talking about the issue he ostensibly wants to talk most about.”

“He declined to say if he wanted Ukraine to win against Russia, wouldn’t answer if he had any regrets about his response to the violence on Jan. 6, and he twice refused to say if he would veto a national abortion ban, like his vice-presidential running mate said he would.

In fact, he went out of his way to say essentially that Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance doesn’t speak for him — in a clumsy and meandering way that led him to student loans.”

“Never mind that Republicans in Congress would not act to help relieve student loans or that Republican-led states sued to end Biden’s executive action on student-loan forgiveness. But Trump was digging the hole even deeper for himself on abortion rights.

“‘I did a great service in doing it,’ Trump said about the overturning of Roe. ‘It took courage to do it. And the Supreme Court had great courage in doing it. And I give tremendous credit to those six justices.’

“Nearly two-thirds have said they opposed the overturning of Roe.”

Montanaro concludes as follows. “Could this debate have changed some minds? Maybe. But views of Trump have been ingrained. This race is very much a coin flip, according to the polls, and that’s unlikely to change very much even after this debate, because of how hyper-polarized this country is.”

#2- Walz vs Vance

John Nichols, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, offers some insights (https://thenation.com/article/politics/walz-vance-vice-presidential-debate-reality).

Republican vice-presidential candidate Senator JD Vance and Democratic vice-presidential candidate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz participated in a debate at the CBS Broadcast Center on October 1, 2024, in New York City.

Nichols writes: “JD Vance began his assault against reality with his response to the first question in what will probably be the only vice-presidential debate of the 2024 campaign. When asked whether he would support a preemptive Israeli strike on Iran, the senator from Ohio blamed the Democratic administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for the violence in the Middle East and the rest of the world. Then, he announced that, during his running mate’s one term as president, ‘Donald Trump actually delivered stability in the world.’ Trump, Vance claimed, ‘consistently made the world more secure.’”

“That was a jaw-dropping pronouncement about a scandal-plagued former president who cozied up to dictators, cheered on the spread of right-wing extremism across Europe, and supported vile attacks on refugees at home and abroad.”

Nichols continues. “

Overall, Walz proved up to the task of fact-checking Vance. He responded deftly to that claim from Vance that Trump had ‘delivered stability in the world’ by saying, ‘Look, our allies understand that Donald Trump is fickle. He will go to whoever has the most flattery or where it makes sense to him.’ Walz had already highlighted the damage done to America’s credibility ‘when our allies see Donald Trump turn towards Vladimir Putin, turn towards North Korea, when we start to see that type of fickleness about holding the coalitions together.’ And he told viewers, ‘It’s those that were closest to Donald Trump that understand how dangerous he is when the world is this dangerous. His chief of staff John Kelly said that he was the most flawed human being he ever met, and both of his secretaries of defense and his national security advisers said he should be nowhere near the White House.’

“Walz delivered the facts, pointing out that when Trump was in office he could have worked with ‘a coalition of nations that had boxed Iran’s nuclear program.’ Instead, Walz explained, ‘Donald Trump pulled that program and put nothing else in its place. So Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon they were before because of Donald Trump’s fickle leadership.’”

Nichols refers to the controversy over Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Vance made the false claim that Haitian immigrants were stealing the pets of their neighbors in Springfield and eating them. On this issue, “Walz delivered a stinging critique of the lies Trump and Vance have told about Haitian immigrants who are legally in Springfield and who are credited by honest Republicans, such as Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, with having revitalized the community. The Democrat rightly accused Vance of seeking to ‘dehumanize and villainize other human beings.’”

There were other issues discussed, “with exchanges highlighting Vance’s extreme stances on reproductive rights, healthcare, childcare, and a host of other issues, including the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy—but it finally returned to immigration. When Vance repeated the wild claim that Harris is responsible for chaos at the nation’s southern border, the Democrat clarified that border crossings have, in recent months, been down compared to when Trump left office.”

IV – Some good news for Harris and Democrats

#1 – Overall, workers are better off now than they were under Trump

Dean Baker, the co-founder and the senior economist of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) and the author of several books, presents evidence that US workers are much better off today than they were during Trump’s presidency (https://commondreams.org/opinion/workers-better-off-under-biden).

This may well benefit Harris and Walz in November.

Baker writes: “First and foremost, workers are better off today because they overwhelmingly have jobs if they want them. They also are getting higher pay, even after adjusting for inflation. And they tell us they are much more satisfied at their jobs.

“When President Biden took office, the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent. It is currently 4.3 percent. For most of his presidency the unemployment rate has been below 4.0 percent, a stretch of low unemployment not seen in more than half a century.”

Baker points out that “wages for workers in the bottom ten percent of the wage distribution increased by 13.4 percent from before the pandemic, after adjusting for inflation.” Workers in the middle saw average increases of 3.0 percent after inflation. He notes that 3% is not great, but it’s better than it has been over the prior four decades, “when wages were often stagnate or falling.”

A tight labor market favors workers, giving many of them a choice of jobs. Under such circumstances, they often have the option of leaving jobs “where the pay is low, the workplace is unsafe, or the boss is a jerk.” Thus, in 2021-2023, workers switched jobs in record numbers: “Tens of millions of people quit their jobs and moved on to better ones. One result was that workers reported the highest rate of job satisfaction on record. This is a big deal, since most workers spend a large share of their waking hours on the job.”

Job growth slowed in the late three months of the Trump administration, with a paltry rate of increase of just 140,000.

“The Biden administration’s recovery package got back these jobs in less than a year and a half. The rapid job growth has continued so that we now have 6.4 million more jobs than we did before the pandemic. With the economy still growing at a good clip and inflation back to its pre-pandemic pace, for workers the future is bright.”

#2 – Trump is losing his advantage among voters on the economy

Abha Bhattarai, the economics correspondent for The Washington Post, also reports on evidence that “Trump is losing his edge on the economy among voters” (https://washingtonpost.com/business/2024/09/25/economy-election-harris-trump-polls). Here’s some of what she writes.

“Although voters still favor former president Donald Trump over Harris on handling the economy, his advantage has dropped dramatically in recent weeks. Trump now averages a six-percentage-point edge on the economy, compared with a 12-point lead against President Joe Biden earlier this year, according to an analysis of five polls that measured voters’ opinions before and after Biden dropped out.

“A Fox News poll this month, for example, found that 51 percent of registered voters favor Trump on the economy, compared with 46 percent who favor Harris. That’s compared with a 15-point advantage Trump had over Biden in March. Other recent polls — by ABC-Ipsos, NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist, USA Today-Suffolk University and Quinnipiac University — show similar shifts.

“‘Voters are beginning to give [Harris] the benefit of the doubt — and that’s really significant,’ said Frank Luntz, a longtime GOP pollster. ‘Affordability is a top issue for voters, but Trump has failed to hold Harris to account or to tie her to Biden’s inflation failures.’”

“Underlying that sea change, analysts say, is the fact that Americans are feeling better about the economy. Prices are stabilizing, interest rates are coming down and wages are rising faster than inflation. At the same time, voters seem to view Harris as a clean slate, unburdened by the rapid run-up in prices that has plagued Biden for much of his presidency.” It also helps that prices have stabilized and Harris is focusing on issues important to middle-class voters, including affordable health care, housing and childcare.

“The shift in economic polling coincides with Americans’ improving views on the economy. Consumer sentiment, at its highest level in four months, has risen 40 percent from its low in June 2022, according to a closely watched survey from the University of Michigan. The latest figures show that Americans are feeling better about inflation, as well as the economy and their own finances. Researchers also noted that ‘a growing share of both Republicans and Democrats now anticipate a Harris win.’”

Trump’s proposed tax cuts and spending proposals “would add $5.8 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade — roughly five times the $1.2 trillion Harris’s plans would cost in the same period, according to estimates from the Penn Wharton Budget Model.”

“More than 400 economists and former U.S. policymakers endorsed Harris for president in an open letter this week, calling her ‘a strong steward of the U.S. economy.’ Meanwhile, they said Trump’s proposals ‘risk reigniting inflation and threaten the United States’ global standing and domestic economic stability.’”

Harris and the Democrats have advantages going into the November elections. The Harris/Walz domestic policy agenda is strong. They are raising funds to support their efforts. They have organizations aimed at getting out the vote in all states. And Harris and Walz are conducting an energetic campaign across the country.

V – Trump’s Republican Party

While the Trump/Republican priorities, especially as contained in the 900+page Project 2025, are extreme and anti-democratic, there are tens of millions of cult-like Trump supporters, along with support from rich and powerful people and organizations, who will go along with whatever Trump wants, that is, an authoritarian/fascist presidency and executive branch with Trump as the dominating leader. He and his party will continue their attempts to suppress the votes of opponents. In Georgia, Republican election officials have mandated that all votes must be hand counted, thus delaying the results for weeks or more.

Trump is for maximizing the development and use of fossil fuels, with no regard for the increasingly destructive climate effects. He says he will order massive deportations and detentions of millions of undocumented residents and build walls on the southern border to keep most of them from entering the US, despite international asylum laws and despite the dire economic consequences of potentially losing workers who contribute to local economies and pay taxes. He will support the imposition of high tariffs, regardless of their inflationary effects. He will support tax cuts for the rich and corporations and drive-up inequality. He will likely support a national abortion ban or something like it. He is for work requirements for those who get government benefits (e.g., for disability). He will support the continuation of the Electoral College. Chris Walker finds that two-thirds of Americans back ending the Electoral College (https://truthout.org/articles/nearly-two-thirds-of-americans-back-ending-the-electoral-college). It is a dystopian vision. As president, Trump will likely withdraw the country from NATO, and will support authoritarian governments.

Consider two examples of the extreme and anti-democratic implications of Trump’s and Republican following and agenda.

#1 – A cult-like following

Dana Milbank, opinion columnist for The Washington Post, considers “why Trump supporters will believe absolutely anything” Trump says (https://washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/12/trump-jesus-mandela-lincoln). Milbank develops his argument in a book, “The Destructionists: The 25-Year Crackup of the Republican Party.”

Trump presents himself as a great leader, perhaps one of the greatest in all of human history. Milbank reports, for example, that in April of 2024 Trump “’styled himself ‘a Modern Day Nelson Mandela.’” Of course, this is absurd but an example of Trump’s “pathological narcissism.” (See the book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President”).

His tens of millions of die-hard followers have been unquestioning in their adherence to Trump’s claims. Milbank refers to a Post-Schar School poll showing just how deep this pathological adherence runs.

“As The Post’s Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, and pollsters Scott Clement and Emily Guskin report, Trump’s supporters have become substantially more persuaded by disinformation than they were six years ago. They are more likely to say today that the 2016 election was marred by millions of fraudulent votes and that Russia did not interfere in that election — both demonstrably untrue. A majority of strong Trump supporters today believe his provably false assertions that Joe Biden won the 2020 election because of fraud, that the United States funds most of NATO’s budget and that global temperatures are rising because of natural, not human, causes. While only 28 percent of Americans believe Trump’s false claims on average, those who list Fox News as a primary news source are 13 percentage points more likely to accept the disinformation as true.”

#2 – Violence against opponents is acceptable

Thom Hartmann, a talk-show host and the author of more than 25 books,” analyzes how “Trump Has Delivered Unto Us a Nation of Fascist Bullies” (https://commondreams.org/opinion/trump-fascist-bully).

“Brownshirts, Blackshirts, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, you name it; they’re all mostly made up of men deeply insecure about their own masculinity or role in the world who find safety and meaning by joining the über-bully’s gang.”

Hartmann continues.

“To some extent the groundwork for this bullying was laid by a group of rightwing billionaires who believed they could keep their own taxes low by bullying politicians and voters who wanted ‘nice things’ for average Americans like a national healthcare system.

“They funded astroturf groups like the Tea Party to harass ‘socialist’ Democrats inclined to vote for President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, even though it was a massive giveaway to the insurance industry that was first written by the Heritage Foundation and put into place in Massachusetts by then-Governor Mitt Romney.

“These, in turn, inspired other groups more closely aligned to the Klan — America’s first national bully group — to show up in the streets with torches and swastikas chanting, ‘Jews will not replace us’ as they murdered a young counter-protestor, Heather Heyer.

“And that, of course, led to the murder of three police officers and the death of five others — and the near death of our democratic republican form of government — at the hands of Trump’s mob on January 6th.

“America is today suffering from a surfeit of bullying. It drained many of us of our hope and optimism, much as it did in the 1950s when Joe McCarthy last led a national bullying campaign. It was causing people to check out of the political process, to essentially give up like an abused spouse, or to retreat into sports, music, and hours of binge-watched TV dramas.

“America, in other words, has been suffering for nine long years from being tortured by an unrepentant bully and the ‘tough guys’ who attached themselves to him.”

“If we don’t take on bullies — particularly fascist bullies — they keep going further and further until either they win or you fight back and defeat them.”

“That’s because bullies never stop, unless they are stopped by somebody stronger than them. And, most importantly, every time they win they set their sights on the next conquest. Giving in to their demands only creates a newer and more elaborate set of demands. Responding to their bullying with anything other than a literal, verbal, or metaphorical punch in the face is a waste of time.”

—————–

Concluding thoughts

With just a month away from the election, polls indicate that Harris and Trump are virtually tied in crucial swing states. Republicans are doing their best to reduce Democratic turnout, while Democrats under Harris are doing the opposite, namely, to encourage voting. Indeed, Harris says, as president, she will govern for all Americans. Unfortunately, the outcome will not be determined by the popular vote in most states, but rather by the winner-take-all Electoral College. Sarah Pruitt describes how Electoral College Electors are chosen

(https://history.com/news/electors-chosen-electoral-college).

“There are 538 total electors, including one for each U.S. senator and representative and three electors representing the District of Columbia, and presidential candidates need a majority of 270 votes to win the White House. Most of the time—but not always—the winner of the Electoral College is also the winner of the popular vote.” For example, Trump won the Electoral College in 2016 but lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 3 million.

The Democrats have a chance to win both the popular vote and the Electoral College. However, Trump and the Republicans will try to create chaos, delay the vote and challenge outcomes they don’t like. They did not succeed in 2020, but they won’t give up.

Then there are unexpected events. Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas began walking picket lines early Tuesday, Oct. 1, in a strike over wages and automation that could reignite inflation and cause shortages of goods if it goes on more than a few weeks. It’s not clear yet which political party will gain or lose from the strike. But it is another wildcard variable that opens up opportunities for Trump to stoke fears on the legitimacy of the election. There are at least two other wildcards. How many votes will Democrats lose because of the Biden administration’ support of Israel’s war on Palestinians or because of Harris’s support for fracking.