This is the so-called honeymoon phase of Donald Trump’s presidency. Pro-democracy Americans likely find such a description — and the underlying reality — disheartening if not outright terrifying and sickening. Trump’s MAGA people and other followers should be happy, on the other hand. America’s brokenness is that deep and severe — and likely irreversible.
During these first weeks of his honeymoon period, Trump successfully launched his shock and awe campaign against America’s democratic institutions, the rule of law, and a sense of normalcy and consistency. With his almost one hundred executive orders and other edicts, Trump has done such things as attempt to void the 14th Amendment, reverse 60 years of civil rights progress, launch a nationwide mass deportation campaign, declare a national emergency to combat the “border crisis," free his MAGA followers who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, weaponize the Department of Justice as his personal enforcers, removed non-partisan inspectors-generals from government agencies so that he can put his loyalists in power, and ordered a freeze on federal grants and loans totaling many billions of dollars. Further cementing his personalist rule, Donald Trump’s Cabinet appointees are also being quickly confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate. Trump’s so-called mandate is his own making.
"This is the moment when we need to be energized and determined."
Some of these actions by Donald Trump are clear violations of the Constitution and the law. He does not care. The right-wing justices on the Supreme Court have made Trump a de facto dictator and king and he intends to use that power.
CNN offers this profile of a divided public and Trump’s return to power, “There are two areas of bipartisan agreement about President Donald Trump’s early days back in the White House: voters say he is moving quickly to keep promises and he is far more active and visible than his predecessor. There is, though, a giant divide over whether that is fantastic or frightening.”
The New York Times compiled the following polling information about the American people’s mood in the aftermath of the election and Trump’s victory through to the first weeks of January and before his inauguration. The Times’ findings should give great pause and concern to those expecting an immediate groundswell of opposition to President Trump:
Although feelings about the country diverge along partisan lines, when taken overall, the electorate’s mood looks relatively lighter than it was during the election season. With Trump’s victory, there was a swift and significant rise in the number of those feeling “excited” and “hopeful,” along with a healthy drop in the number of “angry” voters.
There are many reasons for this, but with the economy such a searing issue in 2024, a chunk of the electorate is presumably buoyed by Trump’s vow to “Make America wealthy again.” Stung by inflation and by the sense that the Biden administration was not taking their pain seriously, Americans are especially eager for Trump to tackle economic issues as he assumes office. Trump promised to swiftly slash costs, improve wages and usher in a new era of prosperity. …
No matter how you slice the numbers, it’s clear the American people were itching for change. Good change. Scary change. Risky change. They wanted someone to acknowledge that the status quo was not working for them — that something’s got to give. Trump is nothing if not an agent of disruption. Of course, now comes the hard part: delivering on all those big promises.
Where is the so-called Resistance to Donald Trump and his autocratic rule? The Resistance is largely dormant. What of the Democrats? They are attempting to figure out how to work with the Trump administration to advance, where possible, on their “common goals." They are also sending out fundraising emails that announce, “We’re not done fighting” and “Trump in the White House is not what any of us wanted, but Democrats are not giving up, and we’re not done fighting. Anything you’re able to contribute today will help us prove just that.” Kamala Harris raised more than a billion dollars and still lost the election to Trump. The Democratic Party’s pleas for more money will likely be less lucrative this time.
To that point, a new poll from Quinnipiac shows widespread discontent with the Democratic Party as compared to the Republican Party among the American public. The Democrats have a 31% percent favorable rating and a 57% unfavorable rating while the Republicans have a 43% favorable and a 45% unfavorable rating.
The mainstream news media? They are engaging in what experts on authoritarianism describe as “anticipatory obedience." In practice, this means that the mainstream news media is in survival mode, normalizing President Trump and his administration’s violations of democratic norms and values because of a belief that such surrender and accommodation will keep them safe. History’s lessons are clear: anticipatory obedience is not a long-term defense for the news media, the country’s other institutions, or its citizens.
What about the courts and civil society? Trump’s attempt to repeal the 14th Amendment has been temporarily paused by a court order. The Trump administration has, at least for now, paused its plans to freeze federal grants and loans because of public outcry and resistance from the courts.
In total, none of this inspires hope about the future of American democracy.
In an attempt to make sense of President Trump’s historically disruptive first week and what happens next, I reached out to a range of experts.
Katherine Stewart is the author of the forthcoming book, “Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy.”
We know from 2016 that Trump governance is chaotic and many of the new administration’s policy proposals are likely to fail. They will fail through incompetence, or they will turn out to be un-implementable, or they will be struck down or snarled up in the courts. But there are some sure bets at this point, including tax cuts for the wealthy, the deregulation of the most anti-social elements of the tech industry and crypto con, subsidies for planet-destroying industries combined with a rollback of recent gains in the renewable energy sector, the further destruction of public education, and the promotion of a culture of distrust, paranoia, and contempt for those who fail to conform.
Trump has used the power of his office to recruit the services of militia groups for possible future use in extralegal action against his political enemies and any Constitutional limitations on his power. He rewarded anti-abortion activists who violated federal laws through obstruction and violence, and they are celebrating the pardons in the expectation of future gains. More broadly we are seeing an ostrich-like approach, from Republicans and some in the media, where we are not supposed to see anything out of the ordinary in the inauguration of a president who previously attempted to overthrow the government that he now heads.
We are also seeing the acceptance of a degree of corruption that has little equal in American history. When oil interests bribed the members of the party administration, there was at least a perceived need to keep the operations under cover, with secret meetings in hotel rooms and suitcases stuffed with cash. Trump and Melania’s gambits in cryptocurrencies are upfront, blatantly transactional means of cashing in on the power of office — quite possibly at the expense of financial markets — and opening the door to publicly traded bribes.
So, this is the moment when we need to be energized and determined. There are reasons for that determination. We have a clear goal in front of us, which is to hang onto our democracy long enough so we can, eventually, make genuine reforms. We know that this new administration is going to pursue extremist, performative politics so we know what to prepare for. We know they are certain to overstep. We know that some elements of Trump’s coalition are ludicrously incompetent. And we know they are internally divided. Those divisions can be highlighted and exploited, and they should be.
"Every day feels like an escalation, every executive order another blow to the fragile fabric of decency."
Last December, the Guardian published a terrific piece by the Turkish journalist Asli Aydintasbas, who lived through and documented Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s methodical process of state capture — and the pushback, which is ongoing. Her suggestions are not only about how to survive the coming four years, but how to emerge stronger, and it is well worth a read. It takes time for the autocrat to consolidate control, she reminds us, so it is vital to remain engaged. She advises that we skip protests and identity politics in favor of strategic and broad-based actions that have appeal beyond the professional classes. She reminds us that nothing is more meaningful than being part of a struggle for democracy. “America will survive the next four years,” she writes, “if Democrats pick themselves up and start learning from the successes of opponents of autocracy across the globe.”
Peter McLaren is Emeritus Professor of Education at University of California, Los Angeles. He is one of the architects of critical pedagogy and the recipient of numerous international awards for this work in education. He is the author of over forty books and his writings have been translated into twenty-five languages.
The first week of Trump’s presidency unfurled like a dreamscape of bewildering executive edicts. The air itself still feels heavy, charged with menace, as if the entire world has tilted into an alternate reality. It is as if gravity has been recalibrated to pull the country toward some unseen abyss. Trump’s immigration policies have already crystalized into the grotesque: the "Remain in Mexico" program has become a Kafkaesque labyrinth, where migrants are swept into endless spirals of arrests and detentions. Tariffs, like Schrödinger’s cat, flicker between existence and nonexistence as whispers of their imposition haunt both Mexico and Canada. Time seemed to warp as a gilded pen signed pardons in the Oval Office for over 1,500 criminal defendants charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. I haven’t felt this disoriented since dropping acid with Timothy Leary back in 1968 — but that was disorientation in the service of consciousness-raising — this felt more like the time I was stomped on by riot police during a protest rally.
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Every day feels like an escalation, every executive order another blow to the fragile fabric of decency.
Like so many powerful demagogues, Trump possesses the ability to shape the mass consciousness of the citizenry—to create a political energy and collective sensibility that transforms his frenetic and unyielding followers into swarms of electrified marionettes, their strings tangled in the chaos of his words. He has an almost mythic power about him. Trump is tethered to extremes, his identity not solid but fluid, shifting to accommodate the desires of those who behold him. He is not defined by who he is or what he possesses but by what others need him to be.
Trump applies the powers of his presidency to create a cult of supplication. For Trump, his Julius Cesar complex is anchored in ownership, from the days in which he ‘owned’ the Miss Universe Pageant, to the days in which he owned the right-wing media, to the days in which he finally crossed the Rubicon and owned the presidency. His pageantry and his promise to his followers is that of ownership. He owns the Republican Party. He owns his followers. He “owns the libs” through his mastery of insult. Trump’s is an ownership presidency. If his billionaire donors are not careful, he will own them too. And when the military parade that Trump so fervently desires comes to pass, we will know that he owns the military as well.
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His inauguration unfolded like a grotesque pageant, a theater of excess where power and cruelty met on a stage gilded in vulgarity. Among those summoned to bear witness to this unholy coronation were figures who perfectly embodied Trump’s base—Joe Rogan and Jake Paul, avatars of populist idolatry — and others more accustomed to the opulence of a gilded red carpet. The gallery of international guests was a rogue’s gallery of illiberal ambition: French firebrand Éric Zemmour, Belgium’s Tom Van Grieken, Nigel Farage, and former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stood as living emblems of far-right resurgence. Absent, though looming, were Jair Bolsonaro, confined by the indignities of a denied Brazilian passport, and Viktor Orbán, entangled in his own machinations. And of course, there were the kleptocrats and plutocrats.
The more that Trump is electrified by the cheers and cries of the faithful, the more he grows bolder, and the more certain he becomes that his vision is destiny. His inauguration was a ritual of devotion, an arena where the less powerful — which means practically everybody — was transfigured by his presence. Through their reverence, they borrow his aura of might, feeling their own fears dissolve in the heat of his spectacle. And as their fervor grows, so too does his confidence, an ouroboros of mutual reinforcement, a serpent devouring its own tail. The inauguration falling on Martin Luther King Day was a cruel irony, a discordant note struck on a day meant to honor justice, equality, and freedom.
It will take decades for the country to recover, if at all. We did this to ourselves by voting for Trump, an autocrat and man who promised to be a dictator on “day one.” The rest of the world looks askance at what we have done, and they, too, will pay a price.
Randolph Hohle is a professor of Sociology at SUNY Fredonia and author of "Racism in the Neoliberal Era" and "American Housing Question: Racism, Urban Citizenship, and the Privilege of Mobility." He studies the nexus of racism and political economy.
The most telling thing from Donald Trump’s first week in office was that he showed us how he plans to spend the next four years pursuing a neo-imperial preference to dictate America’s relationships with the rest of the world and his relationship with individual states. The British Empire used a system of imperial preference to create favorable trade agreements between nations, their colonies, and the empire. Another country could exchange their freedom for favorable trade agreements with the Empire. If they resisted, the British used tariffs and military power to exclude them from the global economy. Trump’s neo-imperial preference is using tariffs and America’s military power to punish his political enemies, including withholding money to individual states in exchange for policy changes, using potential tariff-free access to the US economy to secure political cooperation, and expanding America’s geopolitical footprint, such as acquiring Greenland or creating a new political-economic bloc with Canada.
I believe that Trump calling Canada America’s 51st state had the intended effect of eliminating a political adversary while empowering Canadian conservatives, who look favorable towards a new Canada-US political alignment, but not annexation. We may look back at this week as the beginning of a new American empire. At the very least, Trump just told us how he will conduct business.
With Trump, the spectacle is America’s national character. The inauguration and its tastelessness and superficiality and the ridiculous B and C list celebrities were, as the kids say, a flex. They flexed on the poor, they flexed on immigrants, they flexed on Medicare recipients, and they flexed on trans kids. Rather than shock and awe, Trump’s inauguration was shallow and boring. They predictably punched down while offering us soulless images they hoped we would read as power.
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