Despite A Lack Of A Mandate From The Voters, Trumpism, Inevitably, Has Arrived Full Force

The Leaderless Democrats Are Running Around Like Chickens Without Heads

Monday night, we started reading about how Trump is just willy-nilly lashing out like a mad-man and stopping everything from going forward that he doesn’t understand. First came foreign aid. He halted all aid programs that aren’t connected to the Zionist project. Alexander Ward, Gabriele Steinhauser and Michael Gordon reported that it was all stopped— from counterterrorism training in Somalia, HIV treatment in Uganda, crucial weapons for Taiwan and Ukraine, and narcotics interdiction in Colombia, to prosthetics for refugees from Myanmar and many more U.S.-funded overseas assistance programs. The Jan. 24 directive stated that the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development ‘shall not provide foreign assistance’ until a high level review of the programs is completed, except to Israel and Egypt and in severe cases where emergency food assistance is needed. Rather than just pausing new funding, the cable instructed U.S. government officials to issue so-called ‘stop-work’ orders to nongovernmental organizations and aid groups from using U.S. funding they have already received. The three-month pause stunned U.S. officials and aid workers, who said the interruption in the roughly $60 billion foreign aid budget for this year could severely damage vital programs in some countries and leave an opening for China and other adversaries to supplant Washington as a more reliable benefactor. ‘Everyone in my world is walking around today with our hair on fire and our jaws on the floor,’ said Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International and a former senior USAID official in the Biden and Obama administrations.”

Foreign aid was quickly followed by domestic aid. Jack Blanchard reported that “Tens of billions of dollars in federal grants and loans to organizations across America will be halted today after yet another bombshell order from the White House. A brief, two-page memo… revealed the next step in Trump’s warp-speed overhaul of the U.S. state: an immediate freeze on all federal grants and loans to outside bodies which may not align with the president’s worldview. The memo specifies that Social Security, Medicare and “payments to individuals” will not be affected, but appears to leave all other federal pay-outs in jeopardy— including grants and loans issued to research bodies, charities, universities and community projects. And with groups getting less than 24 hours’ notice, the days ahead may be a little chaotic. The scale of the order is so broad— it cites federal spending totaling $3 trillion— that the initial reaction last night was confusion, with politicians, officials and aides all scrambling to figure out which programs and payments are in scope. The memo, issued by the acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Matthew Vaeth, said all federal spending must be aligned with ‘Presidential priorities,’ and cited Trump’s emergency orders on issues including immigration, foreign aid, DEI programs and the environment. Vaeth said all federal grants and loans which “may be implicated” must be suspended by today’s 5 p.m. cut-off while reviews are undertaken. Officials then have until Feb. 10— that’s less than a fortnight— to prepare reports for the OMB to consider. By Feb. 10, the OMB will likely be run by Trump’s incoming nominee for director, Russ Vought— one of the authors of Project 2025, and a man renowned for his determination to slash government spending. It’s not hard to see where this is going.”

Where it’s going, is to a constitutional crisis. Congress has the power of the purse, not the White House. Although… with obsequious, self-serving lickspittles like MAGA Mike, Steve Scalise nd Tom Emmer running the House, Trump knows he can do whatever he wants— at least for now. Emmer told reporters that Señor T is “doing exactly what he was elected to do. You're going to see things like this, and your first reaction is going to be, ‘Well, this isn't the way it's been done.’ You need to understand, he was elected to shake up the status quo... Emmer, asked what he would tell his GOP members in competitive districts who are now concerned about the freeze, replied: ‘Get on the team.’”

“How big,” asked Blanchard, “a political risk is Trump taking? His supporters are already celebrating the imminent spending purge, but over the next few days, we’re going to discover the full range of programs, projects and initiatives whose funds have suddenly been blocked. And given the sweeping scale of the order, it seems unlikely these will all be glowingly liberal, woke-tastic DEI projects in coastal America. This order is going to affect communities the length and breadth of the country. Be careful what you wish for, Mr. President.”

Trump even stopped Medicaid reimbursements, potentially cutting tens of millions of Americans off healthcare... although the White House seems to be indicating that was an accident they're fixing. Instead, U.S. District Judge Loren Ali Khan shut Trump down, temporarily blocking his Project 2025 shutdowns, “minutes before the funding freeze was scheduled to go into effect. He'll be spinning his wheels at least 'til Monday.

Jonathan Lemire detects a well-thought-out strategy behind Trump’s bring down the house onslaught of rapid-fire executive orders. “Some of this, of course, is in Trump’s nature. He is an inveterate showman whose instincts are to seek attention and dominate the discussion. But this time around, Trump’s ubiquity is also a deliberate strategy, several of his aides and allies told me. Part of the point is to send a message to the American people that their self-declared ‘favorite’ president is getting things done… [T]he White House’s flood of orders and news is also designed to disorient already despairing Democratic foes, leaving them so battered that they won’t be able to mount a cohesive opposition. Trump’s actions in his first week have been a mix of signal and noise, of distraction and seriousness.”

[T]he White House has reveled in Trump’s bombastic, over-the-top style, believing that his message is breaking through. Immigration officers have conducted raids in Chicago; Newark, New Jersey; and other cities. A dozen Guatemalan men in shackles were boarded onto a military aircraft in El Paso, Texas, for the deportation flight to their native country, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Trump threatened tariffs on Colombia in a tiff, now seemingly resolved, over deportation flights. His advisers have also aimed to keep the media off-balance. The White House press office has not sent out a daily schedule to reporters, and has given little notice for Trump’s events…

The speed and volume of Trump’s orders so far seem to be scrambling the left. Millions of protesters marched in cities across the nation on January 21, 2017. Democratic civic groups exploded in popularity, liberals organized voter-registration drives, and cable-TV ratings and newspaper subscriptions soared. Late night-comics made Trump their top punch line. Trump’s hastily written travel ban on Muslim-majority countries went into effect seven days into his term in 2017, sending lawyers and even ordinary citizens sprinting to airports to assist those who were suddenly subject to detainment. That moment, in many ways, was the early high-water mark of the resistance and set a template for the Democrats’ defiance going forward.

Yesterday marked the first week of Trump’s second term. No large-scale protests have taken place. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries argued during last week’s caucus meeting that Democrats cannot chase every outrage, because the Trump administration will “flood the zone” with maddening changes, one person in the room told me. In a Saturday Night Live sketch this past weekend, the show’s Trump character shut down a performance based on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, which became a liberal totem a decade ago. The mood among Democrats, at least in some quarters, feels more like resignation than resistance.

So far, the action on the left has been centered more in the courtrooms than in the streets. Deirdre Schifeling, the chief political and advocacy officer of the American Civil Liberties Union, told me that the organization has filed lawsuits to contest a variety of Trump’s immigration orders and has worked to train volunteers in dozens of states to help local officials in responding to the administration’s plans.

“We’re in a different moment. People are not as surprised as the first time. But I would not mistake that for a lack of willingness to fight,” Schifeling said. “It seems like this first week is one giant test balloon— seeing what will stick, seeing what they can get away with. It’s incumbent on all of us to stay calm and firmly push back on them. Don’t give them an inch.”

Instead, we see Senate Democrats— conservatives  like Jeanne Shaheen (NH) and “it’s-all-about-ME” values-free shitbags like John Fetterman (PA)— voting with the Republicans  to confirm virtually all of Trump’s odious cabinet nominees. And in the House, the corporately-financed New Dems and the reactionary Blue Dogs appear to want to give Trump as much of a free pass as they can, voting, shamelessly, for almost everything the Republicans put up for a vote.

John Fetterman rushing to vote to confirm Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary