We warned the voters that putting Trump back in power was dangerous and would create an existential threat to our democracy. We had good reason to assert this. He attempted a coup (www.cato.org/...) by various methods including inciting an insurrection in order to fraudulently alter who won the electoral college (apnews.com/… )  He had  threatened to weaponize the DOJ (www.npr.org/...) . An external event, meaning not caused by an act of the United States government,  ( whether caused by a leak in a Wuhan lab or if it had a natural cause www.bbc.com/… )   created an uncomfortable life for people all over the globe (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...) . That was the pandemic. Almost all economists agree that the the pandemic was the primary cause of inflation (www.poynter.org/… )  by damaging supply chains which reduced supply while demand remained unchanged.

The primary causes, they say, were supply chain disruptions from the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

While some blame the American Rescue Plan as a cause for a relatively small part of inflation, this is a mistake. We lost ten million jobs in 2020 (www.cnbc.com/… ) . The unemployment rate in January of 2021 was 6.3% (www.bls.gov/....). We were losing more than 3,000 Americans a day to COVID in January 0f 2021. (www.kff.org/....).  Therefore, we needed the American Rescue Plan because it kept Americans financially afloat during the worst of the pandemic. Furthermore, if one wants to criticize a $2Trillion spending bill, then the American Tax Cut and Jobs Act is the one, not the American Rescue Plan because we needed the American Rescue Plan at the time and we didn’t need The American Tax Cut and Jobs Act in 2017. We didn’t need the tax cut for the wealthy because Donald Trump had just INHERITED a record 75 months of job growth from President Obama (money.cnn.com/...) in 2017. 

People all over the world experienced pandemic driven inflation. Within 16 months of President Biden taking office, the rate of pandemic driven inflation began to consistently fall, earlier than any other G7 nation. By July of 2023, the harmonized rate of inflation and core inflation were lower in the United States than in any other G7 nation (www.americanprogress.org/...). 

 Compared with advanced European economies, the United States has the lowest harmonized headline inflation rate—a comparable measure of inflation. (see Figure 1) In fact, compared with every other G7 economy, the United States has not just the lowest headline inflation but also the lowest core inflation—inflation that excludes volatile energy and food prices. Core inflation is the preferred measure of central banks.

Again, as early as July in 2023, Business Insider pointed out  (www.businessinsider.com/...) 

.

Compared to the G7 countries, an informal group of industrialized democracies, the US has the highest gross domestic product growth over the last three years while also seeing inflation come down faster than most of those other wealthy countries.

.

Since July of 2023, the rate of inflation has been below 3 percent (www.google.com/...) in the United States : 

.

According to recent data, the US inflation rate has been below 3% since July 2023, showing a downward trend on a graph

.

The rate of inflation has been lower here than in most other G7 nations for most of the period beginning from 2021 to today. Donald Trump’s policies of across the board tariffs (www.pbs.org/...) and mass deportations ( www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/… )  are almost certain to increase inflation. Enduring the pandemic and pandemic driven inflation, therefore, were not rational reasons to return Donald Trump to the White House. Furthermore, Democrats are accustomed to fixing bad Republican economies, but we can’t say the same if Republicans destroy our democracy. Given Trump’s attempt at a coup by various methods including inciting an armed insurrection and promises to weaponize the Department of Justice, this can’t be written off as overwrought, hysteria. Furthermore, we had plenty of evidence that Republicans in Congress were invertebrates and would not resist Trump’s efforts to consolidate power. Other Republicans with power told themselves that the ends justify the means, people who knew better.

By bowing down to Donald Trump regardless of what he has done or wants to do, they have eliminated the system of checks and balances that the Framers believed that they had guaranteed us. Moreover, as we grew, we added independent agencies within the executive branch to add in additional accountability. Trump’s promise to weaponize DOJ is a dagger pointed at the throat of our democracy. If all citizens are not equal under the law, then we don’t have a democracy. If the president can tell the attorney general, the head of the Department of Justice, who to investigate and who to prosecute and who not to investigate or prosecute, then the Department of Justice is no longer an agency that executes and enforces the law. Instead it becomes a political tool to help friends and to hurt political opponents. That’s an intolerable situation.

Donald Trump has created a Constitutional crisis (www.nytimes.com/...).

.

It can also be obvious, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.

“We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now,” he said on Friday. “There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen anything like this.”

He ticked off examples of what he called President Trump’s lawless conduct: revoking birthright citizenship, freezing federal spending, shutting down an agency, removing leaders of other agencies, firing government employees subject to civil service protections and threatening to deport people based on their political views. The distinctive feature of the current situation, several legal scholars said, is its chaotic flood of activity that collectively amounts to a radically new conception of presidential power. The distinctive feature of the current situation, several legal scholars said, is its chaotic flood of activity that collectively amounts to a radically new conception of presidential power.

.

Donald Trump has far exceeded his constitutional authority through executive orders (www.nbcnews.com/… ).

.

The orders, which Trump critics say greatly exceed his constitutional authority, range from tariffs on Mexico, China and Canada, to pauses on foreign aid and crackdowns on illegal immigration to bans on transgender people serving in the military and the use of federal funds for gender-affirming medical care for minors.

NBC News has catalogued Trump’s executive orders in the table below.

.

In one executive order, Donald Trump tried to end birthright citizenship (constitution.congress.gov/… ) despite the fact that the 14th Amendment clearly asserts it. 

.

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

He doesn’t have the legal or Constitutional authority (www.google.com/… ) to create DOGE. 

.

.

While he located it within the Department of Treasury, that doesn’t eliminate the problem here. The president doesn’t have the unilateral authority to create a new cabinet department. Congress has that power. If he were allowed to place it within another cabinet department already created, then the requirement that Congress create new cabinets is obfuscated or eliminated. 

.

The administration has tried to imbue DOGE with the power to cut spending. However, this would mean that this executive branch would be granted the power of the purse instead of Congress  (constitution.congress.gov/...).

.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 1:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; . . .

In its modern understanding, the Spending Clause of the U.S. Constitution ranks among Congress’s most important powers. The Clause appears first in Article I, Section 8’s list of enumerated legislative powers. It states in relevant part that Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.¹ The Court has construed the Spending Clause as legislative authority for federal programs as varied and consequential as Social Security,² Medicaid,³ and federal education programs.⁴ The spending power also underlies laws regulating local land-use decisions and the treatment of persons institutionalized by states,⁵ as well as statutes prohibiting discrimination on certain protected grounds.⁶

.

Moreover, what DOGE labels as “corruption” and “fraud” aren’t. Those are crimes. They have simply found different spending priorities than those of President Leon Musky and Vice President Bigoted Felon.

.

“I love to bring the receipts,” Leavitt said

“Nothing they have identified is, to my knowledge, evidence of ‘fraud’ or ‘corruption’. Fraud and corruption are crimes,” said Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law at George Washington University. “This administration simply has different spending priorities than the last administration. But to label all of it as fraud or corruption is extremely misleading.” Trump has torn down governmental fraud-finding tools. He fired more than a dozen inspectors general whose job was to ferret out fraud and inefficiencies. He paused the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits businesses from taking bribes from foreign officials.

.

The example she gave proved that she is intentionally lying to the American public. She knows that DEI investment isn’t criminal and that she simply disagrees with investing public funds this way and she knows that calling it fraud or corruption or abuse implies that it is illegal and she knows that it’s not. She’s a dishonest hack. Donald Trump wanted a blond woman who might shallowly present well on television, but the most important requirement was that she be willing to egregiously lie, to say things that they knew were untrue. Nobody with a working moral compass would take the job because he is the most prolific liar to have ever occupied the White House (en.wikipedia.org/… ) ,  having even lied about the pandemic by minimizing it (www.npr.org/… )

Donald Trump asserted that he who saves his country violates no law (thehill.com/… ),  thereby justifying any action he wants to take in order to do what he wants which he will claim is saving the country in his view. 

.

Neither President Leon Musk nor Vice President Trump have any actual interest in making the government more efficient (abcnews.go.com/...). 

.

More legal pushback will unfold amid Trump's unprecedented purge of the executive workforce and reshaping of what Congress set up as independent agencies, the dismantling of which is largely being carried out by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.

Trump quickly fired 17 independent watchdogs and the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Longtime Democratic Federal Election Commissioner Ellen Weintraub said Trump sent a letter removing her from the commission. His administration has directed all federal DEI staff be put on leave. The Justice Department fired more than a dozen of prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases. 

.

Now, he adds to the crises he has already created by asserting authority over traditionally independent agencies within the executive branch (www.npr.org/...)  in order to strengthen our system of checks and balances and to hold those within the executive branch accountable. They are an important part of our democracy. Let’s consider a few examples of these independent agencies.

The FEC is the Federal Election Commission. This is the regulatory body that oversees our federal elections. Would we want the president to control the FEC? Is it not immediately obvious why that is destructive to our democracy? The FEC could make rulings that in favor of the incumbent or the incumbent president’s party’s nominee for president and tilt the election in favor of either the incumbent president if he is running again or the incumbent party’s nominee for president if he’s not running for re-election. The Federal Trade Commission? We don’t want the president to be motivated by pecuniary motivations or for companies to benefit from their association with the incumbent president. Again, it’s clear why we want the FTC to be independent.  The SEC could be ordered to not enforce consequences on the president’s corporate allies for violating the rules of the SEC or ordered to enforce consequences on the president’s corporate opponents when that might not otherwise have happened. The president could have corporate donors who are motivated to donate to him because of these types of favors and the president could be motivated to give these types of favors in exchange for corporate donations. There are already good grounds for suspicion of the motives of corporations for their donations and the president’s actions, but this would exacerbate this by many orders of magnitude.

A particularly concerning agency is the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission because this challenges the existence of a free press. A free press is an essential to democracy ( www.aclu.org/.… ) because without it, then it is virtually impossible for voters to hold elected government accountable. 

.

“The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.”

—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971)

The freedom of the press, protected by the First Amendment, is critical to a democracy in which the government is accountable to the people. A free media functions as a watchdog that can investigate and report on government wrongdoing. It is also a vibrant marketplace of ideas, a vehicle for ordinary citizens to express themselves and gain exposure to a wide range of information and opinions.

.

If voters aren’t aware of what their elected leaders are doing because of adversarial press, then voters won’t know whether to vote to remove them from office. He has referred to the press as the enemy of the people. He’s long been exceptionally hostile (www.nbcnews.com/… ) to any media outlet he perceives as an opponent, even threatening to remove the broadcast license of media outlets. 

.

In the three weeks since he returned to the White House, President Donald Trump and his administration have moved beyond his usual anti-news media rhetoric to take a variety of actions that have limited some outlets’ access while hitting others with lawsuits and directives that critics say are naked attempts to bend news coverage to his will.

“I don’t know if Trump himself has a ‘game plan’ per se, but it is clear that the overall picture is of an Administration that disdains a free press,” Rebecca Hamilton, a law professor at American University, said in an email. “Their view — and this is evident from Trump’s rhetoric, his prior lawsuits, the Pentagon office space memo, and the FCC investigations — is that any media outlets that don’t align themselves with Trump’s agenda are the enemy. This reflects a fundamental disrespect for the principles underlying a democratic commitment to a free press.”

.

Even Politico recognizes that it is an illegal power grab that previous presidents avoided (www.politico.com/...)

.

.

The Hill is less clear and less honest (thehill.com/… )

.

The executive action is expected to trigger a legal battle, as Congress established that the agencies affected by the order would operate with some independence from the White House.

The order is the latest in a series of controversial moves by Trump to try to consolidate power within the executive branch and root out what his advisers see as unelected bureaucrats who could hinder his agenda. The president has in his first few weeks in office fired several inspectors general who provided oversight at various government agencies, and ousted agency heads appointed by the previous administration.

.

.

In an article the New York Times (www.nytimes.com/… ) entitled, “Trump Issues Order to Expand His Power Over Agencies Congress Made Independent” they note that Donald Trump’s recent actions are 

“part of a broader bid to centralize power of a president’s power over the government”. They go on point out that Mr. Trump has fired watchdogs before their Congress mandated terms are over. They continue with these unsettling state of affairs: 

Those agencies include the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the National Labor Relations Board. Still, the order applies only partly to one particularly powerful agency, the Federal Reserve, covering issues related to its supervision and regulation of Wall Street,

The order declared that the White House’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell T. Vought, can withhold funding for any projects or initiatives that conflict with Mr. Trump’s policies and priorities. Specifically, it said, Mr. Vought will have the power to “adjust such agencies’ apportionments by activity, function, project, or object, as necessary and appropriate, to advance the president’s policies and priorities,” including by prohibiting them from expending funds on matters Mr. Trump does not like.

That power for Mr. Vought to restrict agencies’ ability to spend funds that Congress has appropriated for them to use, the order says, is limited: He can do that only “so long as such restrictions are consistent with law.” But another section of the order says the agencies must accept the views of Mr. Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi on what the law means.

.

Donald Trump is asserting (and the Senate agreed with this when it confirmed Vought who said that he would do this) that he has the power to determine how the federal government spends money, that he can ignore that which Congress has enacted and turned into law, can determine who is and who is not a citizen despite the explicit language of the 14th Amendment and its consistent interpretation from conservatives and progressives alike, that he can create new cabinet departments so long as he puts it within an already existing agency, and that if he acts in a way that he deems “saves his country”, then he cannot be guilty of violating the law. He has all but taken a copy of the US Constitution and burned it up and he has done all this in front of Republicans in Congress and they have applauded him as he has done it. This is only possible because the major political party that called themselves the party of the rule of law has made it possible. Those Republicans with political power who have yet to abandon Donald Trump never will because they are invertebrates with a broken moral compass and are only motivated by temporary self-interest. 

The lines are drawn. We have Donald Trump and the fascist Republican Party and we have the Pro Democracy Movement which of necessity must back the only organization that can put forward a candidate who can win 75 million votes and that can take back control of the House of Representatives in 2026. There are too many Democrats in Congress who are not as clear and aggressive and bold as they should be in the light of Trump’s fascist actions. The short video Brian Tyler Cohen posted on You Tube showing Representative Jasmine Crockett demonstrates what we need to see from every Democrat in Congress. Some Senate Democrats have mistakenly adopted the strategy of only voting against confirming the worst of Trump’s nominees. In the past, there was an argument for it with previous Republican presidents. Donald Trump has shown himself to be an outright fascist. He had already made this clear by his attempt at a coup by various methods including inciting an armed insurrection to fraudulently alter who won the electoral college vote. He made this even more clear by threatening to weaponize the DOJ, by threatening to revoke the broadcast licenses of media outlets he disliked, by using the language of Hitler and more. He was already undeniably ineligible for the office based upon the Constitution. All of this was sufficient to tell them that this is not politics as normal; instead, they must demonstrate to voters that Donald Trump is the fascist he is by responding to him the same way that they would with any other fascist. If they act like this is politics as normal, just a bit more bruising, then low information voters aren’t going to understand the gravity of the situation we are facing. By going along with Trump, you are lying to voters. 

We should call for them to loudly, clearly, and often denounce Trump’s fascist acts and do it on various media. Donald Trump’s month in office has made it clear to every democrat in Congress that he is intent on implementing his fascist agenda. There are no more excuses. We should call for them to speak out against this and to do what they can to slow down this fascist agenda. Constructive criticism is designed to help and is appropriate here. What’s not helpful is generally blasting the Democratic Party and President Biden and Vice President Harris. The only political party that can slow down Trump’s fascist agenda and retake control of the House of Representatives is the Democratic Party. By retaking the House we can limit the harm Trump can do. Until then, they only have a narrow majority in the House of Representatives and if we are united, then we can likely stop damaging legislation if they lose a handful of House Republican votes. Damaging the brand of the Democratic Party by dragging it only makes it harder for us to stop Trump’s agenda. 

President Biden and Vice President Harris are no longer in office. President Biden’s AG nomination, Merrick Garland, was clearly his worst mistake. Merrick Garland is second only to McCarthy and McConnell in culpability for our current situation. However, if President Biden had fired him for not prosecuting Donald Trump, then he would have become what we are fighting against. DOJ must be independent. If the president tells the AG who to investigate and prosecute and who not to, then the president isn’t equal under the law and the DOJ isn’t an equal arbiter of justice. Instead, the DOJ becomes an ally of the president’s friends and an enemy of the president’s opponents. Therefore, firing Merrick Garland while justified had enormous drawbacks. I will leave you to weigh those in your mind only saying that it’s not at all obvious what the right choice is there.

Beyond Merrick Garland, President Biden and Vice President Harris didn’t stop the fascist from taking power. How? By magic? Donald Trump won as voters all over the world in developed democracies lashed out at governing parties because they had to endure the pandemic and pandemic driven inflation. The Financial Times Reported that every governing party in every developed democracy that had an election lost voter share and that this had never happened before. Was it likely that this would be the sole exception when only 40% of voters have so much as a bachelor’s degree? President Biden should have announced immediately after his election that he was not going to run again. Maybe, but there are a lot of very strong arguments against claiming this to be certain. Moreover, you make decisions with the information you have at the time. 

President Biden had just defeated Donald Trump and Donald Trump had just attempted a coup and incited an armed insurrection. He certainly thought Donald Trump was done politically and if not, that he would defeat him again. Being an incumbent normally is an advantage. He didn’t know how long pandemic driven inflation would last. Being a lame duck president would have limited what he could have gotten passed by Congress with the narrow majorities the Democratic Party had. That would have made it more difficult for any other democrat to win. There was no one figure that the Democratic Party had united behind other than the president according to polling. Until about a month before she entered the race, she had a plurality of support as the nominee, not a majority. Leapfrogging her, the sitting vice president who happened to be a Black woman would have ended the Democratic Party. Furthermore, voters were here and all over the world punishing incumbents. So she would have still been the incumbent and would have been the target of angry voters, voters angry because it rained. Therefore, it’s far from clear that we would have won if President Biden had made himself a lame duck immediately after getting elected. Moreover, you’re not only speculating, your speculation isn’t helping. 

Whether you wish we had multiple parties which would likely enable Republicans to win for fifty years or not, the Democratic Party is the only organization that can stop bad legislation House Democrats can do that now by stopping bad legislation from passing if enough House Republicans defect. Senate Democrats can filibuster bad legislation if Senate Republicans don’t end the filibuster  and can’t use budget reconciliation. If we win back the House in the 2026 midterms, then we can prevent bad legislation from passing and we can conduct genuine oversight.  If you are in a swing congressional district that Biden won and you have a Republican representing you in Congress, you have an opportunity to press them to not support Trump’s fascism. 

The enemy is Donald Trump and his Republican Party. Sitting around in a circular firing squad won’t help us stop them.  The vast majority of our criticism should be aimed at Donald Trump and his Republican Party. He is the fascist and they’re enabling his fascism. Constructive criticism of specific democrats for specific reasons with the goal of helping to make things better is helpful. If you’re spending more time criticizing specific democrats or the Democratic Party than Donald Trump and his Republican Party, you’ve lost the plot, mate.