Less than three weeks into the new Trump administration, and America is fast becoming unrecognizable.
We are in a tariff war of our own making with Canada and Mexico, two of our dearest allies. The vice president is posting on social media that the administration made Mexico back down and send 10,000 troops to the border — which then-President Joe Biden negotiated back in 2023. That announcement — that Mexico would continue to keep troops on its border, though it had no intention of removing them — made President Donald Trump back off — for now — on tariffs.
Credit: handout
Credit: handout
But the Monday morning stock market drop might have had more to do with making Trump sober up and pull back from his abuse of our allies and friends.
Our new secretary of State, Marco Rubio, publicly threatened to retake the Panama Canal. Rubio also declared that he is now head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was shut down under murky and likely illegal circumstances over the weekend. Employees and members of Congress were locked out on Monday morning. Employees were told to work from home.
Federal agents have been fired from the FBI because they worked on the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection investigation. The Social Security Administration database has been breached by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency committee.
Despite the sudden and open chaos, Congress has been on break since the inauguration on Jan. 20. And in that time, Trump and Musk have been wreaking havoc on federal agencies and our allies. Congressional Democrats showed up at USAID to protest on Monday afternoon, and Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries released a 10-point action plan to fight the Trump administration. But none of this has slowed Trump or Musk in their open and hostile purge of government employees.
Worse than that, if you could imagine, Trump used the tragedy of a midair collision between a commercial passenger plane and a Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport to advance his unhinged theories about diversity, equity and inclusion. Sixty-seven people, including the three members of our military aboard the helicopter, died, and, instead of consoling the nation and the families of those who died, he continued his divisive, inflammatory rhetoric. Never mind that he and Musk, apparently working as copresident, ordered cutbacks to the Federal Aviation Administration and air traffic controller budgets.
Instead of reading in our history books about fascism and authoritarianism and how they creep up on democracies, we are watching it unfold in real-time.
All the while, Congress is mute and neutered except for a few voices. Musk and Trump have raided the Justice Department. They are working on shuttering the Department of Education. Career civil servants are being fired without authorization by Congress.
Many Americans watching this play out feel helpless and ill-prepared for such a frontal assault from within our government — worse, from our president.
Our Founding Fathers established a system of checks and balances for a reason. They wanted no king, no monarchy. They wanted to keep the “executive” from becoming too powerful and too remote from the people. That is why the Constitution includes an impeachment and removal clause — to check the executive should he engage in illegal, immoral or unconstitutional actions.
America was not built for dictators or authoritarians; we overthrew a tyrannical king in 1776. We established the freest form of government ever seen on the face of the earth. For 249 years, it has been safe and secure — until 1,500 people rioted at and inside the U.S. Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes because a sore loser claimed a free and fair election was rigged. Four years later, that sore loser somehow won again, and in one of his first acts in office, pardoned those insurrectionists who had sacked the Capitol on his behalf.
With a passive Congress, where do we go? Most Republicans, of course, are in lockstep with their dear leader. But Democrats should be a very vocal, very angry and very active minority. They need to use every parliamentary tool at their disposal. Filibuster. Put holds on nominations in the Senate, as Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii has vowed to do. Refuse to vote in the House. Democrats and sane Republicans concerned about the constitutional order and our very democracy must use every constitutional power granted them under Article I. Now.
Otherwise, a rogue executive can do whatever he likes by hiring extrajudicial hitmen and ruin our republic in less than 30 days. It took Hitler fewer than 60.
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