The wait is over. Donald Trump is back with his well-stocked bag of Project 2025 treats for his followers.
His Day One plus declarations (referred to in a White House release as “historic actions to kick off America’s Golden Age”) are nicely summarized in the Washington Post and are the subject of much media attention over the past ten days.
- He has sent the military to the southern border, and used military planes to fly undocumented immigrants (not only criminals ones) to their “home” countries.
- Also, as promised, President Trump issued edicts and orders to expand fossil fuel energy production, inhibit electric car production, and stop production of those dangerous windmills.
- He withdrew us from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization.
- President Trump made negative comments about both NATO and Ukraine’s war while cozying up to Saudi Arabia, where he wants to build a new golf course and hotel.
- Trump has fired without cause or transferred more than a dozen Executive Branch officials and has cut funding to agencies he doesn’t like, such as the National Institutes of Health.
- Characteristically, Trump went to California, spoke of getting rid of FEMA, and threatened to withhold federal aid to restore the fire damages unless California changes it election laws to suit him.
All this and more will be cussed and discussed in coming weeks. Trump’s actions are marked by his fundamental distrust of government (or any authority that could thwart him) and by his deep need to punish those who disagree with him. Many of his changes in government policy and practice will destroy, not reform, the federal agencies that all Americans rely upon for their health and safety.
We should also note other recent actions of Trump, including his new support for cryptocurrency and for further tax cuts, which aid the wealthy billionaires seated prominently at his inauguration.
For me, however, the most dangerous decisions affecting American democracy were those that demonstrated President Trump’s clear disregard for “law and order,” formally a Republican watchword. Most notable was his use of presidential power to pardon 1500 of the men and women who had been convicted and sentenced for their role in the January 6, 2021 invasion of the U.S. Capitol, trying to prevent Congress from formalizing the election of Biden as winner of the 2020 election.
Trump fomented that attack in a speech just prior to their march in which he sent the rioters, many armed, to the Capitol urging them to “fight like Hell” to save their country. Trump has endlessly repeated his lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. Trump’s behavior on January 6, 2021 was widely criticized, even by some leading Republicans.
As President Biden’s popularity declined in the face of growing inflation, the immigration issue, and Biden’s inability to rally support for his bi-partisan economic successes, Trump’s lies about the 2020 election faded in the public mind.
By election time in 2024, many Americans had forgotten the seriousness of the January 6th attack. Trump, always the clever demagogue, referred to those rioters sent to jail as “hostages.” Republicans who had criticized Trump spun on their heels to support him. They regretted Trump pardoning those directly responsible for “violence against police” at the Capitol that day — 174 were injured, four died — but ignored the broader issue.
At least one rioter, Pamela Hemphill, who served time in jail, understood that the issue was not only violence against police, but the lies and lawlessness on January 6th. In a Facebook post she explained her refusal to accept Trump’s pardon:
I pleaded guilty because I was guilty A lot of people told me to take the pardon….but this has to do with my amends….They are trying to rewrite history [saying] January 6 was not an insurrection, and I don’t want to be a part of that. It was an insurrection. It was a riot. DOJ was not weaponized by me. In fact, I had a wonderful judge and I am lucky I didn’t get more time, but I don’t want no pardon.
Trump’s action in pardoning real law breakers while consistently referring to law-abiding immigrants as criminals, and his firing of federal employees last week without giving them the notice required by law, show his contempt for the rule of law, something our founders worked hard to protect in our Constitution.
This, more than anything else Trump has done since his Inauguration, is a giant step toward dictatorship.
I am confident future historians will agree.
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