“A republic, if you can keep it”
-Benjamin Franklin
The doomsayers were right about Donald Trump, aided and abetted by a feckless GOP Trump’s second presidential term has already eclipsed the malfeasance of his first. Trump’s bid to enrich himself and entrench his power is accelerating the erosion of America’s core values and threatening the Republic.
Trump is making people poorer, tearing the social fabric, shutting down democratic institutions, eradicating political norms, and wreaking environmental ruin. After just 100 days in office, Trump earned the ignoble distinction of being the most unpopular president in US history, and his unpopularity continues to grow. President Biden’s former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called Trump’s first 6 months in office an “unadulterated disaster,” saying, “it’s not just about the policy. It’s that President Trump and his team have gone at the core American advantages in the world and systematically tried to dismantle them.”
Andrew Coyne tried to explain the depth of the disaster, writing “[this is] a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster…The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do – to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world – is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero.”
The globe is awash with a maelstrom of interconnected social, economic, and biophysical crises often referred to as the polycrisis. Trump is deliberately exacerbating these crises while systematically whittling away at the federal government’s capacity to respond. He is eroding public support for bipartisan solutions, driving the best and brightest out of the government, while undermining the capabilities of the next generation by dismantling the public education system and attacking American universities.
Trump’s disregard for human rights and legitimization of racism, sexism, and xenophobia is consistent with the patriarchal, white fraternity that is at the core of the MAGA brand. Trump manufactures chaos and then blames others for the chaos he creates. While this may seem like ineptitude, there is a method to Trump’s madness. His firehose of malfeasance is a distraction. His spending cuts, removal of oversight, suppression of opposition, and weaponization of the law are all aimed at weakening impediments to his agenda.
Trump uses disinformation to control the public narrative. He foments division as a political strategy to prevent consensus and splinter opposition. He is dismantling institutions, breaking down order, fostering tribalism, and dividing people because it serves his interests. He wants the government to be inefficient and unrepresentative. Dysfunction is not a byproduct of his agenda: it is a means to an end.
Mass firings
“U.S. President Donald Trump is pushing for more control over everything the federal government and its agencies do, and a string of firings will test how far he might be able to take his quest.”
–Trevor Hunnicutt and Jeff Mason
Trump is firing those who do not do his bidding and parrot his narrative. The Trump administration has also indiscriminately laid off hundreds of thousands of federal civil service employees.* As the ex-CDC director explained in a Senate hearing, RFK Jr., the current head of the CDC, called for firings without cause. The Trump administration has purged career officials throughout government, divesting the civil service of many of its most capable employees while appointing unqualified loyalists in their place.
Trump’s weakening of the systems of checks and balances began shortly after moving into the White House, when he fired 17 inspectors general from various agencies across a wide range of government departments. Trump has also moved to close several agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
These firings are a manifestation of Trump’s war against all those who tell unflattering truths. That is because he knows that truth is a threat to his deceptive narrative. To this end, Trump fired dozens of federal prosecutors who were involved in investigating or prosecuting him, and he eliminated federal support for scientific research that keeps Americans safe.
Trump dismisses information he does not like and fires government employees who produce reports that reflect poorly on his administration. This includes people like Erika McEntarfer, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) succinctly explained, Trump is “firing federal workers over beliefs he doesn’t like.” He is using all the instruments at his disposal, including the justice department and the FCC, to go after anyone who dares speak the truth. He is silencing voices who do not fall in line with his deceitful version of reality. This includes politicians, business leaders, media organizations, and universities. He reinforces his authoritarian fearmongering by sending troops into democratic cities led by people of color (Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, Memphis, and New Orleans).
The slashing services endgame
“[The Trump administration has] dismantled social safety net programmes and used the savings to finance regressive tax cuts that favour corporations and high-income Americans.”
– The Lancet
Although DOGE cuts are being sold as initiatives that reduce spending and increase efficiency, the national debt is spiking, and the burden is being shifted to taxpayers. As explained by Brooking, these cuts ignore the government’s mission, but there is something far more foul afoot.
The Trump administration is cutting funding to services Americans depend on. Even though the country is facing a health care crisis, Trump is eating away at HHS (CDC) and reducing spending for Medicare and Medicaid. He is eradicating food aid and housing support as Americans face surging food insecurity and homelessness. Trump is also dismantling public education while slashing funding to critical federal agencies (EPA, NIH, NOAA, and the postal service) as well as funding for public media, museums, and libraries.
Contrary to the stated rationale, the goal is not to increase efficiency or even to get rid of DEI hirings. As Yale University’s Timothy D. Snyder wrote in an article titled The Logic of Destruction, “the logic of their firing is to make the whole government fail.”
These service cuts benefit billionaires at the expense of working people. Bernie Sanders elaborated on Trump’s endgame in a speech he delivered on the floor of the Senate, saying they are destroying virtually every federal program that working people depend on, “so they can get huge tax breaks for the rich and eventually make government so inefficient that they will have the ability, as large corporations, to come in and privatize everything.”
Reduced government spending enriches those at the top while impoverishing everyone else. Cuts are about usurping power and transferring the wealth of working people to the billionaire class. Trump wants to diminish the well-being of Americans to keep the masses in a state of economic insecurity. This is an effective way of diverting attention away from his agenda, and it gives him an opening to argue that difficult times require the “strong leadership” that he claims to provide.
“The best people in American federal law enforcement, national security, and national intelligence are being fired,” Snyder wrote, adding, “In the logic of destruction, there is no need to rebuild afterwards. In this chaos, the oligarchs will tell us that there is no choice but to have a strong man in charge”.
Criminality, lawfare, and the weaponization of the DOJ
“[T]he aim is lawlessness: to get the police and the patriots out of the way.”
-Timothy D. Snyder
Trump has succeeded in normalizing lawbreaking for a large swath of Americans. He convinced them to overlook the criminality that defines his business activities and his presidencies. As a convicted felon and serial fraud artist who has been found guilty of sexual abuse, Trump has a long rap sheet. Trump’s career in real estate started with a federal discrimination lawsuit in 1973. The Trump University “sham” ran from 2005 to 2010. In 2016, Trump broke campaign finance laws by paying hush money to cover up an affair with a porn star. In 2020, he led a coup attempt, and in 2021, a violent insurrection for which he was indicted. By the end of his first term, Trump had 9 major cases pending. He was subsequently charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice over his refusal to return classified documents, and he was also indicted in Georgia for his attempt to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. In 2023, a judge ruled that Trump’s company had been committing fraud for years.
Trump uses the powers of the presidency to serve his political, financial, and legal interests. He pardoned nine Republican congressmen convicted of financial fraud while lauding their crimes as acts of loyalty. He pardoned Jan. 6 rioters, including those who assaulted police. He hailed violence against police officers as a show of strength and bravery. He even gave a Justice Department job to a Jan 6 rioter who threatened police.
Trump’s Justice Department closed a corruption probe into MAGA border czar, Tom Homan, and they also dropped corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. They moved convicted pedophile and serial child sex trafficker Ghislain Maxwell from a maximum-security prison to a minimum-security prison in what many are calling a quid pro quo for whitewashing Trump’s association with convicted pedophile, the late Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump is weaponizing the Department of Justice, and he is firing people who were involved in investigating or prosecuting him. Trump’s DOJ is allegedly investigating former Special Counsel Jack Smith. More recently, Trump forced the resignation of Eastern District of Virginia U.S. attorney Erik Siebert because he had insufficient evidence to charge New York Attorney General Letitia James with mortgage fraud. Trump has used the same mortgage fraud pretext to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Susan Monarez, and regulator Robert Primus. In a Truth Social post in September, Trump brazenly urged his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to go after his political rivals (Sen. Adam Schiff, former FBI Director James Comey, and New York Attorney General Letitia James). A few days later, Comey was indicted even though prosecutors issued a memo saying there was no probable cause to indict him.
Trump manipulates the law to turn accountability on its head and create a culture of loyalty. Everything is reversed in this world. Smart laws, like commonsense gun regulations, are disregarded, while women’s access to reproductive health care has been criminalized. This is upside-down accountability, where everything is backward, down is up, and up is down. The guilty are innocent and the innocent are guilty. This is the kind of rhetorical double-speak Trump uses when he blames others for his own misdeeds.
Trump supporters celebrate this immoral lawlessness. As Hussein Hallak wrote, “Crime is no longer defined by actions, only by allegiance. To them, stomping on a police officer’s head isn’t brutality if the boot belongs to their tribe. Lawlessness, to them, is power, rebellion, identity. This embrace of criminality is strategic. Trump knows his supporters crave permission to break the system rather than fix it. Their grievance has been expertly twisted into justification for violence. Under Trump, power is morality. Loyalty is truth.”
Trump has redefined justice in the eyes of his supporters. The rule of law is being replaced by the idea that might makes right. There is no middle ground, no room for rational debate. “Trump’s followers will not rediscover decency or regret their embrace of chaos,” Hallak cautions, adding, “They’ve shown you clearly who they are. Believe them.”
Trump is flouting the law. He has disregarded multiple statutes, court rulings, and he is openly challenging the authority of the courts. Trump has normalized criminality, weaponized lawlessness, and he is intimidating the judiciary. As Bernie Sanders explained, “[Trump’s] view is that if you don’t like a decision that a judge renders, you get rid of that judge. You try to impeach that judge. You intimidate judges so that you get the decisions that you want.”
Constitutional democracy under attack
“We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”
–General Mark Milley
Trump is making a mockery out of the judiciary as he flouts both the rule of law and the Constitution. Al Gore said, “Our constitution, written by our founders, is intended to protect us against a threat identical to Donald Trump.” The separation of government into three coequal branches was designed to prevent the concentration of power.
Although Congress has jurisdiction over spending, they have abdicated this responsibility by deferring to the President. Trump is usurping the powers of Congress by illegally and unconstitutionally withholding funds that Congress has appropriated. He bypassed Congressional approval to cancel nearly $5 billion in previously approved foreign aid including funding for the State Department and USAID. The Senate Appropriations Committee Chair, Republican Susan Collins, called the move “unlawful,” a sentiment echoed by Senior Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer. Jeanne Shaheen, who oversees the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called these efforts “dangerous”.
Trump has subverted the Constitution by illegitimately pushing unfit cabinet nominees through on recess appointments without the advice and consent of the Senate. Trump is doing the same thing with top federal prosecutors in states across the country, sidestepping or overriding Senate confirmation and judicial appointments processes as required by federal law. Trump failed to notify Congress 30 days before firing Inspector Generals as mandated by federal legislation. He has also decimated agencies that can only be changed or reformed by Congress. As reported by Politico, Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law school professor, called the moves “a perversion of what the Constitution seems to require.”
The free speech that is guaranteed by the First Amendment is in Trump’s crosshairs. As reviewed by the New York Times, the Supreme Court has allowed bully-pulpit persuasion by the president but not the kind of coercion and threats that are alleged to have prompted the cancellation or suspension of TV programs that satirize Trump (The Late Show with Steven Colbert and the Jimmy Kimmel show).
The Trump administration appears to have removed sections of the Constitution that impede its activities. In August 2025, portions of Article 1, Section 8, as well as the entirety of sections 9 and 10, were removed from the text of the Constitution on the Library of Congress website.
Trump once threatened to suspend the Constitution. He lauds authoritarian leaders, and he is systematically removing democratic safeguards, rigging the electoral system through gerrymandering and various forms of voter suppression. He is illegitimately using the coercive powers of the Presidency to force universities, law firms, corporations, the courts, and the media to submit to his authority.
The Founding Fathers were explicit that no one person would have unlimited powers. They wrote the Constitution to prevent exactly what Trump is doing today.
Chris Hedges summarized the predicament, writing: “Our constitutional rights — due process, habeas corpus, privacy, freedom from exploitation, fair elections and dissent — have been taken from us by judicial and legislative fiat. These rights exist only in name. The vast disconnect between the purported values of our faux democracy and reality means our political discourse, the words we use to describe ourselves and our political system, are absurd.”
Trump’s flouting of the Constitution threatens the foundations of America’s democracy. Coyne anticipated how democracy could slip away without people noticing. “[T]he democratic levers they might once have pulled to demand change are no longer attached to anything. There are still elections, but the rules have been altered: there are certain obstacles, certain disadvantages if you are not with the party of power.”
American values under siege
“[The Trump administration is] attacking the values America holds dear…Without a moral compass in the Oval Office, our country is dangerously adrift”.
–Robert Redford
Trump is at war with the values that once defined Americans. This includes Enlightenment values like individual liberty, religious tolerance, scientific understanding, and natural rights that are the backbone of democracy.
There was a time not too long ago when freedom, liberty, and democracy were shared values at the core of American ideals. There was a time when the US saw the promotion of these values as the best way to ensure a secure and prosperous world, preserve the peace, deter aggression, and protect human rights. The transactional approach we see today is overtly antagonistic to these once fundamentally American values.
Vice President JD Vance made it clear that the United States was no longer going to promote democracy. Vance proudly announced that “the Trump administration has reversed course”. He referred to a “generational shift in policy” away from universal secular ideals. This is an anti-democracy presidency from an administration that has declared war on the values that have defined America since its inception.
Trump’s ambitions extend beyond the U.S. as evidenced by the fact that he is unraveling the multilateral world order and the international rules-based system that has preserved the peace since the end of World War ll. He is undermining the values of openness and liberalism globally and making the world mistrustful of America.
It is too facile to say that Trump is isolationist and protectionist. As Schmidt pointed out, Trump’s inaugural tirade repudiated NATO, the Atlantic Charter, the Bretton Woods Agreement, the UN Charter, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
A betrayal of America’s founding principles
“A great nation cannot remain so for long when virtue becomes an endangered species, and nobility becomes an alien concept in a society that is built on a foundation of ideas about human liberty — not nihilistic philosophies about the rights of the strong to destroy as they please, and take what they want — whether it be from a person, a family, a community, or a smaller nation.”
– Steve Schmidt
Trump is challenging constitutional democracy and undermining liberal values because they are impediments to his pursuit of power and wealth. By making government dysfunctional, he hopes to soften working people’s resistance to the theft of public money. In the service of this agenda, he is slashing government support, eliminating oversight, silencing opposition, and weaponizing lawlessness. Trump is whitewashing his turpitude by getting rid of everyone involved in the investigation of his criminal activities.
Trump is undermining international norms as well as eroding core values. He has uprooted the last vestiges of the belief that through hard work and dedication, people can achieve a better life. He has pushed the American Dream even further out of reach.
Trump has abandoned America’s century-old role as the leader of the free world and accelerated the country’s decline. As Former Republican Senators Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger wrote of the Trump presidency: “There are moments in history where you can feel the tectonic plates of power shifting under your feet, the precise seconds when empires declare themselves rotten and ready to collapse.”
The Trump administration is consolidating power while making people poorer and less safe. Trump demands unquestioning obedience, but as General Mark Milley reminded Americans in his final speech as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.”
In a Republic, supreme power is held by the people and those they elect to represent them. A Republic also has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch. This is the message behind the No Kings movement, which organized one of the largest protests in American history.
In a West Point speech, General Miley honored American soldiers saying, “they sacrificed all their tomorrows for today, they laid the last full measure of devotion on the alter of freedom to protect the values enshrined in our Constitution.”
The United States was born out of a Revolutionary War that pitted Enlightenment values against the imperial rule of a king. This act of defiance gave birth to a nation and helped lay the groundwork for democratic societies and constitutional governments around the world.
Trump’s limitless greed and lust for power are a betrayal of the Constitution and the aspirations of the American Revolution. If the values that Americans fought and died for keep sinking into black waters, the dream will die, and the Republic will be lost.
* Department of Education
Department of Homeland Security
Department of Energy,
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Department of Veterans Affairs
Department of Agriculture (USDA)
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Department of Health and Human Services: National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA),
Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
Office of Personnel Management
General Services Administration
Small Business Administration
Internal Revenue Service
Department of Defense
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