Americans, Focus on the Three C’s:  Courts, Congress, Communities

Latest polls show that the worm may be turning – Trump’s negatives are on the rise, Musk is deeply unpopular, voters are increasingly concerned about the trash and burn approach to the first 30 days of the Trump administration.

More and more, these executive orders and Musk raids come across as both cruel and incompetent.  They are not well thought out, they are arbitrary, they are clearly legally questionable and, maybe most important, they hurt everyday people. The actions are “trickling down” and will undermine American’s’ health care, Medicare, Medicaid, education, jobs, incomes, inflation, you name it. 

What Trump and Musk and the MAGA crowd don’t seem to grasp is that wholesale firings and abolishing agencies have real-world implications; they are not just thirty-thousand-foot rhetorical flourishes.  Whether it is fighting bird flu, opening the door for pandemic diseases, taking away people’s health care or nutrition needs or Head Start or housing, whether it is closing National Parks or stopping spending for roads, bridges, water projects, emergency aid, or passing legislation to give huge tax breaks for the uber-wealthy  that the middle class will pay dearly for, this plethora of policies are screwing hard working Americans.  There I said it —  this is the napalming of America, unless you are one of the Trump/Musk oligarchs.

So, how do we fight back and harness the growing rejection of these actions and turn our country around?

The decision to adopt Steve Bannon’s strategy “to flood the zone,” prepared and planned by Project 2025, has meant going everywhere, all at once, right away.  The assumption is that the opposition will be unprepared, stunned, paralyzed by the rapid and ubiquitous collection of executive orders.

The problem with this strategy is two-fold:  first, Trump is not just going after the low hanging fruit, he is chopping down the trees; the second is that the opposition is growing fast, better organized than they thought and the public is responding.  Many voters wanted not normal.  What they fear they are getting is not normal bad, instead of not normal good.

Make no mistake, real damage is being done, at home and abroad.  As Washington Post columnist David Ignatius points out USAID may never be the same again. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/21/usaid-trump-freeze-marocco-foreign-aid/ ) Already the international damage has been catastrophic, according to Ignatius and the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition:

“At least 11,500 Americans and 54,575 foreigners have lost their jobs. Nearly $1 billion in payments for work already done has been frozen. Nearly $500 million in food is sitting in ports, ships and warehouses. In Syria, a country struggling to recover from chaos, food and other support for nearly 900,000 people has been suspended. In West Africa, 3.4 million people in 11 countries have lost drug treatment for deadly tropical diseases. At least 328,000 HIV-positive people in 25 countries aren’t getting lifesaving drugs.”

The decision to take a chain saw to USAID and most aspects of government is generating a “flood the zone” response. 

The three key areas for an equal and opposite reaction are: the courts, the congress and our communities.  Democratic Attorneys General in eighteen states were organized and ready to file law suits on many of the executive orders and actions by Trump. Other groups like environmentalists, civil rights organizations, unions and human rights groups also had prepared for the legal battles. More law suits are coming every day and many Americans are donating to groups like the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and volunteering.  Republican and Democratic lawyers are making their voices heard, some even resigning when told to undermine the rule of law and the constitution.  The more the Trump administration attempts to rule by executive fiat the more lawsuits will be filed and the more the courts will be the bulwark for justice.

Congress will play an increasing role as budget decisions will determine the scope and size of the tax cuts for the rich and the cuts to programs like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, education, food stamps, children’s health, etc.  Many Republicans are seriously uncomfortable with the spending plans of this administration and aren’t buying the projections.  The numbers just don’t add up.  How do you reconcile $4 trillion in tax cuts over ten years, $150 billion more a year for defense, $175 billion more for customs and immigration enforcement, and then balance the budget without gutting health care and food programs?  That wouldn’t take an act of Congress, it would take an act of magic.   Democrats will hold firm and voters will rise up is my guess as Trump policies squeeze most Americans.  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/us/politics/congress-republican-budget-plans.html

All this leads to greater activism in our communities.  Confronting Members of Congress at town meetings, calling and writing their offices, and making constituents’ views known, will only increase.  There is a lot of local politics out there —  when people are fired for no reason or programs eliminated that impact people’s lives, the ripple effects will be substantial.  (About 80% of federal workers live outside the Washington area, less than 20% are in the DC area)

Poll numbers for Trump will continue to decline; Elon Musk and his 20-something DOGE band will be in the doghouse; the newly confirmed cabinet will become increasingly unpopular feeding bad polls and making Trump furious; efforts to undermine the free press will also be unpopular and create a backlash; anger in the heartland will grow.

The problem we have is Republican office holders are being governed and controlled by fear – fear of Trump’s wrath, fear of MAGA beating them in primaries and, to be honest, actual physical fear if they speak out and buck the trend.  This is true of some press outlets, corporate chieftains and ordinary people afraid for their jobs.  There aren’t enough Profiles in Courage out there — look what happened as the JFK Library was forced to shut down when Trump fired employees critical to keeping it open.  Retribution and recrimination is Donald Trump’s MO, always has been, always will be. That playbook will get old — all the more reason to take him on in the courts, stand up to him in Congress, and organize the grass roots in our communities.