This blog is a diary of political observations by an old liberal. My posts mostly represent milestones on the state of our politics and the descent of the United States deeper into competitive authoritarianism: a tragic, momentous fall for our country.
Donald Trump’s second term, driven by the vision of Project 2025, enabled by a compliant Republican majority in Congress, and supercharged by the corruptly partisan Roberts Court, has been a disaster for our democratic institutions at home and for American economic, scientific, and diplomatic dominance internationally.
Beginning with the eradication of USAID, the folks doing Trump’s bidding illustrated their willingness to cause needless suffering and death. Then they proved their eagerness to gut popular, well-established, Congressionally approved programs that benefit Americans. They are stripping federal agencies (HHS, NOAA, EPA, SAA, VA …) of their functional capacity. Beyond this, they are even killing off the basic information gathering, which will make it tougher to reach informed decisions regarding everything from vaccination schedules to weather advisories to hiring and investing.
The agencies wielding federal police powers, and those with missions related to defense and national security (DOJ, FBI, OHS, DOD, NSA …) have mutated into muscular tools to attack political opponents of Donald Trump. ICE has become Trump’s federal police force with an assist from the FBI and other agencies. Beginning with Los Angeles and the District of Columbia, National Guard units and (in L.A.) by the United States Marines have occupied blue cities. Armed, masked men, often without badges or insignia to identify their agencies, have forcibly detained people and hauled them away in unmarked vehicles. While Trump’s militarized police forces have targeted immigrants most visibly and viciously — the purported focus on “the worst of the worst” is an outright lie — no one who stands in the way of the MAGA agenda is safe from assault.
Trump has gone after individuals who (he perceives) have crossed him; institutions of civil society that might counterbalance the power of the wanton assaults on our freedom, including media companies, law firms, universities, research centers, advocates for the poor and disadvantaged, and groups integral to Democratic campaigns; and even the governing authority of states of the union, though Republican-led states (spared Trump’s wrath) have proved willing to go along for the ride to further the MAGA agenda.
This is an all-out war against a pluralistic, multiracial society. Trump has pushed beyond the Constitution, the law, and many of the country’s democratic safeguards. We are less free today, and less secure, than we were on January 19.
The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed supermajority has overruled lower courts again and again to enable this anti-democratic spree. John Roberts, the other men on the court, and sometimes Justice Barrett; Congressional Republicans; and the billionaires and ideologues responsible for Project 2025 are all-in on this monstrous, unaccountable, off the rails presidency. They are committed to the MAGA crusade, not to democracy.
This may be what 38- or 42-percent of Americans voted for. It is not sustainable if free and fair elections occur in 2026 and 2028. But there will be no going back. The deliberate, reckless destruction is already too great for that. I don’t expect the country to recover from this rampage in my lifetime. That’s extraordinarily distressing.
Moreover, the country may never recover. The arc of history doesn’t bend just to favor our hopes.
Nonetheless, our democracy, while wounded, is not dead. Much will happen between now and November 2026 (and 2028). What Trump and Congress and the Supreme Court have dished up is a monumental, historically unprecedented shift of resources from middle America to the richest among us. They are pushing us into a police state to impose their agenda on us. The task for small-d democrats (and Democrats as the opposition party committed to democracy) is to tie the Republicans in charge to the ugly truth about what they have done.
Majorities shift. The swing voters who cast ballots for Trump in 2024 are up for grabs. There are Congressional Republicans who may come to fear defeat in a general election more than in a primary. There are Democratic officials who may gather the courage and perspective to become more effective. There are many elections to win in the next several cycles.
August 25, 2025