Trump will take the oath of office at noon [today]. Soon thereafter, this parade of misfit toys we’ve been watching testify this week will occupy their Cabinet positions. Orders will start percolating out—from Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, and other Trump deep staters—to start doings things differently. Trump already knows certain leverage points in the federal bureaucracy that took him months or years to locate the first time around. And he’ll have one big thing that he didn’t have in 2017: a pliant and willing establishment that signals a desire to be 100 percent on his side and that will give him every benefit of every doubt as he pulls at the republic’s threads.
I hope I'm wrong, but this may well be our last Inauguration Day as a (mostly) functioning democracy. Trump and his apparatchiks and cult are taking full power in the federal government. They're buoyed by the richest and most powerful people in the world, who have collectively bended their knees and lavished money on Trump and his family, to ensure expanded wealth and power for themselves. The American oligarchy is here, and it is firmly in control.
The initial spate of executive orders (see the link below) will be just the beginning. The Republicans – who are Trump's tools, nothing more – will make things worse with legislation that flattens the social and economic progress the nation made since the last Gilded Age in the late 1800s. I hope I'm wrong, but the right-wing backsliding of recent years looks like low-key change compared to what's coming.
Guard rails? The courts will help, at least initially, but the extreme right now controls the Supreme Court; its stunningly corrupt majority ended fair elections, turning money into votes, and gave Trump absolute immunity from the crimes he is preparing to commit. I hope I'm wrong.
The Democrats are sad sacks. As they've consistently done in the past several decades, they will keep bringing handshakes to political knife fights. They could turn themselves around, but there's almost no evidence that they'll even try. I hope I'm wrong.
And then there's our news media, more pathetic than ever. Big Journalism's bosses have capitulated already, but that won't be enough for Trump and his friends. They're going to use the playbook written by Hungary's "prime minister," a dictator who has taken that nation from democracy to near-fascism and all but wiped out honest journalism in his wake. I hope the many small news outlets that have actual spines can make a difference.
I very much hope I'm wrong to think that the ugly times ahead will be violent. Trump's cult – which has countless members inside law enforcement and national-security bodies – has been aching to break bones and bust heads of those deemed enemies by Dear Leader. They'll get permission, soon, most likely when Trump tells them he needs help rounding up those evil brown-skinned people and that protesters against his policies are dangerous enemies. If Trump is looking for some event – call it his 21st Century Kristallnacht – to declare and "justify" a liberty-shredding national emergency, he'll have legions of gun-wielding brownshirts eager to back him up.
America feels badly broken to me today, and I wish I saw more resolve from the people who could stop the worst from happening. The author of the essay I've pointed to above is saying, essentially, that there is no alternative but to try. He's right. I am deeply pessimistic about the immediate future. But I am hopeful, because without hope there is nothing but darkness.
Trump is planning to issue dozens of executive actions — more than 100 just on Day 1, at least in his own telling — within his first week in office, sources familiar with his plans told CNN, including those aimed at ramping up US energy production, tightening border security, reeling in regulations and other top policy priorities.
Trump's apparatchiks surely don't believe that all of these orders are legal or that they will be upheld even by the current Supreme Court. But that isn't the point. People who believe in sane policies will be mired in legal battles while the Trump-controlled federal government barrels ahead with anti-environment, anti-immigrant, anti-fairness, anti-labor (etc. etc. etc.) actions. What passes for our political press will shout about the most egregious orders and ignore the rest. This is more tactical than strategic, and it's likely to work as designed.
All corruption, all the time in Trump world
“If people want to gamble, I don’t really care,” said Lee Reiners, a former Federal Reserve economist who is now a lecturer for a center studying global economic markets at Duke University. “What I care about is when this crypto bubble bursts — and it will burst — it will end up impacting people across the economy even if they don’t have direct investment in crypto. And this new coin is making it worse.”
The most corrupt president in American history occupied the White House from 2017-2021. He'll be back in the Oval Office today after taking a beyond-ironic oath of office. And this time, the level of corruption will be orders of magnitude worse – with Trump, his family, his appointed officials, his business partners (foreign and domestic), and so many others stealing everything in sight and turning what used to be crimes into policy.
Now, in an obviously money-driven switch from his previous opposition to the cryptocurrency operations, he's promoting the scam-ridden cryptocurrency "industry" – the most corrupt I've ever seen – with participation and policy. The Trump memecoin looks mostly like a reflection of mania and speculators' belief that they'll be winners. The ones who get in early enough and sell early enough will be just that. The rest – many of whom have been abandoned or cheated by our current financial system – will be epic losers. They will deserve some empathy, but no more.
I'd be okay with those consequences if, as the economist quoted above makes clear, the crypto-contagion wasn't so certain to spread into the real economy. Even if you aren't participating in this avalanche of sleaze, you are vulnerable to it. I'm trying to figure out how to shield my own holdings, but the reality is that when the bubble deflates, I'll inevitably be a victim of the sleazeballs who are playing roulette with the economy, using other people's money to collect any gains and slough off the vastly greater losses.
Meanwhile, keep in mind, as noted earlier, that the Supreme Court has immunized Trump from prosecution for all the crimes he'll commit from the Oval Office. He'll pardon the people who help him, also with impunity. It's going to be very, very ugly for people who aren't part of the gang – that is to say, you and me – but fantastically lucrative for the insiders.
Democratic opportunity: 'Champion the self-employed'
One of the more sensible ways to help them is to finally sever the outdated tie between basic social safety net protections and traditional W-2 employment. As Steven Hill first proposed in the Washington Monthly in 2016, Democrats should advocate for a “portable benefits” model for independent workers. Under this approach, benefits like health insurance, retirement savings, paid leave, and other employment-related protections would not be tied to a single employer but would instead move with workers across multiple jobs. Each employer would pay an allocation for benefits (prorated based on the number of hours an independent worker was contracted) into that worker’s “individual security account,” which would be managed by the federal government or a private agency specializing in benefit administration.
This commentary is from a special issue of the Washington Monthly entitled "Ten New Ideas for the Democratic Party to Help the Working Class, and Itself" – but the party's focus solely on unions as the answer to all things labor has allowed it to miss a vital constituency.
Let me stress that unions are absolutely vital, and we need to protect and encourage them and the workers who want to form them. We also need (among other things) laws that prohibit huge, monopolistic corporations from turning people who are obviously employees into part-time gig workers who have no rights, shitty working conditions, and no future.
We also need to recognize that many people want to be self-employed. But they need far more protections than they have. Single-payer national health insurance would solve one of the worst problems, and if Democrats had a clue they'd be relentlessly pushing for it. The essay also discusses, as I highlight in the quote above, making benefits (e.g. retirement savings, paid leave, health insurance under the current system, etc.) portable and cumulative.
The Republicans talk a good game on helping the self-employed. They follow it up with policies that are terrible for these folks. Democrats have a real opportunity to help millions of Americans, and themselves.
In Norway, buying an electric car isn’t just a green choice – it’s an affordable one. Subsidies and incentives bring electric car prices in line with, or below, those of petrol and diesel cars. Substantial exemptions from purchase tax and VAT, along with other perks, make electric car ownership remarkably appealing. And it’s financed not only through taxes but by Norway’s oil and gas revenue. Even with some limits on luxury models, the support remains unmatched.
We've been considering whether to buy an EV, but two factors have mitigated against it. The first is the intense surveillance new makers – especially electric cars – subject their customers to once they've driven the car off the dealer's lot. The other is the fact that the car makers – at least American ones – aren't interested in selling compact, affordable EVs. This article in the Conversation makes the case that, for the moment, American manufacturers don't want to hear. They should listen.
This newsletter is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money. For more details, please read my About page.
Please send your suggestions
I spend a lot of time looking for essential coverage, and hope you'll help me by letting me know about the good stuff you find. Let me know.
Subscribe
Was this forwarded to you? If you would like to have your own free subscription, please click here.
Michael Tomasky
Kevin Liptak, Priscilla Alvarez, Jeff Zeleny, Alayna Treene, Kayla Tausche, Phil Mattingly
Will Norris
The Conversation
