"Just as bad as we feared": Experts on the chaos and carnage of Trump's first week

[marmar]

"Just as bad as we feared": Experts on the chaos and carnage of Trump's first week
Trump's first-week performance was calculated, expected — and highly traumatic. What happens next will be crucial

By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Published January 28, 2025 5:45AM (EST)


(Salon) Donald Trump's "shock and awe" first week in office was exactly what he had promised — or threatened.

He issued almost 100 executive orders and policy changes during that chaotic week. These included freeing virtually all of his supporters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, attempting to nullify the 14th Amendment and end birthright citizenship, declaring a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border, launching nationwide raids against undocumented immigrants and their communities as part of “the largest deportation plan in American history,” escalating attacks on the LGBTQ community, closing down government programs and offices focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, withdrawing from both the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord, and throwing out many other changes made by the Biden administration regarding the environment, the economy, education, and other areas.

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In an essay for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Will Bunch reflects on this "reactionary Week One backlash" striking "at the very heart of LGBTQ rights, academic freedom on college campuses, the environmental movement, and decades of rising empowerment for women":

On the surface, Trump’s dictator-on-Day-One orders were a campaign-promise-fulfilling war on 21st-century liberal “wokeness,” but in reality the MAGA movement was stabbing at the heart of MLK, of LBJ’s “Great Society,” and the progressive victories that have sustained my generation for our lifetimes.

In a matter of hours, an American strongman had achieved the long-held dream of the far right, to toss the wave of liberations of the Long Sixties down an Orwellian memory hole … .

Boomers like us grew up in the afterglow of victory of World War II that led us to believe America was the nation that conquered fascism, not a land that would someday succumb to it. Most of us didn’t realize as schoolchildren what we understand better today, which is that the forces of reaction that powered Jim Crow and the KKK would never go away or stop pushing back… . There is much to be written — today and by future historians, if the field of history survives — about how we got here, with the dangerous mix of understandable grievances about a capitalist and right-wing assault on the American middle class mixed with the toxic base fuels of racism and sexism. But first we’re going to have to grapple with how does it feel, with no direction home.

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In an attempt to make sense of President Trump’s first week and what happens next, I reached out to a range of experts.

Norman Ornstein is emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author of the bestseller "One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported."

I am distraught. This is just as bad as we have feared. The sweeping executive orders, right out of Project 2025, stretch and in most cases shatter legal and constitutional limits, but I do not in any way trust the Supreme Court to constrain the dictator. The actions to stop legitimate and important government programs in their tracks, including foreign aid and information about diseases and viruses, are destructive and deadly. This is only the beginning.

....(snip)....

Jennifer Mercieca is a historian of American political rhetoric at Texas A&M University and the author of several books, including "Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump."

Trump's return to power is going as I expected it would. He's declared a state of emergency, declared that God endorses his agenda and declared that he has unlimited power. He's using that power to reward himself and his friends and punish his enemies. A lot of folks in my community are scared by Trump's moves, but I feel calm. I expected them. The goal is to see it for what it is and figure out how to preserve and protect democracy within these new constraints. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/01/28/just-as-as-we-feared-experts-on-the-chaos-and-carnage-of-first-week/

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1. Moot point for trump voters so far

The water in the pot they are in is still cool. Once it starts boiling, there will be nobody left in govt to help them.

We knew how bad it would be, they did not and still have no idea. As long as they see pics of people being deported, they are happy little frogs in a pot.