Any genuine resistance to the Trump agenda is to be welcomed and built on. But we also must “tell no lies” and “claim no easy victories,” as the Bissau Guinean revolutionary Amilcar Cabral put it in the 1960s. The state of the opposition to Trump is weak now.
Trump, and Biden before him, have used charges of “antisemitism” against all pro-Palestinian protesters to justify violently cracking down and expelling students who had taken part in opposing Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Trump has ratcheted up punishment to detention and deportation, using the Cold War era “Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952″—which allows the State Department to deport non-citizens who it deems pose a threat to “U.S. foreign policy.” This was a key tool used in the persecution and deportation of communists during the McCarthy era, which for good reason has been likened to the witch hunt against pro-Palestine activists today.
In the early days of the Trump administration when most establishment Democrats were treating Trump as a political colossus and telling their supporters that they couldn’t do much to stop him, the Sanders/AOC road show helped rank-and-file members of the liberal side of U.S. politics to break from feelings of isolation and despair. But Sanders and AOC are engaged in a project that the Rev. Jesse Jackson used to call “keeping hope alive” in the Democratic Party…
“This expansion is a disastrous waste of billions of taxpayer dollars that will only line the coffers of the private prison industry,” said one ACLU attorney.
Trump seemingly wants to surpass Ronald Reagan, who famously fired all members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) when they went on strike in 1981—thus giving a green light for corporations to likewise fire striking workers and permanently replace them with strikebreakers.
For 80 years, the existing alliances and institutions of global politics have served U.S. imperial policy well. Now we are faced with what appears to be the unprecedented situation in which the “hegemonic power” has become the main “revisionist power,” in the world system…
We are in uncharted waters where Trump is criminalizing free speech even as he has ended Israel’s genocidal war, for now.
“Make America Great Again” is a program to prepare the US to fight and win a war with China. It is not only that; there are plenty of right-wing causes to be pursued, such as hostility to vaccinations, that do not have a direct or necessary military connection, but the overall direction is clear.
Is there a method to Trump’s madness? There is a dizzying array of new policies, extraordinary pronouncements, and constant policy shifts. It’s meant to feel like an unstoppable and overwhelming tsunami. But there’s a reason for this course of action by Trump.
The major economies are exhibiting signs of stagflation. That means interest rates could stay high, while economic growth goes missing. That is a recipe for an eventual crash in financial markets.
The actions sponsored by the left wing of the Democratic Party and the NGOs have been lethargic and unfocused. We are going to have to look elsewhere for viable resistance.
Trump’s actions have been labeled a “coup” and a “constitutional crisis”. These descriptions are not conspiracy theories but attempts to understand events unfolding in real time. While it is unclear exactly how to label Trump’s actions, it is clear that the outcome depends on how far he is allowed to continue on this destructive path.
Actual American occupation of Gaza is extraordinarily unlikely. It would clearly demand serious deployment of US troops and would destabilize the entire world situation. The real purpose of the speech was something else. It was to show the world the absolute and complete support of the US administration for the Netanyahu government and whatever actions that government takes.
Trump is a great fan of the presidential “executive order,” which he believes gives him unlimited power to shape U.S. society by issuing a flood of personal edicts, rather than face even a hint of congressional scrutiny. But with both the House and the Senate dominated by a slim margin of Trump’s minions, not much scrutiny is emanating from Congress.
The order’s language is in line with the Republican Party’s 2024 platform, which did not call for a nationwide abortion ban but expressed support for states that would establish fetal personhood by extending the protections of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees that “no person can be denied life or liberty without due process,” to fetuses.
