War, according to 19th century military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, is merely the extension of politics. To President Donald Trump this time around, politics is clearly the extension of war. He is ruthlessly waging politics on the US constitutional order.
A dizzying barrage of despotic executive orders marked his first days in office (bear with me): ending birthright citizenship; launching mass deportations; vengefully or summarily firing regulators and thousands of federal employees who will be replaced with loyalists; unilaterally freezing federal funds; shutting down USAID and its global humanitarian projects; quashing Diversity, Equality, Inclusion (DEI) programs in government agencies; purging critical race studies, Black History Month and cultural celebrations from government websites; banning liberal school books in military facilities; xenophobically changing geographical names; and even banning paper straws in favor of plastic(!); and more.
“Flooding the zone” is how the White House describes the salvoes of disruptive decrees that assault civil rights, the rule of law, and constitutional checks and balances. It’s the political rendition of Nazi Germany’s blitzkrieg, which throws all military capabilities into the offensive first strike to stun enemies and degrade their ability to quickly fight back.
“Flooding the zone” was plotted with Project 2025 schemers whom Trump had craftily disowned during the campaign. Its targets are the Bill of Rights, civil liberties, and the Constitution itself. To complete the Third Reich analogy, Trump even has Anschluss fantasies of annexing Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, and Gaza.
By his side is black-shirted unelected billionaire Elon Musk who arrogantly leads bands of unvetted DOGE raiders that are forcing their way into the federal tax and social security payment systems holding citizens’ sensitive personal information. Covering fire are Vice President JD Vance and creepy Cabinet appointees who openly abet racists and neofascists at home and in Europe.
Parties to the ongoing coup are the lock-step GOP majorities in Congress — one GOP bill wants to give Trump an unconstitutional third term, another would make his birthday a federal holiday — and sycophantic IT billionaires who will benefit from expected deregulations and tax cuts. Complicit are “anticipatorily obedient” corporate collaborators who have cleansed their auspices of DEI or anything that would displease the White House.
First line of resistance
For resisters of the onslaught, the US courts are the most immediate field of battle. Civil rights and liberal advocacy groups, unions, victims of arbitrary firings, and 14 state attorneys general have filed at least 70 lawsuits against Trump and Musk’s actions, winning at least 14 nationwide restraining orders to date.
The lawsuits as weapons, however, are of modest caliber. A restraining order only temporarily prevents the implementation of laws and decrees until a full judicial process rules on the merits of a legal challenge.
There are also judicial landmines to anticipate. Trump the first time around deployed sleeper judges in the lower courts who are more loyal to him and MAGA than to the US Constitution.
Trump, along with Musk, Vance, and some GOP officials, is insisting that judges shouldn’t be able to stop his executive orders, a sign that he’s willing to trigger a constitutional crisis by refusing to obey unfavorable rulings. Waxing omnipotent, Trump even tweeted a quote loosely attributed to Napoleon: “He who saves the country does not violate any law.”
Some legal theorists think the radical executive decrees are meant as test cases to pave the way to favorable decisions by the conservative Supreme Court majority, which Trump claims gave him “unrestricted powers” by granting him near-absolute immunity in his role as president. Should this gambit succeed, the high court would anoint the US Constitution’s signers’ worst fear: an autocracy.
Where the Dems are
Meanwhile, elected Democrats are stirring at last with more combative declarations, impelled by rising popular outrage. Offices of Senate and House members report being swamped daily by tens of thousands phone calls from worried or irate constituents pressing them to fight back.
However, the Democrats’ best chance to make a difference is by overcoming the Republicans’ slim majorities in Congress. Democrats must top the GOP’s three-seat House lead (soon to be two with Representative Elise Stefanik’s impending confirmation as envoy to the UN) by winning special elections starting in April for the seats vacated by Republicans. Likewise, they must erase the GOP’s six-seat Senate majority in the 2025 midterm elections.
Several factors could work in their favor. Musk’s slash-and-burn mass reduction of the government work force is leading to a severe lack of experts and experienced federal employees. It threatens to stymie the implementation of ambitious executive orders and brings chaos to federal and local governance.
Radical cuts in federal spending spell disaster for social benefits and assistance programs including housing, education, health care, farming, and other basic living expenses. Ironically, Trump voters will be hit the hardest as red states are the most dependent on federal funding.
Inflation, which Trump promised to stem on “day one,” keeps rising, now up to 3% from 2% at the start of his term. The prices of consumer goods will surely hit the roof if he insists on carelessly levying tariffs on imports from friends and foes alike.
Mass deportations and harsher immigration policing will disrupt the food supply chain if thousands of workers can no longer customarily cross the border from Mexico for the U.S. harvest season summer and fall. How growers, huge donors to the GOP, will cope with this threat to their bottomlines bears watching.
Protests and consumer backlash
Meanwhile, Trump’s purported “enemies from within” are taking to the streets and also fighting back with their wallets. All 50 states are seeing mass protests against “Elon and the felon,” calling for Musk’s removal and the rejection of Trump’s executive orders.
Consumer guerrilla warfare has also begun against corporate subservience to the White House. A Harris poll shows that 4 in 10 American shoppers mostly Democratic, black, and young are already snubbing the likes of Amazon, Google, Facebook, Target, Walmart, McDonalds that have ended DEI initiatives. Musk’s Tesla sales in California, the biggest market for EV vehicles in the US, have dropped by double digits.
Increasingly combustible civil strife reminiscent of late 1930s Germany wouldn’t be a surprise as Trump and his coup plotters relentlessly pursue their dictatorial dreams. But history doesn’t really repeat itself, Musk’s Nazi salute notwithstanding. It only offers uncanny parallels to remind those who tend to forget. – Rappler.com