The tariff war is bad. These Trump actions are WAY worse.
Three executive orders actually threaten our republic more than anything else. We've turned a dark corner.
Obviously, it was a bad week for financial markets last week.
Trump's tariff war threw the US and global economy into chaos. People lost money.
Trust built up over decades with allies and other trading partners has been shattered. And we still don't have a coherent plan, with the reasoning for the tariff war and the tariffs themselves shifting all the time.
And it won't be long before average people - you and me - start seeing prices rise - again - on lots of stuff thanks to these taxes - which we pay, by the way.
But all of that is *not* the worst thing that happened recently.
I've long said that we can survive just about any policy position the Trump administration takes.
I still believe that - mostly.
We're sure pressing the respect and friendship we have with our fellow democratic republics across the world to the breaking point by dumb attacks on their politics and economies. Maybe we can repair that in the future.
But much of the rest of the stupidity - we've survived things like those before - from RFK Junior's measles outbreak and covid, to poor foreign policy choices like the Iraq War and now our threatened abandonment of Ukraine, to economic disruption like the inflation surge and the earlier financial crisis, to the largely illegal gutting of key federal health and safety agencies and research programs.
There will be suffering, but we will survive.
Unless we lose the republic along the way.
We are in danger of our democratic rights and processes getting so degraded that we all become subject to whimsical abuses of power. Arbitrary power that has been centralized and personalized. In other words, power in which one dude can do just whatever the hell he wants.
Okay, what am I talking about?
Maybe you heard a little bit about it. I guarantee you did not hear as much about it as the economic news. So I do not want this to be lost in the blur of the deliberate "flood the zone" strategy.
President Trump signed two executive orders last week, directing law enforcement and security officials to investigate and possibly prosecute two specific individuals whom he wanted to target.
This is huge.
Trump is naming specific people - whom he judges to be his enemies - and ordering the Justice Department, the FBI, national intelligence services - to review the last few years of these people's lives and report back with their findings directly to him.
The first is Chris Krebs. He was the head of a federal agency responsible, in part, for making sure elections were secure from cyberattacks and other threats. He was the head of this agency at the end of the Trump administration. The Trump administration. He worked for Trump.
Now, recall that when Trump ran his campaign of lies about the 2020 election being stolen, he threw every crazy theory up against the wall to see what would stick. That included saying that computer systems had deleted or flipped votes.
Krebs, in his official capacity, along with a variety of other computer security experts, debunked that claim several times. Two weeks after the election, Trump fired him.
Now, Trump wants him investigated. In the executive order, he says Krebs "falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen."
The other person Trump is targeting by name is Miles Taylor. Taylor was the anonymous author of a New York Times column and later book about the so-called "resistance" to Trump policies from within the administration during his first term. Eventually, Taylor's name came out. Trump wants him investigated, with a report back, for up to and including treason. Treason can carry the death penalty.
By the way, in both cases, Trump ordered that both of these former government officials lose their security credentials - which, honestly, I can't judge the impact of that - but he also ordered that anyone at their current employers lose their security credentials, too. Trump is punishing the companies, as well as the individuals.
Let me repeat what's happening here. The president decides that he has a specific beef with a specific person. Then, out in public, he orders the full force of the federal government to come down on them.
Let me say, it's not clear that there's anything illegal here that Trump is doing. With the way our system is structured, these agencies do indeed report to the president.
But by tradition, presidents are supposed to abuse that power for their own personal vendettas. It's been that way for 50 years now since Nixon tried it. But we live in interesting times.
By the way, that isn't all from last week.
Trump also targeted, in an executive order, a specific law firm for investigation and cancellation of security clearances and contracts.
This whole program of attacking law firms might have slipped under the radar for you.
Trump is out to bring the entire law industry under his thumb. He's been targeting a variety of high-powered law firms that traditionally work for Democrats or liberal causes, threatening them in a variety of ways unless they come to heel.
A key way has been canceling those law firms’ security clearances. These kinds of firms often work with government clients who need their lawyers to have clearances. Otherwise, these firms are worthless.
By the way, if you, as a former government official, have been accused of crime, you also need a firm with security clearances so they can effectively represent you.
Some of these law firms have submitted because they could be driven out of business. Some have even promised to do free legal work for the Trump administration, like they have done for previous Democratic administrations.
However, some are fighting back - like the one that was targeted last week.
Susman-Godfrey is in court to fight the sanctions being imposed on it.
You might be wondering if Susman-Godfrey is special in any way. Well, it's the firm that successfully sued Fox News on behalf of Dominion Voting Systems.
Trump and his fellow election deniers made the company one of its primary targets around the 2020 election. Fox News repeated a lot of those election lies. Eventually, Fox News settled for $787 million dollars once a bunch of embarrassing texts and email messages came out, in which Fox News hosts and executives were exposed as knowing the truth, but lying to their audience on air.
Let me add more dimension here that's actually played out in recent days. Equally awful. Before I start wrapping up.
In this country, we have a little thing that's guaranteed in the Constitution. It's called due process. Right there in the Fifth Amendment, it says no person shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." In other words, if the government wants to pursue legal action against you, imprison you, you are entitled to your day in court. Notice a key word there, no "person". Not just citizens. Everybody subject to the laws of the US.
You might have heard recently about an immigrant who was living in the US - Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. He was accused by the Trump administration of being part of gang, rounded up, and shipped off with more than 130 others to camp in El Salvador.
The US is now paying that dictatorship to house those people.
Well, it turns out that the Trump administration sent Abrego Garcia to El Salvador by mistake. He had a previous immigration court ruling that allowed him to be in the US legally. But here's the rub - if the administration wants to challenge that, they have to give Abrego Garcia his day in court - like the Constitution says.
This case has now gone all the way to the Supreme Court, and the highest court in the land has said, yep, that deportation was illegal and that the Trump administration must "facilitate" his return.
They used that word because, technically, the Supreme Court doesn't conduct foreign policy.
By the way, this week, during a visit by the dictator of El Salvador and repeated later on Fox News, Trump said he'd like to start shipping convicted criminals from the US over to El Salvador. Even remarking El Salvador should build more prisons.
Okay, let's put some pieces together now.
Let's dwell on how all of these actions, taken together, actually begin to turn the United States into an authoritarian regime.
The president, on a whim, orders federal law enforcement to single out individuals, by name, for investigation.
Lo and behold, his personally appointed officials - all loyal to him, by the way, since he's been purging government employees willy nilly - they find crimes to charge those individuals with.
Suppose the prosecution is unsuccessful. No matter, really. You've probably already ruined the person financially and professionally.
Suppose the prosecution is successful. Now formally being a "criminal", Trump wants to be able to ship you overseas to foreign prisons.
And again, what if you just happen to get caught up in this new system, even before you've had your day in court? Well, good luck getting you back from El Salvador.
We are in the process of creating a system in which the president can name specific individuals and firms as targets for investigation, federal law enforcement presumably must hop to or risk getting fired, report back to the president with what they've found and presumably prosecute the people.
It's similar to the system I've described before regarding systematic political violence and the January 6th pardons. Thanks to those Trump pardons of the thugs who attacked the Capitol, you can now - legally here in these United States - get away with an attack on our government. First, do it under a president's name - preferably carrying his flag. Get him elected. Then get pardoned. Commit more crime's in the man's name, and you can just expect more pardons. Institutionalized, and excused, political violence.
The groundwork is being laid for, well, what we've seen in plenty of countries over the decades, if not centuries - when their democracies fail, individual rights go up in flames. It sounds old-fashioned now, but we've had names for these kinds of things in American history - kings, tyrants. The modern equivalents are dictators, authoritarian strongmen.
Look, these are all tests. Tests of how much he can get away with.
To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway, bad things happen bit by bit, then all at once.
Trump campaigned on stopping the weaponization of law enforcement. Instead, he's taking it to new heights.
Unless the people and the system rise up to say nope, not gonna happen.
And my, by now, standard warning to anyone who's even slightly tempted to think, yeah, well, I don't like the people he's going after, anyway.
Fine. If you can sleep at night with that.
But just know, if we let this take root, kiss your freedom goodbye. Because this same unjust system can readily be turned on friends as well as perceived enemies.
Better hope that Trump - or whatever president we get in the future, and there will be another one someday - is in a good mood when your name comes up in conversation.
Good luck, America.