by Brian Garvey and Cole Harrison
Donald Trump has launched his second term with a blizzard of executive orders and policy changes that have bamboozled the Democratic opposition and portrayed himself as a man of action to his supporters.
Firing watchdogs, putting the world’s richest billionaire Elon Musk in charge of slashing Federal spending, and cutting Federal payments that are authorized by law, many of his moves are arguably illegal, but Congressional Democrats seem powerless to stop them. Democratic Governors are having better luck; their challenges to policy changes have at least earned injunctions so far in Federal courts.
Trump’s foreign policy of “sovereigntist imperialism” considers only what the Administration perceives as the national interest of the United States and pays no attention to international law, human rights, or the opinions and interests of people in other countries. He proposed to cut the Pentagon budget in half and cut nuclear weapons after negotiating with Russia and China, but his reported 8% cut in Pentagon spending exempts a large number of programs, including militarized immigration enforcement which is set to grow rapidly.
His Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, helped pressure Israel to accept a ceasefire deal to pause its destruction of Gaza, even before Trump took office. Then, in a shocking proposal which would amount to ethnic cleansing, Trump stated that Palestinians must leave Gaza, while the US will “own” the coastal enclave and develop it into a new paradise on the Mediterranean – not for Palestinians, of course.
Reversing Biden’s Ukraine policy, Trump has begun talking with Russia, speaking with President Putin by phone, opening bilateral negotiations, vetoing a UN resolution condemning Russia alone for the war, and pressing Ukraine to yield a share of the revenues from Ukraine’s valuable mineral deposits. MAPA has called for a ceasefire and negotiated settlement since the start of the conflict, and we welcome these moves, though we disagree with Trump’s rationale.
Trump is threatening to annex Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada, and plans across the board tariffs on our largest trading partners. In the name of supporting American products, new trade wars would likely provoke retaliatory policies from the targeted countries, raising prices for consumers and threatening global supply chains.
Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the rich expire at the end of 2025, and he and Musk, the top contributor to his 2024 campaign, are determined to extend them. To do so they will have to cut Medicaid or the military, but are probably not ready to pay the political price of doing either. Instead they are trying to create a sense of chaos by going after smaller programs liberals support, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which responds to natural disasters; the Consumer Finance Protection Board; and the US Agency for International Development, which administers foreign aid, feeding needy people overseas but also funding regime change projects.
Trump’s mass deportation policy is so far designed to scare immigrants into leaving on their own, since really deporting huge numbers would be expensive, as well as harmful to the U.S. economy. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in cities across the country, threatening to raid schools and churches, and sending detainees to Guantanamo, aim mainly at headlines.
To defeat Trumpism, an effective opposition will not defend a status quo that has abandoned the needs of the American people, nor roll over and play dead. An effective opposition will champion an expansion of rights that are broadly popular, including the right to health care and medicine, education, work, a home, economic security including in retirement, the right to be treated equally under the law regardless of identity, and the right to live in peace with our neighbors, across the street and around the world, in a country that respects the dignity of every nation. Our effective opposition will take on the oppressive forces strangling the rights of the American people and build political power to destroy them.
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Brian Garvey is the Executive Director at Massachusetts Peace Action.
Cole Harrison is the Administrative Director at Massachusetts Peace Action.
