Fridays in Trumpland: 1.23.2025
The Unraveling, or The Moment We Decide
In preparation for writing each week of this new series, Fridays in Trumpland, I have been keeping a daily list of major events in our political landscape.
On Wednesday of this week, however, I gave up on trying to keep up with this week’s list, because the flood of events was too overwhelming and too insane to document in real time.
It’s worth noting that it’s only been a week since Biden added new drugs to the medicare negotiation list and pardoned 2500 folks convicted of crack-related offenses due to overtly racist sentencing laws. It’s been less than a week since Biden pardoned Leonard Peltier.
And then, Trump was inaugurated at noon on Monday.
It’s taken just four days to unravel all federal DEI directives, to create a McCarthy-era threat to anyone not reporting hidden DEI programs inside the government, to stop all research at NIH, to freeze passport applications for anyone with a non-binary X gender marker, and to dance right up to the confirmation of a white nationalist accused rapist drunk as Defense Secretary, which will likely happen later on today.
Four days to close the border, to terminate refugee flights for people who had done everything required to get here, to weaponize the US military as border agents, to fire immigration judges, to threaten prosecution of sanctuary city officials, to begin warantless raids that detain U.S. citizens as well as undocumented folks who are the backbone of local economies, to challenge birthright citizenship by executive order AND by new legislation in Congress– only to thankfully have the EO blocked by a Reagan appointee judge yesterday (small favors).
Four days to institute tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada and China by February 1, to eliminate Biden-era policies favoring electric cars and other non-fossil fuel energy plans, to freeze all federal hiring, to direct “reviews” to weed out those not deemed loyal enough to Trump within the federal government, all while granting six month security clearances to all those in his administration whose background checks are pending (what could go wrong?).
Four days to eliminate all reproductive rights information from the White House website, to pardon anti-abortion foes convicted of crimes, to reverse Biden’s orders on reducing drug prices on life-saving medications, to remove the United States from the WHO and the Paris Climate Accords (again), to order the Attorney General to ignore Supreme Court precedent preventing the execution of disabled and mentally ill prisoners.
These are just a few major events of the last four days. Just a few.
And then, the icing on the cake: on Day One, he pardoned or commuted sentences for 1500 people convicted for January 6th crimes, including the leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, including a child molester, including the QAnon Shaman, who promised that his first act after release would be to buy “some mothaf***ing guns.”
We knew that it was going to be shock and awe. Trump and his people promised it would be shock and awe. Indeed, it is a part of their strategy– to make the harm so overwhelming that it feels hopeless, to make the fear so paralyzing we believe it’s inescapable, to make us freeze so that we never organize against any of it.
That we know this to be their strategy doesn’t make it any less horrifying.
And yet, it’s time to start pushing through the fog of this and, more importantly, to make some choices.
One of the advantages of having been trained as a lawyer, and having practiced as a white collar and human rights lawyer in D.C. and New York for 15 years, is that I see all of this through the lens of a multi-pronged response strategy, using different tactics to exert pressure.
For example, there is no question that trying to end birthright citizenship through an executive order and/or federal legislation is unconstitutional.
Yes, this current Supreme Court is comprised of a far-right majority willing to squash all principles of constitutional interpretation to fit their desired narratives when convenient. But I knew from the start that it would be a matter of minutes before states began suing the administration based on the blatant unconstitutionality of the EO.
22 states have done so as of this writing, one of which succeeded yesterday in getting Trump’s EO temporarily blocked as “blatantly unconstitutional.”
So, first strategy: battling back through the courts.
I also saw in Trump’s threat this week to prosecute state and local officials who refused to assist in immigration raids and mass deportations as a sign of what he knows to be true: that it takes human beings to carry out his fascist aims, and he doesn’t have the manpower he needs to do what he wants.
He needs state and local officials bludgeoned into not just compliance but active participation, or his mass deportation plans will fail.
Another strategy, therefore, is state and local officials refusing to comply with his directives.
This week, moreover, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to the floor of the House to argue vehemently against private prison camps as a part of her opposition to the abominable Laken Riley Act, noting that members of Congress would profit from these camps as they voted for them. At her most impassioned moment, AOC said: “So when a private prison camp opens in your town, and they say, ‘we didn’t know that this was going to happen,’ — know that they did. And they voted for it.”
Her statements were not just for purposes of legislation. AOC was saying to us: private prison camps are coming to your town. How will you respond?
Herein lies another strategy: localized, collective response, protests, and disruption to the creation of detention camps where you live.
And let’s not forget: when SNAP benefits are cut, folks are going to need food. If social security is cut, folks are going to need housing and other support. WE are the backstop to that.
And there’s yet another strategy: organizing locally for survival, and creating alternative systems of support, a strategy known as dual power.
We are not without power. All hope is not lost. Don’t fall for another one of his cons, and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.
The future isn’t written just yet.
I had a moment many years ago now when I was confronted with a choice. I was facing down a situation where I had to decide whether I was going to fight back against something that was egregiously wrong– against a person who was egregiously amoral, and likely a psychopath– or whether I was going to fold, and succumb to a lifetime of trauma.
I was twenty years old when life, or fate, or destiny put that choice to me.
I remember very clearly that I knew that it was a choice that would alter the course of my life forever– one way or another– that it would be a defining moment of my entire existence, and that it was as serious as it gets.
I still remember the bench I was sitting on, in a garden in France, with my father next to me, when I made the decision. And in that stark October afternoon under a cold blue sky, shaking and yet so crystal clear in where I stood, I knew that it was a choice between life and death.
I chose to fight.
My future wasn’t written just yet either, and I simply could not let that man get away with what he had done, nor could I, were it within my power to stop it, allow him to do it to anyone else.
I didn’t end up with exactly the victory I wanted. He didn’t end up with exactly the karmic or legal retribution that I knew he deserved.
But I survived, and I fought back, and I refused to be silenced, or to capitulate, or to deny myself the reclamation of power that I knew I so richly deserved. I refused to cower, to hide, to break.
It cost me dearly in many ways, but it was worth the price. That choice made me who I am.
The story of my life as it unfolded since that defining moment has been one where, come what may, I know that I am a survivor, in more ways than one. That choice taught me that I can and will survive horrible things, because I had already survived horrible things, and I chose to fight back and then to heal in spite of them.
This is how we as a nation can proceed, too. We can decide to fight. We can decide the future isn’t written just yet. We can decide that we will simply not let that man get away with what he has done, nor will we, if it is in our power to stop it, allow him to harm anyone else.
We can choose to fight. We can choose to not comply. We can choose to speak up whenever and however we can. We can choose to help ourselves and others to survive and to be safe and to evade the damage he seeks to inflict on so many of us. And then, we can choose to heal in spite of him.
All this can be done. It is already being done.
The question now is about what we each decide to do next.
What remains now is for each and every one of us to choose. Will we fold, or cower in fear, or succumb to hopelessness? Will we allow ourselves to be silenced, to capitulate, to retreat into isolation and despair? Will we choose the lifetime of trauma? Will we choose that for everyone else?
Or will we decide that we are worth the fight? That every single person he has harmed or will harm is worth the fight?
This will be the defining choice for the future of our entire nation. It will impact all the generations to come, every single one.
And the moment for deciding?
It’s right now.
Interested in learning how to disrupt what’s coming, build community where you live, and to move the needle forward in big and small ways that make a real difference right now?
I’ve been calling, and urging others to call members of Congress, demanding a resolution be passed condemning the pardoning of violent J6 rioters. Because this action was so outrageous and unpopular I think even if a resolution isn’t passed we should make sure people remember it.
Thank you for that. I needed to hear it.