Fridays in Trumpland: 1.31.2025

White Men are Whiting, or How to Find Rebellion in a River of Filth

Doug Mills/The New York Times

This was a hard week to write. It was also a hard week to watch.

The week began with the confirmation of drunk white supremacist Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary, and then moved through an Executive Order that froze federal spending, threatened lives, and spawned multiple lawsuits; through not one but two vicious anti-trans EOs that also threatened lives and freedom; through confirmation hearings for a crackpot anti-vaxxer, a crackpot “enemies list” generating January 6th conspiracist, and a Russian/Assad apologist; through the announcement of a 30,000 person concentration camp for immigrants to be built at Guantanamo Bay; and finally through a plane crash at National Airport that killed 67 people, which Trump promptly and baselessly blamed on white men not being in charge of everything everywhere.

But Trump’s post-plane crash press conference yesterday was, to be kind about it, a particularly PTSD-inducing low.

I watched it, and was brought suddenly back to the horrifying daily briefs of the early days of the pandemic, and then dizzied by the fact that we are somehow, despite all intervening events, right back here again.

I watched as he vehemently claimed, without any evidence at all (because who needs that?!), that the three magically coded letters known as “DEI,” along with people with disabilities, were somehow to blame for a mid-air collision between an airplane and a helicopter, while cursing out the prior Secretary of Transportation and two presidential predecessors.

It was a galling, retch-inducing display.

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The end rationale, though, was obvious. When Trump, and his “Real World Boston”-qualified Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and his author-turned-hedge-fund-baby VP JD Vance, paraded through the White House briefing room yesterday complaining about “DEI” in the face of tragedy, what they were really saying is that they believe only white men are ever qualified to do anything, and further that if anything ever goes wrong, it is certainly not their fault, but only ever somehow the fault of non-white and/or disabled people instead.

No matter that Duffy himself is wildly unqualified to handle anything having to do with the DOT, as his pathetic commentary in two press conferences yesterday made plain. No matter that JD Vance had less than two years of public service under his belt prior to ascending to the second most powerful position in the land. No matter, indeed, that Trump himself has nothing in his background that makes him qualified to be Commander in Chief, having traipsed through reality TV and beauty pageants and six (count ‘em) bankruptcies before (quite insanely) being elected president the first time.

All that matters to them in the end to them is that they’re white straight cisgender men, because they believe that, as a result, they can do anything they want.

So let’s just be clear about what’s going on here: as Jamelle Bouie first pointed out yesterday, these men are straight-up white segregationists— worse than Jesse Helms, and worse, dare I say it, than even Strom Thurmond. In an era that is now sixty years on from the Civil Rights Act, where Black and brown and LGBTQ+ people have risen to some of the highest positions in the land despite white supremacist misogyny embedded in every institution, this president and his lackeys want white men, and only white men, to be in charge of everything– even when those men do not deserve it, and even if they never will.

Most importantly, however, they are not content to simply rule. They want more. They want all the rest of us permanently relegated to the back of the societal bus, if not completely exterminated, forever and ever, amen.

That, my friends, is definitional white power. Let’s call it what it is.

Why?

Because we can’t fight what we can’t name.

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There was some good news, though, this week, and it came in the form of rebellion.

Federal employees rebelled against an offer, cut-and-pasted from Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, that essentially asked them to fire themselves for nothing. That rebellion grew and grew through Reddit subgroups like wildfire, with federal employees who were previously trying to find new employment declaring that, thanks to Trump’s missive offering them nothing to quit, they were now locked and loaded for the next four years, taking their oaths to defend the Constitution seriously, and would not be bullied out the door.

Rebellion also came through the courts. A multitude of lawsuits were filed against the Trump administration’s horrifying EOs, and met with some success. State AGs rose up against the shutdown of the Medicaid platforms and the freezing of federal funding, and won a temporary restraining order. Nonprofits who filed to stay the spending freeze EO also won a temporary restraining order. Trans soldiers sued the administration to stop the EO banning them from military service.

And finally, rebellion came from the people. So much pressure was brought to bear on Capitol Hill and through the courts that after less than 48 hours, the EO that froze everything from Head Start to veterans suicide prevention programs was withdrawn– maybe not permanently, but for now.

We are not even close to the end of this battle, but at least this week we all remembered how to fight.

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The initial subtitle of this week’s Fridays in Trumpland was going to be How to Get Clean When You’re Swimming Through Sh*t.

While this week did feel, in many ways, like swimming through sh*t, it also reminded us that we have barely begun to throw sand in the gears of this latest incarnation of American fascism.

So, I want to remind you of a few things before I go.

We have to choose, very carefully now, how we are going to survive this. What will we do, for ourselves and one another? What will it take to make it?

Getting clean, in the common vernacular, means letting go of addiction– in this instance to drama, to his narcissism, to the outrage cycle of every horrible thing– and remembering and rediscovering what it’s like to be human.

Remembering, for instance, what it’s like to feel compassion.

Remembering, for instance, what it’s like to love one another without reservation, and to treat other human beings as sacred, miraculous gifts.

Remembering, for instance, what it’s like to believe in dedication, and oaths of office, and the dignity of public service.

Remembering, for instance, what it’s like to grieve the loss of loved ones, and mourn together with the families of those who have lost them, without turning it into anything other than a moment of hallowed sorrow.

Remembering, for instance, and also rediscovering, what it’s like to live into a politics of care, where government is at its best when it is by and for the people, and where the people in government stand in the breach, protecting us from abuses and demagogues and greedy billionaires.

All these values cannot be elided over or eliminated just because one man, or many men, believe that people who look like them or are as rich as them are the only ones who matter.

To quote the great Kendrick Lamar, they’re not like us.

And yet in the great morass of this nation, to quote the also great Childish Gambino, this is America.

America has been swimming in sh*t for a very long time– centuries of it. Many of us didn’t notice the stench until recently, but it’s always been there.

The question we all have to ask ourselves right now is about what we’re willing to do, and how much rebellion it will take, for all of us to finally get clean.

Let’s not pretend, though, that any of this smells like roses.

Let’s start, instead, trying to get out of the sh*t.

And also, to take heart this week in one defining fact:

Rebellion is contagious.

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