This Time Is Different
We’ve known a second Trump Administration would present new—and profound—threats to our values and to our democracy. They’re proving us right every day.
From day one, Donald Trump’s first presidency was a steady parade of breaking norms, envelope-pushing assertions of executive power, and unconstitutional attacks on vulnerable people. And while we knew Trump 2.0 would see more of the same—and we prepared for much of it—the scale and scope of the actions taken by this second Trump Administration are something new.
The first Trump presidency was a shambolic mess. This was an administration run by people who didn’t think they would win in November and were ill-prepared for using the levers of power once they took office. They had no real plan beyond the president’s vague campaign promises about a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the country or building a border wall and making Mexico pay for it.
This time, however, the machinery of the white Christian nationalist movement was ready. And while they were always more supportive of a Trump presidency than other mainstream conservative organizations were, they are now fully on board and, flush with cash from reactionary billionaires who loved the first administration’s remaking of the federal judicial system, fully staffed up. Their Project 2025 roadmap was written by people who knew exactly how to implement their agenda.
And implement it they have. This agenda is laser focused not just on a handful of policy promises from the campaign trail—after all, there were very few actual policies discussed beyond “concepts of a plan” on healthcare, pledges to lower inflation, and repeated attacks on trans people and DEI—but on dismantling government capacity and exacting revenge on ideological opponents of Trump and the white Christian nationalist movement.
This movement has been obsessed with gutting the federal government’s ability to do anything. Whether it’s regulating financial institutions with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, vaccination programs domestically or overseas that save countless lives through USAID, defending civil rights laws at the Department of Justice, or even the complete destruction of the Department of Education; the ideologues who are staffing this administration (led by Project 2025 architect Russell Vought) have their marching orders.
The implementation of their agenda is being helped along by the actions of Elon Musk, using the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to fire hundreds of thousands of probationary employees—not just new hires, but people who have changed locations, have a new role in the same department, or transitioned from military to civilian roles. This action, while blocked by multiple federal courts, was done with no regard for the contributions or expertise of these employees. Rather, it was done because they had the fewest protections from summary dismissal. Far from delivering on efficiency, this implementation has the embodiment of the Silicon Valley ethos of “move fast and break things.”
It is the breaking of things that is the entire point.
But this isn’t the only part of the agenda where Musk, Trump, and the Christian Nationalist movement foot soldiers have found common cause. In just the first two months of this administration, we have seen a sustained campaign to use the machinery of government (or, in the case of Musk, his wealth) to exact revenge against ideological opponents. Their weaponized grievance, the need to punish people who don’t show the “proper” amount of deference to their authority—Trump’s as president, Musk’s wealth and “genius,” and Christianity’s supposed historical entitlement to cultural power—unites them.
Trump has issued executive orders revoking security clearances and purporting to cancel contracts with anyone who does business with the law firms who previously employed Robert Mueller, Jack Smith, and other federal prosecutors who investigated his attempts to subvert the 2020 election or who engaged in pro bono legal advocacy challenging the administration’s actions. Musk’s DOGE has launched a crusade against “wokeness,” cutting grants and funding to nonprofit organizations that support refugees, immigrants, the arts, and LGBTQ people. And the white Christian nationalist movement has set their sights on colleges and universities, pulling hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding because of a single trans athlete at the University of Pennsylvania, or because of student protests at Columbia University.
What’s more, they have now moved on to targeting students studying in the U.S. on visas for speech that is critical of the administration’s policies, with lawful residents being all but kidnapped on the street and shipped off the ICE holding facilities halfway across the country. Their “crime?” The justification for upending their lives? Attending a protest or writing an op-ed.
In a statement commenting on the cancelation of the student visa of Kseniia Petrova, who wrote an article criticizing Vladimir Putin and Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “If you come into the US as a visitor and create a ruckus for us, we don't want it. We don't want it in our country. Go back and do it in your country.” Petrova could now be deported to Russia.
Thus far, religious minorities—including atheists—have mostly eluded explicit targeting. But LGBTQ people, and trans people in particular, have not been so fortunate. Under the guise of “protecting” women, the administration has attempted to enact a ban on trans people from serving in the military (which has already been blocked by two different courts, including one who said that the rule was based not just in animus but had no rational basis whatsoever), required passports and other identification documents to reflect their pre-transition gender, and threatened all federal funding for the state of Maine because their governor, Janet Mills, had criticized the administration’s actions attacking trans people.
To call these attacks on individuals unconstitutional understates the point. They are, if anything, anti-constitutional. They are profoundly antithetical to our values as Americans, to our founding documents, and to the rights guaranteed by our Constitution. They call into question our ability to engage in peaceful protest or petition our government for redress of grievances if we can simply be snatched off the street and summarily deported to a foreign internment camp with no ability to challenge our classification as enemies of the state.
These attacks on attorneys, on civil society and nonprofit groups, and on higher education are intended to force compliance in advance, preventing us from mobilizing against these actions. And already many well-heeled institutions are indeed engaging in self censorship or caving to the administration’s extortionate demands.
Unconstrained by the possibility of reelection and with ideological supporters lined up behind him, this Trump term is both a revenge tour and a breathtaking expansion of the powers of the presidency. The powers they’re trying to claim for him? The power to ignore the other branches of government. The power to reward allies and punish opponents. The power to silence criticism or dissent.
That is not a version of America that any of us would recognize. But it is in lock step with the deepest dreams of the white Christian nationalist movement: one where the chosen few are ordained to rule and the rest of us are destined to be ruled.
It’s a vision of America that must be resisted with every ounce of our conviction. Because once that vision for America is enacted, it will be impossible to undo the damage.
