Gradually, Then Suddenly
We’ve a long way to go before we make it home.
Ernest Hemingway’s famous description in his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises of how one of his characters goes bankrupt is becoming the roadmap for the Trump administration’s attempted dismantling of both the federal government and the post-WW2 global order.
But even though it feels like we’ve already been hit by an unrelenting tsunami of executive orders and presidential pronouncements – our collective zone has been well and truly flooded – we’re still largely in the “gradually” phase.
Looking for some optimism, in an opinion piece for the Minnesota Star-Tribune, Jeffery Vacante, an assistant professor of History at the University of Western Ontario, hits a hopeful nail on the head. He argues that what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing is “illusory” and that despite their efforts, the institutions they are trying to destroy are still in place. Beaten but, for now, still breathing.
“But all hope should not be lost. In truth, what Trump is doing is not so much dismantling the federal government as defunding it. Though people are being fired, office leases are being terminated and funding is being cut off, the institutions themselves remain in place. Even if these institutions are mere shells of what they were only a few weeks ago, they are not dead. The legislation that established these institutions remains in place.
“Both men are engaged in a form of performance art that has created the appearance of strength and action without actually being strong and without actually taking action. They are both engaged in a branding exercise to burnish their own reputations as decisive and tough bosses. In reality, they are doing very little of what they claim to be doing.”
That may be cold comfort to the thousands of federal employees and their families thrown into uncertainty by Musk’s DOGE, while the administration has relentlessly targeted the legal system and is in the process of wrestling an already compliant GOP in Congress to the ground. But we have to keep looking for upsides.
The “suddenly” part is yet to come. The administration knows it has a limited window to alter the country beyond repair, and put their control beyond the reach of a national verdict at the ballot box. It’s not long ago that we used to joke about the next election “assuming there is one”… it honestly doesn’t seem so funny anymore.
With Trump hinting again this week that he might seek a third term, Sarah Longwell tweeted that “Republicans’ tacit openness to the prospect despite its clear unconstitutionality—is a low-key admission they don’t know how to put together a winning coalition without him directly in the ballot” as seemed to be borne out in the election this week for control of the Wisconsin State Supreme Court.
The best part of $100million was spent in the most expensive judicial race in history – about one-fifth of that coming from the pockets of the President’s biggest donor and world’s richest man (who, it turns out, may be on his way out of the administration relatively quickly).
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The financial markets remain in turmoil heading into Monday’s open after Trump’s much-analysed and largely ridiculed global tariff plan this week after having declared a national economic emergency “posed by the large and persistent trade deficit.”
"This is the biggest self-inflicted wound we've put on our economy in history," former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "There's no one, virtually, who doesn't work for the president who thinks this is a good idea."
Cabinet members couldn’t seem to agree on the short-to-medium term purpose of the move, while JP Morgan increased its likelihood of a US recession this year to 60 per cent.
On Thursday, former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani rang the bell at the NYSE on what was the fifth-worst day for the Dow ever, part of its worst week since the pandemic.
While ordinary Americans are bracing for further hits to their retirement savings or through increased prices and inflation, the cash registers are ringing for the Trump family amid a Saudi-backed golf tournament and fundraising events this weekend.
And with the president likely to ramp up still further his involvement with various crypto schemes, Matt Stieb at New York magazine spoke with a senior adviser to former SEC chair Gary Gensler about a lax regulatory environment and the “unthinkable” conflicts of interest that could still be on their way.
In short, Jonathan Last at The Bulwark argues that the American Age is over.
“We cannot overstate what has just happened. It took just 71 days for Donald Trump to wreck the American economy, mortally wound NATO, and destroy the American-led world order.
“He did this with the enthusiastic support of the entire Republican party and conservative movement. He did it with the support of a plurality of American voters.
“He did not hide his intentions. He campaigned on them. He made them the central thrust of his election. He told Americans that he would betray our allies and give up our leadership position in the world.
“There are only three possible explanations as to why Americans voted for this man:
1. they wanted what he promised;
2. they didn’t believe what he promised; or
3. they didn’t understand what he promised.
“Pick whichever rationale you want, because it doesn’t matter. Whatever the reason was, it exposed half of the electorate—the 77 million people who voted for Trump—as either fundamentally unserious, decadent, or weak.
“And no empire can survive the degeneration of its people.”
And that’s the fundamental contradiction of democracy. If we believe in the will of the people, we have to sustain that belief even when the people do things that are detrimental to all of us – not just in theory and opinion, but in fact.
So much for the Age of America, then. But rather than what a self-congratulatory Trump described as a “Golden Age” it appears we’re still living through what Alan Greenspan twenty-odd years ago called the Age of Turbulence.
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Out in the Street
In every state across the country on Saturday, people gathered to protest the actions of the Trump administration. The aforementioned Elon Musk, predictably, came in for his own special treatment at the more than a thousand rallies of varying sizes organised by Hands Off!, Indivisible and many other groups. It’s too soon to get a credible number for total national turnout.
At the rally I attended in Baltimore, there were numerous calls for the release of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man deported ‘in error’ to El Salvador despite having protected legal status. A federal judge on Friday ordered the government to facilitate his return “by no later than 11:59 p.m. on Monday, April 7, 2025.” But the government – while acknowledging the error – remains adamant, saying in an earlier court filing that because Abrego Garcia was no longer in US custody, the court cannot order him to be returned to the US, nor can the court order El Salvador to return him.
Conservative columnist Matt Lewis wrote this week of the deportation policy and the lack of empathy, saying that Trump’s “ever-widening sadism will undermine his movement”.
“Once you normalize cruelty, the hammer eventually swings for everyone. Even the ones who thought they were swinging it.”
The protests were a huge story in local papers – even if they appeared to be downplayed in some major outlets. Margaret Sullivan suggested some reasons for why there might be a contrast.
Sen Cory Booker – who spoke at Saturday’s protest in Montclair, NJ – provided a source of inspiration for the rally-goers with his moving and brilliantly-organised speech in the Senate this week, breaking the record for the longest address in that chamber in history.
Finally, and tragically, as the cutbacks continue at the Dept of Health and Human Services, a second child died of measles in Texas this week. HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr visited the state to meet with members of the community.
The outbreak of the disease has affected some 500 people in the state since January, leading to warnings like this one by a Harvard epidemiologist:
“Public health depends on public trust. When that trust is broken, when people start to see vaccines as personal choices without regard to public health — or, worse, as threats — diseases like measles come roaring back. This outbreak may still seem small. But that’s exactly how it starts. Each case is a spark. And the fuel is all around us.”
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As always, thanks for reading. You might also enjoy – if that’s the right word these days – these previous posts
Warning Signs – Mar 9: ‘But he’s good on the economy…’
Tipping Points – Feb 9: Another chaotic, whiplash week, rounded off by a trip to the Super Bowl.
Elite Giants – Dec 12, 2024: ‘Money had itself a moment this week’
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Meanwhile, the project’s baseball-specific midweek posts started this week and you can read the first one here:
Damn The Torpedoes! – April 2: Innovation or Inevitability?
