One Month of Trump
The movement to stop Trump will not succeed if our opposition is seen as a defense of the status quo.
From the Party for Socialism and Liberation:
Yesterday marked one month since Donald Trump took office. While in some senses it has been filled with uncertainty and confusion, the experience of the last 31 days has made one thing crystal clear: all the people’s movements for justice need to unite if we want to stand a real chance at stopping Trump’s onslaught.
What Trump and his team are trying to do is not simply roll back progress on this or that issue—they are pursuing a comprehensive plan to reorganize the fundamental structures of the government in a way that cements the wealth and power of the ultra-rich at the expense of the rest of us.
They want to shred the most important rights won over the last century of struggle—any program, policy, or practice that promotes equality in society or aims to provide a decent standard of living to working people is on the chopping block. By destroying the rights of the working class, Trump, Musk, and the others hope to restore U.S. capitalism to its former “greatness.” This plot is playing out on many fronts all at once.
The all-out offensive of the past month is designed to overwhelm and disorient any opposition. We can only overcome this if we understand that all of these attacks are par of a single project that requires a united response.
Elon Musk’s DOGE is seizing control of nearly every agency of the federal government and initiating mass layoffs of public sector workers. Entire institutions aimed at regulating big business, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, have been effectively abolished. They aim to hollow out vital services so that they can be privatized in the name of “efficiency,” including the most essential programs like Social Security and Medicaid.
Using practically every federal police agency and even the military, Trump is waging war on immigrants and attempting to carry out mass deportations at a scale never before seen. They are falling short of the number of arrests they hope to carry out, but are trying to make up for it with total cruelty—sending migrants to the torture center at Guantanamo Bay and legalizing raids targeting schools and churches.
The basic rights won by the Black community in the Civil Rights revolution of the 1950s and 60s are being torn up. Trump has put the last nail in the coffin of affirmative action and banned any policy aimed at combating racism in the workplace or federal programs. Practically any problem is now blamed on “DEI hires”—the right wing’s new favorite code word to refer to supposedly “unqualified” Black employees. By ending Justice Department reform programs imposed on the most racist police departments and pardoning two killer cops responsible for the death of a Black 20-year-old in Washington, D.C., Trump is sending a clear message that the police are free to commit terrible violence against Black people with impunity.
Fossil fuel industry figures have been put in charge of some of the most consequential agencies dealing with the environment. Trump has moved aggressively to get rid of any obstacle to oil and gas production and withdraw from any commitment made by the U.S. government to combat climate change. Trump has banned the most basic acknowledgement that trans people exist and prohibited any activities that aim to curb discriminatory attitudes against LGBTQ people. And the Trump administration is preparing a crackdown on civil liberties, targeting people who engage in righteous protest like those who took to the streets in opposition to the genocide in Gaza.
Trump is a threat to the entire world. He has become obsessed with taking over new territory and adding it to the U.S. He wants to seize the Panama Canal and Greenland, turn Canada into the 51st state, and expel all Palestinians from Gaza so it can become a U.S.-owned luxury real-estate development. Not only is he telling Israel they have a green light to resume the genocide against Palestinians, he wants to partner with them to wage war on Iran.
U.S. foreign policy towards China has been handed over to the most extreme hawks whose aggressive posture could bring about World War Three. He has demanded that the U.S.’s junior partners massively increase military spending, setting off a global arms race to boost the profits of U.S.-based weapons manufacturing corporations.
Trump claims to be following an “America First” isolationist foreign policy. But even where he is moving to make peace like in Ukraine, this just functions as a way to clear away what his team views as unnecessary distractions from the core fronts of war and aggression they want to pursue.
Trump managed to get elected by taking advantage of the very real problems people are facing and the very legitimate anger so many working people have towards the political elite. His actual core policies are opposed by the majority of people in this country, but by packaging them together in what he presents as an effort to break up the establishment, he is able to generate significant support.
The movement to stop Trump will not succeed if our opposition is seen as a defense of the status quo. We need to be united around a vision for a new society where the rights of all are respected, and access to all the necessities of a dignified life is guaranteed.
Trump’s critics in the political and corporate elite have run away from the fight—or decided to turn around entirely to embrace him.
It is up to the working class to lead the movement and point the way to a better world.