When he was campaigning last year for a return to the White House, Donald Trump said he would be a dictator on Day One, and after his inauguration he made a show of signing 28 executive orders that stretched his authority. But it took him a month before he actually declared himself a monarch.
The first-day edicts included pardons for 1,500 people convicted of crimes, including violence that injured police officers, and commuting the sentences of 14 others involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump called the convicts “hostages.” Another executive order aimed to cut off birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, for children of undocumented aliens. Five federal lawsuits were filed the first week challenging Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order.
But Trump really hit his stride on Jan. 24, when he fired 17 inspectors general, who are responsible for investigating waste, fraud and abuse, and instead put Elon Musk’s Department of Govern Efficiency in charge of those tasks. Eight of those inspectors general, with oversight of the departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, State, Agriculture, Education, Labor and the Small Business Administration, filed suit Feb. 12, charging their terminations were unlawful and seeking reinstatement.
Then, on Feb. 19, Trump declared himself “king” as he announced his decision to rescind approval of New York’s “congestion pricing” — an auto toll instituted by the state in January to raise money for the region’s aging mass transit system and cut traffic in the city.
“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!” the Trump proclaimed on social media.
Soon after, an official White House account not only echoed the president’s online statement, it also released a portrait showing a grinning Trump wearing a crown.
Two days later, at a National Governors Association session at the White House,Trump referenced his recent executive order forbidding transgender student-athletes and said he had learned that Maine intended to ignore his directive. He then asked if Maine’s governor was in the room.
When Maine Gov. Janet Mills spoke up, he asked her whether her state would comply with his demands. The two-term Democratic governor — who also had served as Maine’s attorney general for several years — told the president she would comply with state and federal laws.
Trump replied, “Well, we are the federal law.” He added, “You better do it, because you’re not going to get federal funding.”
“See you in court,” the governor replied.
Republican members of Congress have bent the knee to the mango majesty, and have threatened to impeach federal judges who dare to undermine Trump’s decrees. Elon Musk stated on his X site that it is “time to impeach judges who violate the law.”
Republicans have no chance of removing the judges from office. Even if they pass impeachment articles in the House, they are dead letters in the Senate, where 67 votes are needed to remove the judges.
The Trump regime represents the opportunity for the Heritage Foundation to achieve their goal of dismantling the vestiges of the New Deal. Heritage is a right-wing think tank that has led the oligarch movement in the U.S. since the 1970s, when it was founded during Richard Nixon’s administration by Paul Weyrich, Edwin Feulner, and beer magnate Joseph Coors. Heritage grew from the new business activist movement inspired by the Powell Memorandum, written by Lewis Powell in 1971 when he was a consultant for the US Chamber of Commerce.
Powell, who later was appointed to the Supreme Court by Nixon, offered a plan for conservative business interests to dismantle New Deal programs, such as Social Security, Medicare and government regulation of businesses, which Powell considered socialist. Heritage advocated for pro-business policies and anti-communism in its early years, but also advocated cultural issues that were important to Christian conservatives.
Heritage’s influence grew with the ascent of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and the Heritage Foundation in January 1981 published “Mandate for Leadership,” a plan to reduce the size of the federal government that provided guidance to the incoming Reagan administration, with more than 2,000 policy recommendations on how the Reagan administration could use the federal government to advance conservative policies. Several of its authors went on to take positions in the Reagan administration and Reagan later called the Heritage Foundation a “vital force” during his presidency. The Heritage Foundation remained an influential voice during the administrations of presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.
Heritage discounted the candidacy of Trump in 2015. “Donald Trump’s a clown,” said Michael Needham, leader of Heritage Action, which handled political activism. Needham argued that Trump was riding the same wave of establishment disaffection that was floating Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic nomination. “He [Trump] needs to be out of the race.”
But once Trump secured the Republican nomination, Heritage changed its tune and obtained influence in Trump’s presidential transition and administration. After the 2016 election, Trump’s team was unprepared to staff the new administration, but Heritage stepped up with its 3,000-name searchable database of trusted movement conservatives who were eager to serve in a post-Obama government. The New York Times in 2018 reported that several hundred people from Heritage ultimately received jobs in government agencies, including Betsy DeVos, Mick Mulvaney, Rick Perry, Scott Pruitt, Jeff Sessions, and others who became members of Trump’s cabinet.
Now, in Trump’s reincarnation, Heritage produced Project 25 to give Trump a running start in recreating U.S. government as an oligarchy. The GOP is going ahead with a budget reconciliation power play that makes severe cuts in federal services to allow more tax cuts for billionaires. There is a relatively minor amount of “waste, fraud and abuse” in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid — mainly in the eye of the beholder — but greedy oligarchs demand a piece of the action.
Medicaid and the related Children’s Health Insurance Program provide health care for more than 79 million Americans in low-income families, at a cost of $880 billion a year. If the poor don’t get health care through Medicaid, they are likely to end up relying on local charities to cover health care costs.
Trump said cuts to Medicare and Social Security are “off the table,” but so was Medicaid until Republicans lined up enough votes to put it back on the table. They have proposed increasing the age to qualify for Medicare, cuts in coverage and moving remaining Medicare recipients to privatized Medicare Advantage, where insurance companies increase profits by denying medical procedures.
Social Security would be fiscally solid for the foreseeable future if Congress would increase the cap on taxable income from the current limit of $176,000, after which the wealthy pay nothing. Democrats must stand firm against the Greedy Oligarchs Party. — JMC
