It’s been a week since the election of Donald Trump and the shock is just now beginning to wear off. The ritual Democratic self-flagellation is calming a bit as most people finally take a breath and recognize that while the result was a terrible disappointment it was anything but a landslide for Donald Trump, nor was it a crushing rebuke of the Democratic party.
As Philip Bump of The Washington Post points out in this preliminary analysis:
“Trump’s popular-vote victory will likely end up as the smallest since 2000. It is due, in part, to fewer people voting. Exit polls are imperfect, but they suggest where each party gained and lost votes since 2020…What we can say, though, is that this was not an electoral landslide, but a narrowly contested race in which Trump is likely to have benefited as much from who didn’t turn out to vote for his candidacy than who did turn out to vote for him.
Right now, the first order of business is to shake off the defeat and confront the challenge of Donald Trump’s ghastly agenda. As we have seen in the last few days it’s shaping up to be both more chaotic and more extreme than even in 2016.
Last time, Trump at least had a transition team put together by his transition chief former Gov. Chris Christie in place, even if he threw most of their plan out almost immediately. They held meetings in Trump Tower in New York to vet candidates and policies in a more or less formal atmosphere. Now they’re meeting at Mar-a-Lago in free-wheeling gab sessions around the golf course and the dining table at the resort. Apparently, Elon Musk is a fixture, “weighing in on staffing decisions, making clear his preference for certain roles,”
As you’ve no doubt heard by now, Trump has been wasting no time in naming his cabinet members and other staff. Musk himself was named, along with former presidential primary candidate Vivek Rammaswamy (who has also been in attendance in transition meetings) to head an outside advisory board they’re calling the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. (Both Musk and Ramaswamy think that acronym is adorable because it’s an older internet meme and a cryptocurrency in which Musk is heavily invested. The techno boys are having a rousing good time. By the look of that lunch table above, Trump is spending most of his time golfing and tweeting, as usual.
The other cabinet officials chosen so far have been typical Trump toadies and henchmen such as his former acting Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to CIA, S. Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to DHS, and former Congressman Lee Zeldin to the EPA. They did cause a stir on Tuesday when they named Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, for Defense Secretary whose main qualification for the job appears to be pushing Trump to pardon war criminals. Who knows who this braintrust is going to choose for Attorney General and Secretary of State? There have been some semi-respectable names floated but there are also some Hegseth level choices as well.
This explains why Trump is demanding that the new Senate Majority Leader, whoever that runs out to be, will ensure that his nominations are handled by recess appointments rather than the usual constitutionally required confirmation process. It’s very possible that even with a 53 vote majority, they couldn’t get some of these unqualified extremists passed.
It’s clear they plan to hit the ground running with the mass deportation agenda. Trump has already officially named his “Border Czar,” an unofficial position he apparently plans on imbuing with immense power, Tom Homan a former border patrol official best known for fashioning Trump’s family separation policy. He has been all over TV assuring America that he plans to deport every undocumented immigrant and he’ll use whatever force it takes to do it, including the military.
At this point it’s hard to know what Democrats in Washington will be able to do to push back on any of this. The Senate will be in Republican hands so the confirmation of Trump’s cabinet and judges are pretty much a done deal. It’s still possible that the Democrats could control the House although it’s a long shot. If that happens budgets and appropriations will have a necessary check. Otherwise, it’s a GOP candy store.
As for the other branch, the judiciary, we don’t know for sure what the Supreme Court would definitely do should anyone try to stop Trump’s appalling agenda from coming to fruition but we do know that they believe virtually nothing he does could possibly be criminal so he pretty much has a free hand. However, in our federalist system there is another institutional check on his power and that’s in the states. And in those that are run by Democrats we are already seeing a strong pushback, which they have been planning for months in case Trump managed to do the unthinkable again.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California immediately called a special legislative session to shore up the state’s legal defenses to challenge Trump’s plans around the environment, reproductive and LGBTQ rights and immigration. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker held a news conference two days after the election and put the President elect on notice, saying “To anyone who intends to come take away the freedom and opportunity and dignity of Illinoisans: I would remind you that a happy warrior is still a warrior. You come for my people, you come through me.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Leticia James pledged to “protect New Yorkers’ fundamental freedoms from any potential threats.” Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who made her name as Attorney General filing lawsuits against the first Trump administration, said she would defend the freedoms of her people “in the face of any attempted federal overreach.”
Democratic states passed laws protecting reproductive health care, stockpiled abortion pills and got as many protections for threatened constituencies as they could on the November ballots. These governors are reportedly talking among themselves about how to get promised federal funding for state projects into their treasuries before Trump takes over. He has, after all, explicitly threatened to withhold aid if any Governor balks at his plans.
And he’s not happy at all about this. He called out Newsom in a rambling Truth Social post:
At the moment, the push back from these lawmakers will be done through lawsuits. But you have to wonder what the new “Border Czar”, who insists that he will have the military at his disposal, means when he says that governors from sanctuary states have to “get the hell out of the way” and if they don’t “we may have to double the number of agents we send to New York City.” Is he planning on having an armed stand off with the state police or something?
Whether the Big Blue states have the ability to successful push back Trump’s larger agenda is unlikely. Unless the courts are amenable, which is a crap shoot these days, Trump will likely be able to get away with much of it if he can find the wherewithal to actually get it done. But it’s hard to imagine that even his loony crew will allow Tom Homan to send the military into New York and LA to roust immigrants in their homes against the wishes of the state and local authorities. So there is a pretty good chance that these governors can “Trump proof” their states and at least stymie his plans in the big population centers. We’d better hope they can do it. It’s pretty much all we’ve got.