Trump's first 100 days will require a second Reconstruction

Yahoo

01-05-2025

Donald Trump has been president for 100 days. He promised to 'Make America Great Again!' Instead, Trump and his administration and the MAGA Republicans have made the United States less democratic, less free, less safe, less prosperous, less respected around the world, and much more unhappy.
Trump has been remarkably direct and transparent in his plans to become the country's first elected autocrat, a 'dictator' on 'day one.' He and his enablers are following through on this plan with reckless abandon.
An avalanche of recent public opinion polls shows that Donald Trump is now the least popular president in 80 years at this point in office. Specifically, Trump's handling of the economy and disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution and general abuse(s) of power have caused the American people to turn against him en masse. Trump's MAGA voters, especially the Christian right-wing and other Christian authoritarians and theocrats, remain dedicated to him and the cause. They view Donald Trump as a type of prophet and god; they are fighting a type of crusade; Trumpism and MAGA are their religious politics.
Legal scholars, political scientists, and other leading voices are sounding the alarm at a deafening level that the United States is quickly collapsing (or already has) into a state of authoritarian rule under Trump. In a new article in the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs, political scientists Stephen Levitsky and Lucan A. Way describe this collapse, as 'U.S. democracy will likely break down during the Second Trump administration in the sense that it will cease to meet standard criteria for a liberal democracy — full adult suffrage, free and fair elections, and broad protection of civil liberties….'
Donald Trump's authoritarian push and his MAGA movement have encountered little substantive resistance from the Democratic Party, the news media and the Fourth Estate, civil society, big business, and other counterbalancing forces in American society. In the worst examples, these elite institutions are engaging in 'anticipatory compliance,' aka surrender and collaboration with Trump and the larger MAGA authoritarian populist movement.
With few exceptions, such as the 'Hands off' protests several weeks ago, the American people have also been cowed by Donald Trump and his forces' shock and awe campaign. The American people appear to be vacillating between learned helplessness and mass disinhibition.
Whatever may happen after Trump's first 100 days as the long Trumpocene further digs in, one thing is almost certain: it will not end well for the American people and their democracy and society. The question is now not if the disaster can be avoided but instead what level of catastrophe and horribleness awaits and how the American people can rebuild if that is even possible.
Ultimately, the first 100 days of Trump's return and the long years of the Trumpocene were preventable. The American people — or at least enough of them in certain parts of the country — inflicted this disaster on themselves. Donald Trump is just doing what he promised and threatened.
In an attempt to gain a better perspective and insights on Donald Trump's first 100 days back in power, what may happen next, and what has already been lost, I reached out to a range of leading experts. I also asked them the following question: If these first 100 days of Trump's administration are indeed the good times as compared to what will come next, what do they want to prepare the American people for?
Barbara McQuade is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. She is the author of the book '.' McQuade is also a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, and a co-host of the podcast #SistersInLaw.
At 100 days, my strongest emotion is sadness. I think we will get through these dark days, but not without some significant steps backward in our march toward a more perfect union. Trump's chaos and low approval ratings show that his authoritarian moves are not what voters chose in November, which gives me hope for candidates more interested in unity in the 2026 and 2028 elections, but it will take us a long time to recover from the harms of this administration. Damage to scientific research, public health, universities, diversity, and the rule of law will not recover overnight.
I am most surprised by Trump's use of executive orders to target American institutions, such as universities and law firms. These orders are completely lawless, and yet, we have seen some of his targets capitulate rather than defend themselves in court. As I learned in my work as a federal prosecutor, appeasing the extortionist only invites more extortion.
If these are the good times, then I don't want to see the bad times! I actually think that for all his bluster, Trump is unable to execute most of his plans because he surrounds himself with incompetence. I think that Trump wanted to create the illusion of action right at the start of his administration, but his choice of cabinet members and other leaders has stymied his success. It appears to me that many leaders were selected for their loyalty rather than for their expertise, and we are seeing the consequences of those choices in their blunders, such as the use of Signal to discuss military attack plans. Running the government like a business never works. I think most Americans see the foolishness of cutting government services without rhyme or reason.
Trump's willingness to violate the rule of law and to traffic in disinformation makes him a very dangerous person to serve as president. He seems to be attacking any institution that can serve as a check on his power — the media, universities, judges, lawyers, and state officials. But so far, our courts have largely held him in check. The real question is whether he will obey court orders. I remain optimistic that the public will not tolerate a president who violates court orders. Trump may not care about many things, but he cares about his ratings, as we have seen from his repeated examples of backing down from unpopular moves, such as tariffs, cancellation of student visas, firing of federal employees, and the like. Public sentiment is everything, and the people still hold the power to shape our democracy. The 'Hands Off' protests seemed like a turning point when the public realized that Trump's tactics did not make his success inevitable.
is a professor of religious studies and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her most recent book is "."
We are in authoritarianism, and things will only get worse unless everyone understands where we really are. I'm a black woman. 92% of us voted for Kamala. We did the work. Now it's time to take care of our own.
is emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author of the bestseller "."
I am not feeling good. The pace of movement toward full-blown autocracy, greater than we saw with Orban and Erdogan among others, is distressing. More distressing is the collapse or shrinkage of the guardrails to prevent it, from the press to Congress to the business community to some judges.
I am somewhat surprised by the level of incompetence combined with the lack of concern over missteps, blunders, destruction of critical health and safety safeguards and direct threats to national security. And the level of cruelty. Not that any of these things are completely unexpected, but it is all worse.
We are seeing a backlash, and I expect it will grow as more Americans, including many who voted for Trump, feel the awful effects of policies and blunders. But Americans should not expect that all this can be ameliorated, much less erased. These are far from normal times for our country and voting and elections and politics as usual. For example, prepare for the possibility that Trump responds by invoking the Insurrection Act, provoking violence against dissent, and declaring martial law. Perhaps it will fall short of that. If it does, and we see a turnaround in the reins of power in 2026 and again in 2028, prepare for some very rough times. The destruction of much of the government and its infrastructure will take a very long time to overcome
Eric Schnurer is a widely recognized expert on public policy and government effectiveness, efficiency and reinvention. His newsletter can be read at .
I'm not really surprised by anything that's taking place now. I thought Trump would win from early in 2016. I also thought that Trump would win in 2024 back in January 7, 2020 onward. I have also believed that Trump would and still will seek and likely attain a third term. Trump will likely get his third term because of America's political and legal dysfunction.
More crucially, I always believed he would encourage a violent insurrection to stay in power, would not leave office as long as he's alive, and that his time in office will culminate in something like the Troubles in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This has little to do with Trump — although he foments the worst in people instead of the best — and more to do with deeper factors like emerging technologies and a changing economy leaving most people out: Trump is the fever, not the underlying illness.
But you don't have to have shared my views to be unsurprised by anything happening today: Trump promised every bit of this. The people running this administration published an entire book announcing what they planned to do and how they were going to do it. If you're surprised by anything at this point, you haven't been paying attention.As for how I'm feeling, anticipating the end of everything I've valued my entire life about this great country — the Constitution, mostly-civil discourse, a public ethos of decency to other human beings no matter how short we fall of our ideals in practice, political processes built on something other than violence, real-if-grudging progress on racial and other forms of discrimination and injustice, America as both a concept and a reality – doesn't make its actual disappearance any better. It all bothers me, every minute of every day. But the intentional inhumanity and cruelty being visited on individual human beings on a daily basis — not just the dissolution at a general level of everything that made this country great — is the truly depressing part, no matter how much it is to be expected of these people.
The only things that have surprised me in the least are how quickly and comprehensively Trump and his forces have pressed ahead, while, at the same time, how grossly incompetent they have proven to be. Some of the incompetence is intentional — you don't intentionally destroy all trust in government without acting incompetently in it, and putting incompetent people in charge, to some degree — but you'd expect people who spent five years planning this in minute detail to be somewhat better on the execution. So, I'm actually more optimistic about it all than I expected to be. Relatively speaking.
I don't entirely agree with the premise that these are the good times compared to what is going to happen next. Yes, things are going to get worse than they currently are. But I also believe, and have believed for a long time, that this is a fire that will burn itself out eventually, and what comes after will probably be better. However, I think the United States is now only about halfway through a roughly 30-year transition of tremendous magnitude, so we've reached roughly the bottom of the trough but there are still many more years before the dawn starts to break, and more than a decade before a real, and better, alternative emerges. I believe it will require a generational change in leadership at all levels to lead us out of this situation. This will be from people who did not grow up in the 'before times,' who can and will think completely differently about the brave new world we have entered.
But I think alternatives will eventually emerge, as they always do, that look completely different from what this country has looked like for more or less the last 100 years, or before. Some will be good and some will be bad. I agree with Dylan Thomas that we must rage against the dying of the light, but the crucial work now is formulating what the eventual new dawn can bring, and how to build that. It is not to dash all our energy against a wave that's not yet spent, trying vainly to roll it back to yesterday.