I thought that Trump would go from bad to worse and then even worse than that but I did not expect it so quickly and deeply. Two months in, thanks to tariffs and personnel reduction, the United States has alienated its closest allies and endangered the Stock Market, Speaker Johnson passed a continuing resolution to keep the government open because Chuck Schumer correctly observed that a shutdown was even worse than the continuing resolution even though the House passed its initial approval of the CR without the Democratic amendments to say Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid wouldn't be cut. A Trump shutdown would give him even more authority to close agencies as non-essential. Moreover, cutting USAID in spite of Congressional mandates to spend it, means that the Congress' power of the purse is thwarted. By the end of the week or soon thereafter, Federal judges who insist that USAID and other agencies must be unfrozen will have to deal with the executive intransigence but the Supreme Court, however much a weak reed, can't just let Trump do whatever he wants to. It will be up to the Congress to enforce Federal judges and many of these people only care about buying the office chairs they were assigned to when they went toCongressrather than standing up for the Constitution. They may change their minds when people lose Social Security and other entitlements, being primaried a lesser danger than losing in the general election. But 2026 is a long time away in that there can be a lot of damage to the nation done in the interim.
So far, Trump has been an agent of destruction. People like J. D. Vance and Karoline Leavitt reinterpret what Trump says to make him more reasonable. He will leave out part of what he said and she will offer an interpretation of tariffs Trump never opined. Others will say Trump was ironic when he said Schumer was no longer a Jew when he was in fact quite serious minded. Oh for the days when Biden said what he meant and meant what he said when he called Putin a dictator and that he hadn’t communicated with him for a long time, there being only the obvious interpretation tat there was nothing for the two to talk about. The truth of the matter is that Trump is an agent of destruction because he can only think of destruction as the only way to accomplish things. Trump is stupid, ignorant and mean spirited. He is also deeply superficial and so has impulses and a word, such as “tariff”, as his only justification, not knowing what it means. He wants Greenland so he can build a sign called “Trumpland” on its biggest town. He wants Canada to be a state in the United States so that he can feel grandiose. He wants government efficiency because he lies the word, even if Musk really does want to destroy the government. Don’t expect him to be any deeper than that.
Who is going to bell the cat? Chuck Schumer in his NY Times interview Sunday, showed the menu we all, including me, can read. The Supreme Court could uphold the unfreezing of money allocated to Congress on various agencies and Schumer is worried that the administration would still keep it frozen, which troubles Schumer, and for good reason, because that would be a constitutional crisis. Another alternative is that Republican Senators would have had enough and oppose Trump, though Schumer may be giving them more credit than they deserve. Hasn’t Trump done enough to get Republican Senators to say enough is enough? Third, there is the midterm election. I note campaigning is just a year away. But Schumer worries whether the election will be clean, and so do I.