Life under Trump

Wednesday, March 12.  At home or abroad, for as far as the eye can see, damage and destruction from the Trump Presidency has run rampant.  Yet, there is still reason for hope.  And even more reason not to abandon the fight.

Internationally, perhaps the most starkly frightening turn was the President’s treatment of Ukrainian President Zelensky in the Oval Office.  It would be hard to conjure up a more ignominious moment in American foreign affairs.  To us, the righteousness of the Ukrainian resistance to the unprovoked Russian invasion is so plainly obvious that it’s hard to see how anyone, in good faith, can argue against it.  The Ukrainians are fighting for democracy, ours no less than theirs.  Ukrainians are fighting and dying on the battlefields, so American troops don’t have to.  Yes, we have given them billions of dollars to buy weaponry, and that weaponry was, overwhelmingly, made in the US, supporting American jobs, American factories, American defense infrastructure.

It appears that the Trump Administration, using the threat of cutting off both supplies and real-time satellite intelligence, has forced the Ukrainians to agree to enter truce talks, aimed initially at a 30-day cease-fire.  Implicitly, I think that means Russia will get to keep the Ukrainian territory it has illegally annexed, giving it a land bridge to the Crimean peninsula, and the Ukrainians will be forced to retreat from the Russian territory they currently hold.  The Ukrainians, however, will demand some longer-term security guarantees in exchange for surrendering those territories, and it’s not clear that Russia will accept those terms.  If the Ukrainians seems to yield to President Trump’s terms, but the Russians do not, it’s not clear what President Trump might do, other than move the goal posts so that he can claim to have ended the war.  If Vladimir Putin does walk away with most of what he wants, and staves off the impending collapse of the Russian economy and the Russian army, this will likely not be the end of his attempts to reacquire the territories lost when the old USSR was dissolved.

Here at home, Elon Musk and his loyal sycophants continue to gallivant through the Federal government, untroubled by their galactic ignorance of what the various governmental agencies actually do.  Increasingly, though, the court system seems to be resisting these illegal summary dismissals or funding freezes.  Those court suits will take some time to wind their way up the appellate ladder.  But at least 5 Supreme Court Justices seem unwilling, at least based on some preliminary rulings, simply to rubber stamp whatever the Imperial President wishes to do.  So there may some recourse for those thousands of government workers suddenly dismissed.

Others, however, are likely not to have any recourse.  In particular, among the Justice Department’s long-term professional legal staff, many deemed insufficiently loyal or pliant have been summarily fired.  Areas like the National Security section and the Public Integrity section have been hard hit.

On other fronts, the President’s grand plans are starting to hit up against hard reality.  Trump seems to have a peculiar love affair with tariffs; with great grandeur, he announces tariffs here and tariffs there.  But every time a country fights back with reciprocal tariffs or other countermeasures, Trump seems to retreat.  He was going to impose an extra 25% tariff on Canadian products, but as soon as the Ontario Prime Minister threatened to boost the price of exported electricity by 25%, Trump backed down.  The President was going to impose additional tariffs on Mexican imports, but as soon as Mexico threatened reprisals, he backed down again.  It’s a curious maneuver for someone who, it would seem, wishes above all to be seen as imperious and irresistible.

Worse yet, the markets seem entirely unimpressed by the President’s plans.  Inflation may be a bit lower this month, but job creation was also lower, unemployment up marginally but that’s before the major Federal firings and layoffs have hit the books.  The odds of an actual recession – a “Trump slump” – are looking higher and higher. 

Lastly, we still have to keep the government functioning through the end of this budget year.  The House, by a four vote margin, passed a continuing resolution to fund the government for the rest of this fiscal year (until Sept. 30th) – which has to be approved by the Senate and signed by the President by Saturday, March 16.  It mostly keeps funding levels the same as they are now, but it does cut about $13 billion from domestic spending and add several billions for defense and homeland security.  There is at least one additional twist in the bill – it suspends Congress’ ability to challenge President Trump’s tariffs for the rest of this Congressional session, thus sparing Republicans the need actually to vote in favor of the President’s tariffs. 

But this measure needs the Senate’s concurrence, and to proceed, the GOP needs a 60-vote margin to limit debate.  Democrats seem unwilling to agree, unless the GOP agrees to allow recorded floor votes on amendments that the GOP leadership does not support and on which it does not want their members to have to vote.

So it’s not clear what will happen.  Will the GOP leadership blame a government shutdown on the Democrats, even though the Reps control both Houses and the Presidency?  Are Democrats willing to force a government shutdown if the GOP doesn’t accede to their demands?  At least one Democrat, John Fetterman of PA, has clearly said he will never vote to shut down the government, implying he would accept even an undesirable GOP alternative rather than a shut down.  Democrats, over the last four years, fought mightily to avoid government shutdowns, so that’s not an unreasonable position.

There is one more fascinating twist in this drama.  You will recall that the House passed, by a 2-vote margin, a Budget Resolution, outlining spending targets for the rest of this year that could only be met with dramatic cuts to domestic entitlement programs, like Medicaid, and to safety-net programs like Food Stamps and WIC (Women, Infants and Children support programs).  The Senate GOP was distinctly unenthusiastic about this Budget resolution; quite a few of their caucus members were not going to vote for it, so even as a reconciliation item, that avoids the 60-vote requirement, it was not going to pass.

But the Budget Resolution is only the first step.  It sets goals for the appropriations and policy committees, and it is up to them to cut spending for the rest of the year to fit the approved budget.  However, if a Continuing Resolution has already funded the government for the rest of the year, the Budget Resolution is now irrelevant.  Spending levels are set and approved in the Continuing Resolution, so there is no longer any need for a messy floor fight over the House version of the Budget bill.  It can just be happily ignored.  This gives the GOP leadership quite an incentive to work with Democrats to get a Continuing Resolution approved, fully funding the government, even if their members have to take some uncomfortable votes to do so.  It also is a neat end run around Elon Musk and DOGE, formally approving and restoring much of the funding that DOGE has been trying to eliminate.

Much of this drama may have already played out by the time you read this column, or we may be in the midst of a government shutdown for who knows how long.  It could be a rocky few weeks.  But with the Florida special elections coming up on April 1, the GOP has another incentive to get a CR approved and avoid news stories of US troops not being paid and non-emergency government services being shut down.