Trump's 100th day is a landmark of American shame. We must all mobilize against him
Friends,
This is the 14th week of the odious Trump regime. Wednesday will mark its first 100 days.
The U.S. Constitution is in peril. Civil and human rights are being trampled upon. The economy is in disarray.
At this rate, we won’t make it through the second 100 days.
Federal judges in more than 120 cases so far have sought to stop Trump — judges appointed by Republicans as well as Democrats, some appointed by Trump himself — but the regime is either ignoring or appealing their orders. It has even arrested a municipal judge in Milwaukee who merely sought to hear a case involving an undocumented defendant.
Recently, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit — an eminent conservative Reagan appointee who is revered by the Federalist Society — issued a scathing rebuke of the Trump regime. In response to its assertion that it can abduct residents of the United States and put them into foreign prisons without due process, Wilkinson wrote:
“If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present, and the Executive’s obligation to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’ would lose its meaning.”
Judge Wilkinson’s fears are already being realized. Early Friday morning, ICE deported three U.S. citizens — aged 2, 4, and 7 — when their mothers were deported to Honduras. One of the children, having Stage 4 cancer, was sent out of the United States without medication or consultation with doctors.
Meanwhile, the regime continues to attack all the independent institutions in this country that have traditionally served as bulwarks against tyranny — universities, nonprofits, lawyers and law firms, the media and journalists, science and researchers, libraries and museums, the civil service, and independent agencies — threatening them with extermination or loss of funding if they don’t submit to its oversight and demands.
Trump has even instructed the Department of Justice to investigate ActBlue, the platform that handles the fundraising for almost all Democratic candidates and the issues Democrats support.
At the same time, Trump is actively destroying the economy. His proposed tariffs are already raising prices. His attacks on Fed chief Jerome Powell are causing tremors around the world.
Trump wants total power, even at the cost of our democracy and economy.
His polls are dropping, yet many Americans are still in denial. “He’s getting things done!” some say. “He’s tough and strong!”
Every American with any shred of authority must loudly and boldly sound the alarm.
A few Democrats and progressives in Congress (Bernie Sanders, AOC, Cory Booker, Chris Van Hollen, Chris Murphy) have expressed outrage, but most seem oddly quiet. Granted, they have no direct power to stop what is occurring, but they cannot and must not appear to acquiesce. They need to be heard, every day — protesting, demanding, resisting, refusing.
Barack Obama has spoken up at least once, to his credit, but where is my old boss, Bill Clinton? Where is George W. Bush? Where are their former vice presidents — Al Gore and Dick Cheney? Where are their former Cabinet members? They all must be heard too.
What about Republican members of Congress? Are none willing to stand up against what is occurring? And what of Republican governors and state legislators? If there were ever a time for courage and integrity, it is now. Their silence is inexcusable.
Over 400 university presidents have finally issued a letter opposing “the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” Good. Now they must speak out against the overreach endangering all of American democracy.
Hundreds of law firms have joined a friend-of-the-court brief in support of law firm Perkins Coie’s appeal of the regime’s demands. Fine. Now, they along with the American Bar Association and every major law school, must sound the alarm about Trump’s vindictive and abusive use of the Justice Department.
America’s religious leaders have a moral obligation to speak out. They have a spiritual duty to their congregations and to themselves to make their voices heard.
The leaders of American business — starting with Jamie Dimon, the chair and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who in normal times has assumed the role of spokesperson for American business — have been conspicuously silent. Of course they fear Trump’s retribution. Of course they hope for a huge tax cut. But these hardly excuse their seeming assent to the destruction of American democracy and our economy.
Journalists must speak out too. In the final moments of last night’s “60 Minutes” telecast, Scott Pelley, one of its top journalists, directly criticized Paramount, CBS’s parent company. “Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways,” he told viewers, explaining why the show’s executive producer, Bill Owens, had resigned.
“Stories we pursued for 57 years are often controversial — lately, the Israel-Gaza War and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were accurate and fair. He was tough that way. But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it.”
Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of Paramount, is seeking the Trump regime’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of the media company, and Paramount is obviously intruding on “60 Minutes” content to curry favor with (and not rile) Trump.
Kudos to Pelley for speaking out and to Bill Owens for resigning. We need more examples of such courage. (They both get this week’s Joseph Welch Award, by the way, while Shari Redstone and Paramount get this week’s Neville Chamberlain.)
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Friends, we have witnessed what can happen in just the first hundred days. I’m not at all sure we can wait until the 2026 midterm elections and cross our fingers that Democrats take back at least one chamber of Congress. At the rate this regime is wreaking havoc, too much damage will have been done by then.
The nation is tottering on the edge of dictatorship.
We are no longer Democrats or Republicans. We are either patriots fighting the regime or we are complicit in its tyranny. There is no middle ground.
Soon, I fear, the regime will openly defy the Supreme Court. Americans must be mobilized into such a huge wave of anger and disgust that members of the House are compelled to impeach Trump (for the third time) and enough senators are moved to finally convict him.
Then this shameful chapter of American history will end.
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.