Trump’s Coup Started on Day One and Continues Apace
Photograph Source: Office of Speaker Mike Johnson – Public Domain
COUP D’ETAT: A sudden decisive exercise of force in politics and especially the alteration of an existing government by a small group.
During last year’s campaign, Donald Trump faced growing scrutiny over his increasingly authoritarian and violent rhetoric. Last year, Fox News host Sean Hannity gave Trump a chance to assure the American people that he wouldn’t abuse power or seek retribution in a second term in the White House. Instead, Trump stoked the fire of the campaign by stating he won’t be a dictator “except for day one.”
Nearly three weeks into his presidency, Trump has established a dictatorial record that has no parallel in American history. He has shredded the balance of power that the Founding Fathers created 250 years ago, and has resorted to extra-legal, undemocratic practices to weaken America’s democracy. Trump, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller are conducting a bureaucratic war against the federal government. Laws have been broken in the process, and even the Constitution itself has been challenged.
The central aspect of the bureaucratic coup include a rolling purge of the civil service, particularly at the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as such regulatory agencies as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Even the Central Intelligence Agency has been threatened.
Just this week, the employees of the Agency for International Development (AID) were told to stay home, and the following day Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared himself to be the acting administrator of AID. Rubio, who was a strong backer of AID while in the Senate, blamed the change on high levels of “insubordination” among the senior leadership of the Agency. (Rubio is also leading the charge to take back the Panama Canal, but I’ll leave the foreign policy absurdities for another day.) Meanwhile, Musk has taken credit for gutting AID by “spending the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
In addition to putting Rubio in charge of AID, Trump announced that Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager, would be acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Bessent replaces Rohit Chopra, an activist director who was expanding the Bureau’s authority over the banks and other financial firms. Chopra was serving a five-year term that was not set to end until late 2026. Bessent immediately ordered the Bureau’s staff to halt some of its most important work, and to start no new enforcement investigations.
The same playbook is being followed at the EPA, where career employees will be replaced by political appointees who have been lawyers and lobbyists for the oil and chemical industries. In Trump’s first term, EPA lost several thousand employees responsible for scientific research and enforcement laws. In his second term, he has already warned over one thousand employees that they could be “immediately terminated” at any time. Joe Biden’s legacy on environmental matters, which was sterling, will soon be shredded.
In addition to purging the civil service, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) cut off all federal grants, which is unconstitutional. A federal judge immediately issued a temporary restraining order in response to a lawsuit filed by 22 states, both blue states and red states, for violations of the Impounding Control Act that reaffirmed the Constitution’s mandate for congressional control of funding. As a result, Trump’s efforts to freeze trillions of dollars in federal spending have been blocked for now. Meanwhile, Musk has moved beds into OMB so that he and his staff could work late into the evening hours. He deployed the same tactic when he ran Twitter and Tesla.
Bessent, who received 16 Democrat votes in his confirmation hearing, even gave Musk, an unelected foreign billionaire, full access to the Department of Treasury’s payment system. This is the largest data and privacy breach in U.S. history. Musk sent several young computer programmers—including a recent high school graduate—into the department, where they strong-armed civil servants into giving them full access to the system that cuts checks for all congressionally authorized government payments.
The leading civil servant in the Treasury Department was forced to resign when he refused to provide access to Musk’s “militia.” Senator Ron Wyden (D/OR) stressed that Musk’s “hatchet brigade has infiltrated a gold mine of data that every foreign spy and corrupt actor would love to see. It is a prescription for nightmares.” This episode alone would constitute a coup if it were to take place in a foreign country.
Two columnists from the New York Times, called the past two weeks “a presidency that’s off the rails.” No, it’s far worse; we are watching a coup d’etat. Simply because there has been no violence associated with the actions of Trump, Musk, and Russell Vought, who co-wrote the playbook for what we are witnessing (See “Project 2025”), does not mean that the undemocratic takeover of government isn’t underway.
Vought, who will soon be confirmed as director of OMB, is the brain behind so much of Musk’s machinations to hollow out the U.S. government and destroy the republic. Vought once stated that he wanted the “bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”
One of Benjamin Franklin’s most famous and prophetic quotes was uttered in Philadelphia in 1787 in response to a citizen’s question regarding the outcome of the Constitutional Convention. Franklin’s reply was that the convention was creating a “republic, Madame, if you can keep it.” Franklin was emphasizing that the survival of the republic depended on the engagement and knowledge of its citizens. Sadly, more than 77 million Americans ignored the need for vigilance and engagement in defense of the republic and voted for Donald Trump in 2024.
Trump Seizes Power in DC
February 7, 2025
Donald Trump has launched a scorched earth campaign to carry out an authoritarian nationalist transformation of U.S. society and its state. In contrast to his first term, this time Trump has a loyal cabinet, a Republican Party reincarnated in his image, and a program laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
In just his first couple of weeks, he has issued a “shock and awe” barrage of executive orders attacking workers, oppressed groups, environmental regulations, and government programs. He also pardoned the fascists convicted for the January six insurrection, paused all foreign aid, and imposed massive new tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China.
At this point, Trump has barreled ahead with hardly any dissent. The liberal capitalist establishment represented by the Democratic Party has largely surrendered, the union officialdom and NGO bureaucracy are on the defensive, and wide layers of society are disoriented, demoralized, and disorganized.
As a result, unlike eight years ago, there is little protest against Trump, who seems all-powerful. But his administration will be prevented from establishing stable rule by its deep internal divisions, policies that will exacerbate not solve the country’s problems, and its tendency to overreach and impose deeply unpopular policies. All of this will inevitably trigger resistance.
Mandate my ass
Despite what the capitalist media says, Trump’s new government is not supported by the majority of the country. The media has exaggerated the scale of his victory in the election, bolstering his claim that he won a mandate to implement his far right program.
In reality, Trump won by only 1.5 percent of the popular vote in one of the narrowest presidential elections in history. He only won about half of the 66 percent of the electorate that bothered to fill out their ballots. So, he got support from only 33 percent of potential voters. That means that 67 percent of the electorate did not vote for him. As the great Gil Scott Heron declared in his song, “B Movie,” about Reagan’s election in 1980, “mandate my ass.”
In reality, Trump’s base remains a minority concentrated in a rogue section of the capitalist class, especially venture and high-tech capital invested in crypto and AI, and the modern petty bourgeoisie—small business owners, private contractors, and mid-level corporate bureaucrats. That said, Trump did make gains among sections of the working class, including Black and Latino voters, particularly those who have been hammered by globalization, lean production, and austerity.
Trump galvanized these people behind his toxic combination of “America First” nationalism, far right bigotry, neoliberalism, austerity, and protectionism. Trump’s administration is by far the most far right government in modern U.S. history, and it aims to carry out a radical, authoritarian restructuring of the U.S. government and society.
Blame the Democrats, not the people
The blame for Trump’s victory lies at the feet of the main party of U.S. capitalism and imperialism—the Democrats. It along with the dethroned Republican establishment jointly pursued U.S. hegemony over a neoliberal order of free trade globalization and enforced it with military power against any and all resistance, rivals, and so-called “rogue states.”
The price for this imperialist project has been paid by workers and the oppressed throughout the world. In the U.S., class inequality has skyrocketed, poverty has grown, and structural oppression has deepened, especially for the Black and Latino working class. This has driven waves of class and social struggle in the U.S. along with political polarization.
While Trump successfully took over the GOP, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party establishment neutralized and co-opted Bernie Sanders reformist challenge in the Democratic Party. As president, Biden tried to institute a new program of imperialist Keynesianism to rebuild U.S. industrial might, enforce its hegemony over the so-called rules-based international order against rivals China and Russia, and enact modest jobs programs and social reforms to redress inequality.
But Biden failed to accomplish these goals. His industrial policy was modest, his decision to support Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine utterly discredited Washington and its rules-based order, and his social reforms died in Congress. He was unable to renew anti-poverty measures and thus oversaw austerity while inflation drove up the cost of everything from groceries to housing.
Thus, the Democrats were doomed to defeat. After senility drove Biden from the ticket, his replacement Kamala Harris ran a right-wing campaign that embraced the Republican, military, and corporate establishment, which lavished her with more money than it did Trump. Her main strategy was to secure the votes of wealthy, centrist voters in the suburbs.
Her campaign so alienated the multiracial working class that it did not show up in large enough numbers and the suburban wealthy could not make up the difference. As a result, Harris got six million fewer votes than Biden did in 2020, tipping the election to Trump.
Forging a more authoritarian state
Regardless of their public triumphalism, Trump and his handlers realize the slim margin of their victory and their lack of popular support. So, they are determined to implement their program before the midterm in two years when the Democrats will likely take back Congress.
They are thus acting fast to radically transform the U.S. state, economy, and their position in global capitalism. Today, Trump confronts fewer guardrails than he did eight years ago. He has transformed the GOP into a far right party, its members in Congress are subservient minions, and the Supreme Court is packed with right wing judges, who have granted him blanket immunity.
He wants to challenge constitutional norms, forge a more authoritarian presidency, and transform the federal bureaucracy into a loyal weapon to wield against his opponents at home and abroad. Already he has invoked Schedule F to fire civil servants he considers unloyal as well as an authority called impoundment to suspend all federal grants and aid to institutions and agencies throughout the country. Both of these have been challenged in court as unconstitutional, and Trump has rescinded at least for now the suspension of grants and aid.
As part of this transformation of the U.S. state, Trump has appointed the Nazi-saluting billionaire, Elon Musk, to head the new advisory body, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It is tasked with restructuring the government, cutting programs, firing workers, and investing in high tech to increase the productivity of the remaining workforce.
Weaponizing the State
Trump has already fired civil servants and called for the “voluntary resignation” of two million federal workers. He has also issued an executive order to revoke birthright citizenship, which violates the Constitution and has been blocked in the courts. Undeterred, he has unleashed ICE throughout the country to conduct raids to arrest and deport migrants charged with crimes and even threatened to house 30,000 deportees in Washington’s vast camps in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He signed executive orders targeting trans people, Palestine solidarity activists, and programs for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) that redress racial and gender discrimination.
Trump also reversed much of the Biden administration’s superficial environmental regulations, opening the U.S. up to even more drilling and fracking, withdrawing from the Paris climate accords, and ending subsidies for green capitalist investment. And in a sop to small business owners still furious over COVID lockdowns that threatened their businesses, he withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization, nominated dangerous anti-vaxxer Robert Kennedy Jr. to head Health and Human Services, and reinstated soldiers dismissed for refusing COVID vaccination.
Unilateral aggression
In foreign policy, Trump has replaced Washington’s imperialist strategy of superintending global capitalism with “America First” nationalism. His strategy is neither pro-peace nor isolationist; it is one of unilateral aggression in pursuit of deals with friends and foes he deems beneficial to the U.S.
Thus, he has threatened to annex Greenland to ensure that the U.S., not China and Russia, control crucial shipping routes through the melting Arctic. He wants to take back the Panama Canal to ward off China’s increasing influence over it. He has publicly backed Israel’s aspiration to ethnically cleanse Gaza. And he intends to cut a deal with Russia behind the back of Ukraine, selling out its struggle for self-determination.
As part of abandoning Washington’s historic role in maintaining global hegemony, he has suspended all foreign aid, except to Israel. That has shut down vital programs to address hunger and disease, and blocked aid to Ukraine, weakening its ability to meet its people’s needs and defend itself against Russian imperialism.
Finally, Trump has begun to implement his protectionist program imposing a 25 percent tariff on Mexico and Canada as well as a new 10 percent one on China. With more tariffs to come, Trump will accelerate the breakup of globalization as we have known it and intensify imperial and regional rivalries.
Where is the resistance?
At this point, there has been little organized opposition to Trump’s regime. Why? First and foremost, the Democratic Party, despite their claims that Trump threatened to bring fascism to the U.S., threw in the towel, ensuring his smooth transition into power.
At best, the Democrats are challenging Trump’s executive orders in the courts. But, in the main, they are surrendering, confirming his appointees including Neocon hawk Marco Rubio without one dissenting vote in the Senate, looking for ways to collaborate, and keeping their powder dry for the midterm elections. The union officialdom and NGO bureaucracy are utterly unprepared to mount an opposition. For the most part, they demobilized struggles from Black Lives Matter to the Women’s March into lobbying the Biden administration over the last four years.
Biden and the Democrats either co-opted them, paying only lip service to their demands while implementing their own policies or repressed them by, for example, breaking the railway strike and criminalizing Palestine protests. Nevertheless, union officials and bureaucrats wasted their members’ time, money, and energy in a desperate and failed attempt to get Harris elected.
That failure demoralized, disoriented, and demobilized the opposition to Trump. As a result, protests of his inauguration were minuscule compared to eight years ago. The Women’s March had as many as one million people in D.C. in 2017, but at best only 15,000 this year.
Conflict in the palace and with its subjects
But no one should confuse the lack of protest with popular support for Trump and his policies. Indeed, 48 percent of people disapprove of his presidency, and only 47 percent approve of it, a remarkable low for a newly elected president. Moreover, union militants and social movement activists are beginning to organize defense campaigns against layoffs, cuts to programs, and attacks on oppressed groups, especially migrants. These will become the building blocks of counter-offensive in the future.
And there is no doubt that Trump will provoke one for several reasons. Trump’s coalition is actually an amalgam of class fractions and political factions with contradictory interests and conflicting programs. The tech billionaires, small business owners, and the sections of the working class he attracted during the election do not share interests. Moreover, his government is made up of three factions with totally different political programs—traditional conservatives, neoliberal tech bosses, and MAGA nationalists. They disagree on everything from tariffs to Social Security. Already, Steve Bannon, the ex-officio leader of the MAGA wing, has denounced Musk and others as “techno-feudalist oligarchs” and pledged to “break all these guys eventually.”
For now, all the factions are loyal, hoping their leader will listen to them and adopt their policy. Trump is thus stuck balancing between factions and leaning in one direction or the other could topple them from their fragile unity.
More importantly, Trump has no solution to the grievances of the vast majority. In fact, he will make their problems worse, exacerbating class and social inequality through tax cuts to the rich, layoffs of government workers, and the decimation of social and environmental programs.
He will also intensify U.S. capitalism’s systemic problems, the root cause of popular opposition. For example, his tariffs and mass deportation will drive up inflation and could trigger a recession, stoking opposition to his rule.
Overreach will trigger resistance
Finally, in his mad rush to implement his program before the midterms, he will overreach and provoke mass opposition. Already, his order to suspend all federal grants and aid, which blocked everything from Medicaid to student loans, provoked opposition from universities, NGOs, and mass public opinion, leading him to rescind the order for now.
It is difficult to predict what will trigger the resistance, but something will. Workers, the oppressed, and students who have undergone waves of class and social struggle from Occupy to Black Lives Matter, the illegal Red State Teachers Strikes, mass climate protests, and the Palestine solidarity protests will not stay quiescent for long.
Trump’s overreach will at some point turn the subterranean fire of defensive campaigns into a wildfire of resistance. Fully aware of that, he has promised to use not only the police but also the military and the vigilantes he released from jail to repress protests and strikes.
For now, the U.S. Left must build defensive campaigns against attacks on workers and all oppressed groups and organize new democratic infrastructures for the resistance—rank-and-file groups in unions and new, open organizations and coalitions. And we must argue for these to remain politically independent and committed to fighting for their demands regardless of who is in power.
Finally, the Left must begin the hard work of building a new party of workers and the oppressed to challenge both Trump’s far right Republican Party and the capitalist establishment’s Democratic Party to contest for power at the ballot box, in communities, and most importantly at the workplace. Our task is to help lead such struggles into a fight for a society and world that puts people and the environment first.
This piece first appeared in Tempest and Solidarites.
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