Don’t stand back and stand by

W hat do ‘we’ do not just to make it through four more years of President Trump but to protect our democracy that so many of us want to see survive?

I’m convinced one ‘answer’ is not to tune out what’s happening. That may protect you from the truth but it does nothing to change it.

In his first week in office Trump is clearly showing he means to do what he promised: get revenge against his perceived enemies, destroy the career government that protects us from a president’s worst instincts, and guide new political appointees on what they can and cannot do, and grab more power than our Constitution gives our President.

And what about those egg prices?

(Fact is, there’s not much a president can do about egg prices. And he knows it. By the way, folks, it’s not so much inflation that’s causing the increase in egg prices, it’s the bird flu. But that’s another piece.)

The fact is the President is pretty transparent. And he’s not alone. You don’t turn out dozens of executive orders in a few days; arrange deportation raids in hours. His people have been preparing for months. And if you compare Project 2025 to his orders, it pretty much matches up.

In spite of him saying he wouldn’t follow that far-right master plan.

Firings, deporting immigrants (can you tell me which are the alleged murderers? He hasn’t), winning support for cabinet members who aren’t qualified, setting us up for a return of increasing inflation (the primary reason I thought he was elected).

It’s all right in front of our eyes. You ignore it at your country’s peril.

To my Trump-loving friends, there’s nothing in this post for you, unless you’re open to seeing what’s going on. And if you do ‘oh yeah but about’ or say I don’t understand what real change is...

... Trust me, I do.

You can’t gaslight me any better than he can.

And what we’re witnessing is real change that puts our Constitution in peril, and that is tearing down the wall between church and state. It might be the beginning of the end. I didn’t want to believe it but I believe I may be watching it.

What can we do? I’ll tell you what we can’t do:

Don’t turn our backs.

Don’t turn off or stop reading legacy news. Turn off your damn phone and live in the real world. Get off X, or anything Musk or Zuckerberg have editorial control over if you can’t see through the disinformation.

Don’t take a break. Don’t avert your eyes.

It’s happening right now.

Senate Republicans, the vast majority are falling in line. They confirmed Pete Hegseth, who we hope won’t break his promise to not drink while serving and protecting us. They’ll probably confirm the others.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has served way too long (he’s 91), thinks he’s seen it all but we will see just how addled his brain is when we see if he allows Trump to break the law by firing most of the government’s top watchdogs without alerting Congress in advance, as he’s already avoided doing.

And, he’s not exempt from that law. Grassley, for years, has been the inspector’s general protector. Will he be now that they are being eliminated, even the ones Trump appointed in his previous term?

The Republicans in the House already are doing the investigations Trump wants into January 6. Helping him rewrite what we all saw with our own eyes. Trump’s already pardoned or commuted the sentences of his personal militia from their crimes on January 6. They are standing back and standing by now. Again.

And free to attack our Constitution. Again.

Our constitutional guardrails are crumbling, right before our eyes as the President’s supporters cheer him on. The slice of the electorate that gave him this win – swing voters – didn’t elect him to do the things he’s doing. I guess they didn’t believe him when he promised it during the campaign.

I wish I knew how to stop it. All I can come up with is we, the people, have to stop it. We still live in a democracy. We still can tell our elected officials what to do. Too many of our elected officials listen to Trump as he gaslights us all.

But, under our Constitution, they answer to us, not him.

When I consider how we stop it, I keep coming back to those guardrails. 
He’s breaking down the congressional guardrail. He’s breaking down the protections the people have within the executive branch.

He’s already packed the Supreme Court. Will the Court continue to follow his lead? And he’s trying to pack the rest of the federal judiciary with his people.

The guardrail he can’t ‘fix’ is we the people. Raise your voices. Call your congressional representatives. Don’t ignore what’s in front of your eyes.

He’s been in office for days, and it already feels like years with his deluge of actions and executive orders.

His win was not even close to a landslide. January 6 did happen, with his leadership.

Please don’t tune out. It’s happening right now.

GOING FURTHER

• Project 2025: The right-wing wish list for another Trump presidency | BBC NEWS

• Project 2025 - Presidential Transition Project | THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION

Sources:

▪ This piece was first published in The Screaming Moderate and re-published in Europeans TODAY on 27 January 2025 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. | The author writes in a personal capacity.

▪ Cover: Flickr/BuddyL. (Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.)