At the beginning of January the president sat impatient on a Zoom call from his garish, gilded estate in Florida, slumped and flustered as his lawyer idled next to him. Even his makeup reflected the mood, with his face daubed to a dull flaxen hue instead of his typical defiant goldenrod. Whatever it was that Judge Juan Merchan was saying from his courtroom in New York during Donald Trump's sentencing that day faded into a dull whistling sound. When the time finally came for him to speak, Trump strung together the same phrases he has uttered every time the subject of his criminal history comes into question. He had suffered an "injustice," been through a "very terrible experience," before landing on one of his favorites: "It's been a political witch hunt." Persecuted and yet unbound, 10 days later the convicted felon was re-inaugurated to the most powerful political office on earth.
I've been thinking of this moment a lot in the last two weeks as Trump, or his cadres of sycophants and sympathetic oligarchs and associated corps of sunlight-deprived grifters, have set about dismantling the American project with the speed and enthusiasm of a contestant on Supermarket Sweep.
Of course it started with immigration; casting aside or just casting out migrants escaping situations worse than the fate on these shores was, after all, one of his few legible campaign promises. Trump announced that his administration would accelerate the deportation threat by attempting to deputizing every law enforcement officer short of a crossing guard. And if you're going to unleash cops in a broader war against society, it only makes sense for the Department of Justice to dump the pretense of federal civil rights investigations into anything that even hints at police violence and other misconduct. Under the pretense of "defending women from gender ideology extremism," the president—a man found liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll—kickstarted the rollback of the minimal protections and basic recognition of trans people afforded by the federal government. And DEI, for whatever those three letters mean to people who believe reverse racism is a real thing that exists, was scuttled from the federal government's priorities. An ideological attack at civil rights policies that date back to Lyndon Johnson, but, also, a very real and rigorous ctrl-f campaign on government websites. On Friday evening, some of those websites went dark entirely.
The president loves to sign papers at the big boy desk. But the executive order on DEI, like so many that have flooded the byways of Washington D.C., is revealing in that it plainly lays out the tactic closest to the heart of Trump's personal persecution narrative—the witch hunt. Merit, that battle cry of every mediocre or dull white man who carry themselves in the same mold as the president, would be the sword to cut back the minorities who so unjustly have held our country's government, and industry, hostage for so long. As noted by The Washington Post, it did not take long for memos to circulate in federal agencies shortly after the inauguration, encouraging workers to trade secrets on their peers or face "adverse consequences."
Rooting out the subversives, one email or bit of spicy workplace gossip at a time, is not the same as outing Goody Proctor in front of a barbecue set. But creating a persistent surveillance state that operates through the eyes of friends, neighbors, and coworkers has been part of the Republican attack plan for years. Texas "bounty laws" provide rewards for dropping a dime on people who provide assistance to people seeking abortions; the Texas Family Code encourages people to inform on families believed to have a trans child so they can be investigated. Writing about the dangers of policies like this in The Atlantic last fall, Adam Serwer wrote:
As of this writing, no one has yet been successfully sued under Texas’s bounty law, and other measures that seek to turn citizens into informants have faced challenges in court. (If reelected, former President Donald Trump is likely to appoint more federal judges who would look favorably upon such measures.) But these policies have chilling effects whether or not they are strictly enforced. The mere threat of having one’s privacy invaded and one’s life potentially destroyed is sufficient to shape people’s speech and behavior. American history shows us where this could lead.
The Rise Of The Right Wing Tattletale
Trump, ordained by god—as he might say—and anointed by an ambiguously vindictive and deeply tired republic, may have attempted to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 during the campaign, but the playbook was never far from view. And now it is out in the open, and our ouroboros has arrived. Gold stars and a hearty handshake for informants, unceasing fear and suspicion for everyone else. In the absence of actual policy, Trump has employed one of the oldest Republican tactics in the book—introducing a useful villain to an anxious public.
But the ongoing spree of executive orders is more than just a signal that the witch hunt is on. It's an attempt at redefining who deserves to be—who could ever really be—American. It's deciding who will be afforded the comforts and protections previously inherent to life here, through a process of extracting those comforts and protections from those deemed undeserving. The personnel surrounding the president is made up of the same revanchist class of wealth hoarders and brazenly mediocre innovators who have strip mined the globe to manufacture a future of their own liking for them and them alone. Why aim for the stars or everlasting life in the Elysian Fields of the metaverse when you can gut reno a nation on the cheap and redecorate as you like.
In just these early weeks, the new presidential administration has made it clear that you will not be safe if you are an immigrant, documented or not; if you rely on social safety nets like Medicaid or Headstart; if you are not white; if you have suffered in the wake of a natural disaster; if you are trans or otherwise need gender affirming care; if you are a worker in need of protection or a patient awaiting medical advancements through well funded research. You will barely merit a respectful mention if you died mid-air over the Potomac, although there may be an executive order at the ready declaring that tragedy the fault of a unqualified brown person.
That all sounds alarmist. It is true that the old-growth expanse of federal bureaucracy will not easily succumb to the whims of a forgetful, vindictive president or his twitchy goons. Local and state government can operate as a bulwark against federal overreach. Executive orders are not the same as laws passed by Congress, and courts have already intervened on behalf of the states and other concerned parties in some cases. But on the other side of every bigoted and odorous fiat from Trump awaits a republican majority in Congress, not to mention an opposing party predisposed to showing its belly in acquiescence. Courts disqualifying a power grab due to procedural snafus will not, in the long run, be enough to save a republic. Time can be an ally to the cruel; enough pressure, exerted over enough time, will damage the foundation even if the edifice still stands.
All it took was 10 days to go from felon to president; now we've seen what can happen in just two weeks.
