Months into Trump’s presidency, his administration’s agenda couldn’t be clearer: more wealth for billionaires and more power for the presidency. The administration is gearing up to pass $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for billionaires and corporations over ten years, which they intend to pay for with cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other social services. They announced plans for another large increase in military spending, bringing the military budget to over $1 trillion. And they’ve slashed the budgets for veterans’ health care and education and more. They continue to fire thousands of government workers and attack their right to form unions and negotiate contracts.
And their reckless tariff policies, which they’ve already had to pause two different times, have already led to price increases and huge swings in the stock market, hitting workers’ retirement accounts hard. There are already signs of more bankruptcies, layoffs, and plant closings.
The Trump administration knows this agenda is an attack on working people, and a transfer of wealth to the super rich. And they know their blatant attacks are unpopular, with large protests taking place across the country this past weekend, and over one million people in the streets on April 5. This is why they have stepped up their attacks on protestors and immigrants.
Recently, ICE detained another Palestinian student activist, Mohsin Mahdawi, and have threatened to deport him even though he is a legal permanent resident of the U.S. ICE lured him to one of their offices in Vermont by setting up a fake final citizenship interview appointment. Once he arrived, agents arrested him. Like other targeted activists such as Mahmoud Khalil, Mahdawi is now being held in detention without any criminal charges.
Trump’s attacks on universities go beyond student activists. He is putting financial pressure on the universities to get them to collaborate with his administration to repress campus activism and any person or curriculum that is critical of him or the U.S. His administration recently targeted Harvard by freezing billions of dollars in federal research funding. They want to install a federal overseer to give the government control over who Harvard hires and admits, and what is taught in the classroom. And they have identified some 60 other universities they plan to use the same tactics with to try to control the classroom and police what is taught at universities across the country.
Trump has also used his attack on immigrants and free speech to openly challenge the courts and blatantly defy the law. The Supreme Court has ruled that Salvadoran immigrant, Kilmar Abrego, was unlawfully detained and deported to El Salvador, and that the Trump administration must facilitate his return. But the administration has defied the order, and declared, along with El Salvador’s President Bukele, that they will not return Abrego to the U.S. Trump even said that he wants to start going after U.S. citizens and deport them to El Salvador if they engage in political activism critical of his agenda.
Even in these few cases when the Supreme Court has ruled against Trump, so far there has been no consequence — Trump simply ignores the ruling. And the Democrats continue to show their total weakness, only opposing Trump with words because they have nothing to propose except to vote for them in the midterm elections.
The Trump administration wants their attacks to become the new normal. It is very clear that these aggressive and blatant arrests and deportations, along with the escalation in repression, are designed as scare tactics — they want to silence people into submission, hoping this level of repression is just passively accepted by much of the population. And they want to openly defy the courts and see how far they can push things.
For this administration, the path ahead is clear. This is a sharp turn toward far-right authoritarianism, aimed at defending a dictatorship of billionaires over our lives. Trump’s administration promises us nothing but greater inequality, environmental destruction, and the threat of war as the U.S. empire is challenged internationally.
But we cannot accept this array of attacks as the new normal. Not the courts, not the Democrats — no outside force is coming to save us. We need to mobilize our own forces on a scale not seen in generations to put a stop to these attacks. And we can’t stop at just opposing Trump. We must fight to overturn their entire capitalist system ruled by the billionaires, who Trump defends. A line in the sand is being drawn, and we have the majority of people on our side. The future is up to us.
