“We’re all afraid,” Alaska Republican Senator Liza Murkowski said last week at an event in Anchorage. “I often feel very anxious about speaking out because the retaliation is real,” she explained. Republican politicians are afraid to voice their disagreements. Federal employees are afraid of being fired. Immigrants—especially if they’re Venezuelan and have a tattoo—are afraid of being deported without guarantees to their countries (or worse, locked up in a maximum-security prison in El Salvador).
Universities are afraid of having their funding withdrawn. International students are afraid of losing their visas. Law firms are afraid of being punished if they don’t comply.
Companies are afraid of maintaining their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. Benefit recipients are afraid of losing their benefits. The media is afraid of retaliation. Trans people are afraid of discrimination… Another senator, Democrat Cory Booker, recalled a quote from one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, the third president: “When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.”
Donald Trump is about to complete 100 days of his second term as president of the United States. The Republican returned to the White House with a radical agenda and a long list of enemies. He won the November 5 election over Democrat Kamala Harris by less than 1.5 percentage points in the popular vote, but a wide lead in the Electoral College. His party won the majority in both houses of Congress. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has a large conservative majority.
With the experience of his first term and four years of pondering his revenge, Trump surrounded himself with loyalists in the government and began to rule by decree. An authoritarian drift, abuses of power, the severing of ties with historical allies, a crusade against illegal immigration, constant unrest, ideological revenge, and a chaotic trade war have marked the beginning of his second term.
Trump declared during his campaign that he would be “a dictator on day one.” About to complete 100 days in office, he has barely signed laws approved by Congress, but has issued nearly 140 executive orders, many of them of dubious constitutionality, pushing the limits of presidential authority and testing the resilience of the democratic system. His authoritarian drift has brought the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis. His erratic trade policy has hampered the economy and triggered a crisis of global proportions. His imperialist ambitions and his geopolitical manipulations have eroded the trust of its allies in the United States.
According to a poll published Friday by The New York Times, the adjectives that best describe Trump’s first 100 days in office for voters are chaotic (66%), terrifying (59%), and exciting (42%). His approval rating, at 45%, according to Gallup, is the lowest for any president’s first quarter since World War II… with the exception of himself in his first term.
