Trump Cabinet Nominees in General

 

Pete Hegseth

So, let me give some thought to Trump Cabinet nominees in general.  

Clearly one has been defeated -- Matt Gaetz, formerly of the House of Representatives, who managed to incur the hatred of all his colleagues.

At least four others are highly controversial -- Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense, Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence, RFK, Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Kash Patel for Director of the FBI, which is not actually a Cabinet post.  And after the latest dustup, Russ Vought of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has presumably made some enemies.

It is customary for the Senate to approve most of the President's Cabinet picks, but to reject one just to show they can.  To reject four (or five, let alone six!) is unheard of.  Of course, most Presidents do not make such outrageous pic  In this case the Senate has claimed their scalp -- Matt Gaetz for Attorney General.  That is all good so far as it goes.  Is there any chance they would reject any of the others?

My impression at the outset was that Hegseth -- by far the most dangerous because he is the only one who could actually launch a coup -- was a shoe-in to win.  Allegations of sexual assault threatened to sink his candidacy at the outset, not because anyone in the Trump Administration cares about sexual assault, of course, but because they were angry that he had not told them.  But, it appears, when Hegseth hit back and said he had been defamed by the liberal media he won Trump's heart.  Trump made clear that confirming him was a test of party loyalty, so in the end only Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitch McConnell -- one from Maine, one from a state that uses ranked choice voting, and one not running for reelection -- voted no.  Probably not by coincidence, that was just short of enough to defeat the nomination.  The Senate split 50-50 and JD Vance broke the tie.*

I considered RFK, Jr. to be the most likely to be defeated.  After all, his basic ideology is out of sync with Republicans.  He favors abortion, greater regulation of agriculture, and banning high fructose corn syrup (a serious loser in Iowa!).  Bill Cassidy, chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, is a doctor, which does not dispose him well to RFK, Jr.  He also voted to convict on the second Trump impeachment.  But he is also up for election in 2026.  Mitch McConnell is a childhood polio survivor and seems a strong bet to vote against an anti-vaxer.  So I guess we will see.

Currently Tulsi Gabbard seems the most likely to be defeated.  National security conservatives don't trust her, and she has not shown any of Hegseth's combativeness, so there is a serious possibility she may be rejected.  That seems a shame because she actually looks like the least bad of the big four (five? six?).  Sure, she is totally unqualified for the post, and her politics are certifiably flaky.  But I see no sign of disloyalty, either in the sense of being a foreign agent or of being subversive of the constitutional order.

Kash Patel is the second most dangerous after Hegseth.  As director of the FBI, he will not be in a position to launch a coup, but he will be able to prosecute Trump's enemies, all in the guise -- of course -- of fighting "weaponization" of government. Prosecution is not as bad as a coup. Trump's enemies will have the protection of the need to charge an actual crime, an independent judiciary, and trial by jury, presumably in Washington, DC. So naturally I expect him to be a shoe-in for confirmation.  I have no idea if any Republicans will vote against him.  Hell, even John Fetterman seems to be leaning toward confirmation.  All that is very bad, but not as bad as Hegseth.

The recent budget freeze just might generate some controversy over another nominee -- Russ Vought of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).  The OMB is a small (under 800 employees), but powerful agency in charge of ensuring that agency reports, rules, testimony, and proposed legislation are consistent with the president's budget and administration policies.  The OMB will be responsible for overseeing Schedule F -- the firing of numerous career federal employees and their replacement with dogmatic ideologues.  The OMB was also responsible for the recent freeze of all federal grants.  Someone commented that its willingness to take such a radical action before Vought was even confirmed as director suggests that he has no fears about confirmation.  And, indeed, Congressional Republicans all appear to have defended the freeze, so I imagine they will all vote to confirm.  If the freeze had gone one a few days longer, I suspect it might have been a different story.  I will dare hope, at least, that after having inflicted such a debacle on the Trump Administration, The Donald will reign him in somewhat.

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*Why are there 100 Senators if Marco Rubio has been appointed Secretary of State?  Apparently his replacement has already been sworn in.

I Am Not Confident in Pete Hegseth's Loyalty

Pete Hegseth

All of which leads to the subject of Pete Hegseth.  

My biggest concern about Pete Hegseth is not the allegations of sexual assault or domestic abuse. It is not the allegations of extreme alcoholism.  It is not even that he seriously mismanaged two small veteran's charities, raising serious doubts about is qualification to manage an organization as large as the Pentagon

More serious is his ideology.  Hegseth has notoriously defendedUS soldiers convicted of war crimes.  There is every reason to believe that he would condone or even encourage war crimes as Secretary of Defense.  But maybe we can avoid that issue by not getting into a war.

Hegeseth's worst trait is that is not loyal.  I don't mean, of course, that he is a foreign spy or anything like that.  But he gives all signs of not being loyal to the Constitution and the rule of law.  Hegseth appears to regard half his fellow countrymen as a dangerous enemy within.  He wanted to treat Black Lives Matter protests as all-out war. He was barred from service at the Biden inauguration as potentially unreliable.

Hegseth talks constantly about ending the "woke military."  Can there be any doubt that he means imposing a strict ideological test on the leadership -- anyone is not solidly MAGA need not apply.

And what are the implications of this if, by some miracle, a Democrat were elected President in 2028.  In 2020, Trump talked about sending the military to seize the ballot boxes.  That was too much, even for Giuliani.  

Does anyone think it would be too much for Pete Hegseth?
 

Loyalty > Competence

 Whenever I hear criticisms of Donald Trump -- or anybody else, for that matter -- valuing loyalty over competence I can only shake my head and say, well, duh!

Of COURSE loyalty is more important than competence.  To anyone who doubts it consider.  Suppose someone is disloyal and out to get you.  Would you rather they were supremely competent or a total idiot?  The answer is so obvious as to make the question rhetorical. When someone is disloyal, greater competence means greater danger.

So the real issue is not whether loyalty is more important than competence (it is), but whether the fear of disloyalty is rampant.  In other words, to say that someone values loyalty over competence really means that they are beset by fears of disloyalty.

These fears are usually justified.  In other words, when the fear of disloyalty is rampant, it usually means that disloyalty really IS rampant. 

There are a number of things that can make disloyalty widespread.  One is being surrounded by real enemies, offering numerous opportunities for betrayal. That is the situation, for instance, in a collection of city-states, or mafia gangs.  It could be a sleazy, underhanded leader asking people to do sleazy, underhanded things that undermine their morals, including their sense of loyalty.  That seems a fair description of Trump.  And it is also true, as some wise person remarked, that by regarding everyone around you as an enemy and treating everyone as an enemy you will, in fact, end up with a lot of enemies.  Note also that when disloyalty is rampant, it becomes self-perpetuating.  If everyone else is trying to stab each other in the back, only a fool and a sucker would refrain.*

Only a society in which loyalty is simply assumed can promotions be based on competence.  We have had that up until now.  Trump is undermining it.

So how does one guard against disloyalty?

It may seem terribly naive and utopian, but one important way to fight disloyalty is through moral authority.  That is, so far as I can tell, the real message in A Team of Rivals.  Instead of looking for loyalists, Lincoln chose the top talent in the Republican Party for is cabinet and won their loyalty.  It took no particular insight for Lincoln to recognize that his cabinet consisted of the top talent in the Republican Party.  His real genius was in persuading them to take orders from Mr. Nobody from Hicktown, Illinois.  Our whole system functions because our government has moral authority that people respect.  That is why Trump and MAGA's attacks on its moral authority are so dangerous.

Of course, this is not to suggest that moral authority alone can can prevent treachery.  Another way to prevent disloyalty is to make it difficult.  Treachery is easier in a small city-state surrounded by hostile neighbors than in a giant country with ocean to the east and west and friendly neighbors to the north and south.**  A favorite fantasy of mine is to imagine myself teaching civics in high school or political science in college and assigning my class to write a paper on what they could do to commit treason.*** The point would be that committing treason in our society today would be extremely difficult.**** It is easy to be loyal when there are almost no opportunities to be disloyal.

Another way is to lower the stakes for disloyalty.  This is the approach taken in most commercial capitalist ventures.  In a commercial/capitalist context, disloyalty is seen as a minor offense, if an offense at all.  Loyalty is valued to an extent, but too much loyalty is regarded as corrupt -- "crony capitalism."  In other words, it is not seen as dishonorably for an employee to leave a job when a better offer presents itself, or for an employer to lay off an employee it cannot afford to pay, or a customer to switch to a supplier who offers a better deal.  In another context, this would be seen a disloyal, but disloyalty of this type is tolerated because the stakes are not high -- it costs some money, that is all, and money is fungible and can be replaced.

What is valued is integrity -- honest dealings with strangers and associates alike.  This would mean not embezzling from an employer or selling trade secrets, but these things are condemned not so much as a betrayal, but as dishonest -- no worse, really than ripping off a stranger or deceit in arm's length transactions.  

Donald Trump famously commented that he valued loyalty more than integrity, but that is contrary to the ethos of a commercial/capitalist enterprise, which sees integrity as as foundational and loyalty is a mere extra -- nice to have, but not all that important.  For Trump to prize loyalty over integrity in business dealings is another way of saying he values honor among thieves.  But honor among thieves is not to be trusted.  People with no integrity can hardly be counted on to be loyal.  Another reason Trump is beset by fear of disloyalty.  

Of course, in the end moral authority, limited opportunity, and low stakes and only make disloyalty infrequent.  They cannot eliminate it altogether.  That is why we still have security clearances for people doing top secret work that really does offer opportunities for disloyalty with high stakes.

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*That is why I do not believe people who think that Machiavelli's The Prince should be understood as satire, or as a warning to the common people.  It is a realistic assessment of how to survive when treachery is rampant.
**Trump can't do anything about the oceans, but he is working hard on alienating our friendly neighbors.
***Of course I would never actually do that.  It would be way to easy to misconstrue.
****I live in New Mexico.  It has Los Alamos Labs and Sandia Labs, both of which offer access to classified information.  So the first step would be to get a job there and somehow get access to classified information.  The next step is to visit the nearest Russian consulate, which is located in Houston, Texas -- 884 miles from Albuquerque and 904 miles from Los Alamos.  Presumably the Russians have spies around both Los Alamos and Sandia Labs, so you would not have to go to Houston every time you wanted to give them information.  But the point stands.

An Exercise in Absurdity

What inspired the foregoing was this article, by a purportedly anti-Trump conservative who is never so irate as when talking about Trump's opponents.  The article argues that Joe Biden was our most lawless President ever (no, seriously!)  The article is so eyeroll inducing that I just can't bear to let it go without a rejoinder.

In making her case that Biden was our most lawless President ever, the author compares is actions with instances of lawlessness by earlier Presidents to show how much worse Biden was.  Judge for yourself.

Andrew Jackson:  Defied a Supreme Court ruling seeking to protect the Cherokee Nation and paved the way for the Trail of Tears.

Joe Biden: When the Supreme Court struck down his student loan forgiveness, he looked for ways to modify it or expand existing programs to achieve his goal.

Abraham Lincoln:  Unilaterally suspended habeas corpus, ordered arrest of opponents in Congress and the media.

Joe Biden:  Encouraged his Attorney General to indict Trump and taunted Trump when he was indicted.

Woodrow Wilson: Palmer Raids, with some 6,000 opponents of US participation in WWI arrested.

Joe Biden: Harshly pressured social media to take down misleading posts about COVID.

Franklin Roosevelt:  Made a serious threat to pack the Supreme Court.

Joe Biden:  Appointed a commission to study proposals to pack the Supreme Court.

Barrack Obama:  Refrained from enforcing marijuana and immigration laws.

Joe Biden: Refrained from enforcing a TikTok ban that went into effect one day before he left office, when his successor made clear he wanted to have the chance make the decision.

George W. Bush:  Signed a campaign finance law he admitted might be unconstitutional.

Joe Biden:  Undertook action to forgive student loans, institute and eviction moratorium, and climate change action despite doubting his actions were constitutional, criticized the Supreme Court "in the most strident and partisan terms" when they struck down his actions.

Donald Trump: Tried to overturn the election when he lost.

Joe Biden:  "To his credit" did not try to overturn the election he lost, but did conceal his mental decline.  And then there is the matter of his pardon of Hunter Biden and his attempt to declare the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution ratified.

The author ends up by acknowledging that there might be reason to fear seriously unconstitutional actions by Trump, but these were purely hypothetical, while Biden's actions were real.

Where do I begin?  From the start, I guess.

Does anyone seriously believe that student loan forgiveness is worse than the Trail of Tears?  I suppose the author might say that the Trail of Tears is substantively worse, but the actions are procedurally equivalent because they both involved defying the Supreme Court.  But responding to a Supreme Court defeat by attempting to tweak one's actions to pass constitutional muster is not the same as open defiance.  It is fairly normal behavior.

Both Biden and Lincoln were acting under extraordinary circumstances.  Nonetheless, encouraging the prosecution of one's political opponents to an Attorney General who (it should be noted) did not always agree, is not the same as arresting them.  And, contrary to what many Republicans are now claiming, being a political opponent is not an automatic get out of jail free card.

 Even the author appears to acknowledge that putting pressure on social media is not quite the same as mass arrests, but apparently doesn't see them as all that different.  Do I have to point out that Trump threatened to throw Mark Zuckerberg in jail for life for kicking Trump of off Facebook?

Nor is studying the possibility of court packing but not making a serious attempt quite the same as make a serious, though failed attempt.  And before 1869 Congress routinely changed the number of justices for to achieve political goals.

Again, the history of Presidents leaving laws unenforced did not begin with Obama by any means.  And Biden's refusal to enforce the TikTok ban amounted to a one day delay that his successor clearly intended to extend.

As for the idea that GW Bush's worst offense against the constitution was signing a campaign finance law -- the mind boggles.  GW Bush distorted evidence to get us into a war, ran a chain of secret torture chambers designed to be outside the law, and openly defied laws requiring a warrant to tap phone calls.  Presidents -- or Congress -- testing the limits of their power by taking actions that the Supreme Court might strike down is not extraordinary lawlessness.  It is fairly normal behavior -- so long as they obey the Supreme Court once it makes a decision.  (Bush also quite routinely tried to tweak his behavior to pass constitutional muster when the Supreme Court struck it down).

And if the author seriously wants to argue that Biden's efforts to conceal his cognitive decline were worse than at attempt to overturn an election, why does she consider it "to his credit" that he did not commit the lesser offense?  For that matter, why is it "to his credit" that Biden did what every candidate for President has done with one exception -- accepted the outcome of the election.

As for Biden's pardon of his son (and others), does anyone seriously believe that Trump would not have pardoned the January 6 offender if Biden had not pardoned his son?  He openly ran on the promise to do just that, after all.  

I agree there is no excuse for unilaterally attempting to declare the Equal Rights Amendment ratified.

I suppose the author might acknowledge that Biden's actions, taken individually might not be as bad as her points of comparison, and it is the combination that makes them worse.  But the argument is unconvincing.  I heard similar argument about the Obama Administration -- that the sheer volume of its misconduct was unparalelled.  The flaw in either case is obvious.  

Examine any administration under a microscope and you will find plenty of things to criticize.  The author is taking particularly notorious actions by previous administrations and comparing them to the day-to-day actions of the current one.  Examine the day-to-day actions of any administration and you will find grounds for criticism, as hyperbolic as you may wish.

Reflection on Joe Biden's Legacy

 

So, when historians write about the legacy of Joe Biden's presidency, what will they say?

I think they will have to say that he failed in the only way that really matters -- he failed to prevent the re-election of Donald Trump.  If he had stepped aside and his successor had won, then Biden would go down in history as the man who saved US democracy twice -- once by defeating Donald Trump, and once by stepping down.  

Maybe US democracy will survive.  Maybe it won't.  But if it does survive, somebody else will get the credit for saving it.  And if it does not, Biden will be on the list of people who are to blame.

I do think history will give him credit for suppressing paramilitary activity.  What a shame it is making a comeback now.

And it will look back at his actions to see which ones were responsible for Trump coming to power and what he might have done differently.  I think we are as well qualified to weigh in on that as future historians.  So what do I say?  People have posed many suggestions as to which of Biden's actions made him so unpopular as to bring Trump back to power.  What do I say?

Too much stimulus ignited inflation:  The assumption is that if we had not passed a stimulus, all would have been well.  I disagree.  The US passed a larger stimulus than any other country.  Our economy rebounded faster and more strongly than any other country.  Incumbents lost everywhere, but the swing against incumbents was less marked than anywhere else.  I believe that these three things are all related.

On the other hand, the US was not any sort of outlier on severity of inflation.  It began in the US a little ahead of the rest of the world and subsided in the US a little ahead of the rest of the world.  But in terms of severity, the US was completely average and unremarkable.  

It may be that a smaller stimulus would have meant lower inflation, at the cost of a weaker recovery.  I am not convinced that would have done the incumbent any favors.  Maybe there was a perfect happy medium that would have led to a strong recovery without strong inflation, but the chances of hitting it were minimal.  Too much guesswork, too little certainty.

A crime wave:  Crime went up in the wake of the pandemic and riots and then subsided.  It would have done the same regardless of who was in the White House.

The disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal:  This appears to be when Biden's popularity began to tank and never recovered.  I basically agree with people who say that Biden was dealt a bad hand and played it badly.  His predecessor negotiated the terms of withdrawal that led to the collapse of the Afghan government before the Taliban.  Biden should have anticipated such a thing and prepared for it, working on issuing visas and getting our supporters out well ahead of time.  Arguably, it might have worked better to withdraw during the winter, when a Taliban offensive would have been more difficult.  The number of people we successfully evacuated was impressive, but not good enough.

Immigration:  I believe this was Biden's biggest unforced error.  The "Remain in Mexico" program was working, though as great cost to the individuals involved.  Biden should have kept the program and worked to make it more humane, i.e., offering more protection to asylum seekers waiting in Mexico.  Giving the opportunity to apply from afar was actually a good idea. It might even have been popular if the border had not been so badly inundated, but inundated it was, and it sank the Biden presidency.

Not tooting his own horn:  There is a good argument that Biden would have been more popular if he had put his name on the stimulus checks that went out and showed up to take credit for all the infrastructure projects that he backed, as well as naming names for which Republicans voted against them.

Not being aggressive enough in prosecuting Trump:  Maybe things would have gone differently if the Trump prosecution had begun right away.  Maybe it would have killed his political career for good. But I really do believe that the failure there lay earlier -- with Mitch McConnell not voting and whipping to convict on the second impeachment.  That would have killed Trump's career for good.

Overreach on "identity politics," including transgenderism:  I don't know how important this was, or big the effect was in the real world, but I do think there was some overreach in both these matters.  (I plan to post on them at a later date).  I also fully expect Trump to overreach in the opposite direction.

Foreign policy:  I think Biden handled the Ukraine and Gaza wars as well as could be reasonably expected.  As for assumptions that an alternative would have worked better (not enough aid to Ukraine!  Russia would never have gone nuclear!  No restraints on Israel!  Or maybe more!), hindsight is not, in fact, 20/20.  We know what did happen and all the problems with the outcome.  We do not know what would have happened if some other option was tried.  In any event, most Americans do not vote based on foreign policy.

Running for a second term in the first place:  There were clear problems with Biden withdrawing as late as he did.  Would the result have been different if he had declined to run for a second term?  This is another case of hindsight not being 20/20.  No doubt a bruising primary would have ensued, which might have done real damage to the Democrats.  I also do not really see who would have been a more effective candidate.  Definitely not Gavin Newsome, who would have had "California" tattooed all over him, much to his detriment.  Maybe a red or purple state governor -- Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Andy Bashear of Kentucky, or John Bel Edwards of Louisiana.  But anyone who thinks the problem was particular to Biden -- or Harris for that matter -- underestimates the power of the Great Right Wing Noise Machine.  Any candidate would have been a target of massive vilification that would be extremely difficult to overcome.

In short, if any Democrat had beaten Trump, Biden would have gone down in history as the man who saved democracy twice.  If a normal Republican like Nikki Haley or even Ron DeSantis had been elected in 2024, Biden might have gone down in history as a leader who did reasonably well under difficult circumstances.  

But as it  is, he will go down as the man who failed to stop Trump.

Don't Despair

 

Don't despair.  Scary as things may be, we are seeing signs of elite and popular resistance to Donald Trump.

Popular resistance

People are setting up helplines for immigrants, letting them know which rumors are true and which ones are false, and letting them know their rights.  People are passing out "know your rights" cards to immigrants.

People are flooding Trump's anti-DEI line with spam.  

And no doubt a lot more is going on as well.

Elite resistance

A federal judge is poised to declare Trump's decree ending birthright citizenship unconstitutional.  At least one fired Inspector General is refusing to leave.  Litigation will presumably ensue.  Chuck Grassley has demanded an explanation!  While I rather doubt that anything will come of that, still Grassley is 91 years old, and his term runs till 2028.  I don't think he is all that afraid of a primary challenge.  Lindsey Graham has criticized Trump for pardoning January 6 rioters who attacked police.  Tom Cotton and Hugh Hewitt have criticized Trump for withdrawing Secret Service protection from former officials threated by Iran.

I know it ain't much, but let's take what we can.

Why Attacks on the Elite Are the Most Dangerous

 

And there you have it.  In my view, Trump's attacks on our elite and institutions (much the same thing, really) are more dangerous than his attacks on ordinary people.

I realize this will not be a popular opinion on our side.  Our elites, after all, have the resources to protect themselves in a way that ordinary people do not.  While ordinary people are clearly to blame for Trump being in power, many of us are wholly innocent in that, while all our elites may be considered complicit with Trump in the sense of not succeeded in stopping him.  And the maneuvers in the corridors of power seem remote from most people's ordinary lives.

And I acknowledge this.  But in the end, it is our institutions and elites that either will stop Trump and his abuses, or they will not.  

It is my firm and settled view that if Trump is able to stay popular for long enough, he will be able to subdue our elites and subvert our institutions, and then if he takes unpopular actions there will no longer be a way to stop him.  That is what has happened in Russia and Venezuela.  It has probably happened in Hungary and Turkey.  In all these cases, an aspiring dictator focused his attacks on the elite and refrained from taking unpopular actions until it was too late to stop him.

A fascinating contrast is the Philippines (see Freedom House rankings).  In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte launched a horrifying campaign of extra-legal violence against purported drug traffickers.  Freedom House found widespread arbitrary detention, disappearances, kidnapping and abuse of suspects, as well as harassment, torture and disappearance of indigenous peoples, especially in land disputes.   Obviously, all of this merits our condemnation and is a serious human rights abuse.  (It is also much worse than even a worst case scenario under Donald Trump).  But here is the thing. Duterte did not direct his attacks on the elite.  Opposition parties continued to operate openly and seriously contest elections.  Duterte stepped down as required by term limits.  His handpicked successor won. There has been a significant improvement in human rights under his handpicked successor.  We are left with the impression that all is not lost, as it is in Russia and Venezuela, and probably in Hungary and Turkey.

Let's bring this closer to home and be more specific.  Trump has issued a number executive orders taking extreme action against immigration.  Many of these decrees have been challenged as illegal or unconstitutional.  A federal judge appears poised to strike down the decree ending birthright citizenship as unconstitutional.  We can hope that other executive orders will meet the same fate.

Meanwhile, Trump has pardoned the January 6 insurgents.  Private militias such as the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters are on the rise.  Many of us fear that these groups will serve as Trump's private paramilitary.  Will they focus on terrorizing immigrants or challengers to Trump in our ruling elite?  And which is worse?

Well, clearly our elites can hire private bodyguards and take other steps to protect themselves much better than ordinary immigrants, so in that sense targeting immigrants is worse than targeting elites.

On the other hand, consider.  There are about 11 million people in the US without legal authorization.  Trump plans to add to their number by revoking humanitarian parole for some 500,000 asylum seekers admitted by Biden.  I have not found any estimate as to the number of paramilitary members in the US, but it seems safe to say, nowhere near that number.  Furthermore, these immigrants are mingled with the citizenry and not easy to distinguish.  And I do generally trust local authorities to prosecute militias who commit crimes against immigrants.

By contrast, there are 870 federal judges in the US.  The locations of federal courthouses are well known, and judges' personal residences should not be too hard to find.  Furthermore, not all federal judges are hearing immigration cases at any given time.  Suppose the Proud Boys, etc. start targeting federal judge, harassing, threatening, and even killing judges unless they uphold Trump's actions.  Such acts are federal crimes, of course, but Trump can direct the federal authorities not to prosecute.  He can issue pardons for the offenders.  

And the IRS, at Trump's direction, can deny tax-exempt status to immigrant's rights organizations, effectively closing them down.  Paramilitaries can target lawyers advocating for immigrants.  Trump can withdraw funding from any local jurisdiction that does not cooperate in his anti-immigrant agenda -- or even any jurisdiction that dares to prosecute his private bands of thugs.  

I venture to say this would leave immigrants worse off than if the militias had targeted them directly -- it would shut down their defenders.

Or, on a less dramatic note, keeping the very worst people out of office depends on elite resistance by the Senate to reject Trump's nominees.

And this is frustrating to those of us who oppose Trump, not just because we can dismiss the elite to some degree as deserving what they get, but because there is so little we can do about Trump's attacks on the elite.  We can call and write to our representatives, and we can donate to organizations like the ACLU that are carrying on the fight.

But most of what we can do is directly on behalf of ordinary people harmed by Trump.  We can take what little action there is to protect immigrants and others who are targets of his ire.  We can improve our communities.  And some of us can even run for office.  And we can remember that this, too, contributes to higher level resistance.  We may belong to organizations that the ACLU is defending in court.

And we can all remember that the key to saving democracy is for all of us to do what little we can do.