This Is So Much Worse Than Last Time

That’s not all! Trump and Musk have shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development and cut off nearly all foreign aid. This will have devastating consequences for global health, global democracy, and the future of American soft power. Speaking of: Trump has spent the early days of his presidency threatening 25 percent tariffs against Mexico and Canada for no real reason, other than that he thinks a tool that worked more than a century ago will work now. (It won’t.) Even if he doesn’t end up enacting these tariffs—which would likely be a form of economic suicide—he has already likely damaged the future of any trade agreement between the U.S. and its closest allies. He has also pardoned over a thousand violent insurrectionists and now seems ready to fire hundreds of FBI agents who helped prosecute them.

But there’s more! The administration is freezing funding for climate and infrastructure spending despite numerous court orders. Trump just released a ton of water into California’s Central Valley in a publicity stunt. All he accomplished is screwing over farmers who will likely need that water in the summer; it did absolutely nothing to fight the (mostly contained) fires that devastated the state last month. His administration is waging an all-out war against trans people and seems on the verge of all but ending gender-affirming care for minors. As I write this, American planes are flying migrants to Guantánamo Bay, where they will be held in a concentration camp. Secretary of State Marco Rubio—supposedly one of the normal people in this administration!—just reached an agreement with El Salvador where it will accept deportees of all nationalities, including Americans.

I have not mentioned confirmed Cabinet members like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (problem drinker who has been credibly accused of sexual assault) or those who seem on the verge of confirmation, such as Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy (conspiracy theorist, had a literal brain worm, no experience, looks and sounds like a beat-up pleather recliner). Even then, this is just a fraction of the horror that has been unleashed over the last two weeks. As TechDirt’s Mike Masnick put it, the past fortnight has been like “a distributed denial of service attack on people who believe in reality.”