I was just starting my political career as a member of Ithaca’s City Council when Barack Obama said in a 2008 campaign trail speech that voters were just a few days from “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
The context made it clear what he meant: prioritizing policies that benefited Main Street and not just Wall Street, “so that everyone has a chance to succeed — not just the CEO, but the secretary and janitor, not just the factory owner, but the men and women on the factory floor.”
Right-wing pundits and politicians ran with that phrase. They claimed it was a sure sign that Obama was indeed the crypto-communist or secret Islamist of their fevered imaginings. I’ve been thinking about the right’s dishonest response to that phrase, given the terrible transformations President Trump has made since he returned to power last year.
The recent killing of an American poet and mother of a young child by an ICE agent in Minnesota sadly encapsulates many of the ways American principles and people have been sacrificed to the maniacal obsessions of Trump, Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought and the rest of the authoritarian team.
ICE campaigns terrorizing communities have been fueled by the same kind of fearmongering directed against Obama — witness Trump supporters’ rhetoric about “invasion” by immigrants and the supposed threat of “white genocide.” This strategy has been deployed widely, including against secularists and gay and transgender people.
The utterly unnecessary death of Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota is the clearest evidence yet that Trump’s supercharging of ICE and Border Patrol is not just about targeting immigrants. It’s about giving Trump a domestic military force that he can turn against anyone who objects to his regime’s brutality — a strategy his advisers prepared before his return to power. Astonishingly, with help from congressional Republicans, Trump’s domestic army now has a bigger budget than most countries’ militaries.
Trump’s team has ignored prohibitions on using U.S. military forces against American citizens — a legal protection Trump has defied by sending troops into American cities. Some of us worry that the administration’s goal is to get us used to troops occupying and patrolling our streets.
Similarly, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is abusing the military justice system to punish Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) for reminding servicemembers of their legal duty to refuse unlawful orders. Hegseth is clearly trying to intimidate other retired officers from exercising their freedom of speech to criticize the president.
Destroying checks and balances and eliminating accountability has been another terrifying transformation wrought by Trump with help from the schemers behind Project 2025 and from the Supreme Court majority’s invented doctrine of presidential immunity.
The flagrant lying by Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after the killing in Minneapolis suggested they have no intention of seeking accountability for the ongoing brutality and criminality of their shock troops. Noem jumped to declare the Minnesota mom a “domestic terrorist” while Trump claimed that she had “run over” an ICE agent when millions of Americans had already seen the video exposing the claim as a lie.
That lying mirrors the Justice Department’s own bad-faith behavior, which has been so extensive that federal judges have said they can no longer operate under the assumption that the government is telling the truth in court. That is devastating to the rule of law.
The operating principle advanced by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is essentially “might makes right.” In other words, the ability to get away with something, no matter how brutal and cruel, trumps the Constitution, the law, principles of due process and human rights, or ethics.
Trump’s team treats the president as a king, above the law, accountable to no one and able to force the country to accommodate his every corrupt and self-serving whim. Nearly every Republican officeholder cheers or meekly enables.
Trumpism is a revolting retreat from basic American principles. It is a fundamental transformation of our country that will take years to recover from. It will require vigilant truth-telling and persistent resistance.
It’s encouraging to me that former President Obama has the highest favorability rating of any living president. He is more popular among young men than Joe Rogan or President Trump.
“I think we can all feel a new energy” after November’s elections, Obama told House Democrats last month, encouraging them to focus on values they share around affordability, access to health care and the American dream.
Taking back the House in this year’s elections will give Democrats a way to “block the worst impulses coming out of this White House,” he said, adding that in the long run the party must tell “a better story about who we are as Americans and what we share.”
Amen.
