Translated from GegenStandpunkt 4-25
The American way of life goes MAGA:
More power to the President to make America great again
I.
The “clash of systems” between the market-based democracies of the West and the Soviet Union’s real socialism was famously decided in favor of the West three and a half decades ago. Not in the sense that democracy now reigns everywhere on the globe, but in the far more substantive political-economic sense that nations no longer have any alternative to participation in the struggle for capital growth. This means that all the forms of government around the world on the spectrum from liberal democracy to despotism are precisely that: forms in which this globally decisive and definitive content of all state activity takes place. This is the historical success of an American world power that, with all its economic and military might – to the point of destroying the world many times over – has insisted it cannot meet its own political-economic principles as long as they do not hold for all the world’s states and peoples. And this is what the world now looks like: completely covered by states that, of their own accord and in order to maintain their own power base, commit their societies and themselves to a competition in which America is the economically and militarily superior competitor.
In this competition, the USA insists on a special position. As a power that not only sets the standards of success for everyone else but also enjoys the corresponding success, it insists on its unquestionable economic superiority and military invincibility, even invulnerability. America bases this on the size and innovativeness of its capitalists; on the size and indispensability of its market for commodities, money, and credit; on the singular importance of its dollar, in which the majority of world business is conducted, especially in the financial capitalist superstructure; and finally on its unique military power. It is certainly striking that America is finding increasingly frequent and urgent reasons to reinforce this claim – in various combinations of offers and threats. For in the world of competition based on the US military and the US dollar, powers have emerged through their successes in this competition – entirely in keeping with the system – which are increasingly acquiring the means and the willingness to challenge America’s special position. The rise of such rivals does not contradict the way the American world order functions, but it does contradict the function this order has for America: globalized capitalist competition must reliably reproduce the superior economic and military power of the USA in a way that makes the successes of its competitors functional for America. For American statesmen – across party lines – any challenge to this special status is intolerable. American supremacy is a matter of national interest. However, since the replacement of the competition of systems by a global system of competition, this supremacy no longer consists of creating a world in its own image in order to make it secure for American capital, but of being the unquestionably strongest competitor in this world – a viewpoint embodied by no American politician as consistently as by Donald Trump.
Not even to propagandistically aggrandize a world of states that has been completely functionalized for the USA – as his Republican and Democratic predecessors still like to do – does Trump demand that the world be made safe for “democracy.” Certainly not by America itself. He is explicitly not interested in whether rulers elsewhere have been freely and secretly elected by their people in fair party competitions in order to then exercise their power in accordance with the rule of law, with ample respect and room for a parliamentary opposition and dissenting opinions in the public sphere. Neither praise nor criticism for this can be expected from the MAGA champion; in his view, all states are sovereign: they alone determine what kind of rule their subjects are entitled to. As is well known, Trump is just as uninterested in their respect for international rules and institutions as he is in the rules and institutions themselves: Trump is willing to make deals with all states, regardless of their form of government. To make deals, local rulers must, of course, be qualified, i.e., be well versed in the “common sense” of nation states: they must act as rulers who openly and unapologetically pursue nothing but the interests of their power; they must represent the unconditional identity of their rule with their own – and only their own – spontaneously developed peoples, i.e., they must have complete control over their own affairs from top to bottom. Above all, they must respect the only reasonable law in a world of nation states which all compete for the same thing: the right of the strongest, which America reserves for itself as the right of the strongest of all. The other state leaders must recognize the will of the MAGA boss as an immutably prescribed natural condition of their freedom to ruthlessly compete against their peers in their drive for success. Anyone who wants to distort the honest contest of strength with their opponents in their favor by invoking practical necessities or overarching rules, inter- or even supra-national obligations, earns Trump’s honest hatred of hypocrisy. Such virtue signaling then tells Trump everything he needs to know about the internal affairs of other countries, whatever he may discover there in terms of migrant- and minority-friendly deviations from a reasonable nationalism. Trump demands respect not for the greatness of the American political system – the only one fit for human beings – or for a global set of rules guaranteed by America, but “only” for the greatness of his power and his willingness to use it against all competitors. In return, Trump promises to ensure precisely this kind of respect: America is the strongest power, so it gets what it wants.
Trump receives a very bad press, as is well known, for his updating of the imperialist success story of the USA, even and especially in America itself: his disregard and contempt for the highest political values and the Western community of values, his destruction of the institutions of the international community, the proven model of American world power – no distinction is made between these victims. Such critics only reinforce Trump’s already entrenched, albeit unjustified, suspicion that those in charge of America’s power have preferred to protect the world order, its principles, and values than ensure the success of the USA within it. Trump seriously believes that the previous style of American imperialism has not been nationalistic enough.
This is precisely the substance of every national emergency that Trump has declared since the beginning of his second term: the domestic unwillingness to be the indisputable and overwhelming superpower that constitutes the very essence of America. This already determines the necessary correction: a rejection of all world politics and world economics, international law, alliance policies, humanitarian institutions and principles, etc., on which America has developed its world power into a universally valid world order and transfigured it into a higher, self-imposed obligation. Trump does not see this as the global systematization of American power, but rather its shackling; he counters this with a single, simple procedural principle: either America uses its means of power freely, or it is not America’s means of power, but those of its rivals. Here’s an incomplete overview:
– As evidenced by the persistent US trade deficit and the notorious Rust Belt, the US establishment places more value on a system of free global trade than on American trade successes and industrial dominance within it. The fact that it has the world’s largest market, the most advanced technologies, the indispensable global currency, and an incomparably destructive military power attests to the fact that America doesn’t even need to compete to defend its superiority, but politically can force its competitors to reproduce America’s superiority – which is also proof that America has a right to collect this debt from its rivals. Through the appropriately bold use of tariffs, a global tribute relationship can be established that logically must not be limited to imposing economic services.[1] Trump regularly invokes a state of emergency that forces him to take extraordinary measures, but at the same time makes it clear that transforming the economic competition of all countries into their political subjugation to America is the way to establish the only reasonable normal state of affairs – the “common sense” of a superpower.
– The same goes for the energy crisis which, according to Trump, exists simply because America does not enjoy the global energy dominance that it is capable of achieving by virtue of its God-given fossil fuel resources. These resources could be used to force competitors into servitude to America, and not just in economic terms. The US establishment has clearly prioritized the prevention of an alleged planetary catastrophe and the creation of a global market for green energy. In recognizing that the climate change invoked by his predecessors can only be an anti-American conspiracy, Trump follows his unerring instinct for the natural laws of American power: a genuine “emergency” couldn’t possibly require America to impose restrictions on itself; it can only mean that America is suffering from too many restrictions. In this sense, Trump decrees the unrestricted use of proven American energy sources – “drill baby drill,” “mine baby mine” – and does away with wind farms, which may in fact produce renewable energy, but still give too much of the appearance of an unsightly self-restraint. Here, too, what Trump decides by invoking a state of emergency obviously coincides with the only reasonable normal state of American power.
– Trump concludes from the widespread drug use among his beloved people and the foreign trade in drugs that US policy is not taking its decades-old “war on drugs” seriously, meaning that American military power is once again not being used for America. Instead, it is being wasted on “forever wars” on the other side of the “big beautiful ocean” to defend the rules of a world order that only benefits its competitors. The political elite itself has inflicted this health emergency on its people, for which Trump knows the only appropriate solution: he is putting his southern neighbors in a (provisionally pre-)warlike state of emergency until America gets the services it wants from them. When asked what services America ultimately wants from whom – more aid to fight drug cartels, more oil for US multinationals, voluntary regime change, the voluntary return of refugees? – Trump always gives the same answer: “We’ll see.” To overcome the emergency that America faces here, Trump insists on his freedom to determine all these issues unilaterally, i.e., to make deals that the other states have to accept.
– Trump sees the presence of millions of illegal immigrants on American soil as proof of treason: American politicians have put their imagined responsibility for the world’s misery above the rights of their own people – the national resource bar none. If they do not recognize the millions of unauthorized immigrants as the act of war that it is, then they apparently prefer to turn the American homeland into a global village. Accordingly, the Trump administration in this case is taking action against a double enemy: first, against foreign invaders, by massively upgrading and deploying police and military forces at home and by economically and militarily extorting their countries of origin to take back the large numbers of undesirables; secondly, against the huge fifth column in its own country whose existence is undeniable when the war scenario in which America finds itself is not recognized as such. Here, the identity between the exceptional and the normal state of affairs is all the more true: with a campaign of violence such as the country would never have considered possible before now – neither in terms of violence nor morality – the government is explicitly establishing the state of affairs which the people have always had an absolute right to: the total freedom and security of state power in dealing with its human material.
* So America has allowed itself to be duped, deceived, and exploited by foreign powers and individuals – always in connection with its higher-value obligations and fabricated necessities which the country has followed out of misguided considerations, miscalculations, or malicious disregard for its national interests. From the beginning, Trump has made it clear that this accusation against the US establishment is aimed at more than just the individual crimes and the personnel of the previous administrations who are criminally culpable for them. His criticism is aimed at the entire party landscape, the whole way of governing that has embedded the principle of weakness as a political guideline, as well as the way the people constitute themselves, including the self-image they have been drawing of themselves for far too long. As a living paradigm of successful dealmaking, i.e., dictating from the position of winner of the competition, Trump is tackling the task at hand on the home front.
II.
There Trump initially found a “two party system” with a mixed reputation: in each case, one’s own party enjoys a good reputation, the other a bad one. This clear division is the goal and also, according to polls, the result of how the parties shape political opinions. They have actually managed to convince large segments of American voters that the parties exist on opposite moral poles, giving them a simple choice between good and evil. The voters recognize themselves as products of this competition, often seeing their party affiliation as central to their whole moral self-image and worldview, and vice versa. Yet by successfully cultivating the irreconcilability of their values in their campaign messages, the parties also do a great deal of damage to their already bad reputation among the very citizens who they have apparently succeeded in politicizing in another respect: this citizenry constantly complains about the unwillingness of the parties – especially, but not only, the other party – to engage in no-nonsense cooperation, thereby side-tracking the main political issues: with nothing but competition between the parties, no decisions are made, hence there is no effective governance. So both parties come under suspicion of being merely two self-dealing political agencies of one and the same “establishment”: committed to the system of their rule instead of the one they were appointed to – vigorously, successfully – exercise.
On the other hand, Trump finds a constitutional government structure with an equally mixed reputation. Its good reputation is owed to a strange realization that sound democratic common sense has somehow agreed on: for the citizens being governed, what matters most about this power apparatus is how it relates to itself. The substance of the rights and duties it decrees, the consequences and living conditions entailed for the citizens affected – all of this is overshadowed by the enlightened procedures by which they come about. The procedures themselves, in turn, are supposedly characterized – yet another strange notion – by the fact that those in power are mainly concerned with restraining and balancing each other out. The fact that state power is divided into different authorities which monitor each other with their respective competencies is therefore good news, especially for the governed, those with whom power cannot, of course, be shared: divided rule is at most half as authoritarian, and above all, it is entirely objective because it is checked twice and three times over. There is actually some truth to the latter point: the all-powerful tyranny of a single power holder is of no use to a modern capitalist nation. Too much is at stake, especially in America: after all, the successful functioning of the world’s most productively competitive and class-based society is the reliable foundation of the most dominant world power in human history. Even in the American laissez-faire paradise, this requirement involves an extremely wide range of sovereign regulatory measures which must be met by a number of well functioning agencies so that the country’s economic power base functions, if not according to plan, then absolutely reliably and productively. The capitalistic and globally powerful cause that must succeed in the short, medium, and long term cannot be brought about by the political will of a king-like luminary, no matter how assertive he may be – and it must not be disrupted by him under any circumstances. Interestingly, this is precisely what gives the constitutional state its bad reputation in democracy. Its convoluted procedures prevent the “strong governance” that the nation desperately needs in the face of competition and that the people have mandated in elections – the pinnacle of civic freedom. Accordingly, it is not the arbitrary power of those in power that is curbed in favor of objective governance, but rather the democratically demanded need for action on the part of those who govern which is thwarted by a sluggish bureaucracy. In this way, the responsible citizens of a free society acknowledge that they definitely do not need mere administration, but decisive rule, and they insist on getting it.
This is precisely what accounts for the good reputation of the presidency that Trump discovers. The holder of this office embodies the need of all Americans for dynamic rule, one they can identify with as a collective people – head of the state apparatus, commander-in-chief of the greatest military power, and figurehead of the world’s greatest national unity, all rolled into one. This office stands – or so the prevailing narrative goes – above all the squabbling of the competing parties and individual representatives in the rest of the state apparatus. Its holder represents in his entirety what the other elected officials represent only fragmentarily: the abstraction known as “the American people.” US presidents generally like to remind their colleagues in other branches of the American power apparatus of this; even Trump’s hated predecessor, Obama, acted with confidence on the assumption that all the other holders and representatives of state power, especially those in the legislature, ultimately had to listen to him because, although they too were elected, they were not elected by the American people. US presidents traditionally use this to justify a concentration of power that pushes the limits of their office. And the greater American power becomes, the more it has at stake in the global competition between powers, and the more this competition represents a more or less permanent state of war, the more irrefutable the need for an energetic and capable leader becomes. What was lamented half a century ago as an “imperial presidency” that was amassing ever greater powers has long since become the norm thanks to the advances of the imperialism that the US president oversees. The exercise of presidential power may not require exceptional intelligence, but it does require a political icon with a concentration of power that no historical king could have ever come close to.
Trump effortlessly connects these three elements of America’s vibrant democracy – as the exceptional figure who all democratically educated, disappointed nationalists are constantly calling for.
III.
First he took on the American two-party system. After years of indecision about which party would be the appropriate vehicle for his politics of uncompromising, super-powerful strength, Trump eventually decided to conquer the Republicans.[2] He had a mixed opinion about the party itself.
On the one hand, it has numerous good points and, on the whole, strikes the right note: “Business first and the military, too!” has always defined its moral compass. Trump didn’t need to teach them that there can never be enough freedom for the profit-makers and destructive power for the military and that they deserve every penny of government support. The same went for the principle that those who lose out in the competition don’t deserve taxpayer money, but rather a lot of “law and order.” And largely thanks to the rise of the Tea Party[3], the demand for more freedom for business and tougher treatment for losers was seamlessly welded together with an appeal to the nationalist rights of an impoverished industrial workforce: it is precisely this morally exemplary yet materially deprived breed of people who have a right to expect that their hard work serves successful entrepreneurs whose success must not be relativized by social policies, and that this work is extorted only from true Americans, that is, from themselves. From Trump’s point of view, this was already an indication of the encouraging progress the party was making on the issue of “foreigners out.” The availability of cheap and willing labor power such as is ultimately only provided by illegal immigrants was increasingly being accepted within the party as a necessary condition in every possible sector of American capitalism; the presence of such people in every possible part of the American territory was increasingly being denounced as a criminal threat to the homeland and the rights of its inhabitants. In this sense, Trump was particularly pleased with the general, boundless, and endlessly offended sense of justice that Republicans increasingly displayed. For them, America is an essentially invincible nation that is suffering more and more defeats: its much-vaunted economic superiority is no longer reflected in the state of the American economy; the worldwide deployment of its superior military power might wreak havoc abroad, but it doesn’t pay off for America. The nation’s right to economic and military supremacy is not being fully realized, so it is being completely squandered. The party doesn’t believe that its nation has any real weaknesses in the competition between nations, it only has perfidious traitors. And the fact that the party saw this un- and anti-American weakness most clearly embodied in a black president who talked about “Change!” – which was actually enough to confuse Obama’s promise at the time with a relativization of America’s claim to unquestionable superiority – finally sealed the love match between Trump and the Republicans. At least on the one hand.
Because, on the other hand, the party was lagging on all fronts behind the chorus of vicious rhetoric that its supporters and even the party itself was peddling on the country’s right-wing propaganda outlets. The party was not going far enough in relieving the burden on the rich and dismissing the whining of the losers. When it comes to relieving hard working Americans of the criminal presence of foreigners, its actions did not match the alarmism that it was stoking. Despite its insistence on the further expansion of the USA’s overwhelming military supremacy and that America knows no higher rule than its own security needs, it was making no discernible effort to finally get rid of all the parasitic allies and shackling institutions that stood in the way of America’s supremacy. And, unfortunately, all that remained of Trump’s hatred for the liberal culture of weakness and its black protagonist in the highest office was this: the cultivation of an intense fighting stance, which the long overdue real fight fell short of. In summary: The beautiful enemy images conjured up by the Republicans and their media allies in the name of the real American people found no real counterpart in their actions.[4] They clearly did not believe that their hostility toward the Democrats and liberalism in general represented the true consensus of true Americans, i.e., the only valid one; in this respect, they were failing their task of turning this national consensus into the governing consensus. Obviously, the Republicans were still riddled with hypocrites – “RINOs” (Republicans In Name Only) – who only invoked the real Americans, that is, merely represented the right wing of the same establishment dominated by their Democratic opponents. Trump would therefore first have to turn this party into a movement of the American people against the anti-American enemy.
With this consistent fighting spirit, Trump offered a great bargain to all right-wing Americans – and indeed to anyone who likes to channel their dissatisfaction into a need for leadership that will do away with America’s weaknesses once and for all and unleash America’s sources of power without restraint. To achieve this, the party had to tear down some firewalls or – depending on the situation – stop hypocritically allowing such sharp boundaries. After all, white supremacists, anti-government militias, and the wildest right-wing conspiracy theorists all want the same thing: victory over a self-inflicted national weakness and its liberal perpetrators. If anything, these radicals, who had been – at least for the most part – largely ostracized until now, differ in one characteristic that Trump sees as a clear advantage: they take their own enemy images absolutely seriously.[5] Whatever the various Republican factions and right-wing currents want to fight against in detail, they all need the powerful avenging angel that Trump presents himself as. And definitely more than Trump needs them – which makes clear the obligation that Trump’s offer to the motley right-wing world involves: everyone must recognize that the MAGA movement, in which Trump unites “traditional” Republicans with their entire right-wing base, is a movement of the American people. Everyone must bring to life the unified will of all true Americans, which only in and through Trump really comes to life as a unified will. Seen in this light, Trump’s notoriously rambling speeches, in which he jumps wildly from praising himself to the next enemy image, are entirely factual and coherent: they are precisely the rhetorical way in which Trump focuses his supporters on the real connection between all their hostilities and dissatisfactions, which really only have their common denominator in him. Trump creates the practical connection through his attacks on anyone who disputes or even relativizes his claim to be the energetic will that the nation needs, and who therefore also takes the powerful liberties he needs for this purpose.
The result is a MAGA movement with a personality cult exactly as exists in a liberal democracy: firstly, as the ideal of genuine unity between the people and their leaders; secondly, as the opportunistic calculation of the movement’s members to instrumentalize the leadership for their own populist issues; thirdly, as a permanent disappointment that must be dealt with when the leadership does exactly what it promises to do – namely, realizes the freedom of its power; fourthly, in the mutual accusations between various factions among the followers that the others merely want to make use of the great leader for their own purposes, which are not really in the interests of the people;[6] fifthly – and more frequently in recent times – as a direct conflict between the great leader himself and parts of his followers as soon as the former falls short in his declarations of enmity and the latter in their declarations of loyalty. That such conflicts arise is no more surprising than that they escalate precisely over issues whose moral quality so wonderfully represents the core of the MAGA mindset[7]: it is precisely in their respective fundamentalisms that these movements have been and continue to be useful to Trump, insofar as they give him total control over the Republicans who have been converted to the Trump movement. Trump’s own fundamentalism on every specific issue is oriented toward the main issue he embodies: the absolute freedom of his power. In this, the protagonists of whatever cause must see the fulfillment of their mission – or forfeit their right.
IV.
With the same objective with which Trump cultivates the support of the MAGA movement, he approaches the constitutional government apparatus. Its rules and procedures do not apply per se to the representative of the people, who has been empowered precisely to put an end to “business as usual” in politics because the allies and opponents within the divided government apparatus are the problem in the first place. Trump has promised an unrelenting and unrestrained fight against them and their bastions in the constitutional government apparatus – and the king-like democrat is keeping his word. He does not shy away from the fascist transition that every democracy provides for when the nation’s cause itself is suffering acutely from the restrictions imposed on the nation’s supreme leader: The nation needs an anti-establishment Caesar who champions the sole true right of the strongest – with ruthless crackdowns on any resistance, with the removal of all protective walls behind which it hides and feels safe. In this respect, it is not Trump who has to prove himself in accordance with the procedures prescribed by the rule of law, but the other way around. In their respective readiness to serve the people’s president and the savior of the nation in its time of need, all members of the state apparatus organized under the rule of law must prove themselves to be freely usable instruments of his power:
The executive branch, with all its agencies – which have more formal independent from the president than the various government departments – is being brought into line by Trump. He is removing all individuals who show critical distance from him, as well as entire agencies that do not appear to be “America first,” such as the development agency USAID and the Department of Education. On the one hand, Trump propagates this as an emergency measure, even as self-defense: against a “deep state” in whose depths liberal traitors pull the strings and hide. On the other hand, Trump emphasizes that he is finally restoring the democratic norm that the far-sighted founding fathers allegedly always intended: a “unified executive” in which all agencies, their heads, and their supervisors serve “at the pleasure of the President.”
“Only that chain of responsibility ensures that SES [Senior Executive Service] officials are properly accountable to the President and the American people...My Administration will restore a ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people.’” (Restoring Accountability for Career Senior Executives, Trump Memorandum, January 20, 2025)[8]
– He governs largely through “executive orders” – a governmental instrument that the framers of the Constitution intended for exceptional situations in which the usual legislative procedures are too slow and consensus-oriented. According to Trump, just such an emergency exists in that he does not have sufficient control over Congress to handle it, despite a Republican majority in both chambers. On the other hand, his decrees are clearly not a stopgap measure. His childlike glee while signing the thick folders shows rather the clear conscience of a power holder who is finally living up to the democratic ideal of the US president, from whom the nation demands energetic governance. For Trump, this is the only method of rule that does justice to the American people’s right to an endless number of awesome deals around the world. The fact that his orders lack the lasting effectiveness of laws formally passed by the legislature and that they can therefore be just as easily reversed by the next president is at most a problem for another day, when another order may be necessary anyway in view of a changed situation. For Trump, the freedom to impose obligations on everyone else without committing himself to anything is not only appropriate in times of crisis, but is the only way to exercise power worthy of the world’s strongest nation. What applies to the power of this nation in general also applies to Trump himself: either his power is unrestricted, or it is not real power. He does not owe the legislature compliance with a procedure in which it has a say, but only a successful outcome, which it must dutifully and with the appropriate financial resources enable him to achieve. With this government practice, Trump does not make friends with all congressional Republicans, but he clearly makes a big impression. On the whole, Republican lawmakers are demonstrating their willingness to let the America First president’s freedom take full effect. They, too, know what free patriots want from their leadership.
– The opposition Democrats – the negative mirror image of the united people’s movement that Trump has transformed and expanded the Republicans into – are immediately feeling the effects of this freedom. In Washington, they are treated, at best, like the defeated minority they are, i.e., simply ignored; they are removed or hounded out of the government and the administrative apparatus wherever possible, and they are subjected to constant rhetorical contempt. At this point, at the latest, they expose themselves as enemies of the people who must be stripped of power, imprisoned if necessary, even hanged.[9] The same applies to the Democrats who govern in the individual states and cities: Their crime becomes apparent, for example, when they declare their cities “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants and refuse to cooperate with the Trump administration’s demands for militant large-scale deportation raids; or when they fail to treat the protests against these raids as rebellions by enemies of the state and thus neglect their duty to violently suppress them. For Trump, every such refusal proves that criminal elements await their overdue eradication, not only within the urban populations governed by Democrats, but even within the local governments themselves. So, for Trump, the need for a MAGA occupation force in America’s major cities is even more compelling. In addition to the deployment of the National Guard – so far on a trial basis in Los Angeles and Washington, DC[10] – as protection and support troops for the large-scale deportation offensive and for combating violent crime and protests in the cities, Trump is setting out to build up his own armed force under his direct command which he will be able to use to maintain order at any time, at his own discretion.[11] With every protest by the respective governors and mayors, with every judge’s injunction, and especially in the wake of the assassination of MAGA hero and rising star Charlie Kirk, talk of the “enemy within” is losing its purely metaphorical character. According to Trump’s chief advisor for all situations, Stephen Miller, the Democrats are “not a political party, but a domestic extremist organization.” Or, putting it even more bluntly:
“The issue before us now is very simple and clear. There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.” (Chief Advisor Stephen Miller on X)
In the process, the Trump administration is becoming increasingly convinced that the nation actually needs martial law so that it can finally fight the Democrats and their supporters with the necessary decisiveness:
“President Donald Trump has repeatedly signaled he is open to invoking the Insurrection Act, a law from 1807 that allows the president to deploy the military in the United States. Earlier this month, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he is “allowed” to use it if courts deny his efforts to send the National Guard to U.S. cities.‘Everybody agrees you’re allowed to use that and there is no more court cases, there is no more anything,’ Trump said. ‘We’re trying to do it in a nicer manner, but we can always use the Insurrection Act if we want.’” (www.pbs.org, October 27, 2025)
In the meantime, Trump casually appropriates the entire leadership of the various US armed forces for MAGA’s enemy images and war games:
“We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military … We’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms...This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room, because it's the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control.” (September 30, 2025)
In Washington, the Democrats pull a kind of emergency brake at the beginning of October. They refuse to give their required approval for the passage of the federal budget and bring about a government shutdown.[12] The aim is to force Trump and the congressional Republicans to recognize the Democrats as an opposition that must be negotiated with, and not simply treated as an enemy without any power. Secondly, to discredit the Republicans in the eyes of the people as a team that clearly thinks hostility to the Democrats is more important than the health of their people, so that the latter will see their own predicament reflected in that of the Democrats.[13] Of course, there is a small and a large contradiction in this maneuver: The minor one is that the Democrats’ hypocrisy is not only easy to see through, but also easy to use in reverse – which the Republicans promptly do, according to the principle: The Democrats’ irrational hatred of Trump is apparently stronger than their love for the suffering people! The far greater contradiction is that the Republicans, who are to be blackmailed into agreeing to negotiate, do not feel damaged by this, so they do not feel blackmailed. On the contrary, they even see the shutdown as a double opportunity to push ahead with the already planned dismantling of a number of federal agencies and make civil servants’ jobs even more unbearable, and to damage the special interests and constituencies of the Democrats.[14] The whole blackmail maneuver thus presupposes the same thing of the other party that is essential for the functioning of the constitutional state: a fundamental consensus on the path to national success and a corresponding willingness to cooperate, which the Republicans not only do not have, but rather perceive as their main mandate to reject. The Republicans’ immunity to the Democrats’ attempt at blackmail and, not least, the Republican threat to resort to the “nuclear option” and abolish the so-called “filibuster” prompts eight Democratic senators to lay down their arms after six weeks and agree to the resumption of government operations. They appeal to their Democratic colleagues in Congress to save their political credibility by demonstrating the kind of political responsibility that distinguishes them from the Republicans who are only interested in power, and to admit that they simply cannot blackmail the Republicans with a damage that the latter see as an advantage. Their colleagues respond with an outrage that reflects the other side of the Democrats’ dilemma: by ending the shutdown, the party is failing to fulfill its responsibility as a bulwark of the rule of law against Trump’s authoritarian offensive, thereby damaging its credibility as the leader of the anti-Trump resistance and instead merely admitting to its powerlessness.[15]
– The judiciary has a very simple task in times like these. It is already clear that Trump can do anything he wants:
“I’m not a dictator. I have the right to do anything I wanna do. I’m the President of the United States. If I think our country is in danger, and it is in danger in these cities, I can do it.”
Accordingly, Trump is not submitting anything like requests to revise the legal situation, but rather is creating facts on the ground with his numerous executive orders which disregard existing legal precedents. On the other hand, Trump doesn’t consider the rulings of the judiciary superfluous at all; he certainly insists on being right by definition, but also on having his rights adjudicated. For this – for the official legalization of the freedom of his power – Trump gladly goes to court. And he does so with every competitive means at his disposal:
“President Donald Trump, asked during an interview on NBC News’s ‘Meet the Press with Kristen Welker,’ whether he believes that he needs to uphold the Constitution during his presidency, responded, ‘I don’t know... I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said’.” (Washington Post, May 4, 2025)
Trump encounters numerous federal judges who find much that is unconstitutional in his executive orders and take action by issuing preliminary injunctions.[16] Trump, for his part, considers these objections unconstitutional and adverse to the people’s wishes; he threatens to prosecute the judges, prosecutors, and plaintiffs, as well as to disregard the rulings themselves, and invokes his absolute right to do so. He then – for the time being – leaves it with these threatening gestures while continuing to take legal action with a lot of belligerence in order to get the required confirmation of his absolute right – all the way up to the top of the Supreme Court, whose approval is sought. There, Trump encounters a conservative majority of judges, which he himself had ensured, and which – in numerous individual cases and in general – confirms Trump’s freedom to pursue his governmental agenda through executive orders unhindered by temporary injunctions. It suspends the rulings of the lower courts across the board, largely via the “shadow docket,” i.e., without explicit justification.[17] In addition, with a landmark ruling in the case of Trump v. CASA, Inc., it generally restricts the judiciary’s power to immediately block executive orders nationwide until the apex of the judiciary makes a final decision on their constitutionality.[18] The court is thus expanding the executive branch’s freedom to govern by decree, but reserves its power to solely decide on their final validity at its own discretion and according to its own timetable – at least until a new president might reverse the decrees. Contrary to the biased judgment of disappointed Democrats, this does not reveal a subservient willingness to become Trump’s compliant instrument, but rather the desire, or hopeful calculation, to exploit Trump’s anti-liberal fighting spirit. Given the clear majority of conservatives over liberals on the Supreme Court (6 to 3), this opportunity is also quite unique. It is precisely for this purpose that the very stable conservative majority on the Supreme Court is concentrating a good deal of judicial power in its own hands. Trump is under no illusions about the calculating, instrumental way in which the conservative judiciary uses him; he is bothered by it precisely to the extent that it doesn’t function as his instrument in practice, that is, when his executive orders are not upheld. Then he is extremely bothered.[19] A whole series of Supreme Court rulings on the substance of the many contested executive orders is expected in the near future, which will show Trump whether and to what extent he will have to resort to other means to bring the judiciary into line.
– The fourth estate – the so-called “court of public opinion” – is considered by Trump, on the one hand, to be a “fake news” machine that needs to be shut down.[20] He often bypasses the mainstream media altogether and maintains direct contact with his movement via “Truth Social.” On the other hand, he is notoriously greedy for good reviews of his stately achievements, especially from the liberal press, which he detests and has declared the “enemy of the people.” This is definitely not just a psychological quirk, but another example of his radical political ambition: Trump wants the press to fulfill its role – as a voluntary echo chamber for the direct pronouncements of the people’s president. Trump insists on approval, on validation for the freedom he claims – and encounters a fair amount of defiant outrage and no small amount of commercial and intellectual opportunism in doing so.[21]
* What Trump is demanding of the constitutional apparatus is essentially its Gleichschaltung. This term is, of course, first and foremost known as a political-moral epithet for evil: a fascist crime against the democratic constitutional state, and thus the absolute opposite of good. Its political content is far more prosaic and not nearly as foreign to the constitutional state as these Manichean moral categories are to each other: The function of the legal system and a state apparatus based on the separation of powers for the government program – for its financing and implementation, its legitimacy as lawful, its justification as serving the people – is insisted on regardless of, or even contrary to, its intended mode of functioning. Trump is not creating a new state apparatus, nor is he giving himself a new title as ruler; he wants the democratic, constitutional apparatus of government to fulfill its tasks – the ones he sets for it – without fail. Trump has confronted constitutional procedures and the associated competition between authorities in exactly the same way as America has confronted the world of states as a whole: that of a successful monopolist. He does not abolish this political competition between democratic and constitutional institutions; rather, he insists that he has already won them over to his program. His absolute right as the winner of the event is the starting and fixed point of the entire constitutional competition. Even when dealing with his own apparatus of power, Trump does not see competition as a process with an open outcome, but as a requirement for success. What matters for power is the outcome of the process; that alone determines the goodness of governance.
V.
1.In the established liberal self-image of the USA, which Trump is fighting against, he encounters the idealized reflection of the real existing American world order:
First, the USA is the quintessential nation of immigrants. The capitalism of no other nation enjoys such extensive and successful access to the world’s human resources. It places them at every level of the economic hierarchy: from key and leadership positions in the industries and institutions responsible for the nation’s economic and military superiority to jobs that have to be compared with foreign squalor to be able to see the “American dream” in them.
A very large portion of Americans – from all walks of life and across party lines – think highly of this access: as a recipe for national success and as a special moral seal of approval. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” – with this inscription on the Statue of Liberty, the nation honors itself for how well it knows how to utilize this yearning for freedom: for the wealth and power of the USA and for the reproduction of its human basis. For a large segment of Americans, this pride in the usefulness of foreigners makes the typical nationalist skepticism toward newcomers seem, first, counterproductive and, second, morally offensive: a nationalism that does this nation no good. This openness to useful foreigners of all origins is by no means limited to those who the US government officially accepts – temporarily or permanently – into the national community. It also extends to the millions who are residing illegally on American territory but have long since found their home in the American way of life – usually on its very large and productive bottom rung. Quite a few righteous US patriots even occasionally go so far as to say that the American passport – probably the most coveted ID in world history – is actually “just a piece of paper” that doesn’t do justice to the true identity and the truly unifying bond of this people. Such patriots find both of these things in another piece of paper that attests to a far more significant sense of belonging, namely, possession of the economic power which determines their real lives from A to Z: in the common interest in dollars, the acquisition of which all members of the community, regardless of their origin, depend on, a unifying love of freedom is discovered that rhymes with the free competition for this money. Therefore, for such Americans – probably the vast majority of them – the question whether foreigners belong here has in a certain sense long been decided: wherever they look in the world outside their borders, there they see themselves – the same energetic drive to succeed in the competition for money is everywhere. This makes cosmopolitanism quite easy for them, even a moral matter of course. However much they may be willing to accept specific foreigners – liberal America sees itself as the “universal nation” that does justice to human nature because it recognizes no other justice than that of the free and equal competition for money. This is precisely what is assumed to be the fulfillment of the dreams of every citizen of the world. And that is precisely what makes this “American dream” so realistic: it corresponds to a world order that is actually designed for this American way of life.
Of course, this American self-love is not entirely unwavering – especially among the most ardent liberal advocates of the idea that America, with its competitive society, does justice to human nature as such. For in the past and present of the United States – in the extermination of the Native Americans, the enslavement of Black people, and its long history of racist treatment and sorting of the population – such critics find numerous reasons to doubt the moral quality of America’s freedom-loving society. Not because it subsumes all people under the competition for money, nor because of the considerable differences that free and equal competition brings about, but because it is not solely this criterion that sorts the many competitors into different ranks of the hierarchy. Instead of Americans really only distinguishing themselves in free competition, they are sorted according to extraneous criteria: skin color, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc. On this issue, America must take a hard look at itself – in the sense of finally waking up or becoming “woke”: It must admit that without a comprehensive system of solidarity – ethnic, gender, etc. – there can be no truly free and equal competition. With DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) in all institutions of society – from private companies to the military – it must ensure that the colorful diversity of competitors is represented in two ways: by reflecting and celebrating it. America, as a “universal nation” of private competitors, must therefore still be perfected.
2.Trump identifies this liberal version of belief in America’s destiny with, of all things, hatred of America and an explicit rejection of its competitive strength as the identity of all true Americans. No later than the “woke” moral offensive in the universities and on social media, which has been upgraded into a revolutionary wave of terror thanks to the moral offensive of right-wing propaganda outlets, it becomes clear to Trump what the efforts around DEI and the many refugees and other illegal immigrants in the country actually represent: not the perfection of a competitive nation and the productive absorption of the world’s poverty, but a deliberate attempt to weaken the American competitive nation, possibly replacing self-confident Americans with submissive foreigners who are much more likely to put up with liberal oppression.
Against this, the Trump administration advocates purging all the country’s public and private institutions of “DEI” programs, the personnel associated with them – the color of their skin can suffice for this – and in general the mere mention of such points of view as a justification for some kind of leniency or even as a reason for national self-criticism. Anyone who wants to live in a morally perfect nation should start with themselves and find the nation that already exists to be perfect. If anything, the nation must “awaken” to its already existing greatness. With this ethos, the Trump administration is currently carrying out a purge in the US education and museum fields, the thoroughness of which even the most fanatical proponents of left-liberal “cancel culture” could only dream of. On the other hand, the Trump administration is conducting its own accompanying moral offensive while in practice purging the nation of illegal – and unwanted legal – immigrants. The violent removal of immigrants is staged not only as revenge for the violated rights of law-abiding Americans, but also as the revival of “manifest destiny,” as the reconquest of the continent from uncivilized savages and for God’s own people. The fact that America has its roots in a brutal “settler colonialism” is not merely the slanderous rhetoric of woke critics, but a source of pride. For the numerous “white supremacists” in the MAGA movement, these are welcome sentiments, but according to their government, they do not have to be interpreted in such a racist and exclusionary way. What matters is not the intellectual path, but the goal: the reappropriation of the arrogance of a successful master race. This is what the nation should be proud of today; this is what makes it perfect today as well.
Some MAGA intellectuals – e.g., Vice President JD Vance – question the very notion of America as a “creedal nation” that defines itself by the universal principles of competition:
“If you were to ask yourself in 2025 what an American is, I hate to say it, very few of our leaders actually have a good answer. Is it purely agreement with the creedal principles of America? ... It’s a beautiful and wonderful founding vision, but it’s not enough by itself. If you think about it, identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let’s say, of the Declaration of Independence, that’s a definition that is way over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time. What do I mean by that? Well, first of all, it would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Must we admit all of them tomorrow? If you follow that logic of America as a purely creedal nation, America purely as an idea, that is where it would lead you. But at the same time, that answer would also reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists. Even those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. And I happen to think that it’s absurd, and the modern left seems dedicated to doing this, to saying, you don’t belong in America unless you agree with progressive liberalism in 2025. I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong...And by the way, when we went to the moon, when we built the great future of the post-war era, we did it with our fellow citizens. And we should reject, whether it’s Democrat politicians or corporate oligarchs, who say that we can only build the future by importing millions and millions of low-wage serfs. We can do it with American citizens, we’ve just got to have the will to actually try. Lastly, I’d say citizenship must mean recognizing the unique relationship, but also the obligations that we all share with our fellow Americans. You cannot swap 10 million people from anywhere else in the world and expect for America to remain unchanged. In the same way you can’t export the Constitution, the written words on a piece of paper, to some random country and expect the same kind of government to take hold. That’s not something to lament or be sad about, it’s something to take pride in. That this is a distinctive moment in time with a distinctive place and a distinctive people.” (JD Vance at the Claremont Institute, July 5, 2025)
The argument is certainly ridiculous and full of straw men, but that doesn’t detract from the clarity of its message. Americans must see themselves as a special “tribe,” as some other MAGA intellectuals put it. This also finds favor with the aforementioned “white supremacists” and “Christian nationalists” within MAGA, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be interpreted in racist or religious terms. Functional equivalents are welcome as long as the result is right: the absolute identification of one’s own nature with the nation’s second nature – namely, as a fighting community against others. The intellectual MAGA community sometimes dusts off very old American self-images of America as the land of white Christian pioneers, but there is nothing old-fashioned about them. The fighting community, for which suitable national narratives are being found here, is entirely consistent with the world that has emerged from the liberal American world order, as well as with the mission that follows from it for American patriots of all stripes: either America secures its supremacy or it is no longer America. And this mission no longer consists of creating a whole world in which the principles and standards of American capitalism apply; the associated narrative about the “universal nation” which, not coincidentally, only became established as the self-image of Americans during the Cold War and decolonization, is definitely not gone, but has lost its previous basis. Today, America must assert its supremacy against rivals of the same kind; the narrative of a ruthless nation of winners against foreign subhumans finds a firm foundation in this context. It is ironic yet fitting: precisely because the world of states has become so completely American in political and economic terms, American nationalists feel compelled to redefine themselves as a people within the global competition defined by America – and at the same time as something quite old, namely as conquerors, as executors of the violence that founded the American success story.
Footnotes
[1] See “Trump’s tariff offensive: A ‘common sense revolution’ on the world market” from GegenStandpunkt 2-2025.
[2] In 1987, Trump joined the Republican Party, but in 1999 switched to Ross Perot’s Reform Party, which took a more consistent “America First” stance. At the beginning of the century, he ended up with the Democrats, who were, after all, well liked by the “masters of the universe” on the stock market. After Obama’s victory, Trump left the party again.
[3] See “The New Tea Party: A Second American Revolution to Restore the Health of the ‘Land of the Free’” from GegenStandpunkt 4-2011.
[4] For Trump, the most illustrative example of the Republicans’ un-American timidity was that they saw Obama as nothing more than a metaphorical foreign body and not the real Kenyan that this liberal black man with an Arabic name must surely be. It was therefore very fitting that Trump, as the most prominent advocate of the relevant “birther conspiracy,” finally entered the race for party leadership.
[5] Those who proved their MAGA credentials most emphatically were those who demonstrated during the “storming of the Capitol” how completely their hatred of the liberal establishment coincides with their willingness to sacrifice themselves for Trump. See also: “The Capitol attack: The last battle (for now) in the ‘Fight for America’s soul’” from GegenStandpunkt 1-2021; especially footnotes 1 and 3.
[6] The most intense conflict is surely over degrees of xenophobia and partisanship for the poorer sections of hard-working Americans against the billionaires from liberal Silicon Valley. Trump’s former chief advisor Steve Bannon describes the conflict as one between the “national populists,” to whom he counts himself, and the “tech broligarchs” from Silicon Valley (e.g., Marc Andreessen, one of the largest tech investors in the USA, Elon Musk, etc.), who jumped on the MAGA bandwagon shortly before the start of Trump’s second term. Their extensive use of foreign engineers and their abuse of American taxpayers exposes them as traitors to the homeland in disguise: “They don’t believe in this country. They believe in this country right now because it protects them and provides some benefits to them. Remember, we bailed out these [expletive] on Silicon Valley Bank... Now, in the last couple of days, what are they talking about? Oh, my gosh, we need a Marshall Plan. We need a space plan. We need a Mercury Plan. We need hundreds of billions of dollars from taxpayers....Yo, Andreessen! We made a deal with you guys. Elon, we made a deal with you guys. We made you oligarchs. We made you the richest people in the [expletive] history of the Earth. ...This is what pisses me off the most. No antitrust, not breaking these companies up and allowing entrepreneurs to get in there. Marc Andreessen doesn’t believe in the entrepreneurial system in the country. No way!” (Steve Bannon in an interview with the New York Times, April 7, 2025)
[7] Trump has caused considerable irritation among supporters of the “largest deportation operation in American history,” which he promised for his second term in office, on two occasions: Amid protests in Los Angeles against several deportation raids and demonstrative marches by heavily armed immigration authorities, Trump expressed not only his delight at such harsh treatment of illegal immigrants and their supporters, but also a certain sympathy – for American profiteers: “They’ve [the illegal farmworkers, cleaners, etc.] been there for 20 or 25 years and they work great and the owner of the farm loves them and you’re supposed to throw them out. We can’t do that to our farmers, our leisure businesses, and our hotels.” (CNN, June 12, 2025) And recently on Fox News, Trump insisted on the need to be more generous in issuing “H-1B visas” to foreign skilled workers because America needs to “bring in talent”: “You can’t take people off an unemployment line and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory where we’re going to make missiles.’” (Fox News, November 11, 2025) “Turning Point USA [founded by Charlie Kirk] contributor Savannah Hernandez accused Trump of being ‘out of touch with the base.’ Hernandez wrote, ‘Trump needs to get out of his bubble and back on the ground listening to the American people who elected him to work for us. His H-1B comment shows how out of touch with the base he has become. Disheartening.’” (MSN, November 11, 2025)
Trump’s refusal to finally release the “Epstein files” in their entirety is causing even more discontent. These files are of such central importance to many of his supporters because the Epstein case is simply too good to be true for them in maintaining their image of the US political elite as the enemy – the ultimate proof that this elite consists not only figuratively, but literally, of child molesters. Following fierce protests from his supporters, Trump excommunicated the discontented from the MAGA movement: “‘Their [the Democrats] new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker,’ Trump wrote in a missive on Truth Social. ‘They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years.’” (CNN, July 16, 2025) Trump then broke with his hitherto most ardent supporter in the entire Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene: “‘I don’t know what happened to Marjorie, nice woman,’ Trump told reporters. ‘She’s lost her way, I think.’” (pbs.org, November 10, 2025) “Lightweight Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Brown (Green grass turns Brown when it begins to ROT!), betrayed the entire Republican Party when she turned Left.” (Trump on Truth Social, 11.22.25)
[8] “Since the Reagan administration, conservative lawyers have developed and pushed an ideology called the unitary executive theory, under which the Constitution should be reinterpreted as not allowing Congress to create any pockets of independence within the government from direct presidential control... During the 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump and some of his closest advisers made clear that if he won, they would push that agenda. In a video on his campaign website, Mr. Trump pledged to bring independent agencies ‘back under presidential authority, as the Constitution demands.’ And Mr. Vought, who also led the Office of Management and Budget in Mr. Trump’s first administration, told The New York Times in an interview in 2023 that independent agencies were in their cross hairs.‘What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,’ Mr. Vought said.” (New York Times, February 18, 2025)
[9] “President Donald Trump on Thursday assailed Democratic lawmakers who told members of the U.S. military they must refuse any illegal orders, calling them traitors who could face execution. Trump reposted an article about a video released on Tuesday by six Democratic lawmakers who served in the military or in the intelligence community.’SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!’ the Republican president wrote in a Truth Social post.” (Reuters, November 20, 2025)
[10] Trump has prepared and ordered further operations in Portland, Memphis, and Chicago, but has not yet carried them out due to preliminary injunctions issued by various federal courts.
[11] “The Pentagon is moving forward on orders from President Donald Trump to build a National Guard quick reaction force in each state for domestic use, though two US officials say the effort is largely making incremental changes to a mission the Guard already undertakes. Trump ordered that the Pentagon ‘ensure the availability of a standing National Guard quick reaction force that shall be resourced, trained, and available for rapid nationwide deployment,’ in an August executive order. But the two officials said those reaction forces already exist. ‘This whole thing – we’re already doing it,’ one of the US officials said. ‘This is just updated guidance.’” (CNN, October 30, 2025) Of course, this “just updated” is no small matter: it concerns Trump’s determination to have an armed force under his command. Meanwhile, he is relying on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, which is already quasi-militarily equipped and is now being massively armed, as well as the Customs and Border Protection agency, whose hardline chief is working on his good reputation with the president by responding to protests in Chicago with shows of brutality.
[12] The Democrats’ ability to bring about a shutdown is due to the so-called “filibuster” rule, which allows the minority party in the Senate to block passage of legislation by engaging in prolonged debate, provided it can mobilize at least 40% of the votes against it. Conversely, if the majority has 60% of the votes, it can force an end to the debate and thus a vote. During shutdowns, many federal employees are furloughed, facilities such as museums and national parks are closed or operate on a severely limited basis, various aid programs such as food assistance are greatly reduced, parts of the armed forces are understaffed, etc.
[13] The official reason cited by the Democrats for their blockade is the Republicans‘ refusal to extend or make permanent the tax credits for health insurance which were due to expire in 2025, as well as the severe cuts and reforms that the Republicans have planned for Medicaid, the nationwide federal health insurance program for the poor.
[14] “U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday froze $26 billion for Democratic-leaning states, following through on a threat to use the government shutdown to target Democratic priorities. The targeted programs included $18 billion for transit projects in New York, home to Congress's top two Democrats, and $8 billion for green-energy projects in 16 Democratic-run states, including California and Illinois. Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, warned that the administration might extend its purge of federal workers if the shutdown lasts more than a few days. The moves made clear that Trump would carry out his threat to take advantage of the shutdown to punish his political opponents and extend his control over the $7 trillion federal budget, established by the U.S. Constitution as the domain of Congress. ‘Billions of dollars can be saved,’ he wrote on Truth Social late on Wednesday. The government shutdown, the 15th since 1981, suspended scientific research, financial oversight, environmental cleanup efforts and a wide range of other activities....Vance said at a White House briefing that the administration would be forced to resort to layoffs if the shutdown lasts more than a few days, adding to the 300,000 who will be pushed out by December. Previous shutdowns have not resulted in permanent layoffs. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said it would lay off 1% of its 14,000 employees, according to an internal letter seen by Reuters. Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, said the funding freeze for subway and harbor projects in his home of New York would throw thousands out of work...Republican Senate Leader John Thune dismissed concerns that the spending freeze amounted to hostage-taking. Well, vote to open up the government and that issue goes away, right? I mean, it's pretty straightforward,’ he said at a press conference.” (Reuters, October 1, 2025)
[15] What remains, or rather what is really taking off, is a lively debate that proves that democracy in America is still very much alive – namely, about how to convince the electorate that the Democrats are the better rulers. The interim and probably final outcome of the debate: anything goes. Whether it’s uncompromising hostility toward Trump, a focus on the everyday problems of hard-working Americans, or MAGA-light: success proves who’s right.
[16] Trump has blessed the country with over 200 executive orders to date. The numerous temporary restraining orders issued by the lower courts provide an overview of the most controversial applications of Trump’s impressive energy, e.g., against the abolition of the birthright citizenship principle so that illegal immigrants can no longer “anchor” themselves in the country by having children; against the revocation of refugee status for thousands upon thousands of refugees; against deportations to third countries, e.g., to South Sudan and Eswatini; against “racial profiling” in the execution of deportation raids; against the revocation of visas for students critical of Israel; against the deployment of the National Guard to Portland and Chicago despite resistance from city and state governments; against the reduction of already approved funds for development aid; against the mass dismissal of federal employees and civil servants, the drastic downsizing of numerous agencies, and the liquidation of the Agency for International Development and the Department of Education; against the dismissal of various agency heads, a Federal Reserve governor, and a Democratic commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission.
[17] This “shadow docket” includes urgent and emergency decisions which accumulate as Trump issues his emergency decrees. A large proportion of the preliminary injunctions mentioned in footnote 15 have been overturned in this way, e.g., regarding the revocation of refugee status for over half a million refugees, the dismissal of a Democratic commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, the use of racial profiling, and deportation to third countries. The fact that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court agrees almost without exception with the Trump administration in its assessment of the preliminary injunctions issued by the lower courts prompts a frustrated liberal Supreme Court justice to make the following remark: “‘This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist,‘ Justice Jackson wrote, referring to a made-up game in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. ‘Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.‘“ (USA Today, August 26, 2025)
[18] Although the lawsuit relates to Trump’s executive order repealing the birthright citizenship principle, it does not deal with the constitutionality of the order itself, but rather the judiciary’s authority to block it. The conservative majority ruled that the lower courts do not have the authority to issue “universal” or nationwide injunctions prohibiting use of the executive order against everyone. Instead, the effect of the injunction must be limited to those who have actually filed a lawsuit and have specific claims. Only nationwide class action lawsuits can result in a nationwide injunction. If there were still any doubt, the bias of the conservative majority of judges in favor of Trump’s freedom to govern is also evident in the fact that Biden’s numerous requests to the Supreme Court to address this fundamental issue in light of the injunctions issued by conservative judges against his executive orders have simply been ignored.
[19] After a series of unpopular rulings in the lower courts, Trump berated the head of the Federalist Society, from whose ranks most of Trump’s nominees to the judiciary at all levels come, as a “sleazebag” who tricked him. Trump is no longer making the mistake of relying on other conservatives: he is positioning his own agents for the next vacancy on the Supreme Court: his former lawyer and Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who is said to have recently said “Fuck the courts!” when a federal court prohibited the immediate deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and others to El Salvador.
[20] “On Thursday, ABC announced it was suspending Jimmy Kimmel Live indefinitely. This followed a statement by Kimmel suggesting that the suspected perpetrator in the Charlie Kirk murder case might have been a MAGA supporter. Brendan Carr [the chairman of the FCC] then threatened TV networks with the revocation of their broadcasting licenses if they did not stop airing the show. ‘We’re going to continue to hold these broadcasters accountable to the public interest,’ he said on a right-wing podcast. ‘And if broadcasters don’t like that simple solution, they can turn their license into the FCC.’” This even prompted Republican Senator and notorious Democrat-hater Ted Cruz to take a more critical stance: ‘I gotta say, that’s right out of ‘Goodfellas.’ That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going ‘Nice bar you have here, it’d be a shame if something happened to it,’ Cruz said.”. (zeit.de, September 20, 2025) Conversely, Trump quite liked the threat. A few months later, he calmly offered his noncommittal opinion when a journalist asked him an unwanted question about the Epstein files: “I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake, and it’s so wrong … We have a hreat commissioner who should look into that.” (November 18, 2025)
[21] “CBS has now paid Trump $16 million as part of a settlement over an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. ‘We have just achieved a BIG AND IMPORTANT WIN in our Historic Lawsuit against 60 Minutes, CBS, and Paramount,’ Trump wrote Tuesday on his social media platform Truth Social. ‘Paramount/CBS/60 Minutes have today paid $16 Million Dollars in settlement, and we also anticipate receiving $20 Million Dollars more from the new Owners.’ CBS is also responsible for the now-canceled ‘Late Show’ with Stephen Colbert [a prominent Trump critic]. Trump sued CBS’s parent company, Paramount, for allegedly airing a manipulated interview with Harris last October, which he claimed favored his Democratic opponent in the presidential election. CBS broadcast two versions of the interview in which Harris appeared to give different answers to the same question. Regarding the Israel-Hamas war, the network stated that it was normal for edited versions of television interviews to be broadcast. However, there may be more to the legal dispute: Skydance plans to acquire National Amusements, which holds a majority stake in Paramount. Skydance is then to be merged with Paramount.” (Spiegel Online, July 23, 2025)