Translated from GegenStandpunkt 1-2025
Biden’s successful farewell
A message of love to the world power of democratic affections
In farewell, some good news: under Joe Biden’s administration, America has become even greater. Its economy is stronger than ever – as evidenced by the fact that “we’ve created nearly 17 million new jobs – more than any other single administration in a single term.” A lot more Americans can thus enjoy “the dignity of work” in the service of “millions of entrepreneurs and companies” that are “creating new businesses and industries.” The latter not only enrich themselves through the dignified work of others, they also fulfill a national mission when they are “hiring American workers, using American products.” With their enrichment, they are creating the growth which always tells American presidents whether they have successfully carried out their own service to the nation’s prosperity: by increasing claims on land and people for American profit making. The Biden administration has also made progress in the other crucial service to the nation: As already the “most powerful nation in the history of the world” (Biden 2023), “we’ve strengthened NATO,” making the leading power of the largest military alliance in world history even stronger. This in turn is a great contribution to ensuring that “we’ve pulled ahead of our competition with China.” That this is ultimately about nothing but the size of business and power and that, after all, this constitutes the “success” of America that Biden prides himself on and that he is passing on to his successor for continuation, he doesn’t need to explicitly say. Americans also understand it that way:
“I’m so proud of how much we’ve accomplished together for the American people. And I wish the incoming administration success, because I want America to succeed … I have no doubt that America is in a position to continue to succeed.” (Biden’s Farewell Address, January 15, 2025)
But there is also bad news. America is in the process of losing its soul, its magnificent democratic soul:
“The Statue of Liberty is also an enduring symbol of the soul of our nation … a nation holding the torch of the most powerful idea ever in the history of the world that all of us are created equal. That all of us deserve to be treated with dignity, justice, and fairness … I know that believing in the idea of America means respecting the institutions that govern a free society: the presidency, the Congress, the courts, a free and independent press. Institutions that ... echo the words of the Declaration of Independence: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident.’ Rooted in the timeless words of the Constitution, ‘We the People.’… Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. We see the consequences all across America. And we’ve seen it before, more than a century ago. But the American people stood up to the robber barons back then and busted the trusts. They didn’t punish the wealthy. They just made the wealthy play by the rules everybody else had to ... The concentration of power and wealth ... erodes a sense of unity and common purpose. It causes distrust and division ... People don’t feel like they have a fair shot … A fair shot is what makes America, America … That’s the magic of America.” (ibid.)
The man is definitely right that he is leaving his successor an extremely large economic and political powerhouse. But is “the idea” of America really the democratic exemplarity of its sovereign procedures? Which must therefore also be protected from “oligarchs” acting without any rules? It is true that this is how US presidents have always wanted to see their state and their pax americana, and this is obviously how it is seen in the West. The superpower with the good, democratic soul – this is not only the self-praise of American governments, but also the standard by which the new former president is measured throughout the West: as the leader of the power that bears by far the greatest responsibility for good in the world, indispensable for security and prosperity worldwide, for international and human rights, for democratic principles and saving the planet.
It’s not surprising that the new Trump administration is utterly failing to meet this extremely flattering standard for the USA. After all, it explicitly rejects it; it wants nothing to do with such a mandate. Is Trump wrong? This much is certain: he is confronting his country and the world, which he likewise wants to overthrow, with a truth that turns all ideals about the nation and its higher mission upside down. What first and foremost “makes America, America” is not egalitarian values and democratic procedures of rule, but its absolute dominance. And indeed in a world that has only become the world that it is, with all its values and procedures, thanks to America: a global struggle of nations for monetary wealth and means of violence in which the only relevant standard is success. That in the world all other nations have to measure themselves against America, but that there is no nation that can match it – that’s “the magic of America.” That America and the world are returning to this “self-evident” truth – this is the new era that Trump proclaims at his inauguration.
Trump’s perfect first days
A “common sense” revolution: Consolidating power, unleashing the nation’s will and ability to win
“The golden age of America begins right now. From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer. During every single day of the Trump administration, I will, very simply, put America first.” (Trump's inaugural address, January 20, 2025)
“America first!” doesn’t just mean “America first,” but “America above everything.” The nation’s right is absolute, as willed by providence. It just needs to be redeemed at last: “Our liberties and our nation’s glorious destiny will no longer be denied.” This is precisely why the right of an American president, who also owes at least his life to the sacred right of his nation, is absolute: “I was saved by God to make America great again.” With this, Trump – as always when an earthly potentate humbles himself as a service provider to supernatural authorities – makes himself really great, even incontestable. With this ethos, Trump and his crew are not only announcing and undertaking a great deal in their first month in office, but also a regime change in domestic and foreign policy. And they are doing so without dwelling on the question of whether Trump wants to be a democrat or a dictator, president or king. Rather, his administration is simply guided by one axiom, that America’s infinite right to unique supremacy is God-given, but only extends as far as the earthly power that an American leadership puts behind it. This is dictated by the national cause in which the political process must prove itself. The cause has but one content: the Americans are a community of superior competitors who prove themselves to be God’s favorite people precisely by not letting any obstacles stand between them and their superiority. The previous procedure has discredited itself: as a betrayal of the American people in favor of supra- and non-American values and authorities. The list of sins is long, that’s the bad news:
“For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair. We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home while, at the same time, stumbling into a continuing catalogue of catastrophic events abroad. It fails to protect our magnificent, law-abiding American citizens but provides sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals, many from prisons and mental institutions, that have illegally entered our country from all over the world. We have a government that has given unlimited funding to the defense of foreign borders but refuses to defend American borders or, more importantly, its own people. Our country can no longer deliver basic services in times of emergency … Everyone is unable to do anything about it. That’s going to change. We have a public health system that does not deliver in times of disaster, yet more money is spent on it than any country anywhere in the world. And we have an education system that teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves — in many cases, to hate our country despite the love that we try so desperately to provide to them.”
All that stops now, that’s the good news:
“My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and, indeed, their freedom. From this moment on, America’s decline is over.”
For what begins in the first “moment” of his reign is the redemption of America’s right to infinite supremacy against all those who would deprive America of that right. Ruthlessness against the established ruling customs is not only permitted, but also required. Only then can the will of the American people become a reality in a world that is actually nothing but a struggle of nations for supremacy.
* Trump is certain that the American people want what he says they want. After all, they are made up of Americans. What is even more certain is that Trump himself embodies the fighting spirit and the will to win that’s in the heart of every true exemplar of the chosen American people, i.e. their will itself. It certainly wouldn’t have taken an assassination attempt for this to happen, but now it is visible even to the unbelievers. The abundance of power that Trump claims for himself is quite dictatorial: He claims to be the sole expression, and therefore the absolutely authorized agent, of the will of the people. However, the source of the power he invokes is radically democratic. With his authoritarian governmental claim, Trump absolutizes what the finest hour of democracy – the free election – not only celebrates, but also produces: There, at least, the most diverse and conflicting concerns of the citizens are converted into the unified empowerment of one person ruling over all citizens; conversely, the ruler is united with the subjects in a free, voluntary act of empowerment. Trump takes this celebrated result radically seriously: in the race for power, he hasn’t just bagged the majority of the citizens’ votes, but has proven that there is no difference between his will to power and the will of his subjects. In this respect, the will of the people does not call for a grand plan that an elected advocate would now have to carry out from the highest office, but rather for the freedom of the person elected by the people. That his powerful freedom is at once the liberation of the people – this is the most comprehensive sovereign claim conceivable that Trump expresses as the most comprehensive promise conceivable to his movement: The direct union between himself and his voters does not celebrate its climax and its end on inauguration day, but rather its hour of birth. “America first!” will not remain the campaign slogan of a ‘MAGA’ movement, it will become the active will of the nation. Trump is ensuring this not by becoming a “president for all Americans,” as US presidents usually proclaim when they take office, but by putting an end to an unbearable contradiction: In the middle of America, there are far too many – at the top and at the bottom – who do not want Trump, i.e. the nation’s glorious mission. The unrestricted realization of the democratically articulated will of the people by a leader who will take out their enemies in their name – this is to be felt on a daily basis by the movement, and even more so by its enemies.
* It is therefore very fitting that Trump is ushering in the first decisive step in his accession to power – the alignment of the federal force apparatus, i.e. the Department of Justice and the FBI, with Trump’s person – with a bit of coming to terms with the past: four years ago, the bravest representatives of the MAGA people’s movement proved how much their love for America and its democracy coincided with their unconditional right to be governed by Trump. The militant citizens who, in their fanaticism for Trump, had called for an attack against the Washington power center are not only being pardoned, they are being crowned patriotic heroes. Their will to save the power of their leader from all the procedures of the rule of law is therefore not only acceptable, but exemplary in precisely its unconditional hostility to the institutions and occupants of the Washington establishment: as the mobilized will of the people that now governs in the person of Trump. Conversely, all public servants who somehow participated in this “grave injustice done to the American people” have committed a crime against the nation. So the new Attorney General is establishing a “Weaponization Working Group” as a sharp sword against the traitors to the nation who were misusing the American state apparatus as a “weapon” against American national heroes.[1] In general, the judicial apparatus is not only sworn to loyalty to Trump as the national will in actu,[2] but also trimmed: Several high-ranking FBI officials are ordered to vacate their posts within a few days; otherwise they will be fired. The previous head of the FBI, who resigned before Trump would announce his dismissal, was replaced by the lawyer Kash Patel, who is characterized above all by his Trump fanaticism and his hostility toward the FBI.[3]
* It’s undoubtedly a useful advantage for implementing Trump’s program that both chambers of Congress are now in the hands of the Republican Party by a narrow majority. The congressional Republicans can begin demonstrating how useful they want to make themselves as transmission belts in the confirmation of an “all-star cabinet” consisting of “some of the most fearless, determined and brilliant individuals ever to hold public office.” (Trump) These people personify the subversive program of struggle that Trump wants to carry out with them, qualifying themselves through their personal loyalty to Trump as well as their personal hostility to the direction of the institutions they are now supposed to head. In addition to the aforementioned Patel, the nominee for Attorney General is Matt Gaetz, who is under investigation for numerous crimes; for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who as a Fox News goon earned an incorruptible reputation as a rabble-rouser against a “woke” military; for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, a prominent opponent of vaccination; for Homeland Security chief, Tom Homan, so far best known for his view that the record-breaking deportations of the Obama era were a fig leaf for an “open border policy”; and many more. Despite all the reservations raised during the relevant hearings of the nominees, the test of the willingness of congressional Republicans to cooperate is passed with flying colors, namely – the rejection of Matt Gaetz in the run-up remains the only exception – with demonstrative open mindedness and even enthusiasm for the “breath of fresh air” and “innovative” personnel policy of a president who has the absolute validity of the will of the American people on his side.
This sums up the entire task of the legislature. It has to recognize the president as the personified will of the people, who does not have to negotiate what the will of the people demands in a cooperative dispute with Congress, but rather freely determines it: Accordingly, Congress makes itself useful mainly by accepting its own disempowerment as a co-ruling authority. The people’s president should be able to carry out his program of struggle against the separation of powers in the state apparatus as autonomously as possible, by presidential decrees – so-called “executive orders.” Firstly, the disempowerment is to be carried out by a comprehensive spending freeze which will remain in place until all government spending has been checked for conformity with Trump’s program. Congress must practically acknowledge the withdrawal of its core competence – the power to appropriate budgetary funds – and its degradation to a major advisory body for the president; from now on, the president will decide for himself which tasks – including those that Congress has long agreed on – will receive any funding at all. Secondly, all federal agencies – including those that Congress set up as independent from the executive branch[4] – will be required to have their spending plans reviewed by the president before spending funds that have been authorized by Congress. Thirdly, a drastic downsizing and restructuring of many federal agencies is to be enacted and immediately implemented without the required congressional approval. And in all this, Trump leaves no doubt that he wants more than a one-time purge; namely the restoration of a principle from which the American state apparatus has deviated for far too long – perhaps even since its founding.[5] Finally, the legislative branch is being asked to deliver “one big beautiful bill” to the people’s president: a huge budget draft or sweeping budgetary “framework” that will authorize Trump to allocate and spend all the appropriated money according to his priorities.
Leading congressional Republicans are resolutely defending themselves, especially against the numerous skeptics with their concerns about the famous “checks and balances” that make up America’s constitutional government – even the soul of the nation, according to President Biden. The Republican leader of the House of Representatives assures them that it is all for a good cause:
“’I’ve been asked so many times, ‘Aren’t you uncomfortable with this?’ No, I’m not … There’s a presupposition in America that the commander in chief is going to be a good steward of taxpayer dollars....What Elon and the DOGE effort is doing right now is what Congress has been unable to do in recent years, because the agencies have hidden some of this from us,’ Mr. Johnson said, referring to Mr. Musk’s task force, known as the Department of Government Efficiency.” (Mike Johnson in the New York Times, Feb. 11, 2025)
The worries as well as the pushback are equally dishonest: For Trump’s critics, the health of the American separation of powers can evidently be gauged precisely by how well it proves to be an obstacle to Trump and his program of struggle. The long-standing accusation against congressional Republicans, that they are an incorrigible coalition of “nay sayers” who thwart all the great ambitions of Democratic presidents, is now being conveniently turned into a mandate to bravely stand in the way of the Republican president in order to preserve their sacred constitutional autonomy. For the carefree Republican leader, however, the essence of constitutional control should not really consist of control at all, but of trust – and this, of all things, when the Trump administration, for its part, is fundamentally withdrawing its trust from Congress. What the whole thing testifies to, however, beyond the interested interpretation by the parties involved, is the point at which the checks and balances of the American rule of law actually reaches their limit: The project that the Trump administration is carrying out and that Johnson is approving on behalf of Congress is to smoke out any enemies within; and this is a program of struggle that actually doesn’t put up with constitutional procedures. What is ramping up in the American state apparatus with the Trump administration’s offensive is a – currently very one-sided – power struggle of a quality that the normal functioning of the rule of law not only does not provide for, but also deprives it of its foundation. What the division of state powers into separate, mutually controlling sub-institutions is supposed to achieve, and at best does achieve, is “appropriate” rule for a state purpose shared by the ruling representatives. When the national “cause,” which the state power is supposed to “do justice” to, simply is not shared, the divided authorities become weapons in a struggle over what the cause of the nation actually consists of and what it absolutely requires or excludes. And if the cause of the nation consists of the boss defining it by himself in the name of the people, then state power is not divisible at all.
* It is precisely in this sense that Trump is targeting the entire bureaucratic apparatus, which he taunts as the “administrative state.” Trump sees the state bureaucracy, i.e. the very instrument by which the state shapes society in accord with its purpose, as solely an obstacle to the national cause, i.e. to the “America first” program of struggle. It is too big, too independent and too stubborn for this – in this respect, a nest of hostile, un-American activities that must now be cleaned out.
In order to make the bureaucracy comply with the will of the governing “America first!” guarantor, the burden that it supposedly represents must first be shaken off for the primary incarnation of American freedom: for American business. The fact that the power of money over free people that is affirmed with “freedom!” is only possible through the service of a comprehensively effective state force that is affirmed with “law & order!” – Trump and his business dealers assume this. For them, the sovereign protection of private economic power is a self-evident necessity and the official confirmation of the sanctity of their free doings. The fact that the state then regulates the workings of this protected power is a blatant injustice: although the “glorious destiny” of American entrepreneurs consists in the growth of their wealth, it burdens them with nothing but restrictions; instead of putting its necessary and useful force at the service of free people, it becomes a ruler over them. At the same time, the bemoaned regulations all testify to how much respect the state has for business, especially when it regulates it: It treats it like this, after all, as the livelihood of the whole nation, as a material source of the common good, which for precisely this reason should bubble up “sustainably.” It shows its respect for business when it treats the well-known harmful effects of business success – for the workforce that must be used sustainably, for nature, etc. – as counterproductive effects that do not speak against the business that produces them, but for its comprehensive nurturing and care – precisely through an entire state bureaucracy. But it doesn’t help: the fact that the freedom-based state imposes costs and considerations on business precisely so that it can pursue its purpose in the long term is a case of dialectics that – not only, but especially – American business dealers and their conservative advocates have never had any use for. The capitalist calculation, which dictates its innovative business acumen and should also be dictated on a government level, not only does not allow for such considerations, it excludes them.[6] What they especially can’t handle is that in the middle of America, this business acumen and, above all, business success are sometimes viewed and treated as if they are merely a particular interest – even one with problematic downsides – that first has to be reconciled with the common good. Despite the dependence of all other calculations on the enrichment of the business dealers, they are not treated as identical to the greater whole... It is really not entirely free of contradictions: The American state uses all its force to make an entire continent, and then an entire world, free and safe for American business dealers, declares growth and its necessities to be the regulative factor of economically sensible statecraft, glamorizes competition for market shares as the playground of human freedom and creative power in general, even harnesses free enterprise for the profitable production of world-destroying war powers in order to protect this freedom – and then the same state comes along to restrict the same business and the same competition in the name of the same humanity and its social, ecological... necessities? And with the legal awareness that it is, of all things, the actual guarantor of freedom and prosperity with its sovereign interventions in the free increase of wealth? This contradiction, that the success on which a capitalist nation and its state power lives is not fully in the right, should now in any case be resolved: The state, which commits itself and society to the blessings of capitalist competition for capital growth, must put its power clearly and solely behind the decision making freedom of the movers and shakers of this competition.
The therapy that the Trump administration now wants to carry out is just as fundamental as the diagnosis. Firstly, there are far too many regulations in general, so from now on, for every new regulation, ten old ones must be abolished. Secondly, there is a whole series of concrete business obstacles that Trump is eliminating with a few strokes of the pen: He announces the release of fossil fuel natural resources so that they no longer merely serve nature, but the nation that values them: “Drill, baby, drill!” is therefore the slogan for the “energy emergency” that Trump proclaims on the occasion of his inauguration in order to remove any legal obstacles to the act of liberation. Ending all CO2 limits that “Paris” and Co. have imposed on “Pittsburgh” and Co. with their climate pact has also been decided. The remnants of Biden’s “Clean Energy Revolution,” which was supposed to turn the USA into a “clean energy superpower,” are now being wound down, and the demand and support for e-mobility in the name of free consumer choice for Americans commuting to hard work is being discontinued. The remnants of the partially wound down Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are being put under the control of a new boss whose successes in the fracking business have made him realize that “the benefits of increasing energy consumption far outweigh the negative impacts of climate change.” (Energy Secretary Chris Wright, quoted in Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2024). The further development of green energy technologies is partly stopped because, although they also produce energy freedom for America, from the perspective of the Trump administration they are an un-American ideology that has become a technology – an ugly expression of a self-imposed energy restriction.[7] The unrestricted exploitation of domestic raw materials is intended to enable America to live up to the spirit of its national declaration of independence by transforming its energy independence into global American “energy dominance.”
The breakthrough to becoming such an energy power is also the state’s first pivotal service in a breakthrough to the country’s next essential “industry of the future”: the energy requirements of the artificial intelligence business as a means of giving the USA an economic and military lead over its Chinese rival and everyone else. The next service to the AI business is to encourage more courage to take risks, i.e. to liberate the relevant innovators from regulations. In return, Trump can take credit for the private innovation offensive called “Stargate.”[8]
The unparalleled American financial industry is finally free to follow its very own glorious destined path with all the ups and downs that go with it. The American state blocked it during the last global financial crisis through the supervision of its Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The agency is immediately put under the direction of the Office of Management and Budget chief Russell Vought, who then imposes a complete work stoppage. How this is to be understood is communicated with thankful clarity by the team around Elon Musk (more on this in a moment): They occupy the headquarters, gain access to the data on all ongoing investigations and announce the death of the agency on “X”. In addition, trading in cryptocurrencies is gradually freed up – in line with the principle that everything that earns dollars really is gold.[9]
* In general, the bureaucracy is an unbearable obstacle to the American state’s freedom of action. This is often justified by its “inefficiency,” which the American taxpayer has to suffer from: It costs too much and does too little. A newly created department for government efficiency called “DOGE” under the – unofficial – leadership of Elon Musk is being tasked with tackling this problem.[10] However, the approach of his efficiency team leaves no room for the misunderstanding that it is merely concerned with improving the usual ratio of expenditure to income. Rather, it is about eliminating an ideology that is seen as being institutionalized in the government apparatus: It does not serve the citizens as an extension of the periodically changing occupants of the White House, but rather as a repository of expertise, independent of the executive branch, with respect to the numerous objectively required necessities for supporting America’s competitive society. From the point of view of the will of the people which has become president, the authorities thus expose themselves as illegitimate elites who presume to know better than the people themselves what’s good for them. They patronize the people when they do not listen to the commands of the people’s president, who per se wants what the people want. In short: it’s an anti-American swamp that needs to be drained by “shock and awe.”[11] Accordingly, Musk and his team raid various agencies, gaining access to all sensitive data from the Treasury Department as well as the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management. Temporary layoff notices are sent out to a good two million civil servants, together with a request to leave their “low productivity jobs” in the public sector for “high productivity jobs” in the private sector. A few weeks later, thousands upon thousands of employees in their probationary period – including many government employees who have just been promoted – are dismissed across the board for “poor performance.” The latter gets to the point of the meaning and purpose of the whole procedure: the poor performance of the staff is that they are even there. The many foreseeable voluntary resignations are not seen as unnecessary collateral damage, but as the sometimes explicitly desired result of this bullying from above.[12]
No department of the apparatus is being spared – from the Department of Education, which is facing complete liquidation, to the National Labor Relations Board[13] and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. An example of this is the liquidation of the development agency USAID, which is independent of the executive branch, subsumed under the State Department and effectively paralyzed. The Trump administration accuses it of programmatically spending money on foreign aid, i.e. systematically not in the interests of the American people, which rhymes with a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America” (Musk). Accordingly, DOGE agents thoroughly empty out the agency’s headquarters and paralyze all its activities. Not too much effort is made to make the subsequent reassurance credible that funding for the fight against AIDS, Ebola and acute famine in Africa will of course be left out of the orgy of cuts. The criticism directed against the liquidation of this agency is also exemplary: This would undermine the effectiveness of American “soft power” and give American rivals the opportunity to step into the gap; if Trump allows America's official machinery to be broken, then the truly crucial benefit of America's friendly helping hand around the world would also be ruined.[14]
These, like all the other countless complaints about the current and prospective loss of essential state services, offer a panoramic view of how comprehensive the need for sovereign regulation of the freedom-based capitalist economy is; of how much the system of freedom it cherishes includes the work of an omnipresent state power; and how determined the concerned observers are to take this circumstance in as pro-business and pro-power a way possible: as a reason for asserting precisely how much business dealings in the public interest require state supervision in the public interest. In this sense, the liberal media cultivates a sympathy for civil servants that equates the eliminated jobs almost completely with the sense of responsibility of the staff: decent people with real families and a willingness to go to work not just for themselves, but for the state administration of the general public. Thanks to this abstraction from the sovereign content of their work in the public interest, the reputation of the American bureaucracy – in every department from processing pension payments to overseeing nuclear weapons – has never been better.
The Trump administration, for its part, has no use for the sense of responsibility of government personnel; it sees this as an occupational disease that testifies to the “cancer” that pervades this “deep state.” The success of this wrecking crew, which follows a principle that in Silicon Valley speak is “move fast and break things,” is measured by what it destroys; protests by those affected only proves how many unjustified privileges they have to lose: “The fraudsters complain the loudest and the fastest.” (Musk in the Oval Office, February 11, 2025) The spirit that should instead characterize these agencies, if they are to function again and continue to function at all, is “merit.” This criterion exists, above all, in the opposite of any consideration for “diversity, equality and inclusion” (DEI). The principle of ruthless struggle and unqualified competitive strength, which constitutes the “America first!” will embodied by Trump, must first be enforced within the state itself – as a literal ruling spirit. The state apparatus should be a model of the virtues of competition, which it exists to promote in the first place. The new anti-DEI political correctness is being implemented through a form of cancel culture that left-liberal fanatics would never have dared: Anything that signals consideration for the weak and vulnerable in one’s area of responsibility, personnel policy and work culture is banned and the respective authority is paralyzed until the disruption has been rectified.[15] In the Department of Defense, the culture war against DEI is even more overdue. Under the new head, Pete Hegseth, the supposedly neglected principle of military might is being restored with immediate effect: soldiers are there to fight and win. The only American identity that these citizens in uniform have to represent is the “lethality” of American state power, which they should now be unleashed to ruthlessly enforce. Accordingly, the savings that are also being forced on the Pentagon do not amount to cuts, but to optimization of purpose.[16]
Overall, this culture war consists of a violent return to the essence of American greatness, which consists not in a canon of values, but rather in superior economic and military power. Victory in the culture war is intended to hunt down the liberal moralists and put the nation’s morality on its feet: This does not consist in the virtues of merely striving for success, but in success itself. Conversely, failure is a disgrace, consideration for the weakest competitors is a betrayal. This is the “common sense” that should now return to America.
* It would be a huge understatement to say that Trump is not measuring up to what the law requires of him in all this. He doesn’t just want to disregard the law, he wants to take aim at the judicial system itself. The fact that he is incurring lawsuits and numerous temporary injunctions here, as with almost all of the interventions mentioned above, is not a problem but quite intentional. After all, the first Trump administration already did a lot to enshrine the necessary America First intentions throughout the entire American judicial system – from the very bottom all the way up to the Supreme Court. The new administration is happy to take cases to court; every lawsuit is an opportunity to bring about favorable decisions – especially with regard to the powers of the executive branch – and the higher up the cases go, the more fundamental and far-reaching the decisions that could be made in the president’s favor. And the president has recently had some excellent experiences precisely with the Supreme Court, something even the conservative court’s harshest critics would not have believed possible.[17] Of course, the Trump administration does not want to rely on friendly judges and wait for their favorable rulings for a second. With the plethora of its decrees and measures, it simply wants to overwhelm the judiciary. It wants to open up so many fronts at once that the courts can’t keep up with the lawsuits; until the wheels of justice produce a result, facts are to be created that cannot easily be legally reversed. By then, the agencies will already be broken, and the staff will have long since been dismissed or resigned. Where judges muck things up with the wrong rulings or even with temporary injunctions, contempt for their decrees is rudimentarily tested out. For example, a court’s request to reinstate unlawfully suspended payments is delayed or even ignored. Or there are threats of escalation, not only to publicly discredit the judges, but also to deny their legitimacy in practice. What Vice President Vance expressed with a still cautiously ambiguous choice of words – “Judges must not check the legitimate power of the executive branch” (Vance on X, February 9, 2025) – a representative of the White House expresses somewhat more clearly:
“Any legal challenge against it is nothing more than an attempt to undermine the will of the American people.” (Harrison Fields, quoted in the New York Times, February 12, 2025)
So that everyone really gets it, Trump simply says it himself:
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
This does not yet mean that a state of emergency has been declared – Trump is not yet explicitly overriding the American courts, but he is asserting his right and willingness to do just that. In doing so, the government is challenging the judicial system, in its own interest in the reasonably orderly functioning of the state apparatus, to avoid the “constitutional crisis” that the administration is aiming for; the judges should perhaps not agree with it in every case, but should be well paced in their objections.[18] Or does the judiciary really want to attempt to enforce its rulings with an executive power that is not within its discretion, but rather within that of an executive that simply doesn’t want to comply with the rulings of the courts? The Trump administration is thus obligating the judiciary to respect an interesting interpretation of the American separation of powers: judges must not presume to set limits on the executive.[19] Instead, they must confirm the legality of Trump’s offensive, interpreting the law as a weapon of the superior in accordance with good American traditions. This is what Trump is demanding with his distinctly democratic sense of justice, not to violate the constitution with his will to power, but to finally help it regain its true meaning: An American constitution only makes sense as a document that secures the absolute identity between the greatest people in world history and a leadership that knows and accepts only this truth. It must therefore finally be liberated from its falsifiers.[20]
* This identity is also the very simple guiding principle for the Trump administration’s dealings with the fourth estate. From now on, the media is to be committed to absolute free speech.[21] There must be an end to the Biden administration’s encroachments on the freedom of social media to spread misinformation, which is no such thing if it expresses the obvious truth that the people’s love for Trump and hatred of his enemies knows no bounds. The creators of the ever freer social media platforms (X, Facebook) don’t need to be told twice. They are discarding their contrived ethos of being socially responsible for respect and truthfulness in the exchange of opinions, enthusiastically abolishing all oversight and fact-checking functions and committing themselves all the more resolutely to the ethos of the new age, which has always been more suited to their libertarian spirit. In this sense, Elon Musk – long before his political rise to becoming the executor of Trump’s offensive against the deep, bureaucratic state – is waging his own culture war on social media, in particular by recasting Twitter into “X” – a platform that perfects the principle that public space in a democracy is a free “battle of ideas” (Musk). “X” is finally becoming the setting for a battle about enforcement, i.e. for the cultivation of pure competitive and fighting morale, in particular through demonstrative attacks on liberal idealists, who are not silenced, but rather ideally destroyed. Because Trump and his people, as is showed in such a free speech landscape, are united in heart and soul, it is only in line with freedom if the established media confirm and reproduce this identity truthfully instead of intervening with criticism that automatically exposes itself as “fake news!” Liberal mainstream media that gets caught criticizing Trump, i.e. betraying the people, are exempt from Trump obedience by entering into legal action.[22]
But the surest guarantee of the identity that the Trump administration demands of the free media is still to completely bypass them. He maintains a direct line to his people on his specially founded platform “Truth Social” – and has his cheerful and combative messages spread more widely on “X”.
* Finally, the Trump administration is taking steps to clean up the American people itself, so that definitely nothing will ever again get in the way of the identity between the people and the leader of the “real Americans.”
“Real Americans”: These are – not only, but especially so for Trump – those who have come to America with a yearning for freedom, with which they built over the centuries an ever greater country, ultimately the world power, and made it their home. With this world-historic success, the Americans have conversely proven that they have a God-given right for the rest of world history to be guided aolely by their own yearning for freedom. This includes, quite fundamentally, the right to decide at their own discretion how large the homeland needs to be in order to accommodate all the “endless possibilities” that characterize their social activities, and who is entitled to enjoy this very scarce good. Trump, who thinks the source of the freedom of the chosen American people is their right to exclusively define when the nation is full in terms of land and people, consistently declares the country’s entire population of illegal immigrants – around ten million people – to be a collective violation of, even a warlike attack on, the identity between the US people and the US leadership. Trump has no intention of concealing the cruelty of the violent acts that will be required to repel this invasion. He can’t stress often enough that he is definitely not targeting the wrong people. The immigrants who the American legal system declares illegal are portrayed by Trump as an apt antithesis to the excellence of his beautiful nation, namely a correspondingly viscous enemy image. Those crossing the border in large numbers today generally come from “shithole countries,” which says everything about the emigrants themselves; and the fact that they do not leave it up to the American state to answer the question as to whether they are even allowed to come in reveals all the more that they are criminals, and therefore undeserving of America’s greatness. With their lack of success, they are only hurting America; with their lack of respect for American law, they obviously want to hurt it.
Far more than a culture war is needed here: On his first day in office, Trump declares that ius soli is abolished so that those already present do not conquer and weaken America from within.[23] And to execute the judgment that these immigrants are literally a danger to America, the entire American apparatus of violence is unleashed for millions of deportations and at the same time committed to it: On the southern border, Trump declares a state of emergency and is now sending almost ten thousand soldiers to secure it; he fires the head of the immigration courts, cancels thousands of already scheduled asylum hearings as well as numerous flights that were supposed to transport already recognized asylum seekers to the US, and deactivates the app for applying for asylum. He threatens all the staffs of local authorities with criminal prosecution if they do not cooperate with the planned raids. He has a number of migrants transported by military aircraft to his Latin American neighbors, some of whom are taken into custody there; more and more are being stowed away in Guantánamo; he has American military bases converted into deportation prisons and expanded accordingly, while he also offers relevant business opportunities to the private prison industry. Finally, he is urging the Internal Revenue Service, which he is flirting with abolishing in order to free American taxpayers from unnecessary costs, to release the addresses of 700,000 illegal immigrants so that these useless freeloaders can also be gotten rid of...
Not only the result, but already the implementation of this offensive is about demonstrating the ruthless will of the people’s president to identity with his people. Not only the immigrants who are deported or threatened with it, but also the “real” Americans can feel how serious Trump is about restoring this identity. And in keeping with his “Make America Great Again” movement, Trump is thus organizing a certain return to historical models of American immigration policy,[24] with which he is putting the nation’s self-image as a country of immigration on its feet: From now on, the American people are to consist solely of those chosen by the American state for its power.[25]
* Elon Musk is the perfect contractor for the Trump administration’s entire “America first” offensive – for the ruthlessly destructive alignment of the nation, at the top as well as the bottom, with the genuinely American mode of success. That he embodies the epitome of the danger that Biden warned about in his farewell speech – a man with “extreme wealth, power and influence” who wants to destroy American democracy as it has functioned up till now – Musk sees himself the same way. As the most successful businessman in world history, at the forefront of the very industries of the future which America’s economic and political superiority depends on, he sees himself predestined for the role that Trump has assigned to him. He attributes the business successes that he achieves with the labor others, the credit of others and the regulatory and economic blessings of state power to himself as the perfect competitor. He equates his success with his assertiveness in all fields – with his ability to thrive on the challenges of his competitors and the resistance of his workforce and his government overseers; with his universal business model of instigating upheavals in future markets in order to dominate them. So he lives the certainty that his success proves him and his competitive virtues right; that destroying his opponents is the most important thing that can happen to Americans and humanity in their endless quest for success and dominance. Conversely, he faces his workforce, global financial capital, the states and humanity in general with the certainty that he is not only successful, but also essential to everyone who ultimately lives off such successes.
With the standpoint of money’s unlimited private power over human beings, which has become a familiar truth for the businessman Musk, namely his self-evident means of business, he can now slash into the American state. The political battle against the government agencies that Trump considers necessary – for the restoration of America’s right to absolute supremacy, for the identity of this nation’s will and its embodiment in President Trump – is in this respect not just a vocation for Musk, but now also another calling. When he takes the necessary campaign of destruction into his own hands, and indeed in such a way that its purpose becomes palpable to the MAGA movement, he then does this with the consciousness that he is not imposing an alien program on the American state, but only forcing it to follow its own. The state should finally correspond fully to its own living lie, to be the force agent of its superior competitive citizens. This is precisely Musk’s and his political boss Trump’s counterattack against the morality of competition that their predecessor Biden appealed to in his farewell speech: The essence of competition and the superior competitive subject called America does not consist in an egalitarian procedure in accordance with “a fair shot for everyone,” but precisely in its result: determining the achievers whose success gives every right. Only in this way can competition remain the production site of national strength that real Americans – and, by extension, humanity as a whole – need.
Footnotes[1] “I stopped Joe Biden's weaponization as soon as I got in... I’m going to hit him with the same stuff.” (Trump, 2.22.2025) On her first day in office, his Attorney General Pam Bondi sent her subordinates a “memo [that] included a laundry list of Republican boogeymen and grievances that the working group was intended to address. At the top of that list were three prosecutors who all brought separate cases against Mr. Trump, even though there is no indication that any of them violated the law.” (New York Times, 2.6.2025)
[2] “Hours after being sworn in as President Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi declared to the entire Justice Department work force, ‘This shameful era ends today.’ ...Newly minted senior officials from powerful perches across the Justice Department have issued fiery broadsides against employees, denouncing ‘insubordination’ or ‘abhorrent’ conduct and, in one instance, vowing to pursue unspecified opponents of Mr. Trump’s cost-cutting efforts ‘to the ends of the Earth.’” (New York Times, 2.5.2025) In a memo, she tells her agency: “It is the job of an attorney privileged to serve in the Department of Justice to zealously defend the interests of the United States. Those interests, and the overall policy of the United States, are set by the Nation's Chief Executive, who is vested by the Constitution with all Executive Power.” (“General Policy Regarding Zealous Advocacy on Behalf of the United States,” 2.5.2025)
[3] In Patel's book ‘Government Gangsters’, he describes a “‘A sinister cabal of corrupt law enforcement personnel, intelligence agents, and military officials at the highest levels of government plotted to overthrow a president.’ After the 2020 election, Patel’s activities included selling Trump merchandise and writing a children's book series about King Donald and his battle against the evil Hillary Queenton... ‘We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.’” (SZ, 2.12, 2024)
[4] These include the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
[5] “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, 2.18.2025)
[6] Trump places his attack on the administrative state in a historical context: “We’re forging a new political majority that's shattering and replacing Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal coalition, which dominated American politics for over 100 years.” (1.25.2025) A historic injustice to a president who, with this very “New Deal,” which included the establishment of the American administrative and welfare state in the wake of the Great Depression at the time, had made an extremely successful attempt to “save capitalism from itself.”
[7] Trump “initiated plans to open vast areas of public land and federal waters, including fragile wilderness in Alaska, for oil drilling and mining. He ordered the elimination of government offices and programs aimed at protecting poor communities from pollution. And he said he would repeal regulations aimed at promoting electric vehicles and would halt approvals of new wind farms in federal waters.” (New York Times, 1.20.2025)
“President Trump launched a broad attack on the wind power industry in the United States, with a sweeping executive order that could block not just new offshore wind farms in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans but potentially many smaller wind farms on federal land and even on private property across the country. The order ... would halt all leasing of federal lands and waters for new wind farms pending a fresh government review of the industry. It also directs federal agencies to stop issuing permits for all wind farms anywhere in the country for the time being, a move that could disrupt projects on private land, which sometimes need federal wildlife or other environmental permits. While the order does not call for a freeze on wind projects that are already under construction, Mr. Trump directed the U.S. Attorney General and secretary of the interior to explore the possibility of ‘terminating or amending’ any leases that have already been issued.” (New York Times, 1.21.2025)
[8] “President Trump on Tuesday announced a joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle to create at least $100 billion in computing infrastructure to power artificial intelligence. The venture, called Stargate, adds to tech companies’ significant investments in U.S. data centers, huge buildings full of servers that provide computing power. Stargate could eventually invest as much as $500 billion over four years. The three companies plan to contribute funds to the venture, which will be open to other investors and start with 10 data centers already under construction in Texas...Mr. Trump has promised to accelerate the production of American-made A.I. to compete against China for global leadership in the technology, and on Monday he rolled back an executive order from former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that imposed standards on safety and other requirements for government use of A.I. During a news briefing Tuesday, Mr. Trump said he would remove barriers to allow for the creation of more data centers. He said he would make ‘emergency declarations’ to allow Stargate to generate its own electricity, without providing details.” (New York Times, 1.21.2025)
[9] “The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said on Friday that the Securities and Exchange Commission had agreed to drop its lawsuit against the company, lifting a legal cloud over the global crypto industry and signaling a broader retreat by federal regulators... It would be a remarkable reversal by the agency after years of legal battles against crypto firms. The S.E.C. sued Coinbase, the largest U.S. crypto company, in 2023 on the grounds that the digital currencies sold on its platform constituted unregistered securities that put consumers at risk of financial harm. The lawsuit was the most significant of several that the S.E.C. had filed against major crypto companies, arguing that they were operating outside the law... The dismissal would be the biggest victory for the crypto industry since President Trump took office last month, promising to end the Biden administration’s regulatory crackdown on crypto ...” (New York Times, 2.21.2025)
[10] The legal basis of this task force is somewhat innovative. Although the department is called a "department", it is not one because the creation of a new department would require the approval of Congress. Therefore, the existing Federal Agency for Digital Affairs is being used for this new purpose. Elon Musk is the de facto head of the department, but only unofficially; he will not be made a federal official because that would also require confirmation by the Senate and Musk would then also be subject to a number of legal restrictions that would prevent him from doing his job. So there is a lot of material for the lawyers and the courts to process while Musk takes action. He does not consider the risk of any conflict of interest to be a problem anyway. His success proves him right, benefits the state and has nothing to do with it anyway:
“The world’s richest man waved off any suggestion that he stands to benefit from the dismantling of the regulatory agencies leading investigations and lawsuits against his companies. His mandate to audit the Pentagon’s spending is not a conflict of interest even though he has billions of dollars in military contracts, he maintained, because he always provides the best value to the government, and anyway, those contracts are not with him but with his companies.” (New York Times, 2.11.2025 )
[11] “If the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have? If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president and the Senate and the House, then we don't live in a democracy. We live in a bureaucracy.” (Musk in the Oval Office, 2.11.2025) When asked why Trump is firing all the heads of the regulatory agencies at once, he gives the simple and honest answer: “They’re not my people... but we’ll put people in there that will be very good.” (Trump, 1.25.2025)
[12] “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected … When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.” (Russ Vought, Trump’s budget chief, quoted in The Guardian, 2.10.2025)
[13] “President Trump ousted the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board along with one of the board’s Democratic members late Monday, signaling a shift away from the Biden administration’s relatively expansive approach to enforcing workers’ rights. The firings in effect halt the activities of the agency, which is charged with protecting workers’ rights. Jennifer Abruzzo, the board’s former top attorney, is seen as having taken a more aggressive approach than her predecessors ...But Mr. Trump’s move to fire board member Gwynne Wilcox ... is without modern precedent and could prompt legal challenges...Ms. Wilcox said she planned to challenge her removal. ‘Right now, there’s no protection for the right to collectively bargain, to be in a union, in this country,’ said Sharon Block, a professor at Harvard Law School and a former member of the N.L.R.B. ‘This is a really serious situation.’” (New York Times, 1.28.2025)
[14] The criticism directed against the dismantling of this agency is also exemplary: it would undermine the effectiveness of American “soft power” and give American rivals the opportunity to step into the gap; if Trump allows America’s bureaucracy to be destroyed, then the really crucial benefit of America’s friendly helping hand around the world will also be destroyed:
“Foreign aid has been widely viewed as a cornerstone of soft power, a term popularized in the 1980s by U.S. political scientist Joseph Nye to describe the ability to influence others to deliver desired outcomes. Nye said that he thought Trump lacked ‘an understanding of soft power. Power is the ability to get others to do what you want and you can do it three ways: you can do it with coercion; you do it with payment; you do it with attraction, which is famous — sticks and carrots and honey — and Trump doesn’t understand honey.’ Michael Schiffer, who served as the assistant administrator of the USAID Bureau for Asia from 2022 until January, was more blunt in his assessment … ‘The Trump administration has just put America last, while handing a gift to our biggest adversaries, notably China … America’s enemies will rejoice.’” (nbc.com, February 4, 2025)
[15] “President Donald Trump’s administration ordered federal diversity, equity and inclusion employees to be placed on leave no later than Wednesday, highlighting how quickly the new commander in chief is moving to demolish DEI initiatives across the federal government.” (Washington Post, 1.22.2025)
“More than 8,000 web pages across more than a dozen U.S. government websites have been taken down since Friday afternoon, a New York Times analysis has found, as federal agencies rush to heed President Trump’s orders targeting diversity initiatives and ‘gender ideology.’ The purges have removed information about vaccines, veterans’ care, hate crimes and scientific research, among many other topics. Doctors, researchers and other professionals often rely on such government data and advisories. Some government agencies appear to have removed entire sections of their websites, while others are missing only a handful of pages.” (New York Times, 2.2.2025)
[16] In addition to the firing of the Chief of Staff – reportedly the ties between him and Trump were severed four years ago when the black general spoke out about his personal difficulties with racism in the military following the death of George Floyd – the Department of Defense is laying off “at least five percent of its civilian employees starting next week. According to a Pentagon statement, existing civilian employees are to be reduced ‘by 5-8% percent’… A hiring freeze will then be imposed ‘while we conduct a further analysis of our personnel needs,’ said the statement by the official in charge, Darin Selnick. The planned layoffst ‘to produce efficiencies and refocus the Department on the President's priorities and restoring readiness in the force.’ Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had made similar comments the day before. In a video message, he said: ‘We will move away from woke Biden era non-lethal programs and instead spend that money on President Trump’s America First peace through strength priorities.’ The planned redistribution of funds is about ‘refocusing and reinvesting existing funds into building the force that protects you, the American people’.” (Spiegel Online, 2.22.2025) The funds will be redistributed accordingly for picking up and deporting illegal migrants as well as new weapons.
[17] See in “A hot summer of campaigning in the USA: What must an American president be able to do and be?” the subchapter “A verdict for the freedom of action of the world’s most powerful capital …… and for the most powerful office holder in the world” in GegenStandpunkt 3-24. This ruling is now paying off as a contribution to the release of government power in the executive branch.
[18] The affair surrounding New York Mayor Eric Adams, who was accused of corruption, is instructive in relation to this kind of power struggle: Adams offers the Trump administration a trade: if the Department of Justice drops the corruption investigation against him, he can be helpful in carrying out the deportation raids on illegal immigrants. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove – formerly a defense attorney for Trump in numerous criminal cases – takes up the offer, but the investigating prosecutor refuses to sign and resigns; subsequently, one prosecutor after another resigns until the head of the department signs so that the department can continue to function. On Fox News, Trump border czar Tom Homan warned that Adams would be punished if cooperation in migrant enforcement doesn’t continue. “If [Adams] doesn't come through, I'll be back in New York City … in his office, up his butt, saying, 'Where the hell is the agreement we came to?” (USA Today, 2.14.2025)
[19] An interpretation that some conservative judges on the Supreme Court themselves insist on. Their reaction to the ruling by the majority of their Supreme Court colleagues, which is intended to force the Trump administration to continue the canceled funding for USAID, is correspondingly strong:
“‘Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic 'No,' but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned,’ Alito wrote in his dissenting opinion.” (Business Insider, 3.5.2025)
[20] Two years ago, Trump‘s current budget chief described the necessity of the relevant liberation struggle as follows:
“And we have the reality revealed by the Left’s fight against Donald Trump and his movement. They know it is an existential threat to their regime... But the long, difficult road ahead of returning to our beloved Constitution starts ... by recognizing that we are living in a post-Constitutional time. Our need is not just to win congressional majorities that blame the other side or fill seats on court benches to meddle at the margins. It is to cast ourselves as dissidents of the current regime and to put on our shoulders the full weight of envisioning, articulating, and defending what a Radical Constitutionalism requires in the late hour that our country finds itself in, and then to do it.” (Russ Vought, “Renewing American Purpose,” September 29, 2022)
[21] “In the first hours of his presidency, Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14149, ‘Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.’ The Order prohibits any ‘federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent’ from acting ‘in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.’” (brookings.edu, 2.19.2025)
After Trump sued CBS during the election campaign for making Kamala Harris look far too good in a campaign interview instead of exposing her as the incompetent traitor that Trump claims she is, Trump is now continuing his fight for critical media freedom with state power:
“Two days later, the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reopened a previously dismissed proceeding, the effect of which was to advance a Trump campaign ‘preferred narrative’ about the CBS television network. The action not only inserted the agency into matters of freedom of speech but also the personal lawsuit brought by private citizen Trump against CBS.” (ibid.)
[22] “President Trump’s new head of the Federal Communications Commission has ordered an investigation of NPR and PBS, with an eye toward unraveling federal funding for all public broadcasting.” (npr.org, 1.30.2025)
“The Trump White House said Friday that The Associated Press is banned from the Oval Office and Air Force One indefinitely... President Donald Trump said last month that the US government would rename the body of water the ‘Gulf of America.’ … But other countries do not recognize the new name, and the AP has customers around the world, so it still refers to the Gulf of Mexico while also acknowledging Trump’s decree.” (cnn.com, 2.14.2025)
“In recent months, Voice of America’s parent organization, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, has opened human-resources investigations into Voice of America journalists for reporting on criticism of Mr. Trump or for making comments that were perceived as critical of him, according to several employees. At least a couple of articles that included criticism of Mr. Trump and his administration were not published or were watered down after publication in recent months, said three Voice of America employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.” (New York Times, 2.28.2025)
[23] The decree was blocked by various federal judges as blatantly unconstitutional. However, the will to serve real Americans is still palpable.
[24] See the article “George Floyd, for example: On the racism of a freedom-based, egalitarian state power” in GegenStandpunkt 3-20.
[25] Of course, Trump knows that every shithole country has its shining exceptions; with appropriate proof of their success, they are welcome in America: “President Trump on Tuesday previewed his plans for a new visa program he was calling the gold card, describing it as ‘somewhat like a green card, but at a higher level of sophistication.’ The blingy new program would allow ‘very high-level people’ a new ‘route to citizenship,’ Mr. Trump said. The price tag, he said, would be about $5 million.” (New York Times, 2.25.2025)