20 hours Ago
By Thomas P. Grumbly We are now a month into the second Trump presidency. The first 21 days have been filled with myriad executive orders, decrees, proposed shutdowns of agencies and the canceling of federal funding.
Most observers believe that this barrage is intended to produce shock and awe to throw the defenders of the status quo off their game. These moves are only the first acts in a deliberate plan to destroy the Constitution as we know it and to replace it with the equivalent of a new Order. It is always considered bad form to compare anything modern with the events in Europe in the 1930s.
But I would argue that the new regime has an unfolding plan with eerie parallels to 1933 and 1934 in Germany. Several actions support this argument. First, the immediate pardon of all Jan 6 defendants — including those convicted of violent acts — put on the streets hundreds of potential militants to enforce any unlawful order and to intimidate those who might stand in their way.
Second, the opening of a detention camp in Guantanamo for up to thirty thousand deportees is potentially a cover for the roundup by the militia of anyone who protests too loudly. Third, the control of key offices like the Departments of Defense the FBI, and the U.S.
Attorneys Office in Washington D.C., and ICE by presidential puppets paves the way for a general crackdown on dissent.
The Office of Management and Budget is now being run by a zealot who believes in all power to the president, and who is in the position to punish any Cabinet secretary that gets out of line. One former cabinet officer, reflecting on his time of service, said that he thought he was reporting to the president, but that his real boss was the director of the OMB. Fourth, as in Europe, corporate America wrongly assumes that it can ride the tiger and not end up inside.
Finally, the media in general is being intimidated, and Elon Musk has already started to call out individuals, shows and networks that should be fired or eliminated. It is only a short distance now to the actual control of the media. As I write this, individual federal judges are also being called out for their decisions by the new vice president, who clearly believes that there are cases in which the court orders can and should be ignored.
We can only imagine what will happen when a federal judge orders the United States Marshal’s Service, an arm of Pam Bondi’s Justice Department, to enforce an order by detaining any of Elon Musk’s minions. Would such an order be blocked by the attorney general? Only then might the sleeping Congress begin to intervene, and it could already be too late. So, if these are harbingers, what more can we expect, especially if some of the first moves are thwarted by the judiciary? I fear that we are heading for some massive act(s) of planned political violence in the next 80 days.
Any major violence, particularly if directed at the new MAGA-controlled institutions, could justify the president’s invocation of the Insurrection Act, and include the declaration of some form of nationwide martial law. The Secretary of Defense would endorse this, and the new FBI Director would have no qualms about citizen roundups and one-way trips to Guantanamo. Constitution-loving citizens should demand that their elected representatives and senators stand up and be counted, and to engage in Martin Luther King’s style of civil disobedience at the White House and at threatened agencies.
That means a willingness to be arrested, if necessary, in order to engage what is left of the independent media in a battle. People should also realize that it is time to act like citizens. A general strike might be necessary, or a conscious attempt by all to file extensions of their income tax obligations — without paying.
I hope that nothing truly terrible comes to pass. I urge everyone to get on with their lives, but to be very awake (not woke) in the next three months . Because it can happen here! Thomas P.
Grumbly is a former staff director for the House Committee on Science and Technology and also the Under Secretary of the Department of Energy during the Clinton-Gore Administration. He has spent over 50 years at the border of science and policy. Grumbly lives in Longmont.
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