Some Democrats fear they’re playing intoDonald Trump’s hands by fighting his mass deportations rather than focusing on his failures on bread-and-butter issues like the cost of living.
But it’s not either-or.The theme that unites Trump’s inept handling of deportations, his trampling on human and civil rights, his rejection of the rule of law, his dictatorial centralization of power,andhis utterly inept handling of the economy is theineptnessitself.
In his first term, not only did his advisers and cabinet officials put guardrails around his crazier tendencies, but they also provided his first administration a degree of stability and focus. Now, it’s mayhem.
A sampling from recent weeks:
- The Pete Hegseth disaster.The defense secretary didn’t just mistakenly share the military’s plans with the editor of the Atlantic; we now know he shared them with asecondSignal group, including his wife, brother and personal lawyer.
He’s a walking disaster. John Ullyot, who resigned last week as Pentagon spokesperson, penned anop-ed in Politicothat began: “It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon.” Last Friday, Hegseth fired three of his senior staffers. His chief of staff is leaving. As Ullyot wrote, it’s “very likely” that “even bigger bombshell stories” will come soon. The defense department “is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership”.
It’s not just the defense department. Much of the federal government is in disarray.
- The Harvard debacle.ATrump official isnow claimingthat a letter full of demands about university policy sent to Harvard on 11 April was “unauthorized”. What does this even mean?
As Harvard pointed out, the letter “was signed by three federal officials, placed on official letterhead, was sent from the email inbox of a senior federal official and was sent on April 11 as promised. Recipients of such correspondence from the US government – even when it contains sweeping demands that are astonishing in their overreach – do not question its authenticity or seriousness.”
Even though it was “unauthorized”, the Trump regime isstanding by the letter, which has now prompted Harvard to sue.
- The tariff travesty.No sooner had Trump imposed “retaliatory” tariffs on almost all of the US’s trading partners – based on a formula that has made no sense to anyone – than the US stock and bond markets began crashing.
To stop the selloff, Trump declared a 90-day pause on the retaliatory tariffs but raised his tariffs on China to 145% – causing markets to plummet once again.
Presumably to stem the impending economic crisis, he declared anexemptionto the China tariffs for smartphones and computer equipment. By doing so, Trump essentially admitted what he had before denied: that importers and consumers bear the cost of tariffs.
Now, Trump is saying that even his China tariffs aren’t really real. Following warnings from Walmart, Target and Home Depot that the tariffs would spike prices, Trump termed the tariffs he imposed on China “very high” and promised they “will come down substantially. But it won’t be zero.”
Markets soared on the news. But where in the world are we heading?
- The attack on the Fed chair fiasco.When Trump renewed his attacks on Jerome H Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve – calling him “a major loser” and demanding that the Fed cut interest rates – Trump unnerved already anxious investors who understand the importance of the Fed’s independence and feared that a politicized Fed wouldn’t be able to credibly fight inflation.
Then, in another about-face, Trump said on Wednesday he had “no intention” of firing Powell, which also helped lift markets.
An economy needs predictability. Investors won’t invest, consumers won’t buy, and producers won’t produce if everything continues to change. But Trump doesn’t think ahead. He responds only to immediate threats and problems.
Who’s profiting from all this tumult? Anyone with inside knowledge of what Trump is about to do: most likely, Trump and his family.
- The KilmarÁbrego García calamity.After the Trump regime admitted an “administrative error” in sendingÁbrego Garcíato a brutal Salvadoran torture prison, in violation of a federal court order, Trump then virtually ignored a 9-0 supreme court order to facilitate his return.
To the contrary, with cameras rolling in the Oval Office, Trump embraced Nayib Bukele – who governs El Salvador in a permanent state of emergency and has himself imprisoned83,000 people in brutal dungeons, mostly without due process. Trump then speculated about using Bukele’s prisons for “homegrown” (ie, American-born) criminals or dissidents.
Meanwhile, after the Trump regime deported another group of immigrants to the Salvadoran prison under a rarely invoked 18th-century wartime law, the supreme courtblocked it from deporting any more peopleunder the measure.
- Ice’s blunderbuss.Further illustrating the chaos of the Trump regime, immigration officials have been detainingUS citizens. One American was held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in Arizona for10 daysuntil his relatives produced papers proving his citizenship, because, according to his girlfriend’s aunt, Ice didn’tbelievehe was American.
Last week,the Trump regime abruptly took action to restorethe legal status of thousands of international students who had been told in recent weeks that their right to study in the United States had been rescinded, but officials reserved the right to terminate their legal status at any time. What?
Freedom depends on the rule of law. The rule of law depends on predictability. Just like Trump’s wildly inconsistent economic policies, his policies on immigration are threatening everyone.
- Musk’s ‘Doge’ disaster.Musk’s claims of government savings have been shown to be ludicrously exaggerated.
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Remember the claim that taxpayers funded $50m incondoms in Gaza? This was supposed to be the first big “gotcha” from the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), but as we know now, it was a lie. The US government buys condoms for about 5 cents apiece, which means $50m would buy 1bn condoms or roughly 467 for every resident of Gaza. Besides, according to afederal 2024 report, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) didn’t provide or fund anycondoms in the entire Middle Eastin the 2021, 2022 or 2023 fiscal years.
Then there have been the frantic callbacks of fired federal workers, such asup to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administrationwho work on sensitive jobs such as reassembling warheads. Four days after Doge fired them, the agency’s acting director rescinded the firings and asked them back. Similarcallbacks have occurredthroughout the government.
Trump and Musk are threatening the safety and security of Americans – for almost no real savings.
- Measles mayhem.As measles breaks out across the country, sickening hundreds and killing at least two children so far, Trump’s secretary for health and human services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, continues toclaimthat the measles vaccine “causes deaths every year … and all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and blindness, et cetera”.
In fact, the measles vaccine is safe, and its risks are lower than the risks of complications from measles. Most people who get the measles vaccine have no serious problems from it, theCDC says. There have been no documented deaths from the vaccine in healthy, non-immunocompromised people, according to theInfectious Diseases Society of America.
Kennedy also says: “We’re always going to have measles, no matter what happens, as the [measles] vaccine wanes very quickly.” In fact, the measles vaccine is highly protective and lasts a lifetime for most people. Two doses of the vaccine are 97% effective against the virus,according to the CDC and medical experts worldwide. The US saw3m to 4m casesa year before the vaccine. Today it’s typically fewer than 200.
- Student debt snafu.After a five-year pause on penalizing borrowers for not making student loan payments, theTrump regime is about to requirehouseholds to resume payments. This could cause credit scores to plunge andslow the economy.
Many of the households required to resume paying on their student loans are also struggling with credit card debt at near-record interest rates and high-rate mortgages they thought they would be able to refinance at a lower rate but haven’t. Instead of increasing education department staffing to handle a work surge and clarifying the often shifting rules of its many repayment programs, the Trump regime has done the opposite and cut staff.
10.Who’s in charge?In the span of a single week, the IRS hadthree different leaders. Three days after Gary Shapley was named acting commissioner, it was announced that the deputy treasury secretary, Michael Faulkender, would replace Shapley. That wasthe same day, not incidentally, that the IRS cut access to the agency for Doge’s top representative.
What happened? The treasury secretary, Scott Bessent,told Trumpthat Musk had evaded him to install Shapley.
Meanwhile, the Trump regime is cutting the IRS in half – starting with6,700 layoffsand gutting the division that audits people with excessive wealth. These are the people meant to keep billionaires accountable. Without them, the federal government will not take in billions of dollars owed.
At the same time, the trade adviser Peter Navarro has entered into a public spat with Musk, accusing him of not being a “car manufacturer” but a “car assembler” because Tesla relies on parts from around the world. This prompted Musk to call Navarro a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks” in a post on X, later posting that he wanted to “apologize to bricks”.
The state department has been torn apart by thefiring of Peter Marocco, the official who was dismantling USAID, by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state. Career officials charged that Marocco, a Maga loyalist, was destroying the agency; Trump’s Maga followers view Marocco’s firing as a sign that Rubio is part of the establishment they want to destroy.
Worse yet, Trump hasfired more than a half-dozen national security officialsafter meeting with thefar-right agitator Lara Loomer, who was granted access to the Oval Office and gave Trump a list of officials she deemed disloyal.
Bottom line: no one is in charge. Trump is holding court but has the attention span of a fruit fly. This is causing chaos across the federal government, as rival sycophants compete for his limited attention.
Incompetence is everywhere. The regime can’t keep military secrets. It can’t maintain financial stability. It can’t protect children from measles. It cannot protect America.
While we need to continue to resist Trump’s authoritarianism, we also need to highlight his utter inability to govern America.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is atrobertreich.substack.com