Trump will occupy the White House, and his Republican Party will also control the Senate, the House, and soon the Supreme Court, as well as 30 state governorships, and in many states it controls the state legislature as well. Seldom if ever in American history has one party held such political power.
Immigrants, blacks, and Latinos know that they will be targets of the new administration, and a large part of the population fears that the United States is entering a dangerous period that menaces American democratic rights. There is also a fear among Democratic and even Republican politicians that the new president could jeopardize the international economy, further destabilize the world political situation, and contribute to more rapid climate change and the destruction of the global environment.
A Staff and Cabinet from Hell
Trump’s victory brings a group of hard right politicians into the White House and puts actual fascists just a step away. While Trump has not yet finalized his staff and cabinet choices, his selection of Stephen K. Bannon, a leader of the alt-right movement to be his chief strategist puts a white nationalist who is known for Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and anti-feminism in the Oval Office, and the fascists at the doorstep.
Trump offered the notorious racist Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions the post of Attorney General, the head of the justice system. In 1986 President Ronald Reagan appointed Sessions to a federal judgeship, but Republicans in Congress denied Sessions that position because of his racist remarks. And Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a man who calls Islam a “political ideology” and a “malignant cancer” will become Trump’s national security advisor. Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City known for his racist policing policies, is being considered for Secretary of State or some other position.
Even conservative Republicans are worried by Trump’s choices. John Weaver, an advisor to conservative leaders Senator John McCain of Arizona and Governor John Kasich of Ohio, told the media, “The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant, America.”
A White Nationalist Program
Trump, who ran on a nationalist economic platform and a racist social program, has listed his goals for his first 100 days. Trump promises these measures:
• The immediate deportation of two to three million undocumented immigrants with criminal records and the building of a wall between the United States and Mexico.
• Suspension of immigration from regions where there terrorist groups are based, meaning immigration by Middle Eastern and Muslim people.
• Strengthening of the country’s police and building more privately owned prisons to combat crime, measures that will fall heaviest on African American and Latino communities that are disproportionally arrested, convicted, and imprisoned.
• The selection of at least one new conservative justice for the U.S. Supreme Court, where there is currently a vacancy, creating a conservative majority, which could end the federal right to abortion.
Trump will also move immediately on his nationalist economic program, which he says will rebuild American industry and create jobs:
• The ending of environmental restrictions on coal, gas, and oil companies and the ending of other climate change programs, as well as allowing XL Keystone Pipeline to go ahead.
• Withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and labeling China, which is the United States’ second largest trading partner and also holds over a trillion dollars in U.S. debt, as a currency manipulator.
• A trillion dollar 10-year program to build what will be privately operated infrastructure such as highways and bridges.
• Abolition of the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s federally coordinated private health care plan, and its replacement with a new competitive private health care plan.
Finally, there is Trump’s foreign policy.
• Trump and Giuliani have said that the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria, but also throughout the world and domestically, will be at the center of their foreign policy.
• Trump has both been critical of the role of European NATO nations and he says he will seek to improve relations with Vladimir Putin, a position that could upend U.S. foreign policy on the continent.
• Trump has also called for renovating and strengthening the U.S. military.
Obama Offers an Olive Branch, but Protest Erupts in the Streets
President Barack Obama, to the disappointment of many, has urged Americans to give Trump a chance. But tens of thousands of Americans in cities across the country have refused to do so and have come out chanting “Not my president!” Hillary Clinton’s supporters, backers of Bernie Sanders, and political independents, high school and college students, immigrants and black Americans have joined in the protest movement. In many of the demonstrations marchers carried signs against racism, Islamophobia, and misogyny. Women and LGBT people have been in the forefront of many protests.
In the United States the Democrats generally govern the multi-ethnic cities while the Republicans govern the white suburbs and rural areas, and the mayors of the country’s largest cities have joined the resistance to Trump; they promise that their cities will continue to remain sanctuaries for immigrants, declining to cooperate with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said that New York would continue to defend undocumented immigrants. “We are not going to sacrifice a half million people who live among us, who are part of our community,” said de Blasio.“We are not going to tear families apart.”
In addition to New York and Chicago, the cities of Boston, Denver, Los Angeles; Oakland, Providence, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. have all pledged to maintain their sanctuary policies. Students and professors are also pressing colleges and universities to adopt sanctuary. During his campaign Trump warned that if he were president, “Cities that refuse to cooperate with federal authorities will not receive taxpayer dollars,” promising a political battle.
Several important Democratic Party leaders have sworn to resist Trump, among them Harry Reid, the party’s outgoing senior leader in the Senate, liberal leader Senator Elizabeth Warren, and, of course, Bernie Sanders who ran for the Democratic Party presidential nomination as a “democratic socialist” calling for a “political revolution.”
Warren told the media, “You can either lie down, you can whimper, you can curl up in a ball, you can decide to move to Canada, or you can stand your ground and fight back and that’s what it’s about.”
Will the Democrats actually lead a militant fight against Trump? After all, they do not have a strong record of resisting the Republicans, having gradually been carried to the right along with them over the last forty years. Democrats came to share the same neoliberal ideology and commitment to austerity. President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary were responsible for some of the worst legislation on social welfare and on crime and justice, policies that fell hardest on the black and Latino communities.
While the broad left tends to look toward reforming the Democratic Party, particularly through elections at the local and state level, the small far left warns that neoliberal Democrats cannot be trusted. Left organization all agree on the need for resistance, but it remains to be seen if the left can become a leading force in the resistance to Trump. The all-important question is the building of an independent political force, ideally an independent political party out of the resistance movements now arising. But for now, we resist.
Dan La Botz