Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
On my radio show/podcast—the Ralph Nader Radio Hour—interviews of knowledgeable people have detailed the ravages by the cruel, serial law violator, Tyrant Trump, inflicted on millions of Americans. Still, the report from the V-Dem Institute at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg produced a jolting Common Dreamsheadline: Trump is Dismantling U.S. Democracy at a Speed ‘Unprecedented in Modern History.’
The report described the first year of Trump’s second term as achieving in one year what budding autocracies take a decade to accomplish, adding that “the speed of decline is comparable to some coups d’état.”
To wreck, weaken, and endanger our country, Trump disrupts the lives of millions of civil servants, contractors, small businesses and their families. He fired or forced out hundreds of thousands of federal civil servants staffing programs that protect the health, safety, and economic well-being of tens of millions of Americans, relying on food supplements, Medicaid, government-backed loans, and innumerable other social safety nets.
Trump has especially targeted law enforcement programs directed at enforcing worker and consumer safety, financial protections, and environmental health against toxic corporations. He is taking federal cops off the corporate crime beat.
Here are some specifics. Qualified foreign doctors have had their visas rejected. The U.S. has a doctor shortage, especially in rural areas. These physicians were blocked by Trump from extending care in areas with no doctors.
Huge, arbitrary cuts for scientific research have closed or curtailed labs, left individual scientists pursuing crucial discoveries to save lives without the government grants funding vital promising projects. He has also accelerated a brain drain from the U.S. to Europe and China, and reduced the number of scientists, engineers, and nurses coming to the U.S. to work, where they are seriously needed.
Entire careers and livelihoods have been destroyed by this dictator using the White House to vastly enrich himself and his cronies.
Let’s be more specific. The New York Times published a front-page story about what is happening to employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), illegally closed down in the first week of Trump’s regime. This reckless action jeopardizes millions of impoverished lives abroad. The article opened with: “She was fired by email while on maternity leave, given 24 hours to clear out her desk and left with three days of health insurance and no severance.” Her husband, also working with funding from USAID, lost his job. They are now relying on food stamps, Medicaid, and a supplemental nutrition program—long-standing programs being cravenly slashed by the Trumpsters, while giving huge tax escapes to the super-rich and large corporations like Apple.
Multiply this story of undeserved misery and fragility hundreds of thousands of times. Through Elon Musk’s criminal enterprise, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) whole agencies were being illegally shattered, and virtually shut down, e.g., the Department of Education, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. Others were being strip-mined like the Department of Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Agriculture.
Trump tore up civil service union contracts. The unions are suing Trump for this breach of contract. Such lawsuits drag on interminably and are hardly covered by the media. What the union leaders and members should be doing is peaceably encircling the White House for round-the-clock vigils and featuring large signs calling Trump out in vivid language. After all, the headquarters of the AFL-CIO is less than a block from the White House for easy logistics.
What are the pretexts coming out of Trump’s snarling mouth to justify such devastation of America? One is that he accuses these agencies of being “woke,” an ill-defined word for “leftists” that he has turned into another of his four-letter epithets for his ever-true believers.
A more frequent declaration issued without substantiation is that his decisions are based on “a grave threat to national security.” His lies don’t pass the laugh test.
This pretext is always applied to Trump’s blockage of offshore wind turbines, which he strangely has long called “ugly.” Trump recently exempted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from measures to protect endangered species. Self-described warrior of God and Jesus Christ, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, stated that such exemptions would bolster national security by increasing domestic oil production.
Trumpian effrontery gets worse. He issued an executive order removing collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal employees employed by a dozen agencies on national security grounds. The 1978 law he falsely invoked applied to “intelligence officers,” not to cleaners, guards, clerks, etc., in federal buildings. Again, the expected lawsuits were filed. Amidst judicial delays, Trump gets his way.
When pressed by reporters to explain these pretexts, Trump’s flaks come up with ridiculous assertions promptly rebutted by specialists in each area. (See The New York Times, April 19, 2026 – “Trump Has a Go-To Justification for His Contentious Decisions: National Security.”)
Who elected Trump? The Democratic Party’s feeble, cowardly, and uninspiring performance in 2024—repressing through its corporate-conflicted consultants’ decisive input from its progressive wing and civic/labor leaders—was a big factor. (See the August 27, 2024, letter to Liz Shuler).
Who unleashed this runaway felonious politician violating daily innumerable federal laws, regulations, international treaties, and constitutional provisions, constituting serious impeachable offenses? (See H.Res.1155).
First, the Congressional Republicans have abjectly surrendered their oath of office to constitutionally lead the Congressional branch of government. In addition, the cowardly Democrats, who could have conducted scores of “shadow hearings” to inform the media and citizenry are largely MIA.
It is time for citizens to press their Senators and Representatives to stop this Trump rampage – before it is too late. The Congressional Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
