In his first nine months in power, Donald Trump has fired tens of thousands of officials, eliminated the largest development cooperation agency on the planet, and dismissed prosecutors or FBI agents with decades of experience who did not want to pursue his political enemies. He has disregarded regulators and violated all kinds of conflict of interest rules, mixing his businesses and cryptocurrencies with his actions in the White House.
He has cut funding to dozens of universities, pressured law firms to work for him for free, and coerced top company executives not to pass on price increases due to his tariffs to consumers. He has humiliated and subdued the gurus of the world's major tech companies, forcing them to pay him millions for closing their social media accounts after the Capitol riot. He has sued major newspapers, demanding billions of dollars, and forced the dismissal of journalists and TV comedians, using regulators in the sector and his power to veto major mergers or hint at the possibility of license losses.
While toying with the idea of serving a third term, something prohibited by the Constitution, he has deployed the National Guard and the military across the country, in many states, often against the will of governors. Filling the streets with masked agents who arrest people without identifying themselves or stating where they are taking them. He has labeled antifa as a terrorist organization, which is an ideology, a creed, not a real group, laying the groundwork to act against any left-wing organization.
He has flirted repeatedly with the idea of annexing Greenland or the Panama Canal, not to mention all of Canada. He has pardoned Capitol rioters while his ministers used all the resources of the State to intimidate his enemies: New York prosecutor Letitia James, his former National Security Advisor John Bolton, former FBI director James Comey.
Leading up to his speech this week, before more than 800 generals, admirals, and commanders from the three branches of the military, he urged them to get involved in his fight against "the internal enemy" and the "left-wing lunatics", in his words. "Last month, I signed an executive order to train a rapid response force that can quell civil unrest. And this will be very important for those present here," he told the top military officials, "because it is the internal enemy, and we have to control it before it gets out of control." "The United States is being invaded from within. It is no different from a foreign enemy, but it is more challenging in many ways because they do not wear uniforms. At least when they wear uniforms, you can eliminate them," he stated.
The fastest and most significant authoritarian drift on record in the world's leading power has virtually found no opposition. There is so much on the table, happening simultaneously and everywhere, that it surpasses any attempt to comprehend it. It bewilders and paralyzes. A few scattered protests across the country, some riots in Los Angeles months ago, and little else. The opposition lacks a leader, is lost, broken, divided, and frightened. It never knew how to find the recipe to defeat Trump, and now it does not know how to confront his steamroller.
"Senator, what will you do"
On September 7, the influential opinion section of the Sunday edition of The New York Times, the largest, wealthiest, and most widely read newspaper in the world, was devoted almost entirely to one topic. The cover featured the faces of the 47 Democratic senators with a question below each image. "Senator, what will you do." Accompanied by a headline in seven columns: "Stop funding Trump's power grab." The newspaper urged the opposition party, not to a total rebellion, but simply to stop collaborating with the Republicans, not to vote a second time to extend funding laws, so that the State apparatus cannot continue to function as if nothing is happening. As if everything were normal.
That's how it went. At midnight on Wednesday, October 1, the United States Government had no choice but to 'shut down'. The term in English is shutdown, and it occurs when the two parties cannot agree on the always precarious federal funding, leading to the paralysis of the State except for its most critical functions, and hundreds of thousands of public employees go home without a job or pay for days or weeks.
Generally, this process, which repeats once or twice a year in its various versions, usually ends in a grand tragicomedy, with squabbles, statements, marathon negotiations, and last-minute agreements. But occasionally, the usual is not enough. It happened to Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump in his first term, with over 20 shutdowns in recent decades. And it has happened again now. But this time is different. Not because of the sequence, which has been identical to all previous ones, but because of the enormous implications behind it.
In March, faced with the same situation, the Democrats, amid harsh criticism from the left and incomprehension from the rest of the world, chose to reach an agreement. What has changed since then? In summary, everything. An authoritarian drift, a tsunami of executive orders, dismissals, revenge, threats, and politicized military mobilization impossible to summarize, almost impossible to believe. By then, Trump had already shown more than enough signs that this term would not be like 2016-2020, that his preparation, his agenda, his team were entirely different. But the opposition, stunned after the elections, with terrible polling data (still far below their rivals in the most recent polls), with very bleak medium-term forecasts, was lost.
They thought, without a clear leader, without a solid agenda, without yet understanding what had happened, that the most responsible thing was not to block the country because they would seem like sore losers. They entrusted everything to the courts, which were halting the measures. And to the markets, which seemed to be the only ones capable of making the president backtrack on his economic and tariff policies. Because, they argued, sending hundreds of thousands of officials home while Elon Musk's DOGE sharpened the chainsaw within the administration was suicide.
Six months later, the landscape is very different. The markets are calm because there is no trade war. These wars happen when two parties fight, but if the rest of the world complies, as it has (except for China), bloodshed does not occur. Investors are concerned about pressure on the independence of the Federal Reserve, poor growth or job creation data, and medium-term debt and deficit prospects. But they are also pragmatic, have adjusted to the new normal, and are receptive to all kinds of stimuli. And if Trump undermines the Fed's credibility but manages to lower interest rates, there will be more credit and money circulating for a while.
Similarly, judges continue to block the president's measures, but the Supreme Court, with a powerful conservative majority (6 to 3), reverses almost all decisions one after another, endorsing the increasingly radical positions of the Executive. From firing officials to deportations. They have granted him unprecedented powers in the last 15 months, from total immunity to the margin to refuse to spend the money allocated by Congress, dismiss directors of independent agencies, or mobilize the National Guard without substantial reasons. And it remains to be seen if they allow him to strip the children of immigrants of their citizenship, a right also recognized in the Constitution.