Greg Sargent, author of An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics, has some valuable insights for Democrats in his post, “Trump’s First Big Fiasco Triggers Stephen Miller’s Rage—Take Note Dems: The Democrats finally started to find their legs after Trump’s spending freeze. The key lesson? Making sheer political noise about something does make a difference.” at The New Republic. Some nuggets from Sargent’s article:

Admitting failure is anathema to the authoritarian leader, who is perpetually in danger of being diminished by those who are resentful of his glory—which is why White House adviser Stephen Miller is frantically searching for scapegoats to blame for the unfolding disaster around President Donald Trump’s massive freeze on federal spending….

What Miller is actually angry about is that the media covered this fiasco aggressively and fairly. Miller insists that the press glossed over the funding pause’s supposed exemption for “aid and benefit programs.” But this is rank misdirection: The funding freeze, which is likely illegal, was indeed confusingly drafted and recklessly rolled out. This is in part what prompted the national outcry over the huge swath of programs that it threatened, Medicaid benefits included—and the media coverage that angered Miller.

All of which carries a lesson for Democrats: This is what it looks like when the opposition stirs and uses its power in a unified way to make a lot of what you might call sheer political noise. That can help set the media agenda, throw Trump and his allies on the defensive, and deliver defeats to Trump that deflate his cultish aura of invincibility.

….Until this crisis, the Democratic opposition has mostly been relatively tentative and divided. Democrats were not sufficiently quick, forceful, or unified in denouncing Trump’s illegal purge of inspectors general and his deranged threat to prosecute state officials who don’t comply with mass deportations. Internal party debates suggest that many Democrats believe that Trump’s 2024 victory shows voters don’t care about the dire threat he poses to democracy and constitutional governance, or that defending them against Trump must be reducible to “kitchen table” appeals.

But the funding-freeze fiasco should illustrate that this reading is highly insufficient. An understanding of the moment shaped around the idea that voters are mostly reachable only via economic concerns—however important—fails to provide guidance on how to convey to voters why things like this extraordinary Trumpian power grab actually matter.

Democrats need to think through ways to act collectively, to utilize something akin to a party-wide strategy, precisely because this sort of collective, concerted action has the capacity to alert voters in a different kind of way. It can put them on edge, signaling to them that something is deeply amiss in the threat Trump is posing to the rule of law and constitutional order.

Generally speaking, some Democrats have several objections to this kind of approach. One is that voters don’t care about anything that doesn’t directly impact them and that warnings about the Trump threat make them look unfocused on people’s material concerns. Another is that if Democrats do this too often, voters will stop believing there’s real cause for alarm.

The funding-freeze fiasco got around the first objection for Democrats because it did have vast material implications, potentially harming millions of people. But Democrats shouldn’t take the wrong lesson from this. A big reason this became a huge story was also that it represented a wildly audacious grab for quasi-dictatorial power. Democratic alarms about this dimension of the story surely helped prompt wall-to-wall coverage. Democrats can learn from that.

Sargent notes that Democratic activist Faiz Shakir has called for a quick response messaging strategy, in which Democrats regularly comment on all the ways Trump betrays “working-class values and your working-class interests.” Also,

Shakir also suggests an intriguing way for the party to act in concert. As chair, he’d aggressively encourage as many elected officials as possible to use the video-recording studio at the DNC in moments like these, getting them to record short takes on why voters should care about them, then push the content out on social media….The goal, Shakir said, would be to provide Democrats with research and recording infrastructure enabling elected officials to find their own voices and flood information spaces with civic knowledge. This also would give Democrats who want to stick to a “kitchen table” approach a way to shape their own warnings around that.

….Nobody denies that the Democratic Party is a big, sprawling, highly varied organism with elected officials facing a huge spectrum of different political imperatives. Of course there will be variation in how they approach each Trumpian abuse. But as Brian Beutler puts it, the answer to this cannot be to “lodge passing complaints about Trump’s abuses of power, but turn every conversation back to the cost of groceries.” This incoherently implies that the abuses themselves are not serious on their own terms.

Of course, it’s not all about messaging. Democrats have to make some major policy changes, as well, particularly regarding immigration and inflation and they must ditch the sillier cultural issue excesses. But Sargent’s TNR column offers a nuanced discussion of possible Democratic messaging strategies in response to Trump’s scorched-earth grand strategy. Read the whole article right here.

I was very closely watching the saga of OMB’s disastrous effort to freeze funding for a vast number of federal programs, and wrote about why it was actually revoked at New York.

This week the Trump administration set off chaos nationwide when it temporarily “paused” all federal grants and loans pending a review of which programs comply with Donald Trump’s policy edicts. The order came down in an unexpected memo issued by the Office of Management and Budget on Monday.

Now OMB has rescinded the memo without comment just as suddenly, less than a day after its implementation was halted by a federal judge. Adding to the pervasive confusion, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately insisted on Wednesday that the funding freeze was still on because Trump’s executive orders on DEI and other prohibited policies remained in place. But there’s no way this actually gets implemented without someone, somewhere, identifying exactly what’s being frozen. So for the moment, it’s safe to say the funding freeze is off.

Why did Team Trump back off this particular initiative so quickly? It’s easy to say the administration was responding to D.C. district judge Loren AliKhan’s injunction halting the freeze. But then again, the administration (and particularly OMB director nominee Russell Vought) has been spoiling for a court fight over the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act that the proposed freeze so obviously violated. Surely something else was wrong with the freeze, aside from the incredible degree of chaos associated with its rollout, requiring multiple clarifications of which agencies and programs it affected (which may have been a feature rather than a bug to the initiative’s government-hating designers). According to the New York Times, the original OMB memo, despite its unprecedented nature and sweeping scope, wasn’t even vetted by senior White House officials like alleged policy overlord Stephen Miller.

Democrats have been quick to claim that they helped generate a public backlash to the funding freeze that forced the administration to reverse direction, as Punchbowl News explained even before the OMB memo was rescinded:

“A Monday night memo from the Office of Management and Budget ordering a freeze in federal grant and loan programs sent congressional Republicans scrambling and helped Democrats rally behind a clear anti-Trump message. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer blasted Trump as ‘lawless, destructive, cruel.’

“D.C. senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, warned that thousands of federal programs could be impacted, including veterans, law enforcement and firefighters, suicide hotlines, military aid to foreign allies, and more …

“During a Senate Democratic Caucus lunch on Tuesday, Schumer urged his colleagues to make the freeze “relatable” to their constituents back home, a clear play for the messaging upper hand. Schumer also plans on doing several local TV interviews today.”

In other words, the funding freeze looks like a clear misstep for an administration and a Republican Party that were walking very tall after the 47th president’s first week in office, giving Democrats a rare perceived “win.” More broadly, it suggests that once the real-life implications of Trump’s agenda (including his assaults on federal spending and the “deep state”) are understood, his public support is going to drop like Wile E. Coyote with an anvil in his paws. If that doesn’t bother Trump or his disruptive sidekick, Elon Musk, it could bother some of the GOP members of Congress expected to implement the legislative elements of the MAGA to-do list for 2025.

It’s far too early, however, to imagine that the chaos machine humming along at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will fall silent even for a moment. OMB could very well issue a new funding-freeze memo the minute the injunction stopping the original one expires next week. If that doesn’t happen, there could be new presidential executive orders (like the ones that suspended certain foreign-aid programs and energy subsidies) and, eventually, congressional legislation. Democrats and Trump-skeptical Republicans will need to stay on their toes to keep up with this administration’s schemes and its willingness to shatter norms.

It’s true, nonetheless, that the electorate that lifted Trump to the White House for the second time almost surely wasn’t voting to sharply cut, if not terminate, the host of popular federal programs that appeared to be under the gun when OMB issued its funding freeze memo. Sooner or later the malice and the fiscal math that led to this and other efforts to destroy big areas of domestic governance will become hard to deny and impossible to rescind.

In “Trump’s grant gambit threatens to wreck the goldilocks economy he inherited,” Allison Morrow writes at CNN Politics: “A two-page memo, totaling less than a thousand words and packed with right-wing rhetoric, threw the fate of the US economy into uncertain territory late Monday as the Trump administration ordered the suspension of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal grants and loans….The document from the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget states explicitly that federal funds should align with Trump administration priorities and focus on “ending ‘wokeness.’”….It’s difficult to overstate the chaos that the directive, with its ambiguous wording, unleashed within organizations across broad swaths of the economy that rely on federal funds — including programs that provide essential medical services, emergency aid for farmers, cancer center support and even a program covering the cost of caskets for deceased veterans with no next of kin, my CNN colleagues Jennifer Hansler, Andy Rose and Tami Luhby reported….By Tuesday evening, a federal judge had temporarily blocked part of the freeze on federal aid….And while there were still countless questions left unanswered — a White House spokesperson initially couldn’t say whether Medicaid funding would be paused, for instance — what was clear is that any disruption to the flow of federal funds would have undeniable ripple effects throughout the US economy….The gambit is part of Trump’s stated desire to wrest control over spending from Congress, and is, according to legal experts, almost certainly illegal.” As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse put it, “Trump’s power grab was plucked directly from the Project 2025 playbook….It’s hard to tell if this is incompetence or mischief, but this funding freeze is illegal and unconstitutional, and every single American has a stake in getting it undone.”

“‘He’ll stiff you’: Senator warns federal workers Trump’s ‘buyout’ offer is bogus,” Matthew Chapman writes at The Raw Story, quoting Sen. Tim Kaine: “….Kaine issued his warning on the Senate floor on Tuesday, following reports of the buyout proposal. “The President has no authority to make that offer,” said Kaine. “There’s no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work … If you accept that offer and resign, he’ll stiff you.”….Trump has been accused of not paying workers what he promised, dating back to his days when private contractors said he ripped them off, and even attorneys he hired who said he stiffed them for legal services. ….The buyout offer, which reportedly extends to every worker in the entire federal civil service, does not appear to actually entitle government employees to a compensation package without work; rather, it lets them take a “deferred resignation,” where they can remain in their job for up to 8 months and be exempt from Trump’s new executive order mandating federal employees return to full-time in-office work.” As Ed Mazza notes, further, at Huffpo, via Yahoo News: “Don’t be fooled,” Kaine said. “He’s tricked hundreds of people with that offer. If you accept that offer and resign he’ll stiff you just like he stiffed the contractors.”

The big buzz continues about former Ambassador Caroline Kennedy’s warning about her cousin, RFK, Jr.’s nomination to head HHS as hearings begin. Aria Bendix writes at nbcnews.com: “In a letter Tuesday urging the Senate to reject Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for health and human services secretary, Caroline Kennedy referred to her cousin as a “predator.”….Caroline Kennedy, a former U.S. ambassador to Australia and the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, said RFK Jr. was unqualified to lead HHS, which oversees 13 federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services….Among her many criticisms in the letter to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Kennedy said that “siblings and cousins who Bobby encouraged down the path of substance abuse suffered addiction, illness and death.”….“Bobby is addicted to attention and power,” Caroline Kennedy said, using her cousin’s nickname. “Bobby preys on the desperation of parents of sick children — vaccinating his own kids while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.”….“Bobby is willing to profit and enrich himself by denying access to a vaccine that can prevent almost all forms of cervical cancer,” Caroline Kennedy wrote….“Bobby expropriated my father’s image and distorted President Kennedy’s legacy to advance his own failed presidential campaign, and then groveled to Donald Trump for a job,” she said….“Bobby continues to grandstand off my father’s assassination and that of his own father,” she added. “It’s incomprehensible to me that someone who is willing to exploit their own painful family tragedies for publicity would be put in charge of America’s life and death situations.”

It’s pretty clear now that Trump’s grand strategy for invoking his imagined imperial authority is to “flood the zone” with so many outrages that Democrats won’t have time to unite behind an effective strategy for defending democracy. As Sahil Kapur explains at nbcnews.com: “Less than 48 hours after President Donald Trump was inaugurated, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries held a closed-door meeting with Democratic lawmakers to issue a warning and a clarion call….The new administration was going to “flood the zone,” and Democrats couldn’t afford to chase every single outrage — or nothing was going to sink in for the American people, Jeffries told them….Jeffries, D-N.Y., urged members to focus their message on the cost of living, along with border security and community safety….Burned by their failures to end the Trump era the first time, Democrats are crafting a new playbook for his second administration that departs from the noisy resistance of his first presidency. The new approach, according to more than a dozen party leaders, lawmakers and strategists, will be to zero in on pocketbook issues as they lay the groundwork for the 2026 midterm elections and beyond. And they plan to focus less on his cultural taunts and issues that don’t reach the kitchen table….The strategy will test Democrats’ ability to break through in a cluttered and rapidly evolving information environment….Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who was in many ways the face of the first resistance to Trump, agreed with the approach. “I think we have to pick our fights and not chase after every crazy squirrel,” Schiff said in an interview….the stuff that really matters — the trade wars that are going to raise costs on people, the mass deportations that are going to raise food prices and cause suffering among huge numbers of families, the pardoning of criminals who beat police and now the focus on tax cuts for really rich people that will do nothing for working families. These are the big fights that we need to focus on.”….Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, a member of the Democratic leadership team, begrudgingly admitted Trump is talented at distracting his critics by making them chase shiny objects. This time, he said, the resistance needs to focus on the GOP economic agenda….“We are going to talk every day and every week about what a rip-off this whole enterprise is,” Schatz said in an interview….“One of the things that congressional Democrats have done poorly, frankly, is that we talk about one thing one week and then something else the following week,” he said. “And I think that’s especially the dynamic with Trump in charge, because he’s extraordinarily skillful at commanding attention. And so one of the things that we’re going to make a conscious effort to do is: Whatever else is going on, our message is going to be: They are ripping you off.”

With all Republicans and even many Democrats complaining about the size, cost and effectiveness of the federal bureaucracy, I offered at New York a contrarian take based on the need for some stability in an era of constantly changing party control of government.

Of all the audacious tasks the new Trump administration and its congressional allies have taken on, perhaps the most intense and far-reaching are their efforts to go after the so-called deep state of executive branch and independent agency bureaucrats. It’s a three-pronged attack at present. First, an ongoing wave of executive orders is paring back civil-service protections for federal employees. Second, the “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill that congressional Republicans are slowly but surely assembling to enact Donald Trump’s legislative agenda will unquestionably include major reductions in federal spending that supports hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of federal employees. And third, there’s the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), operating out of the White House, that aims at a massive overhaul and reduction in federal operations. Conservatives in the judiciary have chipped in, too, notably through the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 decision revoking traditional deference to federal agency interpretations of congressional mandates.

Republicans have varying (but often overlapping) reasons for going after the “deep state.” Trump and his immediate circle pretty clearly just want to demolish anyone and anything that stands in the way of the immediate and complete implementation of his agenda while also providing some juicy patronage plums for MAGA loyalists. Many conservatives desperately want to reduce the size and power of the federal government based on the theory that Washington’s hirelings unduly restrict private enterprise, redistribute wealth, and pursue progressive policy goals they consider illegitimate or even evil. And all sorts of right-of-center folks want to reduce federal spending to pay for their own policy goals, including the white whale of high-end tax cuts. But as knives are sharpened to carve up the bureaucracy, we are also hearing some Democratic voices echoing the need for improvements in government efficiency and a tighter rein on agency discretion. It turns out nobody really likes faceless bureaucrats.

While there’s nothing wrong with “reinventing government” by examining how government policies are enforced and services are delivered, this may be a particularly bad time to turn the bureaucracy upside down and remake the federal public sector into a lean-and-mean instrument for the current controlling party’s governing vision and patronage needs. The “deep state” may be a crucial source of stability in an era during which the electorate keeps delivering and then denying power to one of two major political parties that agree on very little other than the wickedness of their opponents. In other countries with parliamentary systems and multiple political parties, coalition governments are a way around the problem of unstable majorities. Our winner-take-all system makes that impossible, and when someone like Trump comes along who wants to test the boundaries of power in every direction, any sense of continuity goes out the window.

In much of the 20th century, bipartisanship (along with ideological diversity within the two major parties) smoothed the rough edges of transitions in presidential and congressional power. Yes, there were major moments of single-party power, some of which arguably extended for decades, but it’s sometimes forgotten that even highly ideological regimes like Lyndon B. Johnson’s and Ronald Reagan’s relied on minority-party support and produced bipartisan policy legacies. But the 21st century has featured unusually short stretches of party power combined with deep partisan polarization, producing an ever-worsening sense of whiplash and instability in governance. A pattern has developed of partisan breakthroughs giving one party enormous power, followed quickly by gridlock and then reversal of party control. In 1992, 2000, 2008, 2016, 2020, and 2024, party control of the White House changed and the new boss enjoyed trifecta control of Congress. With the exception of George W. Bush (whose unified control ended in 2001 due to a senator switching parties), all these presidents lost their trifecta in their first midterm election, leading to sluggish periods of gridlock and then eventually defeat by the opposing party.

We’ve seen the oscillation accelerate since 2016, even as partisan divisions have deepened to an unprecedented degree. Trump took office determined to reverse Barack Obama’s policies root and branch via executive action and by two huge packages of legislation (one on taxes enacted, one on health care defeated through intraparty divisions). Then Republicans lost the House in 2018 and the ability to do big things died. Joe Biden took office in 2021 similarly determined to remake the federal government via executive orders and by two huge packages of legislation (both enacted, though the second took a long while and had to be pared back). Then Democrats lost the House in 2022 and things came to a halt. Now Trump 2.0 is in the process of more aggressively reversing its predecessor’s policies than any new administration perhaps since FDR in 1933, knowing full well that the window of legislative opportunity is due to close in 2026 when the GOP’s tiny margin of control of the House makes a Democratic flip extremely likely.

This patten of brief power followed by gridlock and then eviction from power shows no sign of ending any time soon in our closely and deeply divided country. As a result, the inherently disorderly process of changing policies and personnel in the executive branch is made even more chaotic as the power configuration changes every two years. To be sure, MAGA types purport to favor “disruption” of the status quo as an end in itself, but at some point, the federal government needs to settle into a governing groove. All the destructive thrashing around that Trump 2.0 is attempting may simply make a functional executive branch in the next (and quite possibly Democratic) administration unnecessarily difficult. And if that’s the whole nihilistic idea, anyone in either party who truly believes in government efficiency and responsiveness should be horrified.

So whether you favor or oppose the policy direction of the Trump administration, it should not be accompanied by an assault on the “deep state.” We need people to provide some semblance of continuity until such time as the electorate chooses to give elephants or donkeys management of the zoo for an extended period.

At The Bulwark Tim Miller has a revealing interview with top political journalist Ronald Brownstein, who pegs the most compelling data points from the presidential election. A paywall kicks in at the end for the “full episode.” But some of Brownstein’s nuggets from the first part of the interview include:

“Trump won a substantial number of votes from people who still expressed  significant doubts abut him and his agenda. Between 1/5 and 1/6 of his voters would agree with sentiments like he was too extreme.”

“Roughly 60 percent of Americans disapproved of Biden’s job performance and 80 percent of those  disapprovers voted for Trump.”

“He won a higher share of women who identified as pro-choice in 2024 after Dobbs, than he did in 2020 before Dobbs….More than a quarter of Latinos wo said they opposed mass deportations voted for him.”

“Among white women without a college degree – they are just crucial to how these [swing] states turn out – who supported legal abortion, broke 2 to 1 for Trump.”

“All of these data points tell me that the dissatisfaction, primarily over inflation, and to some extent the border simply outweighed at this moment voters’ hesitations and concerns about Trump.”

“A considerable majority of the country was dissatisfied with the results they got from the Biden presidency, and, in the normal hydraulics of American polling, voted for the party that was not in the White House.”

The first portion of Miller’s interview of Brownstein did not address cultural issues. But it can be safely concluded that being perceived as fully embracing cultural ‘wokeness’ did not help Harris, although she did well in light of the economic opinions cited by Brownstein.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

The left isn’t dead yet. But it’s getting there.

That’s a shame because the self-identified left played a leading and productive role in the 20^th century. The various socialists, social democrats, and radicals that made up this loose aggregation pushed unions and government policy that benefited the working class, helped tame the excesses of capitalism and provided the shock troops for efforts to end discrimination, ensure equal treatment for all, and protect the environment. On all these fronts, the left made important contributions.

But the left came into the 21^st century beaten down. From the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s to the rise of the Third Way in the 1990’s to the first Bush term and War on Terror that started the century, it didn’t seem like anyone really wanted to hear from the left any more. Political contention between the parties and within American politics generally had passed the movement by.

And then: a sort of revival, sparked initially by the backlash to the Iraq war. The revival was strengthened by the Great Recession of 2008-09 and Obama’s historic first election, gathered force through his second term with the rise of Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, and then was turbocharged by Bernie Sanders’ insurgent candidacy and, of course, the norm-busting election of Donald Trump and his chaotic first term in office. Suddenly, being on the left was cool again. The moribund Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) spiked to 100,000 mostly young members from a few thousand aging veterans of the 20^th century left.

And it wasn’t just the DSA. In many circles, a radical critique of American society as structurally racist, hostile to marginalized communities, and embedded in a rapacious capitalist system that will destroy the planet became a sort of conventional wisdom. In this view, opposing Trump had to be joined to a struggle against all these aspects of oppression (the “omnicause”) and to social transformation. Otherwise, the oppression would remain even if Trump himself was removed.

This view spread through sympathetic cultural milieus where it already had a considerable presence—universities, media, the arts, nonprofits, advocacy groups, foundations, and the infrastructure of the Democratic Party itself—redefining what it meant to be on the left. In opposing Trump, who was himself so radical, it seemed only reasonable to be radical in return.

As a result as the teens drew to close, punctuated by the COVID pandemic and the George Floyd summer of 2020, the left was both larger than it had been in a long time and very different from earlier iterations. This was a left that believed America was a white supremacist society, fully bought into climate catastrophism, prized “equity” above social order, good governance and equal opportunity and thought “no human being is illegal” was a good approach to immigration policy. And they were perfectly willing to shout you down if you didn’t believe all this stuff or even if you didn’t use the right language when referring to these issues. Not coincidentally this was also a left with almost no connection to the working class, in stark contrast to the 20^th century left’s origin story.

But this left did have quite a lot of influence on Biden administration staffing and policies, down to the language officials used to describe their initiatives. To their shock, however, American voters were not delighted with the results, especially the working class, and the left’s preferred party, the Democrats, are out on their ear.

So this would be a great time for the left to recalibrate its approach, right? But are they? To paraphrase George W. Bush: “Is our leftists learning?”

Sadly, that does not appear to be the case. Neither in the evolving intraparty strategic debate after the November election nor in reactions to GOP priorities and Trump’s executive orders is there much evidence of a desire for compromise on the part of the left. Instead, there are signals that there are hills—many hills!—they are willing to die on rather than give ground. Here are three of the most important hills they are willing to die on—and probably will.

1. Immigration/border security/deportations. Outside of the economy, no issue hurt the Democrats more in 2024 than immigration. And the laxness on border security and quasi-open borders policy that resulted in massive waves of illegal immigration was very much a priority and product of the left. You’d think they’d be rushing to correct that mistake. Nah.

Take the Laken Riley Act which just passed Congress. Laken Riley was the Georgia nursing student who was murdered by illegal Venezuelan immigrant Jose Ibarra (recall that Biden, under pressure from the left, apologized for referring to illegal immigrant Ibarra as “illegal” as opposed to the approved nomenclature of “undocumented”). The legislation named after her provides for the detention of illegal immigrants charged with theft-related crimes, assault on a police office or acts causing death or bodily harm to an individual. Just 12 Democrats in the Senate and 46 Democrats in the House were willing to vote for the Laken Riley Act, with the left, heavily concentrated in blue states, conspicuous by its absence.

Outside of Congress, left reaction was predictable and vitriolic. Sarah Dohl, chief campaigns officer of the movement organizing group Indivisible had this to say:

Spineless. That’s the only word for the..Senate Democrats who handed MAGA Republicans a gift they didn’t deserve…The Laken Riley Act is a racist, xenophobic attack on immigrants that shreds constitutional rights and hands power to extremists like [Texas attorney general] Ken Paxton to hijack federal immigration policy. It’s not just cruel—it’s a train wreck of chaos and bad faith. And yet, Senate Democrats caved.

And that’s just the Laken Riley Act! That Act is merely the opener for a variety of Trump administration moves to drastically tighten up border security and deport many of the illegal immigrants who are currently here, focusing initially on those with criminal records. The left will oppose all these moves, with appropriately inflammatory rhetoric, despite their general popularity. Indeed, deporting those illegals with criminal records is stunningly popular; a new New York Times poll finds 87 percent overall support for deporting such illegal immigrants including overwhelming support among surprising groups like Democrats (83 percent) and Hispanics (85 percent).

The simple fact of the matter is that it is impossible to solve the illegal immigration problem without changing the incentive structure for prospective immigrants by: (a) making it much tougher to enter the U.S. illegally, and (b) making it much tougher to stay in the country once you are here illegally. The public understands this while the left evidently does not or (more plausibly) just does not want to solve the problem. They are determined to die on this hill and die they will, perhaps dragging the rest of the Democratic Party down with them.

2. Identity politics/equity/”trans rights.” The contemporary left is deeply invested in these issues and shows little sign of backing down or compromising on any of them. Take the statement of Ben Wikler, the left’s favorite candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee:

We unite our coalition by making sure everyone’s at the table.

As DNC Chair our leadership team will lift up our full coalition—Blacks, Latino, Native, AANHPI, LGBTQ. Youth, Interfaith, Ethnic, Rural, Veteran and Disability representation.

This does not seem like the statement of someone even willing to entertain the idea that identity politics is past its sell-by date. Or consider that it is Trump, not anyone on the left, who ringingly called for unrestricted free speech and for a society that is “colorblind and merit-based.” That’s because all these principles have become right-coded in the last period of time and are therefore verboten for anyone on the left to endorse. That’s crazy! As Jeff Maurermemorably puts it, these statements by Trump

hurt not because I disagree, but because I can’t believe that the left has fucked things up so badly that free speech, color blindness, and meritocracy are now issues that the right feels they own. In fact, those issues are so right-coded that they made the list of Things To Throw In Democrats’ Faces At The Inauguration Speech. A little more than a decade ago, those were bedrock liberal ideals. How did we screw this up?

That wasn’t the only challenge in Trump’s inauguration speech to left shibboleths and there are even more in his spate of executive orders. The left is inclined to fight each and every one of them because they believe history is on their side. But is it? I am doubtful the median working-class voter is going to greet the demise of DEI programs in their workplace, public institutions, or community with anything but delight.

Nor will they miss the pronoun police, the insistence that trans-identified biological boys should be able to play girls sports or the easy availability of “gender-affirming care” (e.g., puberty blockers, hormones, surgery) for minors. The Times poll mentioned earlier found that 80 percent of working-class (non-college) respondents opposed transgender birth males playing in women’s sports and 75 percent opposed allowing puberty blockers and hormone therapy to be prescribed for anyone under 18.

For all that, only two (2!) House Democrats—both conservative Hispanic Democrats from Texas—could find the wherewithal to vote for The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act which would prohibit the participation of biological men and boys in women’s and girls sports. Even Massachusetts Democratic representative Seth Moulton, who had raised questions about having biological boys in girls sports, did not vote for the bill presumably because of pressure from the left (they viciously attacked him for being a “Nazi”, transphobe, etc, etc.)

The left is determined to die on this hill and is willing to call out their army of enforcers to defend it. But the clear shift in public sentiment against their agenda makes defeat far more likely than victory here. Meanwhile, Democrats’ ability to adapt and move to the center on these issues will be seriously compromised while the left is busy dying on that hill.

3. Climate catastrophism/renewables uber alles/net zero. Trump has thrown down the gauntlet to the left on climate and energy issues. In his speech and in his executive orders he has made clear his intention to untether domestic energy production from regulatory and permitting obstacles and de-emphasize Biden administration policies centered around renewables and electric vehicles. He promises energy abundance and low energy prices. The left hates this but the fact of the matter is that such an approach is far closer to what the public wants—especially what the working class wants—than the left’s quasi-religious commitment to a rapid renewables-based clean energy transition.

This can be easily seen by reviewing public opinion data on climate and energy issues. Here’s a refresher:

A recent YouGov survey designed by myself and Roger Pielke found that, by 74 percent to 26 percent, working-class voters prefer an energy approach that uses a mix of energy sources including oil, coal, and natural gas along with renewables to an approach that seeks to phase out the use of oil, coal, and natural gas completely.

In terms of the energy they consume, cost and reliability are way, way more important to working-class voters than possible effects on the climate. Given four choices, 41 percent of these voters said the cost of the energy they use was most important to them and 35 percent said the availability of power when they need it was most important. Just 17 percent thought the effect on climate of their energy consumption was most important and 6 percent selected the effect on U.S. energy security.

In terms of proposals to mitigate the effects of climate change, getting to “net zero” as quickly as possible is relatively unimportant to working-class voters. Asked to consider proposals to reduce the effects of global climate change, these voters were least likely to say “getting the U.S. to net zero carbon emissions as quickly as possible” was very important to them personally (26 percent), fewer than said “limiting the burden of regulations on business” was very important (33 percent). Working-class voters were most likely by far to say keeping consumer costs low (66 percent) and increasing jobs and economic growth (60 percent) were very important aspects of climate mitigation proposals.

Consistent with many other surveys, the YouGov survey found that climate change as an issue has very low salience to working-class voters. Voters were asked to evaluate a list of 18 issue areas and rate their priority for the president and Congress to address in the coming year. As a “top priority,” dealing with global climate change ranked 16^th out of these 18 areas among working-class voters, well behind strengthening the national economy, fighting inflation, defending the country from terrorist attacks, and keeping Social Security financially sound—and also behind reducing health care costs, dealing with immigration, improving the educational system, keeping energy costs low, reducing the budget deficit, reducing crime, improving how the political system works, improving the job situation, strengthening the military, dealing with the problems of poor people, and dealing with drug addiction. The climate issue only ranked above global trade and issues around race.

Finally, by 30 points (59 to 29 percent) working-class voters flat-out favor more domestic production of fossil fuels like oil and gas. But only 15 percent of these voters are aware that the Biden administration increased oil production on federal lands. However, when informed that the U.S. has, in fact, increased domestic production of oil and gas in the last several years, they are delighted. Almost three-quarters (73 percent) of working-class voters said “this is a positive development, which brings good jobs for U.S. workers, ensures our energy supply and helps the U.S. support our allies who need similar resources” compared to 27 percent who thought “this is a negative development, which brings more pollution, climate change, and continued reliance on fossil fuels.”

In short, Trump is likely to shore up his base, rather than lose support, with his energy proposals. Meanwhile, the usual suspects on the left have already denounced his moves as undercutting the sacred quest to stop climate change, lining the pockets of evil fossil fuel companies and even (somehow) raising grocery prices. This hill, too, is evidently one they are willing to die on rather than compromise in any way on what is likely to be an extremely popular quest for energy abundance. And here too the left is likely to be decisively defeated as they expend vast amounts of money and effort defending the indefensible and kneecapping the ability of their party to come up with an alternative that can actually compete with Trump and his party.

Such is the nature of today’s left—divorced from the working class but intimately connected to the leftist strongholds of the professional class. The latter connection has kept them blissfully unaware of how far outside of the public opinion mainstream their current commitments are and therefore how quickly the hills they are defending could be overrun. That’s happening right now but the left seems determined to fight on to the bitter end.

So be it. Perhaps out of the ashes of this left, a better 21^st century left may arise that channels the best aspects and universal principles of the 20^th century left. But in the meantime, Democrats would be well-advised to craft an approach that ignores the left as much as possible. Just because the left is willing to die on all their various hills doesn’t mean Democrats have to as well.

Mary Radcliffe, Nathaniel Rakich, Tia Yang, and Cooper Burton write in “What do Americans think of Trump’s executive actions? “They support Trump’s immigration policies, but not much else” at 538/abcnews: “Before this week, the modern record for most executive orders signed on a president’s first day was nine (set by Trump’s predecessor, former President Joe Biden). And Trump is moving much faster to enact his agenda than he did in his first term:….But how will these sweeping policy changes sit with the American people? We dug up recent polling on 15 of the policies Trump has already issued. While Americans as a whole support some of them, particularly the ones cracking down on immigration, most of the other executive actions he took on Monday are unpopular among the public….In a Beacon Research/Shaw & Company Research/Fox News poll from January, 59 percent of registered voters said they would favor not just detaining but deporting “illegal immigrants who have been charged with crimes” while allowing law-abiding immigrants to “remain in the U.S. and eventually qualify for citizenship.” Another 30 percent said they would support deporting all illegal immigrants in the country…..Building a wall at the southern border: Popular….In the latest poll for The Wall Street Journal from Fabrizio, Lee & Associates/GBAO, voters….”strongly favor” building a wall….After the recent surge in migration, Americans’ opinions have evolved on this issue, which used to be quite unpopular. For example, just after Trump’s first election win in 2016, a Politico/Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health pollshowed only 35 percent of Americans said they supported building the wall, while 62 percent opposed it.”

Further, the authors note: “Using the military to secure the border: Popular….Citing the national emergency, Trump also issued an executive order directing the military to help stop “unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking” at the border. According to a December poll by Hart Research/Public Opinion Strategies for CNBC, 60 percent of Americans thought deploying the military to the border to stop illegal drugs and human trafficking should be a top priority for the Trump administration. Only 24 percent opposed it….Ending birthright citizenship: Unpopular….However, at least one of Trump’s executive orders on immigration may not meet with such a warm reception from Americans: his order attempting to end birthright citizenship for people whose parents are in the U.S. illegally. (This action will likely get blocked in court, as the Constitution states that people born in the U.S. are automatically citizens.) An Ipsos/New York Times poll from Jan. 2-10 found that Americans oppose ending birthright citizenship for children born to immigrants who are here illegally, 55 percent to 41 percent….Reducing costs: Popular….One of the actions that Trump signed with great pomp and circumstance during his inaugural parade was a memorandum ordering all executive departments and agencies to “deliver emergency price relief … to the American people and increase the prosperity of the American worker.” Trump probably did this because he knows it’s exactly what Americans want: Per a Cygnal poll earlier this month, 85 percent of likely 2026 voters said reducing inflation and lowering the cost of living was extremely or very important to them, making it far and away their top policy priority.”

In addition, the authors write: “Jan. 6 pardons: Unpopular….Trump also issued a blanket pardon Monday for anyone convicted of offenses surrounding the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That includes more than 1,500 individuals who have been arrested since the attack, over 80 percent of whom had already been convicted. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to do this, but it’s not likely to play well with the public. In a recent Marist College survey for NPR and PBS News, 62 percent of Americans said they disapproved of Trump taking such an action, and a similar share (57 percent) were opposed in the latest Fabrizio, Lee & Associates/GBAO poll for The Wall Street Journal. The pardons are almost certain to please Trump’s base, though: 64 percent of Republicans in the Marist/NPR/PBS News poll approved of them….Withdrawing from the Paris accord: Unpopular….In another hit to sustainable energy, Trump began the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, an international commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Americans may not be too happy about this move, as the AP/NORC poll found 52 percent opposed to the withdrawal and only 21 percent in favor (with 26 percent undecided or neutral). That does leave a lot of room for convincing, especially among Republicans, who continue to believe policies to mitigate climate change hurt the U.S. economy….But opinions on this issue have actually remained pretty consistently in favor of the Paris agreement since its inception: 62 percent of Americans were opposed when Trump withdrew from it for the first time back in 2017, and the same share supported Biden’s decision to rejoin in 2021.”

Also, “Ending DEI programs in the federal government: Mixed….Trump issued an executive order ending diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the federal government that were primarily begun under the Biden administration, including, among other things, environmental justice programs and equity-related employment practices and initiatives….But polls are mixed on whether Americans support such a move, and the result seems to depend quite a bit on the question wording: In a Harvard/Harris poll from January, for example, voters supported “ending hiring for government jobs on the basis of race and returning to merit hiring of government employees,” 59 percent to 41 percent. But in a Pew Research poll conducted in October, a majority of voters (52 percent) said that “focusing on increasing diversity, equity and inclusion at work” is “mainly a good thing,” while just 21 percent said it’s “mainly a bad thing.”….Declaring there are only two sexes: Popular….Another culture-war-oriented executive order declared that it is now U.S. government policy that there are only two sexes: male and female. The order also bans the use of federal funds for gender-affirming care for inmates and urges the protection of single-sex spaces and facilities, including the assignment of transgender people to prisons that match their sex “at conception.”….This one is likely to go down well with a majority of Americans: According to a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute in 2023, 65 percent of Americans believed there were only two gender identities, and only 34 percent said there were more than two. And a May 2024 survey from McLaughlin & Associates/America’s New Majority Project found that registered voters supported a law that “forbids taxpayer dollars from being used to pay for gender reassignment surgery,” 59 percent to 30 percent. (However, because America’s New Majority Project is a Republican sponsor, it’s possible those numbers are too favorable for the conservative side.)”

As someone ever-attentive to the intersection of political and religion, it wasn’t so much Trump’s explosion at the Bishop of Washington but the follow-on by his clerical allies that struck me, as I explained at New York:

Everything about the Washington National Cathedral, from its vast Gothic architecture to its clergy’s vestments, suggests to the politicians who sometimes grace its pews that they are small players in the grand drama of human events shaped by an omnipotent God. But the most important pol in attendance at this week’s National Prayer Service, right there in the front row, was a newly re-inaugurated president for whom humility and self-restraint are alien concepts, and who has boldly asserted that God prevented his assassination in order to return him to power. So understandably, the clerical leader of the Cathedral, Bishop Mariann Budde, felt constrained in her sermon to beg Donald Trump for some Christian forbearance in how he carried out his vengeful mandate. She begged rather than commanded, using the time-honored language of Jesus Christ by way of enjoining compassion for the poor, the stranger, and those living in fear of state power:

“’Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.’

“‘There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They … may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras, and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.'”

It was also understandable that Trump was annoyed by Budde’s plea, along with the underlying suggestion that he does not personify God’s will for America in 2024. He was undoubtedly aware that the bishop had criticized him during his first term for using one of the churches of her diocese, the White House–adjacent St. John’s, for a photo op in which he held up a Bible in righteous justification for his hard line on Black Lives Matters protesters. And here she was almost literally raining on his inaugural parade.

But when he lashed out at her on Truth Social as a “so-called bishop,” a “radical left hard line Trump hater,” whose sermon was “nasty in tone and not compelling or smart,” he unleashed a lot of MAGA rage aimed not just at Budde but at those liberal Christians who similarly reject a reactionary, Trump-o-centric version of the faith. The New York Times’ Elizabeth Dias hit the nail on the head in depicting the outburst against Budde as representing a submerged iceberg rising to the surface:

“For nearly a decade, American Christianity has been torn apart in every possible way. Christians have fought over whether women should be allowed to preach. Over the place of gay people. The definition of marriage. The separation of church and state. Black Lives Matter. And at the heart of much of it has been Mr. Trump’s rise as the de facto head of the modern American church, and the rise of right-wing Christian power declaring itself the one true voice of God.”

The National Prayer Service incident gave license to a lot of Trump’s clerical allies to deny the legitimacy of any form of Christianity that does not comport with their culturally conservative views. Several uttered their condemnations in interviews with the conservative Washington Examiner:

“’For the past four years, the Left has vilified biblically sound pastors for teaching what Scripture says about marriage, gender, and sexuality — accusing them of preaching politics from the pulpit. Yet, on the very first day of Trump’s return to the White House, a woke clergy member hijacks a church service to promote partisan rhetoric, personally attacks the President of the United States, and distorts the truth about illegal immigration,’ said pastor Lucas Miles, senior director of TPUSA Faith.

“Pastor John Amanchukwu, who has been vocal in his support for Trump in the past, took a harsher tone.

“’Many fear a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but there is nothing worse than a wolf in Bishop garments. She’s heretical, diabolical, and should have NEVER had the opportunity to minister in the presence of President Donald J. Trump,” Amanchukwu said.”

Franklin Graham, who delivered one of the two official invocations at Trump’s inauguration, was equally harsh:

“‘She is a socialist, activist, LGBTQ+ agenda, and that’s, you know, so she’s just wrong,’ he continued. ‘So these are activists, and no question, they hate Trump. I don’t know why they hate Trump. Trump stands for truth.”

So denying that “Trump stands for truth” is apparently grounds for excommunication from the broader community of Jesus Christ. That’s certainly what the extremely influential Pentecostal preacher and musician Sean Feucht suggested from right there in the Cathedral: “This is not a church and she is not a pastor. Time to ditch this tradition of attending this place during the inauguration.”

Maybe these holy warriors will calm down. But for the moment, it’s clear that their relationship with Donald Trump, the most powerful person on the planet, is fully transactional. He’s using them to herd their flocks into the voting booth to back him despite occasional suspicions that he’s more interested in self-promotion and worldly wealth than in doing God’s will. And they are using his authority to monopolize their own power within Christianity, by insisting that the only real Christians are MAGA Christians. These politicized right-wing believers bared their teeth in the reaction to Budde’s decidedly Jesus-oriented plea to Trump for mercy. But their ultimate objective could well be to reduce the influence of liberal Christianity until it’s small enough to be drowned in a baptismal font, leaving loud-and-proud Christian nationalists as the monopoly proprietors of America’s largest religious tradition.

In “Democrats grapple with their own message in Trump 2.0,” Sarah Ferris and Lauren Fox write, ” President Donald Trump is already testing the limits of Hill Democrats who have vowed to be less antagonistic the second time around….Privately, Democrats have largely agreed it’s time to end the capital-R resistance to the newly sworn in president. Then on Trump’s first 24 hours in office, he freed those who violently attacked police officers protecting the Capitol four years ago.”

Elected Democrats know that the chances or reversing Trump’s pardons and commutations of the January 6 perpetrators are nil. But they also know that Trump’s credibility is damaged every time the public is reminded that five police officers died as a result of the insurrection and 140 officers were injured by the rioters. Honest conservatives can’t support ganging up on police officers who were doing their job protecting our elected officials of both parties. The pardons and commutations, on top of Trump’s own convictions, make a mockery of the GOP’s pretense of being the party of law and order.

However, as Ferris and Fox note, “The natural inclination is to fight, fight, fight, fight,” said Rep. Tom Suozzi, a centrist Democrat who represents a Trump-won district on Long Island. Suozzi stressed that Democrats need to be more disciplined in their politics to avoid their more reactionary tactics: “That’s what’s got us to this point.”….Even so, he and others acknowledge they can’t ignore when Trump allows January 6 rioters to go free at the same time he is pushing to deport other violent criminals. “I mean, come on,” an exasperated Suozzi said.”

“On the pardons specifically, [Democratic House Leader] Jeffries privately told Democrats on Wednesday that they should hammer Trump’s decision to free January 6 rioters in a way that makes clear how it risks the safety of the American people, according to two people in the room. And the focus was less on Trump but on the complicity of House Republicans — the ones who will be on the ballot in two years.”

“Democrats have also tried to contrast how what Trump is doing isn’t actually helping the Americans who voted for him,” they write. The flood of executive orders is like Trump’s mass announcement of cabinet appointments, designed to confuse and distract his opponents.

“I think he’s trying to flood the zone,” with executive orders, Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, said. “Trump got hired because he thought he was going to help bring grocery prices down, what does pardoning literally hundreds of criminals who attacked police officers have to do with bringing grocery prices down?”

With respect to the confirmation hearings, “While a hearing for Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth saw blistering questioning about Hegseth’s personal life, including one particularly tough exchange with Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia on Hegseth’s marriages and an unexpected pregnancy, other hearings — including those for Treasury secretary nominee Scott Bessent and Department of Homeland Security pick Kristi Noem — were relatively civil by partisan standards, and focused far more on policy disagreements than personal animus.”

This is understandable. The Department of Defense is the big prize. It involves 3 million armed services members and workers and a budget of 841 billion dollars, and the potential for contractor corruption is a kleptocrat’s dream. In the modern era, at least, the Secretary of Defense has been headed by a leader who has some gravitas. Those days may be over. The Democrats now need two Senate votes to defeat the Hegseth nomination.

“This guy is clearly not qualified,” Warner said of Hegseth. “I’m supporting a number of Trump’s nominees. I voted for (Trump’s nominee to lead the CIA John) Ratcliffe, I voted for Bessent, but there are some of these that are way beyond the bounds.”

However, “We’ve gone back to our playbook which is, ‘attack him,’ instead of actually dealing with the fact that the party doesn’t have a message, doesn’t really have a spokesperson,” one senior House Democrat said of the strategy. “We’re just going back to the shrill attacks.”

“They have a permanent information ecosystem. We don’t,” Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said following the lunch. “They define us and we don’t get to define them. No matter how good our messaging is here, it doesn’t get reflected, reverberated and amplified like theirs does.”

That sounds like something that can be fixed.

Nothing bugs me quite as much as false equivalence, and I’ve been seeing quite a bit of it comparing Joe Biden’s last-minute pardons and those Donald Trump issued the moment he took office. So I compared them and wrote about it at New York:

In trying to sort through all the momentous events marking the transition from the 46th presidency to the 47th, it’s tempting to turn the actions of Joe Biden and Donald Trump into matched sets. In some cases, that’s justifiable; Biden reversed quite a few Trump policies by executive order when he took office in 2017, and in some cases Trump is reversing the reversals right now (e.g., on withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accords). But sometimes the comparisons are of apples and oranges at best. Some commentators lumped together Biden’s and Trump’s transition-week pardons as two sides of the same dubious coin of sovereign clemency powers. Here’s Politico Playbook’s take, from its new British editor Jack Blanchard:

“The biggest story of the night … was Trump’s extraordinary tidal wave of clemency, with the new president issuing pardons or commutations for nearly every person convicted of crimes — including serious violence — in the January 6 Capitol insurrection. This was big — about as big as Trump could possibly go. Only hours earlier Biden, of course, had issued his own shocking flurry of preemptive pardons for friends, family, and associates during his final morning — his final moments — in power. It probably shouldn’t take a Brit to tell you that none of this is remotely normal. At all.”

So Biden’s “shocking flurry” of pardons was matched by Trump’s “extraordinary tidal wave.” Thrust, then counter-thrust, an action with a reaction, right? No, actually, that’s wrong.

Biden’s last-minute pardons were legally controversial in that they were preemptive, offering protection to potential Trump-administration targets who have not been indicted, much less convicted, of criminal wrongdoing, as CNN reports:

“Clemency for General Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and members of Congress who served on the committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, was announced early Monday morning. Later, minutes before Trump was to be inaugurated as the nation’s 47th president, Biden also issued pardons for members of his family: his brothers James and Frank, his sister Valerie, and their respective spouses.

“The pardons, coming in the final hours of Biden’s presidency, amount to a stunning flex of presidential power that is unprecedented in recent presidential history. They serve to protect several outspoken critics of the incoming president, including former Republican representative Liz Cheney, whom Trump has vowed retribution against.”

Trump, by contrast, moved to protect over 1,500 people who most definitely have been indicted, tried, and convicted of criminal wrongdoing in connection with the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as the Associated Press reported:

“President Donald Trump has pardoned, commuted the prison sentences, or vowed to dismiss the cases of all of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes in the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, including people convicted of assaulting police officers, using his clemency powers on his first day back in office to undo the massive prosecution of the unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.

“Trump’s action, just hours after his return to the White House on Monday, paves the way for the release from prison of people found guilty of violent attacks on police, as well as leaders of far-right extremist groups convicted of failed plots to keep the Republican in power after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden.”

There was a preemptive aspect to Trump’s exercise in clemency, too: “Trump also ordered the attorney general to seek the dismissal of roughly 450 cases that are pending before judges stemming from the largest investigation in Justice Department history.”

In general, though, Biden pardoned people who as far as we know haven’t committed crimes (in this last-minute wave, that is; an earlier pardon for convicted felon Hunter Biden is a different matter). Biden’s list was comprised of people Trump targeted by name for investigation and prosecution during his 2024 campaign. Meanwhile, Trump opened the prison doors and expunged the record for insurrectionists who (whatever you think of them and their actions) did enjoy due process in facing accountability for the events of January 6 (unlike Trump himself, who was protected from prosecution by the U.S. Supreme Court).

The 47th president may understandably rage that the 46th has kept him from embarking on the full vengeance tour he seemed to contemplate in calling for a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden and his family, and in describing members of the January 6 investigative committee as traitors. But the idea that Biden’s pardons were as audacious as Trump’s is itself pretty audacious.