Trump Is Vulnerable to Progressive Populism

Democrats are politically flummoxed by the flurry of regressive proposals and policies daily manufactured by the Trump administration. Party leadership has been reduced to a reactionary political presence, simply responding to US President Donald Trump's initiatives. Weakened and disoriented, the party seems incapable of effectively challenging Trump's disingenuous populism. It does not forcefully attack his many vulnerabilities. Democratic Party leaders, moreover, refuse to embrace a comprehensive program of fundamental social, economic, and environmental projects and guarantees that are both popular and a genuine alternative vision of America.

The beleaguered Social Security Administration (SSA) offers an enormous opportunity to weaken Trump's political strength. Ostensibly driven by budget deficits, Trump's Department of Government Efficiency has eliminated 7,000 employees at the SSA. That will certainly reduce services since now one employee manages 1,480 beneficiaries, which is three times the beneficiary load in 1967. Already telephone calls to the agency have gone unanswered. Close to 90% of Americans, moreover, want Social Security to remain a strict priority of the government, "No matter the state of budget deficits." Here the Trump administration has left itself wide open to a progressive political challenge that would guarantee funding of Social Security in the coming decades, definitively reject any privatization plans, and highlight how Trump's cuts threaten the integrity of a service so vital to all Americans.

Trump is also vulnerable in many other of his administration's initiatives. The elimination of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, immediately terminated the annual purchase of as much as a million metric tons of U.S. crops, depriving American farmers of a $510 million market. As a direct consequence, farmers are burning crops due to low prices, rising input costs, and labor shortages compounded by the government's immigration policies. Tragically, 1.5 million starving children in Afghanistan and Pakistan depend on USAID's food assistance. By 2030, according to researchers, an estimated 14 million people, including 4.5 million children under age 5, will die without the relief USAID's programs provide.

Exposure of Trump's cuts and plans for the Federal Emergency Management Agency again opens opportunity to reveal the callousness and shallow, short-term thinking that is typical of the administration. From 2008 to 2024 FEMA provided $170 billion to assist with environmental disasters. FEMA assistance is based on the cost of per capita impact (PCI). Trump has proposed raising the qualifying PCI from $l.89 to $7.56. This policy change is designed to shift the cost of disaster relief onto the states, thereby reducing federal spending and, among other specious cost-reduction efforts, diminishing the federal deficit to fund tax cuts that disproportionately benefit wealthy Americans. And contrary to Trump's assertions, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the tax cuts will spike the deficit by $2.4 trillion over the coming decade.

To turn back a government takeover by the wealthy corporate class, progressives must seize this political moment.

Trump's healthcare plan is yet another area of his vulnerability. A national universal health insurance program is long overdue and such a proposal would stand in stark, constructive contrast to the administration's plan to cut Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which would leave 10.9 million more Americans without healthcare, especially targeting those with low incomes and individuals in poor health. The elimination of the ACA funding mechanism, moreover, will increase the federal deficit by $41 billion. In addition, planned Medicaid cuts threaten rural hospitals that depend on it for a significant percentage of their revenues. And massive cuts to science and medicine in the recently approved "Big Beautiful Bill" will hamper and even end much research into lifesaving medicines and reduce the nation's preparation for future epidemics and pandemics.

The disappearance and detention of thousands of immigrants are a direct attack on the U.S. Constitution. Capturing and transporting law-abiding individuals to distant detention facilities without due process are practices common to police and military states. More than 60,000 immigrants are detained in facilities across the nation. Judges who rule against Trump's immigration policies and practices are pilloried and threatened by the president himself. Families are broken up and children are arrested. This is yet another example of outrageous and often tragic violations of law and human rights.

Trump's virtual abandonment of Ukraine and his unwavering support of Israel are also very profound moral issues, positions that must be adamantly opposed. The US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies must swiftly counter and arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin's military onslaught. With regard to Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza, Trump's continued support for the Netanyahu government—his approval of $12 billion in military assistance in less than two months in office—makes the Trump government an unquestioned accessory to massive crimes against humanity. Trump swiftly bypassed Congress to supply these military weapons to Israel. To date more than 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, at least 18,000 of them children.

The list of assailable proposals and program issues is interminable. Flagrant flouting of the law and congressional authority. Threats to and removal of dissenting judges. Weaponizing the Department of Justice. Deploying military troops in streets. The attack on the media to eliminate fact-based critique and dissent. The assault on academic freedom and free speech at universities, blocking the entrance of foreign students and undermining basic scientific research, imperiling U.S. global leadership in science and technology. Elimination of federal support of public education. The pursuit of tariffs that are actually paid by American importers who will raise prices of these goods, inducing inflation. Downgrading the NATO alliance. Violation of the emoluments clause. Usurping congressional authority and eroding separation of powers among the three branches of government. Pardoning insurrections. Appointing unqualified and compromised nominees to sensitive government positions. Undermining the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health. Weakened regulations at the Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency. A complete retreat from renewable energy and other green practices and emphatic reliance on fossil fuels. Absolute ignorance of climate change. Aggressive vote suppression and rigging elections. Defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And on and on, ad infinitum...

The Democratic leadership is incapable of moving from soft, centrist politics to a progressive social and environmental agenda. In 2016 Democrats' electoral scheme of superdelegates undermined the democratic socialist insurgency and its millions of youthful followers. Wedded to identity politics and fixated on quixotic undecided voters and presumably fence-post Republicans, the establishment wing of the Democrats runs away from thoroughgoing reform. Eschewing progressive populism—fearful of being branded leftist, socialist, and communist—the party has pursued an electoral platform of abstract ideas such as appeals to saving democracy and nearly politically meaningless allusions to joy and decency. Without a genuine populist agenda the Democratic leadership drifts toward the political center, an increasingly conservative position as the center moves to the political right.

Now is the time for progressive Democrats to break from the party and, allying with politically independent progressives and others on the political left, put forth an agenda that forges an alternative vision of a healthy America, one that supports ordinary families through authentic social welfare and sound environmental policy. To turn back a government takeover by the wealthy corporate class, progressives must seize this political moment. Their voice must be forceful, optimistic and youthful. They must aggressively challenge Trump, preying on his numerous points of vulnerability.

By staging powerful televised weekly press conferences, engineering appearances on televised and digital "talk shows," generating a compelling social media presence, and organizing public rallies and marches, progressives could present timely critiques of Trump's ongoing misrepresentations and regressive proposals and, even more importantly, put forth a platform of populist programs that will really benefit average Americans.

Such a campaign and strategy will energize and focus opponents of Trump, elevating the political discourse and conferring enormous credibility on progressive alternatives. It will give anti-Trump forces a platform of specific programs and goals to confront his dictatorial intentions and methods. If progressives fail to lead at this critical juncture in the nation's history, they cede the immediate and long-term future to a self-serving dictator supported by a party of sycophants and opposed mainly by weak-kneed, unimaginative politicians.