Cry, The Beloved Country – an ominous article against T****

This article by John Arkelian, an author, diplomat and writer, summarizes the sins and tribulations of T****. It well worth the 10 minute read.
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An Introduction and explanation of the following article by John Arkelian

The title of this essay borrows from Alan Paton’s 1948 novel Cry, the Beloved Country, which chronicled the moral and social disintegration of apartheid-era South Africa. That book’s central question—how does a nation confront its own capacity for self-destruction?—resonates with particular urgency in contemporary America. What follows is not a partisan screed but a constitutional reckoning: a detailed accounting of how democratic institutions, legal norms, and the separation of powers have been systematically undermined during Donald Trump’s second term in office.

This essay documents specific actions and their consequences. It examines the fabrication of national emergencies to usurp congressional authority, the extortion of law firms and universities into political submission, the weaponization of the Department of Justice against perceived enemies, the violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause, the gutting of foreign aid and public broadcasting, and the deployment of military force against American civilians exercising their constitutional rights. Each section presents a different facet of a coordinated assault on the constitutional order—what might be called a stress test of American democracy itself.

The evidence presented here comes from court filings, congressional testimony, investigative journalism, statements by legal scholars and former government officials, and the administration’s own words and executive orders. This is not speculation about hypothetical dangers but documentation of events that have already occurred. The question is not whether these actions represent a departure from constitutional norms—they demonstrably do—but whether American institutions and citizens possess the will to defend those norms before the damage becomes irreversible.

As the epigraphs that follow suggest, this crisis was foretold. Lincoln warned that destruction, if it comes to America, must spring from within. We are witnessing that internal threat manifest in real time. The tragedy is not merely that these abuses of power are occurring, but that they are occurring with the acquiescence—and sometimes enthusiastic support—of millions of Americans and their elected representatives. The beloved country is indeed crying out. The question remains whether enough citizens will hear that cry and respond before it becomes a eulogy.

 

Cry, The Beloved Country
By John Arkelian

“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” (Abraham Lincoln, 1809-65, uttered those prescient words some twenty-two years before the outbreak of the Civil War)

“We have met the enemy, and he is us.” (Cartoonist Walt Kelly in 1970, paraphrasing a famous quote from the War of 1812)

“Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs, ch. 16, v. 18)

“A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.” (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1929-68)

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference!” (Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, 1928-2016)

The Tragedy of a Broken Nation
Things are broken in America. The beloved country is under attack from within by a demagogue and his enablers. Half of the country’s voters freely voted in 2024 for a return to power by a man who is manifestly and grossly unfit and shockingly devoid of simple decency. Donald Trump and his cabal are at war with the nation’s core values, ignoring the constitutional separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers, depriving the otherwise defenseless of their enshrined right to due process of law, extorting law firms, universities, and big media companies into submissive obeisance, disingenuously inflating actual problems into ‘national emergencies’ as a fig-leaf for using extraordinary executive powers which exist only for time of war, and betraying the very people abroad whom America should be staunchly defending and instead finding wicked common cause with tyrants and war criminals.

The Great Unraveller: Cause or Symptom?
As Lincoln foretold, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.” Trump is a walking anathema, a clear and present danger to liberty and democracy at home and to the rules-based international order and human rights abroad. But is the Great Unraveller the cause or a symptom of the socio-political disintegration underway in America? The answer is: a bit of both. The things that afflict and divide America predate Trump. Too many people have embraced irrationality, dismissing experts, non-partisan civil servants, and the professional journalists who objectively report the news. Too many rely on incendiary social media instead of legitimate news sources. Some wag once observed that if every man spoke only of what he knew, a great silence would descend upon the Earth. But instead of silence we have cacophony, a tsunami of sound-bites, memes, malicious distortions of reality, real or imagined ‘culture war’ differences, hyper-partisanship, and a growing disinclination to find common ground. Every fool, every con man, every agent of hate has an internet megaphone, and they’re not afraid to use it. Trump exemplifies and embodies that malaise, though he did not create it. And, alas, too many people have lost the ability to distinguish fact from fiction, truth from nonsense, and decency from what is vile.

A Tragic Compound of Ideals and Practice
Alan Paton wrote that “The truth is, our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions.” He was talking about apartheid-era South Africa, but the very same indictment applies to the rest of us today, not least to an America that (twice) elevated a shameless agent of indecency to a position of trust. The Americans who put their faith in Trump could never have done so without first allowing themselves to be dumbed down and rendered insensible to the stark difference between quality and dross. That—and the shameful failure of too many in positions of influence to stand up to the lawlessness and moral offensiveness of Trump & Co.—are the real tragedies in America. Instead, we have the shameful spectacle of those who ought to resolutely defend freedom instead bending the proverbial knee to a self-styled dictator. When we fail to stand up for what is right, true, and just, we become nothing and are fit only for the abyss. It is within our power to mend what is broken. The first steps are to see the fractures and shards and reimagine them as a mended whole and to perceive the unravellers in our midst and set ourselves implacably against them.

High Crimes at Home
Flooding the Zone
Trump & Co. have not been shy about stating their intention to overwhelm us with a tidal wave of controversial initiatives. By ‘flooding the zone’ with outrageous and openly malign statements and actions (most of them implemented by executive orders of dubious legality), they unabashedly aim to confuse and scatter likely opponents and, with luck, reduce us to stunned impotence. By late July 2025, six months into Trump’s second term, we’ve been assailed by an unending ‘series of unfortunate events’, to put it very mildly indeed. Consider these examples of the relentless assaults on freedom, justice, human rights—a man-made maelstrom that is subverting the Constitution and is apt to overturn the ship of state itself unless we quell it at its source.

Fabricated National Emergencies
Trump has fabricated false national “emergencies” out of irregular immigration, real or invented trade deficits, and the smuggling of illicit drugs like fentanyl into the U.S.—as a trifecta of counterfeit ‘justifications’ for the use of emergency executive powers reserved for wartime and genuine national emergencies. (None of the three issues meet that definition—not even close.) In the process, Trump has usurped Congressional powers, violated enshrined human rights, side-stepped the courts, and duped the American public. His administration’s measures to dismantle whole government departments, conduct mass deportations while denying those affected their legal right to a hearing, and unilaterally impose tariffs on other countries are all ultra vires, that is, outside the ambit of ordinary executive powers. Hence, the handy pretext of national emergencies to lay fraudulent claim to those special powers. Every member of Congress, irrespective of party, should be up in arms over those improper power grabs by the executive branch at the legislators’ expense.

Extortion of Law Firms
Trump & Co. launched an unprecedented attack on the independence of America’s law firms and universities, extorting them to toe the line and do his bidding. Large law firms which had represented clients or causes unpalatable to Trump were the subject of executive orders barring them from government premises and government contracts. In addition, letters were sent to twenty law firms demanding information about their ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ [DEI] employment practices—a favourite bugbear and scapegoat of Team Trump. Too many firms capitulated to this open extortion, showing obeisance and paying a bribe: Nine large firms agreed to donate a total of $940 million in pro bono work to causes near and dear to the Trumpists. Some law firms and some individual lawyers had the integrity to resist the extortion. Rachel Cohen, a young lawyer with the big Chicago firm of Skadden resigned in March 2025 in protest over that firm’s capitulation to Trump’s blackmail: “The Trump administration is coming for corporate law firms, punishing them explicitly and then stripping them of government contracts and trying to run them out of business. We have a legal system that requires lawyers [to] bring cases… in front of a judge for the Constitution and due process rights to be upheld. He’s trying to intimidate lawyers out of bringing the cases in the first place… [and they’re] too scared to save not just people’s lives but the fabric of our legal system.” The president of the Chicago Bar Association, John Sciaccotta, urged lawyers to stand firm to uphold the Constitution and their critical right to represent whomever they wish: “When there’s interference with that, [it] really violates the Constitution, violates the rule of law, and, quite frankly, violates the oath that we all take as lawyers to uphold the Constitution.” Part of Trump’s wrongful intent is to dissuade law firms from taking pro bono cases representing defendants in immigration cases. As Sciaccotta says, “That is infringing upon their rights, and… it’s very devastating to who we are as a country.”

Intimidation of Universities
Trump’s efforts to extort large universities likewise found some success. His objections on that front? Why, students who protested against the current Israeli government and its decimation of Gaza and the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians there. The Trumpists had the gall to condemn such protests as ‘harmful to U.S. foreign policy’ (i.e. its uncritical support of the hardline Israeli government). In doing so, the Trumpists stabbed the Constitution and its enshrined guarantees of free speech and free assembly in the heart (or perhaps the back). And whatever one may think of the pros and cons of ‘DEI’, it is not open to the government to dictate that idea’s banishment from curricula or from student admission processes. Moira Donegan, columnist with The Guardian newspaper, has lamented the abject capitulation of Columbia University: “After Columbia became the centerpiece of a nationwide movement of campus encampments in protest of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the university administration began a frantic and at times sadistic crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus speech in an effort to appease congressional Republicans, who had gleefully seized upon the protests to make cynical and unfounded accusations that the universities were engaged in antisemitism. Columbia invited police on to its campus, who rounded up protesting students in mass arrests…” To further appease America’s aspiring authoritarians, “a Trump-approved monitor will now have the right to review Columbia’s admissions records, with the express intent of enforcing a Supreme Court ban on affirmative action—in other words, ensuring that the university does not admit what the Trump administration deems to be too many non-white students. The Middle Eastern studies department is subject to monitoring, as well…” Donegan decries the fact that “Columbia folded, and sacrificed its integrity, reputation, and the freedom of its students and faculty for the federal money,” adding that the presence of Trump appointees on the courts may make other national institutions dubious about the prospects of successful recourse there. But capitulation to a bully is never the answer. Law firms and universities ought instead to put up an implacable common front of defiant resistance.

Assault on Constitutional Rights
Shockingly, the Trump administration has cited participation in peaceful protest as grounds for deporting persons who are lawfully in the United States with student or other visas. In the process, it is making a mockery of constitutionally guaranteed rights of free assembly and free speech. The same goes for deploying the U.S. military against protesters in Los Angeles. It was bad enough that ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) agents themselves were heavily militarized and needlessly masked to hide their identity like some despot’s secret police. But deploying the military against civilians in America, over the strenuous objections of the mayor of L.A. and governor of California, went well beyond the pale. But Trump’s violations of the Constitution don’t stop there. A grossly unlawful executive order purported to enable him to strip persons of the citizenship they have by right of being born there. Birthright citizenship is guaranteed in the Constitution, and no president has the power to meddle with it: The 14th Amendment provides that, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Initially, Trump had the American-born children of irregular migrants in his banishment sights. But he’s mused about using that imaginary power against people who commit crimes (even minor ones) and, even, outrageously, against people who simply incur his disfavour. The American comedienne and actress Rosie O’Donnell is no fan of Trump, whom she has derided (quite accurately) as ‘a snake-oil salesman.’ Her reaction to his reelection was to take up residence in Ireland. Trump’s response to O’Donnell’s barbs was (typically) grossly excessive and uncalled for: “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship… She is a Threat to Humanity…”

Attack on Press Freedom
In his first term, Trump did the unforgiveable disservice to his country of labelling the free press “the enemies of the people,” language that belongs in a tyranny, not a free country. In October 2024, during the election campaign, Trump filed a lawsuit against the American television broadcasting company CBS. The venue his minions chose was a federal district court in Texas, where, apparently, the only judge is one appointed by Trump in 2019. The risible (not to mention despicable) basis of Trump’s claim was that the highly respected television news magazine program “60 Minutes” had edited an interview with Trump’s election opponent, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, ‘to make her look good!’ (Both candidates had been invited to be interviewed on “60 Minutes,” but Trump declined.) One is monumentally hard-pressed to discern any valid “cause of action” (i.e. legal basis) for the lawsuit. Interview editing is no business of Trump’s. And he can’t possibly know that the program’s staff tried to make Harris ‘look good!’ And even if they did, so what? Trump’s lawyers relied on an obscure (and inapplicable) law regulating misleading advertising. But the lawsuit was utterly without legal merit. The Harvard constitutional law scholar Noah Feldman called the case an “outrageous violation of First Amendment principles” (i.e. the principles that guarantee free speech and freedom of the press). Despite the glaring lack of merit to the lawsuit, CBS settled it out of court in early July 2025 by agreeing to pay Trump $16 million for use in his future presidential library. The executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, resigned in April 2025, citing a loss of editorial independence. Wendy McMahon, the president of CBS News, subsequently announced that she, too, was leaving the network: “It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on a path forward.” It was a shockingly bad decision by CBS. Why reward a meritless lawsuit with a huge payout of cash? They had a moral and legal duty to fight the case in court. In May 2025, Senator Bernie Sanders admonished CBS to change course: “Enough is enough. Do not capitulate to Trump’s attack on a free press. Do not settle Trump’s bogus lawsuit against ’60 Minutes.’”

Corporate Capitulation and Implicit Extortion
Yielding set a terrible precedent for the ongoing attack on free speech and freedom of the press in America. Most observers attribute CBS’ capitulation to an extraneous consideration. The parent company of CBS, Paramount, was in merger talks with another company—Skydance, which has a Trump supporter at its helm. The fear was that Trump would block that merger (through his appointee at the helm of the Federal Communications Commission) if CBS didn’t capitulate. Even if that threat was unspoken, implicit, and only anticipatory, it amounts to extortion. Yet, Paramount/CBS succumbed to it and paid fief to the self-styled overlord in the form of millions of dollars. Television satirist Stephen Colbert mocked their self-interested and craven payout to Trump as “a big fat bribe.” Soon thereafter, CBS announced that his successful show, “Late Night” is being canceled, effective next spring. Coincidence, or punishment?

Weaponization of the Justice Department
On July 15, 2025, the PBS Frontline documentary “Trump’s Power and the Rule of Law” had this to say about the grotesquely improper efforts by Trump & Co. to politicize law enforcement and criminal prosecutions in America: “The truism that he’s treating the Justice Department as a personal law firm is almost literally true in the second term… where he has filled its upper ranks with people who previously had been his personal lawyers. Defense lawyers for him have abruptly gone from trying to counter federal prosecutors and FBI agents to being the bosses of those people and being the instruments of his revenge against that institution.” On March 14, 2025 Trump held the equivalent of a campaign rally before a captive audience at the Department of Justice, launching into a hateful diatribe against those on his personal enemies list (including those who had quite correctly investigated and prosecuted his all-too-evident criminality) and promising vengeance: “Our predecessors turned this Department of Justice into the Department of Injustice. But I stand before you today to declare that those days are over, and they are never going to come back and never coming back… So now, as the chief law enforcement officer in our country, I will insist upon and demand full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses [against me] that have occurred.”

Trump attacked the “corrupt group of hacks and radicals [who] weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies [against me]… the same scum that you have been dealing with for years… guys like…” Trump then defamatorily named names, falsely accusing specific federal prosecutors of being out to get him. About one he said: “His sole life has been to get Donald Trump. And he’s been vicious and violent.” Against those at the DOJ and FBI who incurred his disfavor more generally (many of whom he’d already wrongfully dismissed upon his return to the presidency), Trump ranted, “They’re not legitimate people… They’re horrible people; they’re scum.” Besides being a textbook case of ‘deflection’ (falsely accusing others of his own manifold transgressions), Trump’s words and actions were a gross abuse of power, what retired appeals court judge Michael Luttig (a conservative, who’d been appointed by Reagan) rightly decried as “reprehensible.” But Trump’s legal adviser Mike Davis later doubled down on behalf of his boss with this threat, “I want these Democrat prosecutors and [FBI] agents and judges and other operatives to understand there are still going to be severe legal, political, and financial consequences.” That’s the hateful authoritarian language of purge and revenge used by tyrants, not by free people in a democracy. Judge Luttig cautions that, “I was shocked beyond words, even after all we’ve seen from this president in the past eight years, to see him actually stand in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice, a sacred place in America, and claim that now he was going to get even by politicizing and weaponizing the Department of Justice and the FBI against his political enemies… [It] was a travesty in all of American history.” Travesty it certainly was, but it followed hard on the heels of Trump’s sycophant of an Attorney General, Pam Bondi, introducing her boss as “the greatest president in the history of our country.”

The Boomerang Effect: Conspiracy Theories Come Home
Let’s call it the boomerang effect: For years Trump and his true believers in the MAGA crowd have delighted in promoting one far-fetched conspiracy theory after another. (Remember the long-sustained and seditious Big Lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” and earlier unfounded accusations that Barack Obama was not a natural-born American?) What better way to defame individuals or whole classes of ‘the other’ (be they Democrats, migrants, journalists, scientists, civil servants, or the fictional “Deep State”) than to tar them with the brush of some unfounded clandestine plot or supposed illicit activity? One of those conspiracy theories came home to bite Trump in July 2025. He and his people have long insinuated that people they didn’t like were somehow implicated in the criminality of the serial sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein (who died, ostensibly by his own hand, in custody in 2019). The absence of evidence didn’t impede their dark accusations. Conspiracy devotees tend to have an over-abundance of credulity, a fact that cynical manipulators like Trump use to their full advantage. Trouble is: talking up a storm about a sex trafficker’s presumed protected circle of rich and powerful fellow predators can backfire when it transpires that your own name is among those linked to him in confidential papers—and when your own high officials are suddenly the ones balking at releasing those documents for public scrutiny. As Jeffrey Goldberg said on PBS’s “Washington Week,” “A president who rose to prominence promoting conspiracy theories now confronts a conspiracy theory about himself.” Trump had always brushed aside the known fact that he’d been friendly with Epstein, downplaying the fact that there were chummy photographs of them together, that Epstein had visited at Trump’s residence in Florida, that Trump was on the passenger manifest of Epstein’s private jet, and that Epstein had been an invited guest at one of Trump’s weddings. It was a lot less easy to brush aside the revelation by The Wall Street Journal in July 2025 that Trump had allegedly written a sexually suggestive letter which hinted at transgressive mutual secrets for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003. The sudden about-face by Trump’s hand-picked A.G., deciding not to release the much ballyhooed confidential “Epstein papers” after all, was likewise a red flag for some of Trump’s true believers. To put it in the vernacular, they smelled a rat. Some of the MAGA devotees started asking if Trump & Co. weren’t suddenly hiding their own illegalities and moral transgressions exactly as they always accused others of doing.

Violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause
In May 2025, Trump ignored the Constitution’s express prohibition on accepting gifts from foreign states. The “Foreign Emoluments Clause” is found in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution (an emolument is any form of compensation or advantage). It stipulates that “no person holding any office [including the president]… shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept… any present, emolument, office, or title of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.” The purpose of that explicit injunction was to prevent a conflict of interest. Well, how much influence does a luxury jet, described by the ever boastful, always crassly sybaritic Trump as a “palace in the sky,” valued at $300 million (U.S.) buy you when you’re a small undemocratic oil state on the Persian Gulf? As ABC News reported: “The Trump administration is preparing to accept a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar—a gift that is to be available for use by President Donald Trump as the new Air Force One until shortly before he leaves office, at which time ownership of the plane will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation…” Accepting that gift and the influence peddling it inevitably represents (some critics have called it an outright bribe) is an unlawful flaunting of the Constitution’s limits on presidential power.

Theft, Self-Dealing, and Upward Redistribution of Wealth
Katrina vanden Heuvel, publisher of The Nation magazine wrote in early June 2025 that “The level of theft and self-dealing taking place in Washington is unprecedented. From a gift-filled trip through the Middle East, to pardons tied to attendance at a $1 million per ticket Mar-a-Lago dinner, and a crypto gala meant to pump up the value of his own ‘meme-coin,’ the scale and shamelessness of Trump’s grifting is staggering. As you read this, the administration is pushing to entrench crypto corruption in law through the so-called ‘GENIUS Act,’ while Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ budget legislation makes its way through the Senate. Hiding behind these imbecilic names are pieces of legislation that will have grave consequences for working people across the country, targeting their pensions, Social Security, and food stamp eligibility.” She calls it “the single largest upward redistribution of wealth effectuated by any piece of legislation in our history.” While the very few are profiting, the many are paying for it.

Undermining the Separation of Powers
Trump & Co. are actively undermining the constitutional separation of powers between three co-equal branches of government. They’ve shown open and egregious contempt of court, ignoring court orders to turn deportation flights around, with Trump personally showing open disrespect and using threatening language that’s apt to incite violence against the specific judges he attacks by name. The Trumpists have dismantled or gravely hobbled government departments which were established and funded by Congress, actions which exceed executive branch powers.

Gutting Foreign Aid and USAID
One target was U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) which has been the U.S. government’s chief conduit of foreign aid since 1961, comprising such things as disaster relief, economic development, poverty reduction, environmental protection, and help with democratic reform: “USAID brought lifesaving medicines, food, clean water, assistance for farmers, kept women and girls safe, and promoted peace—all for less than one percent of [the U.S. federal budget].” The Trump administration all but shuttered the agency, without bothering to get the congressional approval required for such a measure. The result, according to Oxfam, is that “at least 23 million children stand to lose access to education, and as many as 95 million people [will] lose access to basic health care, potentially leading to more than 3 million preventable deaths per year.” Adding insult to injury, The Atlantic magazine reported on July 14, 2025, that 500 metric tons of emergency food (in the form of high-energy biscuits for children), which had already been purchased by USAID for $800,000 (U.S.) and which was in storage awaiting distribution to children in Afghanistan and Pakistan will instead be incinerated, incurring an additional (disposal) cost of $130,000 (U.S.). Shamefully, “the food marked for destruction could have met the nutritional needs of every child facing acute food insecurity in Gaza for a week.” There’s an altruistic element to delivering such aid to the world’s needy; but it also constitutes a “soft power” extension of American foreign policy, an economical way to win friends and influence people. On a similar note, CBC reported on July 31 that the U.S. government plans to destroy $10 million (U.S.) in USAID contraceptives which had been destined for sub-Saharan Africa. Several NGOs stepped forward to distribute them (at no cost to the U.S.), but the Trump administration prefers instead to spend $167,000 (U.S.) to incinerate them. Says aid administrator Sarah Snow: “It’s a completely political act,” not motivated by cost-cutting. “This is going to be life-changing for a whole generation of women and not in a good way.”

Defunding Public Media
Republicans in Congress slavishly followed Trump’s lead in July 2025 by cutting $9 billion (U.S.) in public media funding and foreign aid. That adversely affects PBS and National Public Radio (NPR), including their local news reporting and emergency alert services in rural areas. In reply, NPR cited a July 2025 Harris Poll that found “that 66% of Americans support federal funding for public radio, with the same share calling it a good value.”

Silencing Voice of America
On a related front, Trump’s senior adviser Kari Lake said she wanted to shut down “Voice of America,” claiming (without evidence, as is the Trump modus operandi) that it is ‘rife with ideological bias and waste.’ She nearly got her way: it was gutted, with only 81 employees left out of 1,300. VoA was an invaluable expression of soft power for the Free World. As one of its bureau chiefs said: “The idea that you can make staff this size fulfill our mandate to provide accurate, objective, and comprehensive news to a global audience, is absurd…it would be comical if it weren’t so tragic. My colleagues and I are not just losing our jobs and journalism, we are abandoning the 360 million people around the world who depend on us weekly for independent news and abdicating the United States’ voice and influence in the world.” An irreplaceable voice of freedom and truthful reporting in repressive places is being muted. How does that serve America’s interests? NPR reported that, “Since the founding of the Voice of America during the early days of American involvement in World War II, Congress has funded it as an exercise in soft power: by having credible news coverage of the war, the Voice of America was intended to both put the lie to enemy propaganda and advertise U.S. values of political pluralism and tolerance for debate and dissent. That philosophy was expanded to support its subsequent sister networks, which include Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.” With the King of Fake News currently at the nation’s helm, perhaps the voice of freedom no longer signifies.

Breaking Congressional Conventions
The gutting of foreign aid and public broadcasting to the tune of $9 billion (U.S.) in May 2025’s Rescissions Act was effected by a breach of a hitherto respected convention in Congress that requires a 60% majority vote (and therefore some cooperation by the other party) on budget matters (to avoid filibuster delays) rather than the mere 51% majority required for other decisions. Illegal, no. Shortsighted and unhelpful in maintaining any semblance of bipartisan cooperation, yes.

Further Abuses of Power
There’s more, much more. Trump punished former government officials who displeased him by removing their security clearances and, in some cases, their police protection when they credibly could be targets for violence by foreign or domestic malefactors. Trump fired the government’s inspectors-general, whose hitherto independent role had been to oversee and audit government agencies to detect (and proactively prevent) waste, fraud, and abuse and to report their findings to Congress.

The Tariff Lie
Trump repeatedly lies through his teeth to Americans about who pays for his tariffs: “Money is going to pour into the United States like we’ve never seen.” Maybe he thinks if he repeats the same inane bunkum enough times people will believe him. And maybe some of them will. But he’s repeating a bald-faced lie. A tariff is a tax paid by consumers in the country (the U.S.) which imposes the tariff. It is a consumption tax paid by American consumers when they buy goods imported from abroad. American consumers pay the tariff. But because the cost of imported goods goes up because of the tariff-tax, those same consumers may balk at buying them. If that happens, the resulting decrease in exports to the U.S. hurts the economies of other countries.