Trump’s second term is going well. He is accomplishing a lot, getting his appointees placed in key positions, and maintaining public support. The entire administration is completely focused and disciplined, which is a marked contrast to his first term.
Until now, the opposition was lethargic and disoriented, unsure of how to proceed after Trump’s big election win. This ennui persisted until last week, but we now see the first embers of serious resistance, chiefly from the courts.
Lone district court federal judges are making a mockery of the separation of powers by imposing nationwide injunctions against core executive powers, such as assigning personnel, publishing websites, and reviewing spending. If any judge can unilaterally undo any policy he doesn’t like for the flimsiest of reasons, we do not have either self-government or a constitution.
This will have to be resolved soon, and playing whack-a-mole by appealing these lawless decisions one at a time is probably not the best way. I confess, I do not know what the answer is, since most judicial restraint resides in the putatively high character of judges, but we should be creative and consider statutory limits on federal district court jurisdiction over such matters at the very least, as well as impeachment.
Ineffective Protests To Keep The Gravy Train Flowing
Defenders of the status quo are also beginning the maudlin appeal to everyone’s heartstrings. We have seen the first stirrings of real protests to defend USAID funding, but this is not a compelling cause to the broader public.
Foreign aid has always been unpopular, and many people are appalled by the scale of waste, fraud, and abuse revealed under the USAID umbrella. In other words, ordinary people do not see value in 100X their annual salary going to disinformation research in the Dominican Republic or LGBTQ operas in Colombia.
This arrangement is one reason why Washington, DC, has never had a recession: everyone, inside and outside of government, is on the gravy train in some way. Connected insiders are better at taking the money than anyone in the political branches has been at policing it. This is why the spending among these so-called non-profit institutions is so out of control. By way of example, the head of the federally-funded Kennedy Center was making $1.5 million.
Other examples abound. A typical government-funded charity no one has heard of is the Vera Institute, which aims to “transform the criminal, legal, and immigration system so that money doesn’t determine freedom; few people are incarcerated; and everyone behind bars is treated with dignity.” In other words, this operation promotes soft-on-crime leftism using Department of Justice grants in order to undermine federal enforcement efforts, and both sides of the equation are funded by taxpayers.
The head of the organization, Nicholas Turner, is paid $550,000 a year for running this racket, up from an already-excessive $396,000 a few years ago. His subordinates are also making $200-300K, and this scene is repeated among hundreds of similar “charities.” The fiction behind these inflated salaries is that somehow no one could competently run these institutions for, say, $150,000 a year. Ridiculous.
There is a reason cuts to USAID have led to the first significant resistance to Trump’s agenda, and it has nothing to do with a concern for downtrodden foreigners; rather, the lives and lifestyles of the managerial class are on the line. A huge army of well-heeled people, and their prestige, self-image, and credit scores are in jeopardy.
Their wealth consists of ill-gotten gains, taken from taxpayers at gunpoint, and they either lack marketable skills or do not want to work as hard and tediously as one must in the for-profit, private sector.
The Opposition Must Know They Are Beaten
In order to succeed in “draining the swamp,” it is not enough merely to win a temporary victory and indulge in the usual DC switcharoo. This is the practice whereby top-level people go from having prestige positions in government to killing time at a think tank, nonprofit, or educational institution until their party is back in power. This revolving door facilitates the exclusion of outsiders and creates a common sensibility among the “blob.”
The various people and institutions that depend on this corruption must be uprooted and dispersed, lest they rebuild the old system. Cutting off the money is an important and impactful first step.
Trump and his lieutenants understand that there is more to this fight than money. If this were only about a few people losing their jobs, the media and donor class would make them all martyrs and find them other employment. Reducing the status of the highly-paid professionals in the nonprofit sector requires these institutions to be shut down, for the most egregious frauds to go to prison, and for most of the remaining highly-paid officers to get less remunerative, much less glamorous jobs in the private sector.
While this takes place, why not limit the pay of any officers and staff of nonprofits receiving government funding, including universities? If government workers have to survive on a GS schedule—hardly a pittance—why not also those engaged in the “public service” of the nonprofit sector?
Trump is winning on this issue because most Americans get no benefit from any of these institutions and also pay a small fortune in taxes. They have nothing at stake in letting this continue and are resentful to learn that people who hate them are getting rich pretending to be caretakers of the poor and the downtrodden.
Is destroying an entire sector of the economy harsh? Yes, it is. But we should remember who these people are and what it is they do. These are not productive enterprises, and their officers are hostile to middle America, the private sector, and the U.S. Constitution. Without any pretext of revenge, they already demonstrated no restraint during Trump’s first term and sabotaged much of what he tried to do.
None of these people stood up as the FBI sent SWAT teams to kick in doors and arrest grandmas who walked through the Capitol on January 6. Few demonstrated any magnanimity towards the hundreds of thousands of soldiers, firemen, cops, teachers, and others who lost their jobs because they defied COVID vaccine mandates.
If the MAGA agenda means anything, it means no one can undermine our civilization at our collective expense. What has taken place is worse than waste. It is as if we paid a team of arsonists to light fires in the middle of a conflagration.
The Distribution of Public Honor and Public Shame Must Be Reversed
One way the left succeeded in recent years was by convincing many people that their institutional power was so great and their causes so inevitable that opposing these things was a path to penury and pariah status. People in corporate America and the government either got with the program and donned their rainbow flag pins or were compelled to keep a low profile and do nothing to resist the relentless assault on what was normal five minutes ago.
The apparent unanimity among high-level leaders and other arbiters of culture had the effect of codifying new, revolutionary norms. High pay and political influence from the nonprofit sector reinforced the status hierarchy concocted by the left. But voters rejected their ongoing humiliation when they elected Trump a second time. And these institutions’ status is quickly being undermined by their failure to move public opinion during the last election and because of public scrutiny of their murky finances.
This is a good thing, and we should not retreat until the job is done. It is a false and unproductive moral and political strategy that counsels pulling punches in the middle of the fight. One must win first and win completely before any such clemency can take place. This only happens when opponents admit their defeat.
Consider as an analogy the different postwar outcomes in Germany and Japan in 1945 versus Iraq in 2003. The former were thoroughly beaten, army and civilian society alike. The destruction had fully exhausted the populations of each of the Axis powers, discredited the old regimes, and also demonstrated the power of the conquerors. They became model liberal democracies, and neither produced any significant post-defeat resistance.
By contrast, Iraq’s conventional defeat in the 2003 invasion was so surgical and swift that most of the enemy just dissipated, going home in civilian clothes and bringing their guns and explosives with them. The chaos of the early occupation revealed an American military force that was too small and ill-prepared for occupation duty. Criminal gangs engaged in widespread looting. Saddam’s ability to evade capture for many months inspired the revanchist dreams of the Iraqi resistance. These factors combined to create a sense of a not-quite-complete victory, fueling the chaotic violence and extended insurgency of post-invasion Iraq.
National politics are not the same as war, of course, but many of the same principles apply. American politics since Obama’s presidency has been more than a family fight among people with common values and a shared understanding of our identity. It has, instead, been a heightened culture war, along with a whiff of “color revolution” in recent years.
There’s a reason the left invented new holidays and toppled old statues in 2020. During the last 10 years, we have endured an elite-directed campaign against the American past and the heritage people of America. The left fully understands—and we should also understand—that Trump’s presidency is a counterrevolutionary rejection of this campaign.
Judges, generals, and senior bureaucrats showed that they were willing to undermine every norm of self-government and legality to thwart the popular will during Trump’s first term. What he was able to accomplish despite these conditions was quickly undone after Biden was installed as president.
This all happened because the people, money, and parallel institutions that enabled the resistance were never uprooted until now.
What Comes Next?
As this infrastructure is uprooted, there will be a lot of wailing, whining, and gnashing of teeth. There will likely be some violence and sabotage too, particularly if the left’s usual tricks do not yield results. This must be a thorough process, akin to the denazification of Germany after World War II.
As in that precedent, the offenders must be removed from power and barred from taking it again. Their sources of wealth must dry up, and the campaign must extend, to the extent possible, to the refuge and support they receive from the media and the universities. In other words, the program of counterrevolution must be as far-reaching and comprehensive as what preceded it.
I am optimistic. Everything so far suggests things are moving in the right direction. But this work must continue, and the administration must remain firm in the face of calls for restraint and forbearance. Remember the parable of the scorpion and the frog.
On a personal note, I will be taking a break and writing less frequently in the months ahead. I have written a column nearly every week since I began writing at American Greatness in 2017. I am not out of things to say, but I do admit that, as a curmudgeon, I find it easier to find inspiration in expressing my contempt for the enemy and its antics. I am now in the strangely refreshing position of basking in all the good news and clear-thinking at the top.
I am confident that withdrawing my very modest service in support of reactionary conservatism will not harm the momentum of the Trump administration or the good spirits of my readers.
I appreciate every one of my readers who have taken the time to read this column, consider my thoughts, occasionally write a kind note, and also sometimes criticize my remarks intelligently and respectfully. In the meantime, I invite everyone to continue to volunteer, donate, write, and pray to support the successful recapture of our country’s political and cultural institutions.
***
Christopher Roach is an adjunct fellow of the Center for American Greatness and an attorney in private practice based in Florida. He is a double graduate of the University of Chicago and has previously been published by The Federalist, Takimag, Chronicles, the Washington Legal Foundation, the Marine Corps Gazette, and the Orlando Sentinel. The views presented are solely his own.
Everyone appreciates your commentary and I also understand that life gives all of us a limited amount of time to do some, and not all of the things, we want to do. I will say that you may want to hesitate, and heed your own advice that now is the time to double down and finish the job “and not retreat until the job is done”. If what you did was not so good I would not have said that.
There are a lot of Constitutional issues that need to be corrected and settled and especially those that pertain to the Judiciary being permitted to exercise power over the other two branches it was never intended to be given. The Court, in a slight of hand maneuver, bootstrapped itself with the Marbury v. Madison Decision. The Court’s role, when it came to the other government branches, in my opinion, was meant to be advisory and certainly it could never have been imagined that district courts, that were not even mentioned in the Constitution, except by inference, would be given power to effectively hamstring the Chief Executive, the President, who is not only mentioned in the Constitution but was, as a single member, with no other members to assist him, considered capable to fulfill the requirement needed to create an Executive Branch and represents the very raison d’être as to why it was created with him in mind. He does not absolutely require a cabinet to function and only when he elects to have such members does any legislative “advise and consent” come into play from the Legislative branch. I see no reference to the Judiciary in that regards and I see no reference to the Judiciary being permitted to exercise power over the other branches and, by doing so, making itself, not separate and equal, as intended, but more powerful. Jefferson and the Framer’s would never have ratified any such contract and Jefferson, fearful of courts, would likely have eliminated or marginalized the SCOTUS, in the original construct, had he envisioned anything like what Democrats are doing today with judges they appoint to do their bidding. In fact it is the President, with advise and consent from the legislature that appoints SCOTUS justices and, without such advise and consent, appoints other Federal judges. It is impossible to believe, from a Madisonian or Jefferson perspective, that such appointments would be made with the understanding that the appointees could make decisions that might contradict and supersede the powers reserved for the President who appointed them.
There is no doubt that Congress will, at times, legislate unconstitutional laws and that Presidents will exercise powers unrelated to legislated law or fail to faithfully exercise what is legislated but even then who can say that the SCOTUS, let alone district judges, that gave us the most glaring examples of unconstitutionality, will get things right? Decisions such as Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Korematsu v. United States and Roe v. Wade testify that the Judiciary has historically demonstrated to be, itself, the most likely branch of doing deep and lasting harm. We need the SCOTUS and other courts but when it comes to their decisions regarding the other branches of government, once again, in my opinion, they were designed by very intelligent men, thinking about the SCOTUS’s role for a long time, to be only advisors whose opinions were to be taken seriously but never to replace the Chief Executive’s decisions or the Law as legislated. Dittos for the not even mentioned Federal District courts. Mistakes are what the voters correct or their representatives via the Impeachment Clause. And even then, sometimes, they just might not get it right. The American Republic was designed so that its preservation is ultimately left up to the citizenry. It is they who are required to become educated and involved to protect and preserve the choice their predecessors once made to govern themselves and to provide the same for their posterity.
Mr. Roach, we will stil look forward to your articles even though they will now be less frequent. And I think with the battles ahead, you may be surprised to find more than sufficient substance for your always thoughful and interesting articles.
Unfortunately, the authority to rein in the power of the lesser Federal courts lies with Congress. See U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 1, first sentence. There are not enough pro-Trump people in Congress, yet, to get a new definition of lower court authorities on the books.
Oh, I think a definitive ruling from SCOTUS that district and circuit courts CANNOT issue national injunctions might do the trick.
“This must be a thorough process, akin to the denazification of Germany after World War II.”
My concern is that some Trump voters might not want to believe that the 2020 election was a coup against the country and that the forces behind it are as determined as ever to control them. But more horrifying revelations of waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money are in store, and they could soon make believers of them. If a shortfall of voter belief persists in this regard, it will be more than made up for by Trump controlling his own DOJ and the FBI this time.