The 47th President and the Post-Biden World

During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said he was trying to educate other nations. “I’m trying to have people learn about wind real fast, and I think I’ve done a good job, but not good enough because some countries are still trying,” Mr. Trump said. He said countries were “destroying themselves” with wind energy and said, “I hope they get back to fossil fuels.”

The image of National Guard troops, some of them from as far away as Louisiana and Mississippi, in Washington, D.C., spreading mulch around the cherry trees at the Tidal Basin and picking up trash, illustrates that President Donald J. Trump’s insistence that he needed troops to crack down on violent crime in the nation’s capital was always a cover for an authoritarian takeover.

As Kate Riga and Emine Yücel noted in Talking Points Memo today, earlier this spring Trump and congressional Republicans did all they could to weaken Washington, D.C. In March, Congress passed a resolution to fund the government temporarily while also freezing all federal spending. That included the District of Columbia, whose budget has to be approved by Congress although the monies involved come from local taxes, not federal funds.

Because those budget monies are local and not federal, according to Campbell Robertson of the New York Times, the Washington, D.C., budget is routinely exempted from federal spending freezes. But the House did not carve it out this time, leaving the city with a shortfall of $1.1 billion. The Senate unanimously approved a bill to fix the error, letting the city continue to operate under its current budget, but the House never took it up. Washington, D.C., mayor Muriel Bowser and local officials found a workaround to restore some funding but have had to freeze hiring and cut contracts, grants, and expenditures across the city’s agencies.

Cuts to city services have made it easier for Trump and his loyalists to insist the city is being poorly taken care of, although violent crime is dropping there, not rising, and the Department of Justice’s own numbers show it is at a 30-year low. Now, with troops stationed in the city, Trump and his MAGA loyalists are demonstrating that they control the federal capital.

Today, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that the administration will also take over Union Station in Washington, D.C., from which Amtrak and the city’s commuter rail lines run, saying such a takeover was part of Trump’s “beautification” program.

Amtrak took control of the station in July 2024, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of the Biden era provided $22 billion to Amtrak to modernize trains and stations. The administration cut a $120 million federal grant to Amtrak in April. Taking control of Union Station will put the administration in charge of key transportation lines into and out of the city. It also will create a federal presence in an area where veterans have been protesting.

The freezing of D.C.’s budget is a different process from the dramatic cuts the Trump administration has made across the federal government, although the effects of the two are similar. As Tara Copp of the Washington Post noted today, custodial work like that being done by the National Guard troops normally would have been performed by National Park Service employees. But that service was already short staffed when the administration slashed through the federal workforce. The park service used to have 200 people assigned to the thousands of acres of gardens and trees in the capital. Now it has 20.

A park service official told Copp: “It’s everybody—the masons, the maintenance workers, the groundskeepers, the plumbers. Every shop is short.”

The Trump administration inherited decades of Republican rhetoric insisting the federal government was bloated and inefficient. It set out immediately to gut the civil service through hiring freezes, reductions in force, and impoundment of funds.

In an interview with Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times on Thursday, August 21, Office of Personnel Management director Scott Kupor said that by the end of December 2025 there will be 300,000 fewer federal workers than there were in January. Sullivan notes that this is the largest single-year reduction in civilian federal employment since World War II.

But even before these cuts, the federal workforce had not kept pace with the growth of the nation. The workforce when Trump took office in 2025 was about 2.4 million people, roughly the same number of government workers the nation had in 1969. As Bill Chappell of NPR reported in March, in 1969 the U.S. population was about 202.5 million. Now it is about 341.1 million.

The U.S. public workforce was about 14.9% of overall employment, significantly lower than our 37 peer nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, where public sector employment averages at 18.1%. In Canada, that number is 19.4%. Chappell also noted that an OECD report showed more than 90% of U.S. civil servants believed it was important for their work to serve the public good.

The old Republican argument for getting rid of civil servants was that private contractors would be more efficient, and so in place of civil servants, the U.S. has relied on private contractors since the 1990s. While the U.S. spent about $270 billion on federal workers’ salaries before the 2025 cuts, it spent $478 billion on government contractors. Public policy scholar Elizabeth Linos explained that even before the recent cuts, the U.S. had “something like three times as many [contractors] delivering the work of government” as it had civil servants.

The Trump administration’s drastic cuts were almost certainly designed to speed up the shift to private contractors. Under the direction of billionaire Elon Musk, the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) cut jobs willy-nilly, apparently under the impression that replacing people with AI contracts and consolidating databases would make civil servants redundant. But like the D.C. budget freeze, the cuts have weakened the nation and make it more susceptible to an authoritarian takeover.

Yesterday news broke that a whistleblower, identified as Social Security Administration chief data officer Charles Borges, claims that a former senior DOGE official put a copy of a key Social Security database on a server that was vulnerable to hacking. The DOGE employee copied the names, birthdays, and Social Security numbers of more than 300 million Americans to an unsecure cloud server accessible to other former DOGE employees.

Borges alleges that the copy “constitute[s] violations of laws, rules, and regulations, abuse of authority, gross mismanagement, and creation of a substantial and specific threat to public health and safety.” He also said that as of late June, there were no verified audit or oversight mechanisms in place to oversee where DOGE was sharing that data or what it was using the data for. The agency assessed that a breach of the database would be “catastrophic” for Social Security beneficiaries, making them susceptible to identity theft, the loss of health care and nutrition benefits, and so on.

Last week, as the Trump administration prepared to fire nearly 90% of the workforce of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, virtually all pending matters flagged by bank examiners were simply closed without action.

Layla A. Jones reported last week that while the administration insisted it was targeting “bias” at NPR and PBS when it defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the $1.1 billion in cuts means that the CPB can no longer provide public broadcasting stations with severe weather alerts. CPB administered the Next Generation Warning System in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to issue alerts and information over radio and television stations, many of which are in rural America, and can continue to operate when other systems fail.

Yesterday, 182 employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) wrote to Congress to warn that one third of FEMA’s full-time staff have separated from the agency this year, eroding institutional knowledge and relationships, even as FEMA employees have been reassigned to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The administration has cut funds for FEMA, has removed both public and internal information related to climate change, and has not appointed a qualified FEMA administrator as the law requires.

In this document, which they called the Katrina Declaration in memory of the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast almost exactly 20 years ago, they warned that the administration was making it impossible for FEMA to help Americans survive hurricanes, floods, fires, and other disasters. “FEMA’s mission to provide critical support [is being] obstructed by leadership who not only question the agency’s existence but place uninformed cost-cutting above serving the American people and the communities our oath compels us to serve.”

Thirty-six people signed their names to the document; 155 did not put their names down out of concern the administration would target them in retaliation for speaking out. They were right. All of those who used their names received emails Tuesday night saying they had been placed on administrative leave.

Tonight, Lena H. Sun, Dan Diamond, and Lauren Weber of the Washington Post reported a battle at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). When recently-confirmed director Susan Monarez refused to agree to change coronavirus vaccine guidelines without consulting advisors, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. urged her to resign. Monarez refused and called Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who was instrumental in securing Kennedy’s confirmation and who pushed back against him. Her involvement of the senator apparently infuriated Kennedy, and the department simply announced on social media that Monarez was no longer the CDC director.

Hours later, Monarez’s lawyers responded that she had neither resigned nor been fired, accused Kennedy of “weaponizing public health for political gain,” and said that his purge of health officials put “millions of American lives at risk.” “This is not about one official,” they wrote. “It is about the systematic dismantling of public health institutions, the silencing of experts, and the dangerous politicization of science. The attack on Dr. Monarez is a warning to every American: our evidence-based systems are being undermined from within.”

The White House then formally fired Monarez, saying she was “not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again.” The attacks on Monarez came as administration firings, budget cuts, and policies prompted the resignations this week of the CDC’s chief medical officer, the director of its infectious disease center, the head of its center for immunization and infectious diseases, and the director of the office of public health data. One described Monarez as “hamstrung and sidelined by an authoritarian leader.”

On August 20, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and former deputy secretary of state William Burns thanked America’s fired public servants for serving their country with honor and told them they deserved better than the “gleeful indignity” inflicted on them by this administration. The current process of cutting the government is “not about reform,” he wrote, but about “retribution. It is about breaking people and breaking institutions by sowing fear and mistrust throughout our government. It is about paralyzing public servants—making them apprehensive about what they say, how it might be interpreted, and who might report on them. It is about deterring anyone from daring to speak truth to power.”

Deploying National Guard soldiers away from their families and sending them to Washington, D.C., in the heat of August to respond to an “emergency” only to put them to work spreading mulch and picking up trash certainly seems to fit the idea of inflicting indignity to break the nobility of public service for the nation.

The firefighters at work combating a wildfire in the state of Washington likely also felt the indignity inflicted by the government today when ICE agents showed up and made them line up so the agents could check their IDs. The agents arrested two firefighters, and when the a member of the crew asked for the chance to say goodbye, the agents responded: “[Y]ou need to get the f*ck out of here. I’m going to make you leave.” One firefighter said: “You risked your life out here to save the community. This is how they treat us.”

In his resignation letter today, Director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Demetre Daskalakis set an example for those refusing to be cowed. “The recent shooting at CDC is not why I am resigning,” he wrote. “My grandfather, who I am named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life doing so. I am resigning to make him and his legacy proud.”

Speaking at a recent event in Austin, Texas, RFK Jr said he can spot unhealthy children from their appearance


Could someone just look at your kid and instantly tell if they’re “suffering” from an undiagnosed complicated condition? According to US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, apparently you can.

He recently claimed he can spot children with mitochondrial issues or developmental problems, simply by observing their appearance and behaviour. No tests, no lab reports, just his eagle eye.

“I’m looking at kids as I walk through the airports today... and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, inflammation... You can tell from their faces, movements, and lack of social connection I know that's not how our children are supposed to look,” he said in a recent interaction with the media during a public event in Austin, Texas.

.@SecKennedy: "I know what a healthy child is supposed to look like. I’m looking at kids as I walk through the airports today...and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges...and I know that’s not how our children are supposed to look." pic.twitter.com/b8A2OEphav
— CSPAN (@cspan) August 27, 2025

He linked this to conditions like autism and mitochondrial dysfunction, a group of rare disorders where the body’s cells do not produce enough energy. In simple terms, he suggested his eyes alone are enough to know if a child is unwell.

Can someone really ‘see’ if a child is unhealthy?

Doctors and scientists have raised concerns. Many health professionals on social media agree that while some illnesses may show visible signs, such as pale skin in anaemia or fatigue in chronic illness, one cannot diagnose complex conditions like autism or mitochondrial disease by appearance alone.

Experts also worry such statements could:

• Spread misinformation about how diseases are detected
• Increase stigma around children with developmental differences
• Distract parents from seeking evidence-based medical advice


What are autism and mitochondrial disorders?

According to Cleveland Clinic, an American nonprofit academic medical centre in Ohio, autism is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects communication and behaviour. It’s diagnosed through structured assessments, not a “quick look”.

Mitochondrial disorders, on the other hand, are rare genetic conditions where cells cannot produce enough energy. They need blood tests, genetic studies, and sometimes muscle biopsies for diagnosis.

Both conditions require medical expertise, testing, and time, not visual guesswork.

Earlier this year, RFK Jr told said that his department would release a report by September about the root causes of autism.

Misinformation shadows measles crisis

Texas recently faced a severe measles outbreak with more than 900 infections, mostly in children. Health officials declared the outbreak over only last week. During this time, RFK, a longtime vaccine sceptic, continued promoting misleading anti-vaccine claims despite rising infections.

“It used to be, when I was a kid, that everybody got measles. And the measles gave you lifetime protection against measles infection,” he told Fox News in March. “The vaccine doesn’t do that. The vaccine is effective for some people for life, but for many people it wanes.”

On Wednesday, Kennedy also hailed the end of Covid vaccine mandates after the US Food and Drug Administration approved updated shots but restricted their use.

Step back and take it in: the US is entering full authoritarian mode

Trump’s dictator-like behaviour is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. But now it’s time to call it what it is

f this were happening somewhere else – in Latin America, say – how might it be reported? Having secured his grip on the capital, the president is now set to send troops to several rebel-held cities, claiming he is wanted there to restore order. The move follows raids on the homes of leading dissidents and comes as armed men seen as loyal to the president, many of them masked, continue to pluck people off the streets …

Except this is happening in the United States of America and so we don’t quite talk about it that way. That’s not the only reason. It’s also because Donald Trump’s march towards authoritarianism is so steady, taking another step or two every day, that it’s easy to become inured to it: you can’t be in a state of shock permanently. And, besides, sober-minded people are wary of sounding hyperbolic or hysterical: their instinct is to play down rather than scream at the top of their voice.

There’s something else, too. Trump’s dictator-like behaviour is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. It’s like being woken in the night by a burglar wearing a striped shirt and carrying a bag marked “Swag”: we would assume it was a joke or a stunt or otherwise unreal, rather than a genuine danger. So it is with Trump. We cannot quite believe what we are seeing.

But here is what we are seeing. Trump has deployed the national guard on the streets of Washington DC, so that there are now 2,000 troops, heavily armed, patrolling the capital. The pretext is fighting crime, but violent crime in DC was at a 30-year low when he made his move. The president has warned that Chicago will be next, perhaps Baltimore too. In June he sent the national guard and the marines into Los Angeles to put down protests against his immigration policies, protests which the administration said amounted to an “insurrection”. Demonstrators were complaining about the masked men of Ice, the immigration agency that, thanks to Trump, now has a budget to match that of the world’s largest armies, snatching people from street corners or hauling them from their cars.

Those cities are all run by Democrats and, not coincidentally, have large Black populations. They are potential centres of opposition to Trump’s rule and he wants them under his control. The constitution’s insistence that states have powers of their own and that the reach of the federal government should be limited – a principle that until recently was sacred to Republicans – can go hang.

Control is the goal, amassing power in the hands of the president and removing or neutering any institution or person that could stand in his way. That is the guiding logic that explains Trump’s every action, large and small, including his wars on the media, the courts, the universities and the civil servants of the federal government. It helps explain why FBI agents last week mounted a 7am raid on the home and office of John Bolton, once Trump’s national security adviser and now one of his most vocal critics. And why the president hinted darkly that the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie is in his sights.

It’s why he has broken all convention, and possibly US law, by attempting to remove Lisa Cook as a member of the board of the Federal Reserve on unproven charges of mortgage fraud. Those charges are based on information helpfully supplied by the Trump loyalist installed as federal housing director and who, according to the New York Times, has repeatedly leveraged “the powers of his office … to investigate or attack Mr Trump’s most recognisable political enemies”. The pattern is clear: Trump is using the institutions of government to hound his foes in a manner that recalls the worst of Richard Nixon – though where Nixon skulked in the shadows, Trump’s abuses are in plain sight.

And all in the pursuit of ever more power. Take the firing of Cook. With falling poll numbers, especially on his handling of the economy, he craves the sugar rush of an interest rate cut. The independent central bank won’t give it to him, so he wants to push the Fed out of the way and grab the power to set interest rates himself. Note the justification offered by JD Vance this week, that Trump is “much better able to make those determinations” than “unelected bureaucrats” because he embodies the will of the people. The reasoning is pure authoritarianism, arguing that a core principle of the US constitution, the separation of powers, should be swept aside, because all legitimate authority resides in one man alone.

Of course, the greatest check on Trump would come from the opposition winning power in a democratic election, specifically Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives in November 2026. Trump is working hard to make that impossible: witness this month’s unabashed gerrymander in Texas, where at Trump’s command, Republicans redrew congressional boundaries to give themselves five more safe seats in the House. Trump wants more states to follow Texas’s lead, because a Democratic-controlled House would have powers of scrutiny that he rightly fears.

Meanwhile, apparently prompted by his meeting with Vladimir Putin, he is once again at war against postal voting, baselessly decrying it as fraudulent, while also demanding a new census that would exclude undocumented migrants – moves that will either help Republicans win in 2026 or else enable him to argue that a Democratic victory was illegitimate and should be overturned.

In that same spirit, the Trump White House now argues that, in effect, only one party should be allowed to exercise power in the US. How else to read the words of key Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who this week told Fox News that “The Democrat party is not a political party; it is a domestic extremist organisation.”

It’s the same picture on every front, whether it’s plans for a new military parade in Trump’s honour or the firing of health officials who insist on putting science ahead of political loyalty. He is bent on amassing power to himself and being seen to amass power to himself, even if that means departing from economic conservative orthodoxy to have the federal government take a stake in hitherto private companies. He wants to rule over every aspect of US life. As Trump himself said this week, “A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator.’” The former Obama adviser David Axelrod is not alone when he says, “We have gone from zero to Hungary faster than I ever imagined.”

The trouble is, people still don’t talk about it the way they talk about Hungary, not inside the US and not outside it. That’s partly the It Can’t Happen Here mindset, partly a reluctance to accept a reality that would require, of foreign governments especially, a rethink of almost everything. If the US is on its way to autocracy, in a condition scholars might call “unconsolidated authoritarianism”, then that changes Britain’s entire strategic position, its place in the world, which for 80 years has been predicated on the notion of a west led by a stable, democratic US. The same goes for the EU. Far easier to carry on, either pretending that the transformation of the US is not, in fact, as severe as it is, or that normal service will resume shortly. But the world’s leaders, like US citizens, cannot ignore the evidence indefinitely. To adapt the title of that long-ago novel, it can happen here – and it is.