The 47th President and the Post-Biden World

Today the social media account of President Donald J. Trump posted an AI-generated image of Trump as if he were Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore from the 1979 film Apocalypse Now in front of the Chicago skyline with military helicopters and flames and the caption “Chipocalypse Now.” Kilgore loved the war in Vietnam in which he was engaged; his most famous line was “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

Over the image, Trump’s social media post read: “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” The words were followed by three helicopter emojis, symbols the right wing uses to represent former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s goons’ disappearing political opponents by pushing them out of helicopters.

Although it has become trite to speculate about what Republicans would say if a Democratic president engaged in the behavior Trump exhibits daily, this open attack of the president on an American city is a new level of unhinged. Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo wrote: “The president of the United States just declared war, actual military war, not a metaphorical one, on a major American city, and one governed by his political opponents.” He added, accurately: “In any other period, this would be impeachment-worthy.”

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker called attention to the gravity of Trump’s post: “The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.” Under the words “Know your rights, Illinois,” and “Stay safe and stay informed,” the governor’s social media account posted information about Americans’ rights in both English and Spanish.

Trump’s threats against American citizens are outrageous, but they also feel desperate. Trump’s popularity is tanking, the economy is faltering, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing a chorus of calls to resign or be fired, and the American people are taking to the streets. Thousands of people turned out today in Washington, D.C., for the “We Are All D.C.” march to protest the presence of troops in the city, and in Chicago for the “Chicago Says No Trump No Troops” protest. The protests are notable for the seas of signs the peaceful protesters carry.

And then, with Congress back in session, there is the resurgence of the issue of Trump’s appearance in the Epstein files. Last week, the White House warned Republicans that voting to release the Epstein files “would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration.” Yesterday, Trump reiterated his claim that the agitation for the release of the files is a “Democrat HOAX…in order to deflect and distract from the great success of a Republican President.”

Also yesterday, lawyers for the Justice Department asked a federal judge to keep the names of two associates who received large payments from Epstein in 2018 secret. Days before the payments, the Miami Herald had started to examine the sweetheart deal Epstein got in 2008. One associate received a payment of $100,000, and the second received $250,000. As part of his plea deal, Tom Winter of NBC News reports, Epstein got a guarantee that the associates would not be prosecuted.

Last night, Trump hosted the inaugural dinner of what the White House is calling the “Rose Garden Club” in the newly-paved White House Rose Garden, telling those assembled that they were there because they are loyal to the president. “You’re the ones that I never had to call at 4:00 in the morning,” Trump told them. “You are the ones that have been my friends, and you know what I’m talking about.”

Yesterday, talking to reporters about the Epstein files, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said that Trump was “an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down.” The idea that Trump was secretly working to bring Epstein down is common fare among conspiracy theorists, but as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo suggests, Johnson’s embrace of it might well be an attempt to spin material in the files before it becomes public.

Marshall notes that journalist Michael Wolff, who interviewed Epstein at length during Trump’s first presidency, says that Epstein suspected it was Trump who told the authorities about his systemic sexual assault of girls. But if so, Marshall explains, this is damning rather than exonerating.

It’s pretty well known that Trump and Epstein had a falling out in 2004 after Trump went behind Epstein’s back to buy an estate in South Florida that Epstein wanted. But at the time, Trump was headed toward bankruptcy, and it was not clear where he was getting the money to buy the estate.

Marshall calls attention to a recent interview in which Wolff said that Epstein suspected Trump was laundering money for a Russian oligarch—and indeed, Trump did flip the property to a Russian oligarch for a profit of more than $50 million a few years after buying it—and threatened to sue Trump, bringing the money laundering to light. At that point, the Epstein investigation began.

According to Wolff, Epstein believed Trump had notified the police about what was going on at Epstein’s house, which he knew because he was a frequent visitor. Marshall speculates that Johnson mentioned that Trump was an informant because that information could well be in the files the Department of Justice has, and they’re trying to spin it ahead of time to make it sound like Trump was a hero.

But both Wolff and Marshall note that if indeed Trump turned the FBI onto Epstein, it shows he knew what was taking place at Epstein’s properties.

Johnson’s claim that Trump was an FBI informant suggests Trump’s team is worried that as more and more people get access to the files, it will be increasingly difficult to hide what’s in them. Trump's demand for Republicans’ loyalty suggests that at least some of them are starting to recalculate it. And that, in turn, might have something to do with why he is putting troops in the streets.

Signs bearing President Trump’s name have gone up at major construction projects financed by the 2021 law, which he strenuously opposed ahead of its passage.

In southern Connecticut, the federal government is replacing a 118-year-old bridge along America’s busiest rail corridor. The $1.3 billion project was largely funded by the 2021 infrastructure law that was championed by then-President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — and strenuously opposed by Donald J. Trump.

These days, however, motorists cruising by the construction site might be forgiven for thinking that a certain famous New York developer was responsible for it all.

“PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP” a sign by the road declares. “REBUILDING AMERICA’S INFRASTRUCTURE.”

In recent months, a number of similar signs have popped up in front of major infrastructure projects financed by the bipartisan 2021 legislation, a $1.2 trillion package that Mr. Trump, who left office in January of that year, had passionately railed against. He called the bill “a loser for the U.S.A.,” and warned that Republican lawmakers who signed on could be thrown out of office by angry primary voters. “Patriots will never forget!” he wrote.

The signs bearing Mr. Trump’s name now adorn bridge projects in Connecticut and Maryland; rail-yard improvement projects in Seattle, Boston and Philadelphia; and the replacement of a tunnel on Amtrak’s route between Baltimore and Washington, according to W. Kyle Anderson, a spokesman for the company.

In an email, Mr. Anderson said the new signs “are a voluntary Amtrak initiative, updating outdated signage posted at the project locations listed previously, following the change in presidential administrations earlier this year.”

The signs note, in a smaller font, that the projects in question are “funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act,” the official name of the legislation that Mr. Trump tried to derail.

Still, the signs, in bold MAGA red, strike some as misleading.

Representative Joe Courtney, a Connecticut Democrat who represents the area where the Connecticut River Bridge is being replaced, said seeing the sign with Mr. Trump’s name there “is just, you know, very odd to me.”

He added: “That bridge would never have gotten where it is today without that bill, which he opposed.”

It is hardly unheard of for a new administration to replace signage featuring the name of the previous president. But the 2021 infrastructure law has uncorked particularly intense debates over the granting of credit, perhaps inevitable given the size of a spending package that was roughly the size of the gross domestic product of the Netherlands.

Last year, in the midst of election season, Politico compiled a list of a number of House Republicans who voted against the bill but went on to take credit for bringing projects funded by the legislation to their districts. Representative Nancy Mace, who is currently running for governor in her home state of South Carolina, called the bill a “socialist wish list,” but did not protest the millions of dollars it allocated to public transit upgrades in the Charleston area.

“What do you want me to do, turn my back on the Lowcountry when we get funding for public transit?” she said, when asked about the apparent contradiction, according to a local newspaper.

A number of infrastructure projects formerly featured signs name-checking Mr. Biden, said Mr. Anderson, the Amtrak spokesman. (“Project funded by President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure law,” some of them stated). Those, too, drew backlash.

In June 2024, Senator Ted Cruz complained about them to the Office of Special Counsel, arguing that they amounted to campaign signs for Mr. Biden, and thus violated the Hatch Act, which limits federal employees’ political activities.

“These displays are nothing more than campaign yard signs courtesy of the American taxpayer,” Mr. Cruz wrote at the time.

The special counsel’s office investigated the matter, disagreed with Mr. Cruz and closed the case.

This week, Mr. Cruz’s office did not respond to an email asking whether the Trump signs might also violate the Hatch Act.

Infrastructure questions are sensitive for Mr. Trump, who ran for president in 2016 reminding voters that he was one of the nation’s great master builders, promising an infrastructure rebuilding program to rival the New Deal era. But he never quite pulled it off. In fact, his administration’s repeated efforts to hold an “Infrastructure Week” became a running joke during his tumultuous first term.

In April, three months after Mr. Trump began his second term, the Federal Railroad Administration stripped language from its grant agreements that had required signs about projects made possible by the 2021 legislation to say they were “funded by President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.”

The Connecticut Department of Transportation took this as a signal to remove signs with Mr. Biden’s name, said Josh Morgan, a department spokesman.

The replacement of the Connecticut River Bridge, which connects the towns of Old Lyme and Old Saybrook, is expected to generate up to 300 jobs. According to Mr. Courtney, the existing bridge was found to be structurally deficient in 2006. Trains must now slow down to 45 miles per hour to cross, he said. They will be able to cross the new bridge, he said, at 70 miles per hour.

At the dawn of the second Trump administration, Amtrak had good reason to worry about its future. In March, when Elon Musk was deeply involved in slashing federal government programs, the billionaire said that the company was “embarrassing” and should be privatized.

Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat whose Seattle district includes a rail-yard project festooned with some of the signs, speculated that Amtrak might be posting them to remain in Mr. Trump’s good graces. “Look, I think that what we’re seeing is Trump is demanding loyalty from every single government agency,” she said.

Whether or not that is the case, Amtrak appears to be on a more secure footing in the early months of the Trump administration.

Sean Jeans-Gail, vice president of policy for the Rail Passengers Association, an advocacy group that seeks to improve passenger rail service, said that after the scare of Mr. Musk’s call for privatization, the administration ended up releasing a presidential budget for passenger rail that is “very measured” and “allows Amtrak to keep running the trains and make some key investments.”

Asked about the signs, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Transportation said in a statement that Amtrak was recognizing the Trump administration’s “swift action” in clearing a backlog of roughly 3,200 grants that the Biden administration had allocated but not awarded. The process had been sped along, the statement said, by “cutting unnecessary DEI and climate mandates from the grant process.”

Amtrak news releases show that construction on some projects featuring the Trump signs began in the Biden era, including the Connecticut bridge project and the $2.7 billion replacement of the Susquehanna River Bridge in Havre de Grace, Md.

Mr. Anderson, the Amtrak spokesman, praised the Transportation Department’s “hard work,” which he said had helped address the backlog.

He added: “We appreciate the Trump administration’s strong support for Amtrak’s historic infrastructure investments.”

In about three weeks, the government’s funding will run out. Democrats will face a choice: Join Republicans to fund a government that President Trump is turning into a tool of authoritarian takeover and vengeance or shut the government down.

Democrats faced a version of this choice back in March. DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, was chain-sawing its way through the government. Civil servants were being fired left and right. Government grants and payments were being choked off and reworked into tools of political power and punishment. Trump was signing executive orders demanding the investigation — I would say, the persecution — of his enemies. He had announced shocking tariffs on Mexico and Canada. We were in the muzzle velocity stage of this presidency. And Democrats seemed completely overwhelmed and outmatched.

I often heard people complain that Democrats lacked a message. What Democrats really lacked was power. They didn’t have the House or the Senate, but they did have one sliver of leverage: To fund the government, Senate Republicans needed Democratic votes. And not just one or two. They needed at least seven Democrats to reach that magic 60-vote threshold. House Democrats wanted a shutdown. But Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Senate Democrats, didn’t. He voted for the funding bill and encouraged a crucial number of his colleagues to do the same. The bill passed.

To many Democrats, this seemed insane. Some began openly calling for Schumer to resign or face a primary challenge. This was Democrats’ first real opportunity to fight back against Trump, and they had folded. What were they good for?

During this period, I talked to Schumer, to House leadership, to members of Congress with different theories of what should be done. I didn’t think it was an easy call. The House’s argument — Hakeem Jeffries’s argument — was that a shutdown creates a crisis. A crisis creates attention. And attention gives Democrats the chance to make their case, to be heard by the American people.

The argument Schumer made was threefold. First, Trump was being stopped in the courts. There were dozens of cases playing out against him, and he was losing again and again and again. Shut down the government, and you might shut down the courts.

Second, DOGE was trying to gut the executive branch. When the government falls into a funding crisis, the executive gets more authority to decide where the money the government does have goes. In that chaos, DOGE could go further and faster.

After all, it’s Democrats who want the government to work. It was Trump and DOGE looking for every opportunity to dismantle it. A shutdown wasn’t leverage against Trump. It was leverage against the Democrats’ own priorities.

Third, the market was quaking at the threat of Trump’s tariffs. Trump had promised a strong economy and low prices, and instead he was creating chaos. If Democrats triggered a shutdown at the exact moment Trump was creating an economic crisis, they would confuse who was to blame for the chaos — was it Trump or them? It’s the first rule of politics: When your opponents are drowning, do not throw them a lifeline.

And I thought there was a fourth argument: Democrats had not prepared for a shutdown. They had not explained why they were shutting the government down or what they wanted to achieve. They had no strategy. They had no message. The demand I was hearing them make was that the spending bill needed more bipartisan negotiation. It was unbearably lame.

If you had forced me to choose, I would have said Schumer was probably right. It wasn’t the time for a shutdown — in part because Democrats weren’t prepared to win one.

But the bill that passed back in March funding the government runs out at the end of this month. And so we’re facing the question again: Should Senate Democrats partner with Senate Republicans to fund this government?

I don’t see how they can. (...)