Washington, D.C. – What can Donald Trump 2.0 do in his first hundred days in office? That’s the timeframe every new US president is measured by, though this time, the question on many minds is: how fast can he dismantle a democratic government?
Mass deportations, a stronger Muslim travel ban, Israeli territorial expansions, including a slated takeover of Gaza,  a crackdown on dissent, and the dismantling of the federal government have all been part of his plan, which is more than four years in the making.
Within Trump’s first two weeks, thousands of migrants have been arrested and detained, the refugee resettlement has been paused, pro-Palestinian protesters have been threatened with deportation, and the administration has halted multiple federal programmes related to welfare, aid, safety and healthcare.
He has also suggested that migrants could be detained at Guantanamo Bay, where the population of 9/11 suspects has declined to 15.
Donald Trump has returned to the White House with big plans. Unlike his historic upset victory eight years ago, he has had four years outside of office to develop a blueprint for his comeback.
‘Shock and awe’
“This is the shock and awe phase. He’s going full-speed, doing everything he can to beat people into submission and hopelessness,” David Frank, a professor of rhetoric at the University of Oregon, told The New Arab.
Indeed, the public resistance to these swiftly executed policies appears to be mild compared with what was seen at the beginning of his first term eight years ago, when the women’s marches broke attendance records and protesters flooded airports in response to the Muslim ban.
However, on Wednesday, demonstrators in 50 states across the country took to the streets in protest of Trump’s policies, ranging from the evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza to the mass purge of federal employees and programmes, and the deportation of migrants to Guantanamo. It was an unusually high turn-out for a quickly planned mid-week protest.
This time, however, there seem to be wider divisions within the Democratic Party, with a second loss to Trump sparking debates over what went wrong. For many Democratic centrists, their loss can be attributed to focusing on far-left politics. For many on the left, Kamala Harris didn’t distance herself enough from Biden and didn’t sufficiently embrace a working-class agenda. Moreover, the party is divided over support for Israel’s far-right government.
Democrats are also continuing to contend with Trump’s unconventional tactics, including off-the-wall angry comments that propelled him to his upset victory in the 2016 Republican primaries and that continue to serve him as he grabs headlines multiple times a day in his second term.
“He was able to reform the party in his image and was able to defeat two qualified candidates,” says Frank, who has attended some of Trump’s rallies, witnessing the effectiveness of his messaging, which is inflammatory though entertaining and engaging. “He’s really built a community over time.”
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A strategy of distractions?
Trump has arguably become one of the most effective messengers of distraction of his generation, to the point where it can be difficult to keep up with his outbursts, often occurring multiple times a day or at odd hours of the night, or to know if he’s serious or not.
“The strategy is to overwhelm the opposition so they don’t know what to do and they’re thrown off balance,” CEO of Left Rising, a consulting firm for progressive candidates, tells TNA. “There will be a lot of harmful stuff and a lot of BS. It’s up to us to focus on the important stuff.”
Among the examples of distractions, he points to Trump’s insistence on renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and wanting to buy Greenland, something he had also suggested during his campaign.
“They’re just throwing a bunch of things at us so that we won’t know what fights to pick, so that it dilutes our response,” he says.
“Bombs to Israel should be taken seriously. It’s also up to us to be watchful of other things that don’t get the publicity of Greenland and to pay attention to what’s being done privately,” he adds.
True to form, as someone who thrives on popularity, Trump appears to already be walking back some of his most inflammatory comments from the joint press conference with Netanyahu during his visit to Washington, in which he suggested that Gazans should be relocated to Egypt and Jordan.
Through his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, he now seems to mean that they would be temporarily relocated while the enclave is being reconstructed. Few seem to be accepting the sincerity of the revised version of the proposal.
In an early blow to Trump’s notoriously impermeable popularity (earning him the moniker Teflon Don or Teflon Trump), the president’s poll numbers have already dropped considerably since he took office. According to a post-inaugural Gallup poll, his approval rating is at 45 percent, putting him below all other elected presidents since 1953, according to the report.
Targeting education
Trump openly campaigned on wanting to abolish the Department of Education, something that could be difficult to do entirely, though he is still taking major steps to bring his right-wing agenda to the classrooms.Â
In one of his more bizarre statements, Trump said (on multiple occasions) that children were going to school and then returning home with a new gender.
“Can you imagine your child goes to school and they don’t even call you, and they change the sex of your child?” Trump said at an event in Arizona last year, an assertion found to be false by Snopes.
Last Wednesday, he issued sweeping orders to overhaul the US education system, including an executive order called Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schools, which threatens to withhold federal funding for discriminatory treatment and indoctrination based on gender ideology. This broad policy calls for patriotic education and ends counselling programmes supporting LGBTQ+ students.
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Another executive order, Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism, mainly targets universities, which became centres for protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. The order calls on schools to observe and report on “alien” students and staff for the purpose of deportation.
A third executive order related to education issued last Wednesday is the Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families, which helps make available federal funding for faith-based (likely mainly Christian) schools.
One week later, he signed an executive order banning transgender women from school sports, an area that fuels public debate but that affects few students.Â
Signs of resistance?
It is difficult to compare the resistance of eight years ago compared with what is happening today. The US is arguably seeing a demoralised Democratic party without a clear leadership. Nancy Pelosi stepped back from her House leadership position following the near-fatal attack on her husband, and her replacement, Hakeem Jeffries, is still building name recognition.
With Republicans holding power in the executive branch, both chambers of Congress, and with a conservative-majority Supreme Court, there are currently few legislative opportunities for Democrats to push back.
There are, however, some clear signs of resistance, particularly with votes that require a super-majority. A recent example is of Senate Democrats (with the exception of John Fetterman) rejecting a bill to sanction those involved with the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“Given the Republicans’ very small majority in the House, they’re going to have to be very strategic about what big ticket items they pursue,” J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, tells TNA.
Another recent example of legal resistance to Trump’s policies was the rejection by a Seattle judge of his order to end birthright citizenship.
Frank, with the University of Oregon, has identified five areas to focus on as Trump continues with his so-called “shock and awe” strategy.
First, there are the midterms, which typically flip the House in favour of the opposition; second, there could be areas of agreement, such as keeping popular programs like Medicare and Medicaid; third, strength could be shown from local and state governments; fourth, litigation and legal challenges from civil rights groups; and fifth the possibility of “compassion fatigue” in which people get worn down from issues.
He emphasises that he doesn’t think the current resistance against Trump should be dismissed, even if it doesn’t appear to be as organised as it was eight years ago.
“The resistance should be uplifted. It won’t be the same, nor should it be the same as what we saw in 2016,” he says, noting local examples of resistance, such as churches and schools sheltering migrants and lawyers advocating for vulnerable communities.
“I have my hope and faith in the resistance that’s ongoing. It might not be as public as the actions of the Trump administration,” Frank added. However, he worries if resistance to Trump isn’t highlighted and acknowledged, “it could lead to toxic fatalism. A lot of people I talk to say there’s no hope”.
Brooke Anderson is The New Arab’s correspondent in Washington DC, covering US and international politics, business and culture.
Follow her on Twitter:Â @Brookethenews
