The Shock Has Passed, the Awe is Gone

One of the Trump administration's earliest and most vicious power abuses was its attempt to sabotage law firms who it viewed as tied to Trump's adversaries, targeting the firms with outrageous and draconian restrictions on everything from their ability to meet with federal agencies to their license to enter federal buildings. It was an existential threat to these firms' businesses if allowed to go through, and some firms, famously, caved in. 

But others fought, and won injunctions against the administration's unlawful retaliation. And today, the report is that the Trump administration is quietly dropping its appeal of those rulings. It is a victory for rule of law, and for the law firms that understood the actual demands of the moment beyond the most transient instinct for self-preservation.

The timeline of events here is instructive, offering hope and, I'd argue, a lesson. From their first week back in power, the Trump administration came out storming with a cavalcade of some of the most radical attacks on the American constitutional order that have been seen in my lifetime. It was shocking, and people and institutions were shocked. They'd never witnessed anything like this. Many were still reeling from an election they weren't expecting to lose. They didn't know how to respond. And the Trump administration exploited that shock and that awe to spend months just running over the institutional guardrails that should have existed to keep them in check. The law firm submissions were part of that story, but it was much larger than that. Media companies, universities, even the Democratic leadership was left floundering at best, trying to negotiate a panicked surrender at worst.

But now the tide is turning. Once again, the dropped initiative against the law firms is just one part of a larger story. The initial blitzkrieg is grinding to a halt. A dazed opposition has regained its footing. Resistance is mounting. Even the Supreme Court maybe is starting to recognize, just a little bit, that its constitutional role is not to act as the highest rubber stamp in the land. The shock has passed, the awe is gone. People are fighting back, and they are winning. And while nobody should expect the Trump administration to just slink away quietly (even if that's what they did do in this appeal), at the very least it's no longer a romp. They're in for a fight now, and it's a fight we can and will win.

This is not an exculpation of those who turned tail and ran. It is a praise of those who remained steadfast -- a few law firms, sure, but far more importantly ordinary American citizens in places like Minneapolis and Chicago and Portland who planted their feet and said no. Their continued faith and grit is what allowed others to rally and reestablish themselves. They are heroes. May their names ever be sung in our victory speeches.

That's the hope. Here's the lesson. The Trump administration's goals are evil. But the strategy -- of coming out the gates storming, front-loading as much aggressive policy content as possible, as fast as possible -- was a sound one. It worked. Yes, it bred backlash -- eventually. But much of the damage "accomplishments" they wrought is already well-entrenched. The lesson here is Machiavelli's, and I flagged it when the Supreme Court did something similar in loading up its most extreme right-wing agenda all at once in 2022.

[I]f you feel compelled to take certain actions that you know are unpopular, or will engender backlash -- do them all, do them early, and do them all at once.

Do not try to spread them out. Do not feel the need to pull back on some to balance the others. Do not hem and haw with baby steps. Do everything you want to do early, and immediately. The backlash will come, but the backlash won't be materially different between one outrageous thing and ten outrageous things. Spreading them out just creates new moments of fresh anger. Purported sops won't make people forgive in the moment.... Get them all out of the way in one fell swoop.

This was a lesson I argued Democrats should internalize, though it was already too late for them in 2022.

Democrats needed to do big things. Those things would be controversial. Talking them out indefinitely in a bid for a compromise that would never occur only would bleed resources (ask Barack Obama how that went with the ACA). Better to slam them through at the start. Voting rights, anti-gerrymandering, DC statehood, BBB, protecting abortion rights. Yeah, these things would be controversial. They wouldn't be any less controversial if they're spread out in drips and drabs. Do them all, do them together, weather the storm, and then spend the rest of your time consolidating your position. 

That would still be my basic advice if Democrats retake the Oval Office in 2028. By the end of the first week, I'd want to a complete pro-democracy package (including DC statehood) on the president's desk. I want to see prominent Republicans and ICE leaders who've committed crimes frog-marched in handcuffs. I want the corporate executives who approved "settlements" for Trump's frivolous lawsuits indicted for bribery. I want to see public resources and opportunities expressly redirected away from companies and firms who caved to Trump, and towards those who showed backbone, to show that there are penalties to being a quisling. I want the DOJ to announce an anti-corruption task force geared at identifying all the money stolen from the American taxpayer by the Trump family and clawing back as much of it as possible, and I want them to name and shame the Supreme Court as among the primary obstacles to providing accountability for their crimes. I want to uncover the corrupt insiders who bet on the lives of American servicemembers and have their identities blasted across every newspaper in America in advance of their trials. Do it all, do it fast, weather the storm, then consolidate your position.

Does the backlash to Trumpism discredit this strategy? I don't think so. For starters, a Democrat administration hopefully would not have the same proportion of incompetent and corrupt lickspittles undermining its progress at every turn -- it's not clear to me that the same level of backlash would emerge. Indeed, I suspect Trump's hyper-aggression was initially popular in a political climate where many people just have an inchoate desire to see some inchoate powerful "them" receive comeuppance. That instinct can be harnessed by Democrats, but, you know, without resort to random street kidnappings.

But even if there is a real backlash, again -- the brute truth is that Trump "accomplished" a lot in his shock and awe period. Those accomplishments are vicious and evil and destructive, but they're going to prove more terribly durable than they have any right to be. Democrats, too, should try to entrench big victories, even if it does generate adverse political winds. Those winds will come regardless -- that's how politics work. You might as well try to accomplish what you can -- and there's a lot that needs accomplishing.