The Trump Administration reminds me, this being its second time in office, that when I put things off for too long, those delayed tasks never go away. They compound and pile on top of each other and, like un-folded laundry to someone raised never to let such a thing linger for too long, annoy. Trump has only been in office for two months, but his administration—its many blunders and excesses—have provided ample opportunity to write and reflect on what we’re seeing. Unfortunately, while I have engaged in reflection, I have not properly credited those reflections with the time needed to do them justice, which is to say, I am not writing enough.

This is not, I promise, another writing about writing, at least not exclusively. But it will serve to highlight what happens when each scandal isn’t given its due—they stack in such a way that the outrage becomes muting.

Let’s start with a quirky one: abolishing the Department of Education. I’ll begin by noting that I do not know what the Department of Education does. Keep in mind, dear reader, that the majority of my news comes from what is referred to as The Mainstream Media, and C-SPAN, mostly the latter. So, it was through one of these channels that I heard two conflicting statements about the DOE, both of which came from the Trump Administration.

First, I believe it was its current Secretary, then looking to be confirmed, Linda McMahon who pointed out the things that the Department of Education did not do, so as to make the point that it wasn’t like the Trump Administration was dismantling education itself. She said:

“I think it’s important to note what the Department of Education does not do. The Department of Education doesn’t educate anyone. It doesn’t hire teachers. It doesn’t establish curriculum. It doesn’t hire school boards or superintendents. It really is to help provide funding so that the states themselves can help with their own programs. But that creativity and innovation has to come from the state level.”

So you’ll understand my confusion when the next thing I heard about why the Department of Education should be abolished—I believe it was from Trump himself—was because, since its creation, more money has gone into education, yet produced worse results. The additional talking point was that test scores hadn’t gone up, reading levels were low, math scores were down, educational performance was overall lacking.

But read McMahon’s quote again, she outright says that all the Department of Education really does is funnel federal money “so that the states themselves can help with their own programs.” I have heard that programs like No Child Left Behind or Head Start have been categorical failures—but I have also heard the opposite, particularly with its benefits felt more among those disenfranchised or minority populations, which tracks why such benefits would be waived off as insignificant. But I disclose my own bias, having no direct source to support such an assumption. Any-who.

Of course, the abolishment of the Department of Education, two months in, seems to be the Trump Administration’s attempt to do things the “right” way, outright acknowledging that Congressional authority is needed for the Department to be formally shut down. I think this is a mistake by the would-be dictator-enablers of the Administration. Trump has faced no pushback thus far, at least not from the majority party in Congress, for his shutdown of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees Voice of America, or for shuttering USAID—Republicans have been nowhere, absolutely nowhere to be found and at least raise the question of whether the President can, in fact, shut down these agencies. They’ve acquiesced. In legal terms, they’ve waived the privilege to lodge an objection.

A brief side note, dear reader—let us have a moment of silence for Kari Lake. Her loyalty was rewarded with a future appointment to be none other than the Director of the now-defunct Voice of America. The Voice of America website published a post on February 7, 2025, announcing that the USAGM made Kari Lake a special advisor for Voice of America, with plans to appoint her as its Director. The post notes an email written by Roman Napoli, acting head of USAGM, to staff, in which he said that “Lake’s experience ‘will be invaluable as we continue our mission to clearly and effectively present the policies of the Trump Administration around the world.’”

What have those policies been, thus far? I’ll stick with the ones that memory has decided to commit to, well, itself.

Elimination of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion…Programs? Words? Sentiment?

I am unclear on how far this one goes. Take NASA, for example. It recently announced that it would remove language from its Artemis campaign that it would “land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the Moon using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before.” As the Axios article linked here notes, however, it strictly seems to be only the language that has changed, not the intention to still land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the Moon.

Will that now happen later than it otherwise would have? Only time will tell. The optimistic take is that Republicans are so seemingly committed to meritocracy—the stock of present Cabinet Secretaries notwithstanding—that they feel it is unnecessary to outright promise a competent woman, or person of color, or international partner, will come along, because one will come along eventually who truly will have earned it. The cynical take is that none will ever, or will seldom ever, beat a straight, white man who is also in line. As I wrote in a previous post, Republicans always promise access, never the actual thing you want the access to, such as healthcare or education. That the chance exists for someone to have healthcare is enough of a job well done by the Federal Government, according to Republicans. The truly competent will seize the chance and succeed where the unfortunates (read: incompetents) fail.

It’s such a simple, arrogant worldview.

There additionally seems to be a question about whether the termination of “‘diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) discrimination’” now permits, or provides cover for, old-timey discrimination and racism. At the very least, it provides cover, if only temporarily. If I remember correctly, attempting to prove a civil rights violation, such as race-based or, say, gender-based, discrimination in the courts requires a showing of systemic action, such as a policy to discriminate based on impermissible factors. Such a policy would have to be litigated and uncovered, and it would still benefit from the chance that some statistic, some lapse in racism, would lead to a finding that such systemic action was, in fact, absent.

Subsequent events since the drafting of that last paragraph have provided a little more light, or maybe a different light, on what has been intended by the elimination of DEI programs: the expansion of executive control. During Trump’s first election, we thought he might be in the pocket of the Russians. The pee tape never materialized, but that does not foreclose the possibility that it exists. Now we can fairly wonder whether Trump is in the pocket of the Israeli government because the impetus for shutting down DEI programs has been to curtail speech, more broadly, and speech deemed “antisemitic,” more specifically. The American branding machine now has two buzzwords it can wield to shut down dissent and, importantly for Trump, wield emergency power. First it was “terrorism” and its adjacent conjugations; now it’s “antisemitism.” Both have been wielded to punish “foreigners” and both are increasingly being used to punish even storied, all-American institutions, like universities, and the American citizens that not only attend them, but the American populace at large that benefits from the research that these institutions produce.

Re-formulation of Global Trade

For anyone still confused about whether capitalism can ever just be fine, the Trump Administration has given us the answer in plain, bravado-laced, text: No. Capitalism is an economic system of extraction, first and foremost. Capitalism sits above the free market; it is not dependent on it. Capitalism sits above economic theory, because no matter what libertarians think, or free market-oriented policy advisors, it is the survival of capitalism itself that is important, not free markets. Indeed, as the recent barrage of tariffs attest, exclusion is a tool to be used when “negotiating” more favorable terms, free market be damned. What bothers me about Trump’s international economic pivot is that the world economic system is a creation of the United States. International bodies that regulate trade, provide economic aid, or loans, these are international in scope, but they’re US creations and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn they have US headquarters. For Trump to suddenly say that the US’ trade terms are not fair and haven’t been fair for decades smacks of grotesquerie when you remember that, whatever the supposed unfairness of those trade terms, the US still managed to become the richest nation, by far, in history. That we’re saddled with debt speaks more to mismanagement of funds rather than a lack of them.

Trump reminds me, once again, of that one student in economics class that is not convinced about the power of comparative advantages. I’m sure I wrote about this elsewhere, but I’ll repeat the point. According to economic theory, the law of comparative advantage states that trading partners always benefit when they focus on the goods or services that their country is best suited for. The United States may be able to grow its own lemons, but by importing lemons from, say, Portugal, it can devote the time, resources, and land otherwise needed to grow lemons, for some other use. Cue the economics student: But if the United States is the best at growing lemons, it should just grow its own lemons. This seems to be Trump’s argument, though he raises an additional “what about” that one also may encounter in economics class: What about monopolies? Economics will tell you that monopolies are inefficient because the lack of free market competition stifles innovation and leaves the monopoly with no incentive even to improve or stabilize its own product. But what does the monopolist care? If you have no choice but to pay for electricity provided by, and only available to, one company, you’re going to pay until the quality of the service, or the asking price becomes intolerable. Trump seems to be applying this thinking to trade: build your manufacturing base here; let’s take Canada and Greenland; no need to trade when we own everything.

It’s such a simple, arrogant worldview.

The gluttonous Trump has justified his across-the-board tariffs as a negotiating tool primarily aimed at lowering or eliminating the trade barriers that other countries have with the US—tariffs of their own (he’s also said tariffs are intended to raise revenue but that’s a dubious claim given their on-again, off-again implementation). I translate this to mean that a country like Kenya might have made some revenue from its tariffs placed on, let’s say, American wheat, but that’s revenue that Kenya should no longer have because of the negative impact it has on American wheat producers. Never mind what America can pay, the point is that America should never pay—why should we? Again, the economics student poses a difficult question because authoritarian tendencies do not hold up well to theory, particularly as it comes to efficiencies or optimal outcomes. What we’re seeing is something I’ll call Grotesque Capitalism, that is, the elimination of the veil capitalism has thus far used to cover its appetite for excess only to now find that its hunger is insatiable. Its consumption will not be curtailed by climate concerns, neither will its need for energy turn away any merchant willing to provide it, such as with coal.

The depravity that Grotesque Capitalism is willing to endure, if not create, seems to be limited only by the shame of the person sitting in the Executive office, especially when a majority in Congress is able to look away.