Most of us are seeing and hearing a lot of noise right now…
Social media is flooded with hot takes about what will happen when Trump is sworn into office on January 20, and national news isn’t helping much, either.
Some of the noise is intentional, aiming to create fear and panic, some of it is scammers and spammers seeking money and power, and some of it is just the chaos that comes with a president elect who has spent the last 40 years running everything he touches like a Hunger Games competition.
While we don’t know how it will all play out, we have a pretty good idea of what’s coming after inauguration day.
As we closely monitor and respond to the direct impacts on hardworking New Mexicans, here are the 4 ways our team is preparing for the second Trump Presidency marathon:
1. Centering policy/action instead of noise
It’s probably a good idea to start by acknowledging that dis/misinformation played a major role in the presidential election.
Simply put, we are no longer shielding ourselves from a hail of falsehoods, we are swimming in a lake of them. This means we will have to learn to think/move differently as we face these new realities.
In line with that, the Lawfare Institute recently provided some reminders to help us all maintain our political sanity:
- You do not need to respond to every outrage
- You do not need to respond in real-time
- You often do not need to respond publicly
- [Trump’s] screaming / spoken words can often, but not always, be ignored
- Policy must be evaluated rigorously and critiqued carefully
- Nonpolicy governmental actions, particularly enforcement actions involving the government’s coercive powers, should always receive special scrutiny
This process will be different for everyone, but it is essential to stay informed and identify what actually requires our time/attention.
Bluntly, to use Lawfare’s language, responding to The Screaming with more screaming is something to be careful about.
As The New Republic’s Michael Tomasky points out – and we’ve seen indications from our own data here in New Mexico – many Americans are unhappy with the Biden Administration but also uninformed about the coming level of corruption and damage from Trump and the power hungry people around him.
Answering “what do Trump’s policy/actions mean for me” is the North Star, and we intend to consistently provide that information to New Mexicans of all backgrounds and experiences.
2. Identifying the three factions of a 2nd Trump presidency
Knowing the players around Trump is also important going into 2025.
While they may overlap at times, there are also some key differences progressives should be aware of that may offer opportunities to hold Trump and the Republican Party accountable.
Faction #1 – The Burn It All Down Brigade
This consists of people like Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, withdrawn FBI Director nominee Matt Gaetz/current nominee Kash Patel, and Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth who have said, plainly and repeatedly, that they believe in authoritarian power and seek to undermine democracy and the constitution.
Faction #2 – The Project 2025 Loyalists
The second faction consists of people like Heritage Foundation CEO Kevin Roberts, Russ Vought, and Department of Education Secretary nominee Linda McMahon, who are on a mission to enact Project 2025 and radically reshape the federal government by installing Trump loyalists.
Faction #3 – The Grifters
The third faction is made up of appointees and advisors like Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Scott Bessent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and Jared Isaacman, all of whom are capitalizing and making money off of Trump’s Presidency. In total, Trump’s billionaires are worth at least a combined $450 billion dollars. Most of them have conflicts of interest due to their existing private investments and multi-million dollar government contracts.
The noise/screaming will play out across these different factions, and it will be messy.
For example, the Burn It All Down Brigade may deliver an extreme headline or outrage bait proposal, and while news media and influencers are busy screaming, Project 2025 Loyalists and Grifters will collaborate to push through a legislative or administrative change.
Knowing this can inform our decisions and help us focus on defeating the actual policy/operational change.
3. Working in tight formation
The Burn It All Down Brigade has said they will completely eliminate the Department of Education, something that would be difficult to do but would almost certainly create a lot of screaming.
We don’t have to guess what would happen in this case, because Kevin Roberts and Project 2025 have already outlined the plan: pushing school vouchers and privatizing schools will devastate working families and re-enact segregated schools.
If Project 2025’s plan to defund no cost Head Start programs for low income families is implemented, students with disabilities would be hit especially hard in New Mexico, as would families in rural areas.
Countering those plans would require a close coalition of business, government, and community leaders, likely led by New Mexico Voices for Children, who are able to move quickly to splinter and weaken all three factions.
4. Answering “So WTF Now?”
While a Harris administration would hopefully not have enforced the status quo (realistically, it likely would have been a mixed bag), we know what Trump will do: enrich wealthy corporations and billionaires.
We know this because billionaires bought him the election…
Elon Musk poured $44B into turning Twitter/X into a far right echo chamber and another $277M into the election. A dozen other ultra-wealthy donors also poured millions into the presidential race, and Trump has already appointed many of them to work in/around his administration.
Billionaires put us here and won’t protect hardworking Americans over their own interests because they are too busy exploiting us.
This includes but isn’t limited to collecting health insurance premiums while denying life saving care, polluting our land/air/water as they delay, deny, and distract from the transition to clean energy, driving the housing crisis by buying up homes and skyrocketing prices, and siphoning our money via price gouging essential items and charging credit card junk fees.
The hard truth is that Trump and his wealthy friends will enact corruption and cruelty on a range of hardworking Americans, including people who voted for him.
Our economy and systems aren’t working for working people and we all know it. We power the economy, not billionaires. This means that uplifting worker and labor power and being intersectional matters.
Learning to move quickly and be flexible is also something many of us need practice with. The work ahead requires that we dig deep and focus on being cooperative within our neighborhoods and communities, reinforcing what’s already there, so that we don’t waste time screaming into the void.