MacLean Gander is retired from a long career as a professor and administrator at Landmark College. A former member of the board of directors of Vermont Independent Media, he was a longtime volunteer investigative reporter and columnist for this newspaper. This piece is adapted from his Substack site, Escape Velocity, where he posts essays about society, culture and politics.
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL-Trump and Musk's illegal orders and activities are more than just a coup - they are a literal invasion in a war for the American system of governance.
Just days ago, it seemed to make sense to echo those calling Trump's activities a coup - maybe a soft coup or an autogolpe (self-coup) - a shift from democracy to autocracy by legal and illegal means, or the self-transformation of a democratically elected leader into a despot.
Now, after news about Trump's plans for Gaza, college kids with access to the backend of payment systems, and the idea of sending American convicts to El Salvadoran prisons, I think "invasion" may be the better trope.
The unrelenting barrage of executive orders and rogue activities of an unelected oligarch seem like nothing less than the governmental equivalent of the Nazi blitzkrieg on Poland in 1939 that marked the start of World War II in Europe.
Blitzkrieg means "lightning war," and the quick success of the Nazi army came from a multi-pronged attack using 1.5 million troops, more than 60 divisions, and more than 2,300 aircraft, with tight coordination between tanks, motorized infantry, artillery, and air support. The Polish army was encircled and overwhelmed, and Polish forces surrendered five weeks after the attack began.
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Trump's own blitzkrieg began on Jan. 20, and it's still going on. Amidst the storm, with each day's news bringing a new set of initiatives, it can be hard to keep track of what's really happening.
It looks like chaos, but that's largely by design, since it's hard for anyone to make sense of chaos. But it is actually a highly intentional three-pronged attack intended to invade and overthrow the basic system of American governance, with the goal of gathering unprecedented power to the presidency and the executive branch.
The main front is to wrest control of federal spending from Congress, which is responsible for authorizing the expenditure of American taxpayer dollars. A second, even more dangerous front, is the takeover of federal law enforcement, meaning the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security. The third front is the takeover of national security and foreign relations.
The primary line of attack includes the memo sent out to freeze all federal spending along with Musk and his rogue team of college-age IT kids taking over access to the mechanisms by which federal dollars are spent.
Musk's operation is a literal, illegal invasion that includes both the entire payment system, located in the Treasury Department, along with spending and personnel in various departments. They started with USAID as the test case, in part because many Americans hate foreign aid.
In his public statements, Musk has made clear his sense that he and his team should just be able to cancel spending authorized by Congress if it is not in alignment with the administration's goals and values - whatever they may be. The showdown at USAID has foreshadowed similar initiatives in other agencies and departments, including the Department of Education.
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All of this is illegal. The Constitution, federal law, and longstanding legal precedents make clear the congressional authority for authorizing federal expenditures and the limits to presidential powers to impound or repurpose spending.
But the Trump army appears to have expected and even invited the legal battles that are now underway, and the question is open of how the Supreme Court will finally rule in these cases.
Congress also obviously has a role in asserting the primacy of its place within the division of power, and the minority Democratic Party appears now to be rising to the challenge.
But Trump has already demonstrated, with the confirmation of dangerously unqualified cabinet appointments, that his control of the Republican Senate is nearly ironclad. They even confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard - outliers within the various factions behind Trump's victory - as secretary of Health and Human Services and director of National Intelligence, respectively.
It seems unlikely that Trump will let the Senate counter him on any matter he cares about. The Republican Senate majority is more or less like those citizens in Invasion of the Body Snatchers whose souls have already been replaced by aliens.
This seems most obvious in Trump's takeover of federal law enforcement, where Republican senators offered no pushback on Pam Bondi, the president's personal attorney, as his election-denying attorney general and Kash Patel, his FBI chief, who brings with him a truly grievous public record that includes enemies lists and anti-democratic screeds.
Wholesale purges within the Department of Justice and FBI raise the question of how deep Trump's span of control can reach, along with the challenge of finding competent replacements - a challenge Trump and his minions face in every agency and department.
These personnel purges within the Department of Justice and the FBI may to some degree be countered by legal actions asserting civil service protections for non-political appointments, and some high-ranking FBI officials in field offices like New York and Newark have asserted their willingness to fight personnel reassignments and forced resignations or firings.
But the leadership of these two central parts of government, which have been meant to be independent of whomever is in office, is now entirely loyal to Trump.
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The pardon of the convicted criminals involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt is part of this design. This is not simply a matter of Trump having exploded any norms regarding his Constitutional right. In pardoning several leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, two powerful right wing extremist groups, Trump sent a signal to militias across the nation.
The FBI has been the main force countering right wing domestic terrorism, which it has marked as the greatest danger to nation. It seems likely that this major aspect of the agency's operations will be curtailed or shut down under the new leadership.
Trump has made clear his affinity for these White Nationalist and neo-Nazi groups. To an extent that may be difficult to see, they could wind up comprising a sort of private army for him.
Along those lines, there have been some reports that Republican opposition has been immobilized, not simply because of the threat of being "primaried," but because of actual fears about physical harm. Stochastic violence, in which violent acts are inspired by indirect or coded rhetoric by an influential leader, has been a trademark of Trump's - most notably in his role in sanctioning and promoting the Jan. 6 insurrection. ("Be there, will be wild!")
Given that insurrectionists who were roaming the halls of Congress to find Mike Pence and hang him have now been pardoned by Trump, it's not unreasonable to suspect that part of the paralysis of Republican senators is based in fear of violent retribution.
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On the third front, national security and foreign relations, Trump has made his assumption of power stunningly clear and nearly absolute. It is difficult to discern what his strategy is, beyond subverting decades of American diplomacy and alliances.
His most recent gambit - promoting the notion that the U.S. would resettle two million Palestinians and turn Gaza into a Middle Eastern French Riviera - is almost psychotically irrational, though it's hardly a new idea with Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, the Saudis' man in the president's camp.
Trump has threatened military actions and harsh sanctions, in the form of tariffs, against America's smaller allies like Panama, Denmark, Canada, Mexico, and Colombia, making the U.S. the world's bully. His diffidence toward the European Union and NATO has long been clear, and it appears that he is ready to break the longstanding Western Alliance against Russia.
Although the news is buried on the inside pages, Russia is steadily winning its war in Ukraine, and it seems unlikely that Putin will stop short of a Russian victory that includes regime change in Kyiv, the ceding of significant Ukrainian territory, and the "neutralization" of Ukraine under the Russian national security umbrella.
The ongoing threat that Russia poses in Europe cannot be overstated. Trump has so far signaled only the likelihood that he will abandon Ukraine to its fate.
The main point is that Trump's use of tariffs and his threats against allies all signal that he has taken control of the national security and foreign policy apparatus. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both seem like willing tools.
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The tariff shock against Mexico and Canada created temporary dismay in Wall Street and were deferred in what Trump claimed as victory, although neither Mexico nor Canada agreed to do anything that they had not already done or decided to do. Trump's threat of tariffs bumps up against the reality that any trade war he provokes will hurt U.S. businesses and consumers.
Likewise, his activities in terms of foreign relations and alliances, including the potential decimation of foreign aid projects and the USAID, all have the result of weakening American standing in the world. His disdain for traditional strategic alliances undercuts U.S. power in global terms.
America has two real enemies in a multipolar world - Russia and China. Nothing Trump has done so far strengthens U.S. power in relation to these powers.
In fact, Trump's weakness on Ukraine only strengthens and emboldens Putin. The ultimate resolution of the war in Ukraine is likely to be seen as a defeat for the United States and its allies.
China's growing military and technological strength poses the greatest national security challenge to the United States - not simply in its ability to maneuver at will in the South China Sea but its demonstrated proficiency at hacking into vital American information technology systems in areas like communications and energy.
How Trump manages this threat may be the key to whether his presidency succeeds or fails.
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What Trump is actually trying to accomplish is unclear, beyond the projection of American power in a sort of random and chaotic fashion. The outcome, at the very least, is the overthrow of several decades of American strategy in managing its role in a dangerous, multipolar world. The main check on Trump's actions may prove to be the performance of stock markets and the opposition of business leaders.
It will take at least a few more weeks before the smoke of war settles and we can see clearly where things stand. Resistance to Trump is beginning to take shape, primarily in legal actions but also within the Democratic Party, within blue state governance, and on the part of individuals within some administrative departments, including the civil service itself.
The question of whether Trump can succeed in wresting control of spending from Congress is still open. If he succeeds, it would mean that the invasion has worked.
It is one thing to take power. Trump has effectively done that, though there may turn out to be some limits in the end, depending on what happens in the courts.
But it is quite another thing to exercise power with competence and control, and this is an area in which it seems possible that Trump will fail, given the history of failure that marks his long career as anything other than a public performer, where his brilliance is obvious.
So we'll see.
The invasion is underway, waged and fought on multiple fronts. It is still early times in the war for control of the system of American governance.
The battle is far from over. And it's easy to be distracted - to see this dizzying array of power grabs as a set of discrete initiatives rather than as skirmishes and battles in an all-out war.
The more clearly we see that what Trump is doing as a naked grab for total control, I think, the better armed we are to fight him.
This Voices Viewpoint by MacLean Gander was written for The Commons.
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