Five Days Feels Like a Lifetime

I’ve been quiet lately. Or quieter than is normal for me, anyway. As I watch the scenes unfold around Washington, DC — a city I love and am proud to call home — I can feel my cognitive wheels spinning ever faster in a possibly futile attempt to keep up with the strategically manufactured chaos. I have so many feelings and thoughts that I’m frankly not entirely sure where to start, let alone how I could ever go about capturing them all in one place.

Still, I feel compelled to say something about the times we’re bearing witness to, and I’d like to do so in a way that feels — at least to me — somewhat meaningful. I’d like to open a conversation with the people I know who lean politically conservative, some of whom likely voted for the MAGA platform and this Trump-Vance ticket, and ask a few questions on a human level. I am sure this will reach a relatively small handful of those people, since I know exactly how biased my social feeds and networks are, but I feel there’s value in the attempt nonetheless.

I’m sure you have your reasons for voting Donald Trump into office — disappointment in the actions of the Biden administration, economic dissatisfaction, firm religious values. I don’t want to talk about any of that. Here’s what I’ll ask of you: For just the next ten or so minutes it takes you to read this piece, I invite you to do your best to set those reasons aside and meet me in good faith. Let’s start fresh, without defaulting to the politics and the posturing and the propaganda and the whataboutisms that have gotten us here. I don’t want to fight, or to lecture, or to scold you smugly from a place of moral superiority. I just want to talk, or, more accurately, to understand.

We can even forget, for now, that we’ve already lived through four years of a Trump presidency; that we have so many documented reference points to understand what is happening, what is about to happen. Let’s just talk about the first five days of this new regime — and not even all of it, either. Let’s focus on only a handful of the most egregiously flagrant directives our current president has issued, and the direct and immediate consequences they have for very real members of our national community.

In less than a week, President Donald Trump has:

• Nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. It’s no secret that RFK Jr. has a history of inexplicable and questionable personal decision-making, but his skepticism around vaccine efficacy is perhaps the most contentious element of his nomination. I know the anti-vax movement is a small-yet-growing phenomenon in our country, and I’m sincerely curious — how do you reconcile a belief that vaccines don’t work with the fact that they have all but eradicated several global diseases? How can doubt around the value of the Covid vaccine play nicely with the fact that Covid mortality rates dropped rapidly after the vaccines were rolled out, and that there is still no country that has reached the threshold for herd immunity?
  
  I understand, on principle, the instinctive resistance around anyone mandating that you have to receive a bodily injection. But that mandate exists to protect the most susceptible and vulnerable members of our community — if you don’t want to get vaccinated just because the government tells you to, fine, but how can you justify turning down an approved and safe vaccine if the alternative is causing clear harm to the people around you?
  

• Nominated Fox News contributor and military veteran Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense. I’d be remiss if I failed to acknowledge that Hegseth continues to face allegations of sexual abuse and rape, which he vehemently denies, but there are any other number of other reasons to keep the television personality at a distance from the White House — including a phrase commonly used by white supremacists tattooed on his arm and accusations of severe alcohol abuse (former colleagues and relatives have testified that Hegseth drank both on the job and so much that he regularly passed out at family gatherings). It seems obvious to me that these problems should disqualify anyone from leading the Pentagon. How can you reconcile this behavior, which would keep you from being hired almost anywhere else, with the responsibility of running the most powerful military on earth?
  

• Made generational billionaire Elon Musk, the man who just days ago performed one of the most technically perfect Nazi salutes we’ve seen in modern history, the most powerful private citizen in the world. However you feel about Musk — or billionaires in general — it seems clear that giving such an erratic, wealthy individual direct and overt influence over government operations is tantamount to coming right out and announcing that the United States (US) is now a plutocracy (which of course by definition would also include Trump himself).
  
  Musk still has yet to explicitly deny that he gave a Nazi salute, and despite the Anti-Defamation League’s inexplicable willingness to read him charitably, there is very little I personally can find in his behavior to suggest that he had any other thought on his mind when he did it — Musk has a long history of public speaking and has never before executed that specific motion, let alone with such apparent passion, or performed any similar action with that stiffly trademark cross-body salute or palm down. Can you really convince yourself that this was an honest mistake, especially when Musk’s actions have since been celebrated with such adoration by right-wing extremists online?
  

• Terminated security protection for Anthony Fauci, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and several others. In follow-up interviews, Trump has said candidly that he would feel no remorse or shame if anything happened to them. Can you imagine having the power to protect other people, including some of your own former handpicked employees, and not doing everything you can to ensure their safety? How would you feel if you knew someone was at clear risk of being harmed, did nothing to help them, and then something did in fact happen to them?
  

• Ordered that new White House staffers be granted the highest level of security clearance without any vetting whatsoever. I won’t drag this one out; I’m not sure how anyone can justify so cavalierly neglecting decades-old, nonpartisan policies intended to ensure our national security.
  

• Withdrawn the US from the Paris Agreement, an international treaty intended to safeguard our planet and most vulnerable communities against a drastically changing climate. Whatever you personally believe about climate change, we have been experiencing and will continue to experience the effects more and more every year — just look to the wildfires still raging in California as proof. And on that note, Trump has also called for rerouting water from California's Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state, ignoring expert advice and effectively punishing the state for no crime other than being populated by predominantly Democratic voters. Shouldn’t the president of one of the world’s greatest democracies care about doing all they can to help the people they were elected to serve, regardless of who those people voted for?
  

• Initiated the process of withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization (WHO). It will take time for this to actually happen, but it should be immensely concerning to anyone who cares at all about public health and safety — however you think WHO handled the Covid pandemic, exiting the United Nations-driven agency would end our access to critical data and reporting, leaving us flying functionally blind in the face of another global crisis or emergency. How does restricting our flow of information help us in any way?
  

• Pardoned (or in some cases commuted the sentences of) any person who was convicted of an offense related to the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. An unpopular move with an overwhelming majority of American citizens, this decision indicates an extreme lack of concern for rule of law. Capitol Police were injured and killed in the events of the day; even former Trump administration staffers and people involved in the attack themselves have testified to the violence that took place. How can you justify letting those convicted for participating in these events steamroll our judicial processes and systems?
  

• Paused Center for Disease Control and Food & Drug Administration communications, and frozen grant reviews for National Institute of Health research. If you’re wondering why this might matter to you and your daily life, look no further than the soaring price of eggs. In gutting the agencies and departments responsible for ensuring of American citizens, the Trump administration has effectively paralyzed the federal government and rendered it incapable of doing anything to investigate or solve the problem (bird flu).
  

• Begun eliminating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives across our federal government. I know this is a hot-button issue in the larger political culture war raging today — ultimately, though, these initiatives existed not to demonize or elevate any particular group but to ensure that the perspectives of traditionally underrepresented communities are heard and understood. It’s the smallest of the examples I could offer, but consider the sidewalk ramps we all see and use every day; these “curb cuts” are the direct result of a DEI initiative, made common only when veterans returning from World War II in the 1940s and 1950s partnered with disability advocates to push for improving accessibility in public spaces across the country. It’s cases like these that show just how long the DEI movement has been around, however the language we’ve used to describe it has changed over time, and what it actually means in practice.
  
  I’ll also note here that the Trump administration is not just targeting recent DEI initiatives implemented by “radical leftists.” One executive order aims to rescind the Equal Employment Opportunity rule, which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed in 1965 — to be clear, that means this is an executive order that’s lasted through the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, H. W. Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. Even if you think modern DEI initiatives are attacking the wrong problems, how can you rationalize rolling back a Civil Rights-era rule that until now has been supported wholeheartedly across the aisle?
  

• Created a culture of fear in our federal government. I know hyperbole is a cheap way to make any kind of case, but recent emails sent to federal employees asking them to report on their colleagues and the reinstatement of “Schedule F” draw obvious parallels with the hysteria of the Red Scare. So many of our civil servants are not political appointees, and are in fact just everyday Americans committed to making our country the best place it can be for the people living in it. Why would you want to fire and undermine these true patriots, who have dedicated their lives to ensuring that our government serves the people it’s meant to serve?
  

• Enabled a resurgence in transphobia, announcing that the US would only officially recognize two genders and would not accept any changes to gender after birth. In other words, intersex, nonbinary, and transgender people will no longer be able to have their true identities reflected on official documents like passports. I personally have several friends impacted by these directives, and I am both furious and terrified on their behalf. Can you imagine your government — the one you depend on to protect you, and the one you pay taxes to — deciding one day that it will no longer even acknowledge such a basic piece of your personal identity? How can you believe that the way we express and see ourselves is the business of any government or institution?
  

• Made life demonstrably and immeasurably worse for immigrants and refugees alike. So many directives have been issued with this theme that it feels like a failure on my part to focus on any one over another, but the easy place to start is with the executive orders ending our Refugee Assistance Program — effective immediately, meaning even refugees already approved to immigrate to the US are having flights canceled — and fast-tracking deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants (​​less than four percent of whom have a criminal record, and most of whom have been in the US for more than five years now). Can you imagine your own life being uprooted in the way these people’s lives have, the casualties of a culture war raged by a political elite that means nothing to them?
  
  In my own neighborhood alone, several restaurants have already been subject to Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids over the last few days. These are people just trying to do their jobs, to get by in a country that is making it clear it doesn’t want them. If your stance is that anyone who breaks the law deserves the treatment they receive at the hands of the government, I’d invite you to reflect on what the phrase ”no human being is illegal” actually means in practice — people don’t risk life and limb when they’re comfortable or already leading a “good” life. If pushed to the desperate act of fleeing the country you’ve always called home and making a dangerous border crossing to create a new life for yourself and your family, would you feel that then being forcibly detained, shipped off on a bus or train, and held in an internment camp (often separated from your children) might be a reasonable consequence of your actions? Or would you feel as if you were being harshly and unfairly punished for the “crime” of escaping a dangerous situation and seeking economic and physical safety?
  

• Attempted to revoke birthright citizenship, the constitutionally guaranteed right of anyone born in this country. Trump-backed attorneys have even questioned the citizenship of the Indigenous Americans on whose land we all exist. I genuinely can see no good argument for any of this. Why would we ever voluntarily want to create a permanent sub-class of Americans, disillusioned with our government and without any investment in or reason to be invested in the future of our country? Who does that benefit?

I know some of you might think that all of this makes Donald Trump a “strong” president. I don’t believe it does, but that’s beside the point anyway; being a “strong” leader doesn’t excuse or justify moral abscondance. And I hope that if you take anything away from reading this piece, it’s a consciousness that the actions and behaviors we’re witnessing from the Trump administration are more than symbolic, and that they mean real things for real people just living their lives in the same way we’re trying to live ours.

I am and remain a fervent believer in our democratic ideals and principles; in civic engagement, in empathy, and in freedom of expression. I recognize that for some of you, and particularly those unable to let go of the unfortunately cross-partisan compulsion to score political points and “win” every conversation you have, this letter might seem like just another complaint lodged by a self-professed bleeding-heart liberal. If so, I will wear that badge with pride.

But I hope that most of you can set aside your biases and prejudice and take me at face value. I do not have any kind of hidden, secret agenda here. I have an understanding of the world cultivated, molded, and shaped by a lifetime of experiences — as do you, and as do we all. Ultimately, I believe that the only way forward is through honest and open dialogue; this isn’t about changing anyone’s mind, but about fostering a deeper understanding of what actually divides us (because it isn’t actually all that much). It’s my hope that we can all choose to believe in that potential and work towards a future where all Americans can thrive, regardless of who they are.