Donald Trump was sworn in on January 20, 2025, officially becoming the President of the United States of America. It was more or less clear what he would do when he took office after the swearing-in ceremony, but since the consequences of his decisions will determine the main planes on which politics will develop in the future, I thought it was necessary to make an assessment of the picture that emerged at the end of the first week.
It would not be misleading to argue that his second term of Donald Trump's presidency, unlike the first, will bring much more radical and lasting changes, and that these profound changes will have a profound impact on world politics, since they will be centered on the American state. The most important reason for this is that Donald Trump has already begun to implement significant cuts in the federal government as soon as he took office. One of the first decrees signed was the elimination of employment protections provided by the federal government, in other words, the removal of barriers to tenure. Indeed, as the Washington Post reported;
The White House described the order stripping employment protections from agency employees as necessary to rein in what Trump and his allies have called a “deep state” of bureaucrats who resisted his plans during his first term.
Another important point is the introduction of a performance monitoring system in labor relations. This is in line with the neoliberal economic policies embraced by the conservative establishment. Considering the Trump administration, this was actually expected. Nevertheless, I feel the need to note an important point here.
In the United States, after the elections, a tendency that became evident in the Democratic Party elite that remained in the opposition after the elections was that the liberal-democratic wing, which was openly capitalist at every opportunity - Joe Biden often liked to emphasize that he was a capitalist - adopted a relatively radical leftist discourse that they had not used before. This approach is hardly convincing and if they keep it up for a long time, they might get caught in a contradiction of their own class character. What do I mean? In fact, most of the liberal elites belong to the middle and upper classes and are relatively rich. They have no real relationship with the masses of poor people. When they are excluded from relations within the state, they will be completely powerless. Therefore, their resistance can be broken. If they are deprived of these relationships and the opportunities of the bureaucracy for a long time, I don't think it is possible for them to maintain a relatively radical leftist discourse in the long run.
Another important situation is that the decrees and orders signed by Donald Trump at "breakneck speed" have effectively locked down the federal government. I think it would be fair to call this a real "shock". Yet this "shock therapy" is so "shocking" that even The Wall Street Journal, which was one of the main factors that led to the withdrawal of former President Joe Biden with its fierce opposition to him, and which at times openly supported Trump, following the same line of opposition to Kamala Harris, was forced to publish a comprehensive critique. In a comprehensive list of the disruptions, the Wall Street Journal reports that services have come to a standstill in many areas, from the economy to health care, foreign communications, scientific research and even the national park service.
I think that the rulers of the United States, and Wall Street in particular, have forgotten how important it is for a great state, a "superpower", to be able to do exactly what is called "governing". Indeed, for a great state, an experienced administrator can fill many gaps with his or her mere "presence", fill many gaps that others cannot, and fill certain gaps with his or her experience. As a matter of fact, Joe Biden was emerging as such an executive figure. The second important point, as I mentioned in my previous article, is that big changes take time, and moreover they need to take time. Of course, what your program is also important. Nevertheless, economic and political transformations, which can be called "populist" in a sense, and which are being implemented much faster than usual, can easily lead those who implement them astray. Indeed, the Soviet Union collapsed as a result of the rapid dismantling of the established administrative mechanism and the dismantling of the state apparatus.
One of the potential complications of Donald Trump's prioritization and implementation of a series of administrative measures to implement his conservative agenda is the ethical and humanitarian dimension of the death penalty. According to Bloomberg's Barbara McQuade, who is also a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, a decree signed by Trump entitled "Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety" is particularly noteworthy for some of its elements. One of its sections instructs courts to overrule the Supreme Court in order to impose the death penalty for certain crimes. In one of the crucial paragraphs of his article, McQuade states;
The Supreme Court has found the death penalty is unconstitutional in cases for crimes other than homicide or where the defendant is under 18, mentally disabled, or legally insane. Trump’s executive order seems to suggest that prosecutors should seek the death penalty in such cases anyway, even for defendants who cannot appreciate the seriousness of their crimes.
In other words, in a practice as serious as the death penalty, which is already controversial today, it takes away a very important right of the accused, directs the courts to insist on the execution of the sentence even in cases that may be "morally flawed", and leads to inconsistencies that may undermine public confidence in the judiciary and the administration by reversing the application of precedent decisions.
The author states this situation as follows;
Reversing precedents is harmful to American society. It removes fair notice of what the law requires so that people may conform their behavior to the law. Failure to adhere to precedents makes it more difficult for policymakers to craft rules that comply with the law and for business leaders to commit to long-term planning. Courts that repeatedly change their minds risk losing credibility that they are interpreting the law without regard to politics.
The author's second point concerns another glaring injustice in the order. Accordingly, it instructs that the death penalty be sought against any person who is an illegal immigrant in the United States of America, regardless of other factors, if that person is in a legal situation that warrants the death penalty. This is clearly contrary to both the spirit of the law and to American law and practice, which the author elaborates on in his article, as it abrogates the principle of equality.
It is possible to reveal which segments of society have been subjected to the death penalty more in the United States of America, but this fundamental problem is beyond the limits of this article. Suffice it to say that Hispanics, blacks and non-Americans are clearly at the forefront of the application of the death penalty. This means that de facto discrimination already existed, and it was a well-known secret. What makes this practice different from others is that it legalizes discrimination and elevates inequality to the force of law. This universally contradicts the rule of law.
Indeed, Trump's decrees are already facing numerous objections and resistance from lawmakers. The first is the most controversial, his famous order to revoke birthright citizenship. According to The New York Times, a federal judge has already ordered a temporary stay of this decree. The Times reports that;
In a hearing held three days after Mr. Trump issued his executive order, a Federal District Court judge, John C. Coughenour, sided with Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon, the four states that sued, signing a restraining order that blocks Mr. Trump’s executive order for 14 days, renewable upon expiration. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” he said.
Moreover, the NYT, known for its opposition to the Republicans and the Trump government, was not alone in reporting this news. The Wall Street Journal, known for its support for the Trump government and its conservative identity, also emphasized this news and the situation; “Trump Loses on Birthright Citizenship” with the headline. Moreover, the newspaper chose to send a message to the Trump administration from the very first week, by stating that a federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan had declared the executive order clearly unconstitutional. The content of this message is that conservatism should prioritize the perspective that prioritizes profit in economic policies, while it is essential to take a more realistic, balanced and feasible social and ideological approach. The fact that Ronald Reagan, one of the iconic figures of the new right-wing politics and a role model for Trump, is used as an example of the fallacy of his policies reinforces this impression.
Anyone familiar with American media circles knows that The New York Times and its affiliates, as well as outlets such as CNN and the Washington Post, have long had a Democratic bias. But when it comes to The Wall Street Journal, the situation changes.
The WSJ is a conservative-leaning and big business influential newspaper. Personally, I am a regular reader of the WSJ and I can safely claim that its editorial group has a huge influence in setting the agenda in the United States. In fact, Wall Street, using its editorial policy and its influence in the circles with which it is associated, actively opposed the Democratic Party from the front during the election. We have all observed this as political observers, and it has shown an opposition to Joe Biden that some might consider too harsh in terms of style. This style of opposition reached its highest level after the first of the television debates, and the anti-Biden wave spread in a panic to the Democratic community, to The New York Times, and to major Democratic donors. This is one of the main reasons why an experienced president like Joe Biden was forced to withdraw.
Kamala Harris, another energetic and high-potential candidate who replaced Joe Biden after he was forced to withdraw from the nomination due to the pressure put on him, was also not elected, mainly because she could not win the support of Wall Street circles. I can easily claim this as well. Harris has a leftist background that is beyond the tolerance of the capitalist circles and it is not easy for anyone in the USA to accept this. Moreover, it is not unreasonable to think that Harris' time as a prosecutor has come under scrutiny in this process. The mortgage crisis that led to one of the biggest financial crises in the history of Wall Street is still fresh in the memory, and we are not only talking about the owners of capital, we are talking about very powerful and intelligent people. If there is such a thing as concentration of intelligence in the world, Wall Street is one of the few centers of it, and I can easily claim that. When Joe Biden left office, he hinted that a kind of financial oligarchy was taking shape in the United States, but this claim is incomplete. He would have been correct if he had said that a new and much more active financial-technological oligarchy has taken shape in the United States and has taken power. This statement would have hit the bull's eye. But unfortunately, there has always been a kind of oligarchy in the United States. Indeed, in capitalist countries and in monarchies, behind the president or the king there is always a kind of oligarchy that rules with him. In monarchies it is the aristocrats, in democracies it is mostly the rich. These rich people did not want to see Kamala Harris in the government because they felt that her stance against China would be weak. This is another observation of mine. As a matter of fact, this observation could have been made months before the elections and the result confirmed my impressions.
The Democratic Party is the most vivid example of the limits within which the left in America has to stay. Priorities such as providing more people with social security, housing, basic necessities, etc. are seen as "extreme" demands in this country. Therefore, for example, providing free and equal health care, education and housing for all is beyond the boundaries of this kind of leftism and is enough to get you labeled as a "communist". For this reason, the Democratic agenda has had to adopt a kind of identity politics and the globalist, technological progressive agenda as its politics to the extent that it is allowed and can move, and after a while it has reached the natural limits of this politics. The process of globalization, as I have tried to express in my previous articles, stalled during Covid. The idea of technological progress passed on a different plane when the question of how and by whom this progress could be realized was resolved in favor of conservative Republicans. Reproductive rights, trans marriages and identity issues are of course very important, but they do not directly improve the daily lives of the masses, and they can be met with antipathy to the extent that they are imposed on countries in the rest of the world that live in much more backward conditions. Within these political limits, the Democratic ideology has been plunged into a kind of identity crisis, and as an elite ideology, it has become a middle-upper income ideology that appeals only to the elite and the educated. This is essentially the crisis that the Democrats could not overcome.
In Britain, too, the Labor Party government came to power not long ago. In fact, we are talking about two election results that should be diametrically opposed to each other; the Republican government in the USA and the Labor Party government in the UK are two such different traditions. However, the constitutive influence of the capitalist circles in the political system in both countries is so strong that these two different political governments are closely and critically monitored and criticized by the same power centers that brought them to power. The Wall Street Journal's line is the most concrete indicator of this. The editorial lines of The Times and The New Statesman show that such a balance is being struck, and that it is a delicate one at that.
Elon Musk's outrageous and shameful move should be taken as a warning sign about the dangerous tendencies developing in the bosom of the forces behind this balance. However, the evaluation of this movement is beyond the scope of this article and deserves to be the subject of an article in its own right.
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