WEEK 12

Wednesday, April 30

It is 100 days since the inauguration.

Many years ago I participated in a small meeting organized by the then newly elected President of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso. He sought advice, among other subjects, on whether to pursue a "honeymoon" or a "momentum" strategy. The honeymoon strategy is to do everything as quickly as possible, during the first 100 days. The momentum strategy is to proceed in steps: begin with items that are politically easy, demonstrate power, and then gradually move to more difficult items. Trump clearly opted for the honeymoon: as of April 24, he signed 139 executive orders, 37 memorandums, and 39 proclamations. His subordinates delve into practically everything. Repression, however, may follow a momentum strategy: the government started with undocumented immigrants, for which he had majority support, then proceeded to legal visa holders but, in the light of Trump's comment on "homegrown", it may move to green-card holders, naturalized citizens, and then US born citizens.

The date is only symbolic but it provokes taking stock. Here is how I see the situation now. These are neither judgments nor predictions, just facts.

(1) Courts.

There are lots of temporary disabling orders issued by federal judges and the Trump administration never openly defied a court ruling but no court ruling has stopped it from doing what it wants. Mahmoud Khalil is still languishing in prison, Kilmar Abrego Garcia remains in El Salvador, ICE arrests whomever it wants, no university recovered its federal grants, federal employees were fired, several government agencies were dismantled and others experienced budget cuts, several law firms were disabled from appearing in federal courts. Nothing has changed. The Supreme Court appears to be trying to avoid an open confrontation with the administration.

(2) Dismantling the government.

Several agencies were abolished, most prominently USAID, but including minor institutions such as the Wilson Center at the Smithsonian. In several cases, the agencies were not formally abolished, as this would require legislation, but their personnel was reduced by 99%. I could not get a full list of them anywhere, even using Chatgpt. I know they include Voice of America, US Interagency Council on Homelessness, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Office for Civil Rights and Liberties but this is just a small part. Many other agencies were gutted. Again, I have only examples, which include Federal Housing Authority, Health and Human Services Department, State Department, Federal Aviation Authority, and whatever is the agency that provides weather forecasts. The elephant is the Department of Education: it is still unclear whether it will be formally abolished or just disabled. Numbers of people who lost federal jobs are difficult to determine because some are fired and then rehired.

(3) Medical research funds.

The budget for NIH is to be reduced by 44%. I mention NIH separately, because reducing federal funds for medical research is the least popular government policy according to a recent poll: the margin between supporting and opposing cuts is -56%.

(4) The economy.

Stock markets are exceptionally volatile but with a clear downward trend. While Dow Jones soared 1,500 points when Trump was elected, it fell 8.89% since January 21 and 5.17% during the past month. Consumer confidence is sharply down. Both professional economists and the general public are highly pessimistic about inflation and GDP growth. Tariffs are almost universally expected to increase inflation. Some economists fear that deregulation of the financial system will generate a major crisis.

(5) Actions against universities.

Sixty universities are subject to government investigations. The original charge against them was anti-Semitism, now the charges are more focused on DEI. The government never attempted to explain why these charges justify freezing biomedical research. Several universities were subject to total or partial cuts of federal funding. They are threatened not only with cuts of research funds, but also with withdrawing accreditation, losing their tax-exempt status, a tax on income from endowments, and being deprived of foreign students. Some universities are yielding, some resisting.

(6) Selective actions against law firms.

Law firms that represented Trump's adversaries, political and non-political, are subject to sanctions which would disable them from appearing in federal courts. Again, some yielded, some are resisting in courts.

(7) Selective threats against non-government institutions, organizations, and private individuals.

They include interference into medical journals, prosecution of Wikipedia, Trump's pronouncements against ABC, CNN and MSNBC. Some former Trump aides are accused of treason; others lost their government protection.

(8) Elections.

A bill is being processed through the Congress that would require specific documents proving citizenship in order to register to vote. The Department of Justice was instructed to initiate actions against the main funding platform of the Democratic Party, ActBlue. Public opinion polls show declining support for Trump: most recent polls show that his approval rating is the lowest any president had after 100 days, including his first term. The confidence in the Democratic Party, however, is even lower than in Trump or the Republican Party.

(9) Republicans in the House.

Trump established complete control over Republicans in the House, where he cannot afford to lose votes. Even those Republicans who in the past vigorously opposed government deficits and debt are mute.

(10) Resistance.

Following Harvard, several universities are resisting measures that would eliminate their autonomy. Some law firms also defy the administration. Street protests two weeks ago had a reasonably high participation and new demonstrations are planned. They are not led or coordinated by the Democratic Party. Only Bernie Sanders and AOC address themselves directly to the public.

(11) Wars.

Children are still being bombed and die in Ukraine and in Gaza.

Thursday, May 1

More on the 100 days. In a recent poll, 66% of respondents think that Trump's performance is "chaotic," 59 % that it is "scary," and 42% that it is "exciting." "Chaotic" is probably due to the zigzags on tariffs. I wonder if "scary" is due mainly to the prospect of increasing inflation or the threat to democracy.

Interesting from an April 29 Substack post by Ben Ansell: "You cannot directly purchase respect. You can of course purchase lots of things that might invoke respect from others - be it cars, clothes, housing, weird golden sprayed trophies. But the thing you really want, you cannot buy wholesale." Respect is something one may earn as a consequence of some actions or achievements but not when their purpose is to generate respect. In Jon Elster's view, which Ansell quotes, it can be only an unintended by-product. Ansell is thinking of the tech bros but I wonder whether it does not apply to Trump himself. He is incessantly touting himself and his achievements. "Respect" is a word he uses often, even if in his mouths it sounds mafioso.

Some weeks ago I quoted a sign posted at the Warsaw airport in 1990, warning that "Violators will be punished and prosecuted." When I saw it at the time, I interpreted it as an indication that, having just emerged from 45 years of communism, Poles needed to learn that governments must prosecute before they could punish. Yet this is the generic legal posture of the Trump administration. It applies to immigrants, to law firms, to universities. The guiding principle is simple: those guilty should be punished. The guilt of those being punished is obvious, so they do not deserve due process. I already quoted Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka saying that anyone advocating for due process for Kilmar Abrego Garcia could be viewed as "aiding and abetting a terrorist."

Friday, May 2

"Backsliding," I thought, has two dimensions: one is protecting oneself from the possibility of losing office through elections, the second is extending discretion in policy making beyond established institutional limits. Project 2025, which is faithfully being implemented by the Trump administration, makes me think of the second dimension in a narrower way, namely in terms of an ideological project to radically increase or reduce the role of the State with regard to the society. There are several backsliders on the first dimension -- monopolizing power -- who have no revolutionary project. There have been some democratically elected governments that had revolutionary projects but which did not try to monkey with the electoral mechanism. I can think only of three who had revolutionary projects and did everything possible to disarm any political opposition. Here is a table with some names:

Revolutionary

Yes No

Yes Chàvez, Morales, Trump Erdogan, Modi, Orban

Power grab

No Allende, Mitterand, Milei Most

Allende was going to lead Chile to socialism but he had deep respect for democratic norms. The electoral program of Mitterand's coalition was to "Change Lives" (Changer la Vie) but Mitterand did not have any ideological beliefs and he was prepared to subject himself to the verdict of elections. I also include Milei in this category because, while he has a radical neo-liberal project, at least thus far he has stayed away from trying to manipulate elections. Thatcher and Reagan probably belong in the same category. In turn, Erdogan, Modi, Orban, and several others have done everything possible to protect themselves from the possibility of losing office, including sizeable political repression, but they have no ideological projects. So the list of governments which both try to hold onto power by any means and to use it to implement an ideological project has only three names. I tried to find more and I pushed some friends who should know to give me other examples, but we could not come up with any more. The events we are living through are historically rare.

Saturday, May 3

Here is something truly grotesque. Chris Krebs, a former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, had his Global Entry withdrawn. Presidential Memorandum of April 9 was dedicated exclusively to him, as "a significant bad-faith actor." What follows in the text is inane: "Krebs, through CISA, falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, .... Abusive conduct of this sort both violates the First Amendment and erodes trust in Government, thus undermining the strength of our democracy itself." What puzzles me is how the administration succeeds to act on such minute details. The order to go after Mr. Krebs comes from the very top of the administration, the President. But I doubt that the President personally ordered to withdraw Global Entry clearance from anyone: he probably does not even know about the existence of this program. Someone in the White House must have thought about Mr. Krebs, must have contacted the US Customs and Border Protection and ordered it to take this particular action. Do they have some young people within the White House whose job it is to make life difficult for people Trump does not like? Still, this must have been the least consequential action ever taken by any chief executive: now Mr. Krebs will have to wait in line 10 minutes longer to reenter the US. When revenge is entailed, the attention span of the administration is unlimited.

Just for the record. The offensive to destroy science continues: NSF stopped awarding all funding as of April 30, "until further notice." The offensive to subjugate media continues: funds for NPR and PBS were cut.

Sunday, May 4

I asked a friend, someone who has a very good record of predicting political events, what he thinks these days. His response was "It depends on the weather." I may be more persistently pessimistic but my fears and hope also oscillate widely. Today it is sunny, so I am asking myself which of the imaginable atrocities are not possible in the United States. Specifically, which of the repressive measures used by various dictators could not be implemented in the US?

The first candidate is not holding an election, which has no precedent in the history of the US. Elections were held even during the Civil War.

The second candidate is massive incarceration of political opponents. The precedent is the Sedition Act of 1918, which extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to speech and opinion critical of the war and of the US government. According to Wikipedia, some 1,500 persons were prosecuted under this Act and more than 1,000 were convicted. Notable among them was the Socialist leader, Eugene Debs, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison, of which he ended up serving two. This Act was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1919 but it was repealed in 1920. The article in Wikipedia ends on a positive note: "Subsequent Supreme Court decisions, such as Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), make it unlikely that similar legislation would be considered constitutional today."

The third one is the use of any branch of the Armed Forces against US civilians. This is the essence of the Posse Camitatus Act of 1878. The escape clause in this Act is "unless authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress," but it still seems highly unlikely.

Continuing elections, no gulags, no Tiananmen Squares is all that comes to my mind. Perhaps this is already a lot if one's vision of the future is truly bleak: Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao committed these atrocities. But it still has the feeling of gallows humor.

Monday, May 5

I am taking the day off. It is my 85th birthday. I lived through all kinds of hell. Bombs were falling on my head when I was four. I grew up under a repressive regime, violent until I was 13, then more tolerant. I am a refugee and an immigrant. I had my share of US visa problems. I was deeply affected by the coup in Chile, where I lived just before it. But I was still unprepared that in my very old age I would be entertaining the possibility of the end of democracy in the United States. I am not going to spoil my birthday thinking about it.

Tuesday, May 6

The President of the EU Ursula von der Leyen announced yesterday that the Union will spend 500 million Euros to attract non-European scientists to European institutions, while President Macron pledged that France will spend 100 million. It is difficult to think that these announcements are more than a fanfaronade, pure show. The US government cut 736 million dollars, 651 million Euros at the current exchange rate, from Columbia University alone. The total cut in the budget of the NIH projected in the current budget proposal is about 21 billion and many more billions are cut from other government funding agencies.

In 2024, the US spent 3.59% of its national product on research and development, about 1 trillion dollars. In Europe, R&D expenditures vary significantly across countries: Sweden spent 3.41% of its GDP, Germany 3.13%, UK 2.90%, France 2.23%, Spain 1.44%, and Italy 1.39%. These percentages are equivalent to US$ 180 billion spent by Germany, 95 billion by the UK, and 68 billion by France. Hence, the scale of the Choose Europe for Science program, which is how Macron dubbed it, is just miniscule. Even for France, which has been starving science and scientists during the recent years, 100 million is just 0.0015 of the current spending on R&D.

The opportunity Europe is missing is huge. According to numbers cited by the Hill, a dollar invested in biomedical research in the US generated $8.30 in eight years, implying a 30.2% annual rate of return. A March 2023 careful study of rates of return to R&D in the OECD countries, by Frontier Economics, concludes that the median rate at the level of countries is 15% while the mean rate is 36%. I find these numbers hard to believe but even if they were much lower, they would still be much higher than any other investment. Moreover -- now I am just speculating -- the difference in economic growth rates between the US and Europe may be attributable to the under-investment in R&D by European countries. Hence, the opportunity of attracting top US researchers is unprecedented. The obvious problem is that almost all European countries already engage in deficitary spending and the push toward rearmament puts an additional burden on fiscal deficits. This is why, I think, the steps taken by Europe are so timid.

What would it take to attract researchers now located in the US? The salary differentials between the US and Europe are large. Here is a comparison of the ranges of gross annual salaries by academic levels (all the numbers are in thousands of US dollars transformed at today's exchange rates):

Level US Germany France Netherlands UK

1 60-130 57-68 32-54 51-73 51-64

2 70-160 68-85 62-90 60-77

3 90-300+ 79-113 43-90 73-124 80-160

Taxes are higher in Europe but so are social services. The effective net incomes are impossible to determine and the nominal comparisons may over-estimate the differences. The numbers we do have show that the top US researchers at level 1 would suffer a salary cut of between 44% if moving to the Netherlands and 58% if relocating to France and at level 3 between 47% if moving to the UK and 70% if relocating to France.

Many US researchers may have no choice but to move because they will be unable to do any kind of research if they remain. Some need only paper, pencil, and a waste paper basket; some, as a former President of Princeton once remarked, don't even need a waste paper basket. But some need expensive equipment. The typical annual research grant in the US includes between $250 and $500 thousand in direct costs and between $500 thousand and 1 million with indirect costs. Hence, even if US researchers were willing to take salary cuts, each would still require some sum between $250 and $500 thousand per year to conduct their research, plus the indirect costs.

All the numbers I used are approximate and not all can be compared but the glaring conclusion is that the movement of US based scholars to Europe will be at best a trickle.