WEEK 18

WEEK 18

Intended and unintended

The MAGAs came into office with some clear plans, detailed on 920 pages of the Project 2025 prepared by the Heritage Foundation. I doubt that Trump ever read it but some people in his Administration not only read but participated in writing it. The specific plans of the incoming government were distilled in Agenda 47, Trump's campaign manifesto. Which government policies and specific actions constitute implementation of these plans and which could not have been expected?

Obviously, any answer to this question must be selective, so I just focus on some prominent aspects. Here is a list of some areas in which the government is relentlessly implementing its plans.

1. Federal government. Expenditures of the federal government are being drastically reduced, by about 25%. Several agencies are being eliminated. Still pending but in progress is replacement of professional civil servants by political loyalists (Schedule F).

2. Tariffs. Tariffs are a subject of a strategy, rather than a plan, because outcomes of negotiations depend on the stance taken by other countries.The general idea that the extant tariff system is unfair to the US and that manufacturing can be revitalized by taxing imports are deeply ingrained in Trump's plans. He likes "making deals" and he believes he is good at it, so the current chaos, perhaps only temporary, was predictable.

3. US role in the world. The general posture is extremely xenophobic. It includes withdrawing from most international organizations and programs, closing government agencies that propagated American "soft power," shutting access to the US of people from several countries, and reducing the number of foreign students.

4. Immigration. Many people, myself included, had hoped that Trump would be satisfied with a TV spectacle and not implement his campaign pronouncements. Parading a few illegal immigrants, with documented criminal records, on TV would have satisfied his followers at a low cost and without much disruption: this is what I thought. Yet the Administration took deliberate measures to prepare a legal structure for massive deportations and is building a massive infrastructure for incarcerating thousands of people in privately operated concentration camps. The proposed budget for the DHS is of the same size as the budget of the NIH before the cuts. The daily quotas for detentions set for ICE add up to over a million a year.

5. Deployment of military forces against civilians. President's authority to use the military to maintain order was called for in the original plans. Trump's Executive Order issued on April 28 prepared the ground: "Sec. 4. Using National Security Assets for Law and Order. (a) Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security and the heads of agencies as appropriate, shall increase the provision of excess military and national security assets in local jurisdictions to assist State and local law enforcement."

6. Anti-DEI campaign. Planned and thoroughly implemented.

Here, in turn, are some surprises.

1. US role in the world. Trump's declared intention was to end quickly, "on the first day," the wars ongoing in different parts of the world. Thus far, Trump failed to generate even a truce in Ukraine and not only failed to pacify the Middle East but had to swallow the Israeli attack on Iran. His campaign pronouncements seem to indicate that he truly dislikes wars, would want them to stop, and to keep the US away from armed conflicts. Yet the US turned out not to be as powerful as he must have thought and he cannot avoid being entangled in ongoing wars.

2. Science and universities. I lump them because I cannot tell whether universities became targets because of the campaign against science or scientific research was victimized because of the campaign against research universities.

2.1. Science. I could not find anything in the plans that would forecast a general offensive against scientific research. Perhaps the NIH and NSF are just corollary victims of the zeal to cut government expenditures. But the budget proposal for 2026 signals that the attack on science is systematic: from what I can tell, every science or research unit within any agency of the federal government is either eliminated or severely reduced.

2.2. Universities. An offensive against DEI programs was planned. So were the measures intended to generate a political balance among university faculties. But why were some universities, notably Columbia and Harvard, picked as targets? The rumors are that Trump has a grudge against Columbia because many years ago it turned down a real estate deal Trump wanted and against Harvard because it did not accept his youngest son. I cite these rumors only because the reasons the Administration attacked specific universities are opaque. In turn, cutting all universities from access to foreign students undermines their financial viability. Was this intended?

3. California. There is nothing in the plans that would predict the opening of the anti-California front. One could have expected that a Republican Administration would try to weaken Blue states. But this conflict erupted suddenly and, note, a few days before the Los Angeles show of military force. Trump does hates Newsom, who tried unsuccessfully to avoid Trump's ire, so perhaps Trump just smelled weakness?

I think unintended outcomes occur for three reasons. One is that the blueprint the Administration pursues generates some effects that were not anticipated or just willfully ignored. To take an example that does not cease to puzzle me, why cut cancer research of a university that has a pro-Palestinian Middle East Center? What will happen to the costs of borrowing if the US continues to increase its fiscal deficits? Is the general attack on science an unintended by-product of the ideological impulse to subjugate universities to political control or is it a deliberate attempt to destroy all sources of authority independent of the government? The second reason is that the political control over government policies can never be perfectly centralized, which is why most governments employ people who are competent to act on their own on particular matters. When loyalty becomes the only criterion, loyalists compete for the attention of the Leader by venturing into actions they expect to attract his attention and please him, regardless of their other consequences. Is Rubio's halt to issuing visas for foreign students an aspect of some general policy or is it just his guess about what Trump would like? The indiscriminate brutality of ICE seems to be an effect of letting a free hand to Mr. Homan. And then there is emotion, hate, and revenge. The attack on California may be a product of personal feelings of Trump, as are his attacks on particular individuals, law firms, media, and universities.

While the general blueprint the government pursues is transparent, all this implies that some of its actions and their consequences are difficult to predict. But I think it is futile to hope that the government would change its course or even its specific measures if they have obviously negative consequences for the economy or the society, for everyday lives. Trump is committed to maintaining an aura of infallibility. Admitting any kinds of mistakes would make this bubble burst. The result is that once any conflict erupts, Trump must double up on it. He cannot afford to leave California at peace, so he escalates by attacking New York and Illinois. He cannot leave Harvard at peace, so he goes after universities in general. He cannot soften his campaign against immigrants. He cannot correct his "Big and beautiful" budget. Hence, one should expect all the already ongoing conflicts to escalate.

"No Kings!"

Protests have two potential effects. One is that they could persuade the government to modify some of its policies: I see this possibility so unlikely that I do not even consider it. The second possibility is that they could increase the probability that Democrats would win the next, mid-term, election.

There is some scattered statistical evidence that protests increase the vote share of the parties protesters sympathize with: articles about particular protests in Bolivia and Chile, Germany, and South Africa found this effect. The purely technical issues entailed in such studies are difficult to cope with, for there is always the possibility that this vote would have increased in the localities where the protests were larger even if they had not occurred. Moreover, protests are not all the same. One distinction is whether they are intended to be disruptive: a march on a weekend is not, road blocks or strikes are. Another distinction is whether they are intended to mobilize the general opposition to the government or to generate a change of a specific policy.

The demonstrations of June 14 seems to have been quite massive and generally peaceful. The general implication of the academic literature is that their size should increase in the future. But I think the relevant question we face is very narrow: will these demonstrations cause some people who voted for Trump, many of them saying that they did not expect Trump to actually follow some of his campaign announcements, to switch their vote in the mid-term election, either to not-voting or directly to voting for Democrats? This is not a question easy to answer. For one, turnout in mid-term elections is always much lower than in presidential years: according to Pew survey of July 12, 2023, 37% of Americans voted in all the elections of 2018, 2020, and 2022 but 12% voted on 2020 only. Hence, the electorates are different in the on- and the off-years. For two, the congressional districts where one party had a large advantage are unlikely to change partisan hands unless the swing is huge. So the question is whether demonstrations will have an effect on people who voted Republican in 2024, are likely to vote in 2026, and are located in marginal districts.

What I found striking about No Kings! was the complete absence of the Democratic Party. I read several stories, looked at lots of picture, and did not find a single slogan saying "Vote Democratic." "Defending Democracy" was frequent among the slogans but not the Democratic Party. The demonstrations were organized by an alliance of 203 organizations. They have no eminent leaders and no organizational structure. They are not a vehicle of anybody running for any office. I assume that the people participating in the demonstrations had voted and will vote Democratic, even if only to vote against Trump. But at least thus far, No Kings! is a movement and movements that at some time do not orient themselves toward winning elections do not survive long under democracy. Moreover, not only were the demonstrations devoid of electoral slogans, the Democratic Party makes no attempts to instrumentalize it electorally. It is just politically absent.

I just learned from the New York Times why the Democratic Party elite was absent. The Clintons, Harris, Schumer, Jeffries, and Pelosi were attending a wedding of Alex Soros to Huma Abeldi at the estate of Mr Soros in the Hamptons.

I was surprised as well that Trump neither prepared for the demonstrations nor reacted to it. I expected that he would bring the conflict to a boil by deploying all over the country military forces. Yet the demonstrations were managed exclusively by local police and with some exceptions were peaceful. If one is to believe results of research, this augurs well for future demonstrations. The total number of participants on June 14 is a guess but upwards of 4 million seems a safe bet and research indicates that peaceful demonstrations tend to grow in size. There is research that claims that no authoritarian regime survived demonstrations that included more than 3.5% percent of the population, which would be about 10 million in the US. We may be on the way to reach this number.

Yet the political effects of street protests are difficult to predict. The obvious question is whether the numbers of the streets would affect voting. Not only is the Democratic Party absent from the streets but the demonstrations are purely negative. They are a protest, without any glimpse of hope for an alternative future. Their purpose is to defend democracy from the onslaught by the MAGAs. There is research, by Graham and Svolik, which shows that faced with a candidate of one's own party who violates some democratic norms, voters are more likely to abstain in elections. The effects, however, are quite small: partisanship matters much more than observing democratic procedures. Without some vision of a better future, mere protests are unlikely to catch the imagination, to feed hopes, particularly of young people. To give clashing political forces renewed confidence in democracy, its defenders must offer a forward-looking perspective. This perspective is just absent.

Miscellaneous

In the last couple of days, the Administration executed some zigzags with regard to its targets for deportation. According to the press, facing pressures from some of his constituencies, Trump halted deportations of farm workers, meat packers, and some categories of people in the service sector. Yet the most recent reports are that ICE is not obeying these restrictions and it is hard to tell whether Trump already changed his mind or the ICE, facing daily quotas, is going ahead against his will. A consequential aspect of Trump's pronouncements is that he wants ICE to focus its actions on the major cities controlled by Democrats, including New York and Chicago. As the experience of Los Angeles demonstrates, this focus will lead to a major escalation of conflicts.

Thus far, a House representative, the mayor of Newark, a senator from California, and New York City Comptroller have been arrested by ICE; all Democrats.

To put what I have been thinking about in perspective, it all pales in importance given yet another new war. I do not comment about it because I could never understand wars. I was born in the midst of a world war and I grew up believing that its lesson was so painful that it would be last one ever. And yet in my lifetime wars never ceased, millions of people were killed, maimed, or displaced, huge amounts of money has been diverted from health and education to prepare for them, no one became better off as a result of them, and nationalisms still flared up each time any country entered into one. Their irrationality is so blatant that a huge academic literature about causes of wars concludes that they occur as a result of some kind of mistakes. But how many times can we repeat the same mistakes? As a Vietnam war era song asked, "When will they ever learn?"