Sometimes the future can seem dark. The pandemic drags on. Climate change is upon us. Political polarization remains toxic. When stories of division fill the headlines, it's easy to feel like the only way is down.
But what if that's not true? What if we gave less airtime to voices of doom and more to voices of hope? This episode of Let's Find Common Ground discusses the possibilities for a more hopeful future.
Project Overview
This essay is part of a series by Lawyers Defending American Democracy, explaining in practical terms what the administration’s executive orders and other executive actions mean for all of us. Each of these actions springs from the pages of Project 2025, the administration's 900-page playbook that serves as the foundation for these measures. The Project 2025 agenda should concern all of us, as it tracks strategies adopted by countries such as Hungary, which have eroded democratic norms and have adopted authoritarian approaches to governing.
Project 2025’s stated intent to move quickly to “dismantle” the federal government will strip the public of important protections against excessive presidential power and provide enormous and unchecked opportunities for big corporations to profit by preying on America's households.
In Part One of the series, we address attacks on the federal workforce, specifically, through the removal of protection for tens of thousands of federal workers underExecutive Order 14171 and through large-scale reductions in force directed under Executive Order 14201.
From Public Service to Presidential Loyalty
Beginning on Inauguration Day, President Trump has moved swiftly and steadily to dismantle the federal government. If successfully implemented, his stream of executive orders and related actions will result in the destruction of government as we know it, replacing it with a new operational system where conflicts of interest abound, checks and balances are gone, and government workers are chosen based on loyalty to the President instead of the duty to serve the public. Fact-based decisions made by professionals will become a thing of the past.
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Project 2025 – The Destruction of Government Agencies
Executive Orders 14171 and 14201 come straight from the Project 2025 chapter entitled, Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy. The intent of this chapter is to essentially replace the federal workforce with a decentralized and privatized system.
Executive Order 14171 achieves the goals of Project 2025 by removing due process and other employment for thousands of federal workers by reclassifying as many as 50,000 members of the civil service as “Schedule F” employees. This enables the administration to fire these employees without due process and to replace them with political appointees. Media reports describe a process where hiring focuses more on loyalty to the President than on merit.
Executive Order 14201 complements that directive through mandated, large-scale, and widespread reductions in the federal workforce, without any requirement that such firings be based on performance, productivity, or merit.
Why This Matters
These Executive Orders empower the administration to fill positions that were once occupied by nonpolitical employees with unqualified loyalists. Although some high-level government workers are typically replaced following a change in federal administration, the vast majority are not. This stability enables the government to perform vital services without interruption, by people with expertise in health, safety, law enforcement, national security, and other crucial areas.
Civil service protections were created more than a century ago in response to the corruption of the “spoils system” in which government jobs were rewarded for political loyalty. They were designed to protect government workers from political interference, allowing them to serve the public while shielded from political pressure.
The executive orders ignore this history and will have direct impacts on the public by reducing the quality of government services and jeopardizing public health and safety. The examples are many and include:
The executive orders will result in cuts to essential government services and increased costs for taxpayers.
The executive orders will open the door to patronage systems and corruption and will eliminate vital expertise.
They also threaten the independence and integrity of agency officials.
Key Takeaway
This creation of a practice of governance that rewards supporters, friends, and loyalists and that reduces the size of federal agencies without regard to the services they provide will reduce needed services and threaten our health and safety. It should raise alarms for all those who believe that federal employees must be free to provide crucial services without political interference.
Lawyers Defending American Democracy is dedicated to galvanizing lawyers “to defend the rule of law in the face of an unprecedented threat to American Democracy.” Its work is not political or partisan.
Few would argue with the claim that President Trump’s tariff policy is chaotic.
In early April 2025, Trump announced sweeping tariffs on all U.S. trading partners, including a 10% blanket tariff and higher rates for specific countries like China (145%) and Canada (25%). Just a few days later, however, he rolled back many of these tariffs, citing the need for "flexibility".
Again this past weekend, Trump announced major changes—this time targeting the tech industry. Products like smartphones, laptops, hard drives, and semiconductors were suddenly exempted from the 125% tariffs he had imposed on Chinese imports just a week earlier. But these exemptions are temporary, the administration noted, hinting at future tariffs that target semiconductors and other electronics.
The uncertainty has rattled business leaders. Last week, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned that the lack of clarity could push the U.S. into a recession if trade deals aren't finalized swiftly. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon also highlighted the challenges of navigating the instability caused by these policies.
“There’s no strategy here... zero,” said Michael Cohen, a longtime Trump confidante-turned-critic who testified against him in his Manhattan hush money trial. “This isn’t about strategy, this is about brute force... and dictating demands.”
Cohen is not alone. Michael Strain, an economist with the American Enterprise Institute, believes that Trump has no coherent policy, saying, “People are trying to figure out what game of five-dimensional chess the president is playing and I don’t think there is one. I don’t think he knows what he’s doing and he’s making mistakes and making this up as he goes along.”
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But while many worry about the chaos and suggest Trump has no idea what he is doing, could this actually be part of Trump’s “Art of the Deal”?
For years, many have described Trump’s negotiating style as chaotic and unpredictable and have suggested this is an intentional strategy to gain leverage in the tariff negotiations. This approach aligns with a negotiating approach known as "chaos negotiating," where unpredictability is used as a tool to unsettle adversaries as a way to push for favorable outcomes.
Proponents of this method believe it can be a calculated way to shift power dynamics. Critics argue it creates confusion and can backfire. In truth, it may be a bit of both. Many academics believe that negotiators are better off setting specific and clear goals when negotiating, although others believe that improvisation and even chaos are powerful methods as well. Thomas Green, a managing director at Citigroup Global Markets, believes that embracing chaos can be advantageous at the bargaining table. Admittedly, Green's approach challenges conventional wisdom; “I’ve learned to make chaos my friend in negotiations,” says Green. He played a pivotal role in negotiating the $350 billion settlement of lawsuits against major U.S. tobacco companies and used this approach as the team leveraged the unpredictability of the situation to outmaneuver the opposition. The negotiation demonstrated how chaos, when managed effectively, can be a powerful tool in negotiations.
Of course, no one can really know what Trump is thinking and perhaps that is his goal. David Bahnsen, the founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group suggested this, saying: “There is a certain chaotic dimension to this that lends itself to uncertainty.” Part of it is that President Trump likes that style. I do not think he has liked the last 4 or 5 days, and I think that's where this announcement is coming from. But investors that are trying to trade around this should be extremely careful unless they think they're inside the President's mind. I'd be very careful thinking you know what President Trump's going to do next, when I can assure you that he doesn't know what he's going to do next.”
So, what will become of this latest round of tariffs—and the complex web of negotiations they’re fueling? Will Trump’s unpredictability give him leverage or will it weaken the United States' credibility and negotiating power? The truth is, no one knows. The long-term implications for trust in U.S. trade policy and the stability of strategic partnerships remain uncertain.
However, Yogi Berra, a famous baseball player known for his witty and paradoxical sayings, might have summed it all up best for what the future holds for the U.S. tariff policy:
“It is very difficult to make predictions—especially about the future.”
When it comes to Trump’s tariff policy that certainly rings true.
David Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on April 3, 2025 in Washington, DC.
The following is reposted with permission from his Substack newsletter, The Art of Association.
I make a point of letting readers know when I change my mind about matters that bear on the ongoing discussion here at The Art of Association. I need to introduce today’s newsletter about what the second Trump Administration entails for civil society with just such an update.
My views on Donald Trump have remained more or less stable for a decade. As I wrote in the aftermath of Trump’s re-election and before his second inauguration,
“Ever since I saw Donald Trump speak in person, at a campaign event in New Hampshire in the fall of 2015, I have regarded him as a demagogue. To me, he exemplifies the “dangerous ambition” that Alexander Hamilton warned about in Federalist Paper #1 — and that the framers of the Constitution sought to exclude from the presidency. Trump subsequently demonstrated major shortcomings as a chief executive during his first term; in my view, he never really grasped nor demonstrated much interest in the core responsibilities of his office. Then came his shameless and sustained if ultimately unsuccessful bid to overturn the 2020 election. From my vantage point, then, Trump has repeatedly shown himself to be unfit for the office to which he was just re-elected.”
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Nothing Trump has said or done since his new term began has disabused me of this basic judgment. What has changed, however, is my perspective on the resilience of constitutional democracy in America vis-a-vis Trump’s demagoguery and the populist nationalism that he stokes with it.
I used to think, and sought to persuade others (e.g., see here and here), that our constitutional system had a staying power against the likes of Donald Trump, one anchored in an interlocking set of self-defense mechanisms. These include the separation of powers, checks and balances, fixed and biennial congressional elections, federalism, the Bill of Rights, etc.
Moreover, as recently as a year ago, I proposed that, whatever malevolent designs Trump might pursue in a second term, they would be tempered (as they were in his first) by his incompetence at wielding the levers of governing power.
Ten weeks into the second Trump Administration, I am seeing things differently. To be sure, many of the self-defense mechanisms of U.S. democracy persist. For example, we still have an independent judiciary that I expect – contrary to its critics on both the left and right – will generally acquit itself well during the next four years. And we will have federal elections again in 2026, 2028, 2030, etc.
But I am considerably less confident than I once was that these mechanisms will serve to uphold constitutional democracy. All bets are off in particular when majorities in Congress – the branch of government best positioned and meant to check an encroaching president – are instead aiding and abetting his usurpation of their roles. A Congress that has ceded to the executive the powers of the purse (i.e., taxing, tariffing, and spending) that the Constitution grants to it is “Congress” in name only.
It also is clear that President Trump and his acolytes have learned some things. Their second time around, they are using a swarming approach that is more effective in overwhelming and bypassing democracy’s defenses. To quote Hamilton again, they are exploiting the executive’s capacity for – and comparative inter-branch advantages of – “decision, activity, secrecy, and despatch.”
In sum, I have come to appreciate how constitutional mechanisms of democratic competition and unabashed authoritarian impulses can co-exist within the same polity. And I no longer presume that the former will ultimately confound the latter.
What type of regime will prevail? That depends on how civil society responds. For constitutional democracy to win out, civil society actors must reckon with the logic of competitive authoritarianism and rethink their roles and contributions in the face of it.
Political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way first developed the concept of competitive authoritarianism in the early 2000s. Their goal was to describe and classify a growing number of hybrid regimes in which elements of ongoing democratic competition coincided with undeniable patterns of autocratic rule. Today, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Narendra Modi’s India, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey stand as classic examples of this type of regime.
Trump has long made no secret of his admiration for these strongman rulers. In his second term, the U.S. will come to operate more like their countries. Levitsky and Way have recently observed how the U.S. is showing all the hallmarks of this regime type:
“Authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order. What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. Most autocracies that have emerged since the end of the Cold War fall into this category…But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair.
Competitive authoritarianism will transform political life in the United States. As Trump’s early flurry of dubiously constitutional executive orders made clear, the cost of public opposition will rise considerably…Americans will still be able to oppose the government, but opposition will be harder and riskier, leading many elites and citizens to decide that the fight is not worth it. A failure to resist, however, could pave the way for authoritarian entrenchment.”
A lot of elites have already decided the fight is not worth it. President Trump has made not only his congressional majorities but also media companies, law firms, and Ivy League universities bend the knee to his rule. He and and his appointees have quickly and unceremoniously fired and replaced senior military officers and agency officials who might have refused to do likewise. All the while, with Trump’s full support, Russell Vought’s OMB and Elon Musk’s DOGE are intentionally traumatizing and decimating the ranks of the federal civil service in order to bring it to heel.
President Trump is not just working the referees of our justice system – he is commandeering them to reward his allies and punish his enemies. He placed the Department of Justice and FBI under the control of his most committed partisans. They, in turn, are purging any lawyers, prosecutors, and investigators who prioritize constitutional scruples over the President’s demands. With a blanket pardon on Inauguration Day, President Trump gave a get-out-of-jail-free card to 1,500+ rioters, militiamen, and seditious conspirators convicted for their crimes on January 6, 2021. He is now lashing out with incendiary rhetoric and demands for the impeachment of federal judges who have the audacity to rule against his Administration. We are not in Kansas anymore.
All these acts of submission, vituperation, and domination send clear signals to the President’s friends and foes alike. It is how competitive authoritarianism takes root.
It may be that, having underestimated the stability of constitutional democracy in the face of Donald Trump’s leadership style and designs, I am now overestimating the threat he poses to it. But the authoritarian bent of his Administration is on full display wherever one looks.
For example, consider this footage of six ICE agents, masked and masquerading as “the police,” as they detain Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University graduate student and legal resident of the U.S. One minute she is walking down a suburban Massachusetts sidewalk, off to break a Ramadan fast with friends. The next she is handcuffed and frogmarched into a Black SUV, then whisked away to a federal detention center in Louisiana. Her thoughtcrime? Co-authoring an op-ed in a student newspaper that criticized Israel. Watch and listen to the video in full to see how your federal tax dollars are now at work.
A more plausible critique of my updated assessment is that it ignores the laws of political gravity. Insofar as Donald Trump is doing unpopular things, like the sweeping tariffs he imposed last week, he and his party will suffer for it in future elections. But this presumes an opposition party that can harness public discontent against Donald Trump and the GOP – a capacity that has eluded the Democrats for years now.
Hoping for a “return to normalcy” scenario also glosses over another real possibility. We live in a dangerous world, one made more dangerous by the amateurism and politicized preoccupations of Trump’s national security appointees. A sudden emergency – terrorism in the homeland, a Chinese assault on Taiwan, a crippling cyberattack – could very well serve to strengthen the Administration’s hand.
All this said, the struggle between those seeking to keep the polity as competitive as possible, to the point of re-establishing liberal democracy, and those who seek to put their authority beyond the reach of democratic contestation is not likely to hinge on a single event, on one particular red line being crossed (or not). It rather will be an ongoing and cumulative conflict sprawling across government, politics, and society.
The good news about this dynamic for those on the side of preserving and enhancing competition is that it enables a much wider array of actors and associations to play constructive roles in the contest. The bad news is that the longer the struggle persists, the more the ranks of the public-spirited contestants risk getting thinned out by flagging zeal and the human tendency to make the best of what seems inevitable.
In competitive authoritarianism, it is necessary but insufficient for would-be strongmen to dominate government and politics. Ultimately, to cement their authority in place, they must subdue civil society. They can do this via payoffs, pacification, and / or distraction of those who are more malleable – and intimidation, investigation, and / or exile of those who are less so.
Here are five indicators we can track in the years ahead to assess whether civil society is rising to, or retreating from, the challenge we now face.
1). Collective action and mutual defense. These imperatives are rightly seen as key to the whole contest. The administration’s prime targets – e.g., law firms, universities, foundations, newspapers, scientific networks, etc. – must hang together when it tries to dominate one of their kind, lest they hang separately. Authoritarians like to subdue one institution at a time so that those next up become more apt to fold without a fight.
It is thus encouraging, for example, to see law firms like Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, and Jenner & Block contesting President Trump’s executive orders targeting them, other stalwart lawyers stepping up to represent them, and 500+ firms signing an amicus brief on behalf of Perkins. Conversely, it is discouraging to see other law firms striking Faustian bargains with the Administration and the largest “big law” groups staying silent about the frontal attack on their profession.
2). Widely shared and reflective patriotism. Given how Donald Trump has sought to wrap his bid to “Make America Great Again” in the flag, it would be tempting for his opponents in civil society to dismiss love of country as part of the problem. But this would surrender the most defensible high ground. It is on the basis of the values, achievements, and shared, warts-and-all history of democracy in America that we can envision a better way forward.
The celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026 offers an opportunity to reclaim the mantle of patriotism. President Trump will no doubt proclaim a nostalgic and exclusive form of this civic virtue to rally his MAGA followers during the Semiquincentennial. To counter it, we need to exhibit a reflective, forward-looking, and inclusive patriotism that resonates with an ample majority of Americans.
3). Broad and centripetal policy coalitions. It will once again be tempting for progressive philanthropists, advocates, and activists to intermingle their pre-existing policy preferences with their efforts to defend democracy. This helps them maintain their intersectional commitments and alliances on immigration, climate, DEI, trans rights, political economy, etc. But it makes it much harder to build the cross-partisan coalition of supporters that liberal democracy requires.
Civil society actors who are serious about stopping and reversing authoritarian drift should ask themselves a clarifying question: “Do the policy positions we hold currently appeal to a broad majority of Americans, including the median voter?” If the answer is “no” or “not really,” then they should either modulate the intensity with which they insist coalition partners and leaders share their policy preferences, or candidly acknowledge that they are prioritizing those preferences over the recovery of liberal democracy.
4). Repair and revitalization. One of the main reasons liberal democracy finds itself on the back foot is that so many of the institutions and professions it relies on have lost their collective way. Even as we come to the defense of these endeavors, we also have to admit and follow up on the pressing need to fix and reinvigorate them so they can once more serve democratic purposes.
Jen Pahlka and Mark Dunkelman have pointed out why and how this needs to be done with the administration and implementation of government policy. Others have done likewise with philanthropy (myself included). Darryl Holliday and his colleagues are doing this with local journalism and civic media. And a growing number of critical friends and leaders are mapping out the changes needed in beleaguered institutions of higher education.
Consider what former Harvard President and current professor Larry Summers recently had to say about his own institution and others like it:
“To maintain the moral high ground, which universities have in large part lost, they need a much more aggressive reform agenda focused on antisemitism, celebrating excellence rather than venerating identity, pursuing truth rather than particular notions of social justice and promoting diversity of perspective as the most important dimension of diversity.”
This would certainly be a step in the right direction – and make our universities much better able to ward off the populist broadsides that have only just begun to ramp up.
5). Independence and self-reliance. Finally, we come to a related and difficult rub. Many of the prominent nonprofits that comprise an ostensibly independent sector find themselves dependent on funding from a federal government that is now hellbent on squelching, diverting, or micro-managing their missions.
Upon closer examination, in the wake of the Trump Administration’s early disruptions, much of what we have taken to calling “civic space” is more accurately described as federally funded and subsidized space. They are not the same thing.
I will have more to say about this prosaic but nonetheless profound challenge in an upcoming post. Suffice it to say for now that, unless and until it is resolved in a reconfiguration of nonprofit funding patterns that enables greater institutional autonomy, authoritarians will retain the upper hand
Daniel Stid is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on civil society, philanthropy, and democratic governance.
In the comments section of his New York Times column titled “Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True,” Nick Kristof wrote: “I think that President Trump and Elon Musk thought the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would be an easy target and could be a practice run for raiding something harder, like Medicaid. In reporting this story, I tried to put human faces on the aid cuts and appeal to readers' consciences, but I wonder whether it's more effective to appeal to the public's sense of self interest? Which arguments do you think are most effective in reaching people and changing minds?”
As a citizen advocate who has spent more than 40 years working to improve USAID, waves of grief keep coming over me due to the reckless and shameful dismemberment of the agency. Attempts by Musk and Trump to shut down USAID amount to vandalizing America’s soul.
Here's why I say that demolishing USAID is like vandalizing America’s soul, why it is wrong to decimate an agency that Elon Musk calls “evil” and “a criminal organization” that “needs to die” and that President Trump said is run by “lunatic radicals”. Listen to the late-U.S. Senator Mark Hatfield (R-OR) who, in 1982, spoke to our deepest aspirations as individuals and as a nation. In an Oregonian op-ed Hatfield wrote, “We stand by as children starve by the millions because we lack the will to eliminate hunger. Yet, we have found the will to develop missiles capable of flying over the polar cap and landing within a few hundred feet of their target. This is not innovation; it is a profound distortion of humanity’s purpose on earth.”
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USAID is not a perfect organization, but it is one key tool the U.S. has for correcting that distortion of humanity’s purpose on earth.
Here’s an example of USAID’s importance. In the mid-1980s, globally, 3.5 million children were dying each year from six vaccine-preventable diseases (listen up RFK Jr.!): diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, measles, polio, and tuberculosis. At the time, a dose of vaccine to prevent the greatest killer, measles, cost a mere six cents. By 2017, globally, an estimated 700,000 children died each year from these vaccine-preventable diseases—a reduction in child deaths of 80 percent.
USAID matters not only for what it does but for how it impacts other donor countries. In a New York Times interview in 2013, former UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Kul Chandra Gautam said that it was the U.S. leadership on child survival “….that led many other countries to come on board.” Will our abandonment of the world’s poorest children and their families lead other nations to follow our lead and result in an alarming rise in global child deaths?
Hearing about millions of lives saved can make our eyes glaze over and miss the impact on individuals. UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children 1986 Report concluded with the words of Maria Auxilia Paja, a mother from a rural area in South America. A trained health worker arrived in her village but only after two of Paja’s children had already died, one from a respiratory infection and the other from measles. Paja said:
“For the baby boy, I tried to get help, but as I was carrying him for help, he just died in my arms. My daughter was older. I had got used to playing with her, being with her. It’s difficult. . . . It’s sad to remember those times with my children. She was alright when she went to bed. By midnight she was sick. She died just as day broke. I am not alone. It’s happened to a lot of women.”
“Maria Auxilia Paja is indeed not alone,” the report concluded. “In the last 12 months, approximately 15 million mothers like her have been forced to watch their children die.”
Because of the work of USAID and others, 10 million of those 15 million child deaths are now prevented each year, a two-thirds reduction in global child deaths. But with five million children still dying each year from mostly preventable causes, now is not the time to retreat from the parts of the aid budget that work.
We should locate wasteful spending in all areas of government but you don’t do that by firing USAID’s Inspector General and putting Elon Musk’s army of 20-somethings in charge. The Congress should do its job; protect effective aid and remove any abuse. When the Senate approved a continuing resolution in early March to extend federal funding for the remainder of the fiscal year, they voted down, by a vote of 73-27, an amendment introduced by Sen. Rand Paul that would cut foreign assistance funding by $16 billion. Twenty-seven Republicans voted against Sen. Paul’s amendment to cut foreign aid. Maybe some in Congress are finding their conscience (and some backbone).
Andrew Natsios, a lifelong Republican who ran USAID under President George W. Bush, said that what Musk and Rubio are doing “is criminal”. I agree with Natsios and I think Hatfield would too. I look at what Musk, Trump and Rubio are doing and see a profound distortion of humanity’s purpose on earth.
Sam Daley-Harris is the author of “Reclaiming Our Democracy: Every Citizen’s Guide to Transformational Advocacy” (Rivertowns Books, 2025 paperback) and the founder of RESULTS and Civic Courage.
