When most people think about grief, they associate it with the death of a loved one. They reflect on past memories, shared experiences and precious moments of life. It is natural for one to yearn for the past, the comfort and safety of familiar times and stability. Now, with the promise of a second term for Donald Trump and the suggested implementation of Project 2025, thousands of U.S. citizens are anticipating a state of oppression driven by the proposition of drastic, authoritarian political policies.
This feeling of overwhelming loss of safety and trust in the government is known as political grief. Minority groups — such as individuals who identify as LGBTQA+, immigrants who are currently residing in the United States with or without visas and women of child-bearing age — are currently experiencing political grief due to the possibility of bills being passed in support of Project 2025’s initiatives.
New concerns about adherence to checks and balances have arisen due to Trump’s suggestion that Republican Senators consider agreeing to recess appointments. This is problematic for two reasons. First, recess appointments allow the president to bypass the time taken by the Senate to vote on the appointment of the presidential Cabinet, judicial openings or any vacancies within the executive branch that may occur when the Senate is not in session. In doing this, Trump could authorize temporary appointments to his Cabinet and expedite Senate legislative action.
Second, by encouraging Republican Senators to adhere to recess appointments, Trump is essentially suggesting that he will be more willing to consider endorsing their rise up the leadership ladder. Additionally, the new Trump administration will be operating with a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, increasing the chances that bills regarding initiatives from Project 2025 could be approved.
With these developments, fear of what is to come is now plaguing LGBTQA+ and immigrant families, as well as women and their right to reproductive health. For non-heterosexual families, the possibility of losing their right to marriage, having fostered or adopted children removed from their care or requiring transgender teachers to register as sex offenders are just a few concerns.
Project 2025 also calls for state and local law enforcement to adhere to stricter federal immigration laws. Families of immigrants will now be at risk of expedited deportation following Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids of public areas such as schools and religious institutions. These non-violent immigrants would be placed in massive detention centers for months or years while waiting for deportation. Further, immigrants could expect the elimination of visas for children and adults who have come to the United States for education or seeking asylum from war-torn countries, as well as complete denial of access to the U.S. from the southern border.
Project 2025 aims to restrict access to birth control, and eventually eliminate access to medication abortion by nullifying Food and Drug Administration approval for safe, effective and commonly used drugs such as mifepristone and misoprostol. Hospitals will be allowed to deny abortion care to women who are at risk of losing their lives due to pregnancy complications, placing more pressure on already overwhelmed and under-funded clinics. Businesses will also be prosecuted for transportation and dissemination of abortion pills and associated medical supplies.
If passed, bills and laws solidifying Trump’s plans will harm hundreds of thousands of citizens, immigrants and women. Project 2025 will instigate the separation of loving families, cause the death of thousands of women, incite nation-wide trauma, displace hundreds of thousands of people and potentially provoke economic collapse due to the major loss of workforce. Even U.S. citizens who are not in these minority populations have begun to experience political grief for their friends, neighbors and colleagues.
In preparation of events to come, many individuals are seeking resources and services to protect their rights. Immigration and LGBTQA+ lawyers will soon be in high demand, as immigrants, residents and citizens fight to maintain their rights in the United States. If you or someone you know is in need of legal or mental health services during this time, please reach out for assistance.
Resources
National Mental Health Hotline: 9-8-8
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-TALK (8255)
The Trevor Project (LGBTQA+ Crisis and Suicide Prevention Hotline): 866-488-7386 Lambda Legal (LGBTQA+ Legal Support System): 212-809-8585
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: 800-375-5283 (TTY 800-767-1833, VRS 877-709-5797)
Liley publishes editorial content as well as peer-reviewed scientific publications in the field of behavioral neuroscience.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.