Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader: Trump/Musk Dictatorship Is Galvanizing The American People’s Resistance – OpEd
By Ralph Nader
Madmen Trump and Musk are moving with warp speed to illegally and dictatorially wreck America and enrich themselves in the process. Forget the use of the terms “autocracy” and “constitutional crisis.” This is a savage dictatorship, getting worse by the day. Trump is attacking the courts, ignoring Congress run by a cowardly GOP, pushing to cut off critical assistance for tens of millions of Americans, devastating health, safety, food (Meals on Wheels), education (Head Start), and Medicaid insurance protections.
The rabid, ravaging, unstable Musk and his Chief Musketeer Trump are shutting down whole agencies, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Agency for International Development (only Congress can do this). The CFPB is the federal cop enforcing laws against corporate crooks stealing your money in myriad ways, and returning many billions of dollars back to you.
As for shuttering illegally the U.S. Agency for International Development, consider what is happening in these direly poor countries, as reported in the New York Times: “Funds from the world’s richest nation once flowed from the largest global aid agency to an intricate network of small, medium and large organizations that delivered aid: H.I.V. medication for more than 20 million people; nutrition supplements for starving children; support for refugees, orphaned children and women battered by violence.” (“Chaos and Confusion Reign as U.S. Cuts Off Aid to Millions Globally” by Apoorva Mandavilli, February 12, 2025). Trump is also cutting monitoring for the emergence of deadly epidemics such as Ebola, drug-resistant Tuberculosis, Malaria and other lethal viruses and bacteria, which could come to the U.S. like COVID-19 did.
The cost of all these vital protections is less than one percent of the federal budget. These safeguards have been supported by both Republican and Democratic Presidents – until Trump’s brutal reign of terror.
Children, women (maternal health assistance) and men are dying now in places like Africa. Americans are just starting to suffer with the unlawful cutoff of funds (only Congress can do this) and the firing of thousands of dedicated civil servants ministering to their fellow Americans in need.
U.S.A.I.D. is the humanitarian face of America, and Republicans like Marco Rubio once called it necessary for our country’s national security.
American businesses are starting to feel Musk’s poisonous tusks. Just with closing A.I.D., this South African racist ordered the sign on its headquarters taken down. 100,000 positions have been cut overseas, an estimated 52,000 Americans in 42 states have lost their jobs. Agricultural food supplies ready for export are starting to rot in warehouses and ports, according to the Times.
The Trump/Musk machetes are swinging wildly striking beyond bullying the poor, defenseless, and powerless, and also upending the business community. Much of our government is contracted out to millions of businesses – small and large. Their contracts are being ripped up by this lying, corrupt President who many business leaders helped elect last November.
However, voters electing Trump didn’t mean that they elected a fascist dictator betraying his campaign boasts and “Day One”promises with the first flurry of executive orders or dictates violating our Constitution, statutes, and international laws.
There is a systemic cunning behind the wild rioting that Trump and Musk are causing. First, their actions are not about efficiency. Here is their broad scheme. First fire the cops, the law enforcers against corporate violators of worker, consumer, environmental, and small investor protections. Many federal agencies have current investigations into Musk’s companies (SEC, NHTSA, EPA, FAA, etc.).
Second, establish a kleptocracy to enrich both Musk and Trump personally. (See the February 13, 2025, New York Times article by Eric Lipton titled “Under Trump Shake-Up, Benefits for Musk Empire”).
Third, smash programs assisting people, while protecting huge waste, fraud, and abuse from corporate crime harming taxpayers (e.g., fraud on Medicare/Medicaid) and vast outlays of corporate welfare – giveaways, subsidies, bailouts, and endless tax escapes by big business. After all, Trump and Musk are both corporatists.
The military/industrial complex’s unauditable Pentagon budget is untouchable. Far from squeezing the enormous waste, redundancy, and corporate fraud, Trump gives every sign of supporting an additional $150 billion, which should go for domestic necessities, to this years’ Defense Department’s swollen taxpayer appropriations. After all, Trump and Musk are militarists.
What of the resistance, presently mounting, but still outrun and over-run by the Trumpster gangsters? Americans don’t like to be told to shut up; they don’t like to have things rightfully theirs taken from their families; they don’t like to be fired en masse without cause; they don’t like government contracts for vital services being arbitrarily broken. They also don’t like their government being overthrown by fascistic gangsters.
Street demonstrations are spreading from Washington to California, from Oregon to Florida. Government employees and their unions are filing lawsuits in federal courts. Half of the country’s state Attorneys General are filing numerous court challenges. The mainstream media, under direct attack by Trump, and being frivolously sued by Trump, is still reporting and investigating.
The campuses will start rumbling as Trump/Musk cuts to medical research and other aids to education corrode these institutions. Retired military personnel are voicing their objections to the devastation of the kind of America and the freedom they fought to defend. (See veteransforpeace.org.) Veteran benefits are on draft-dodger Trump’s cutting table.
The American Bar Association (ABA) has finally spoken out. On February 11, 2025, the ABA assailed the disregard of the judiciary and threats to judges by Trump/Musk/Vance, which “threaten the very foundation of our constitutional system.” The ABA calls for every lawyer and legal organization to speak with one voice and to condemn the efforts of any administration that suggests its actions are beyond the reach of judicial review.”
Soon the business community, unable to tolerate the chaos, inflation, instability, and recklessness of Trump’s regime’s contracting violations, will speak out as economic indices fall, including stock markets.
It will take a few weeks or months, with heightened inflation, for this disruptive pipeline to reach critical mass as it will everywhere including the Red States where Trump supporters are concentrated. As one example, one of Biden’s enacted laws “is projected to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into low-carbon energy technologies.” Most of these benefits are in Republican-voting communities in Red States “where they are creating a once-in-a-generation manufacturing boom.” (The New York Times).
Recall, Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” mantra of climate violence was linked with downgrading efficient solar energy and shutting down wind power projects under construction, along with the EPA’s work.
Once Trump’s voters and his business base start turning against him, with wide media coverage and dropping polls, the stage will be set for surging demands for his resignation and impeachment that starts with “impossible,” then “possible,” then “probable,” then conviction. If the GOP sees either its political skin at risk in 2026 versus Trump’s destructive, daily delusions and dangerous daily damage, politicians will put their political fortunes first.
That is what Congressional Republicans did when they told Nixon to resign in 1974 over the Watergate scandal – a peapod by comparison with Trump’s wholesale subversions of our government to one man rule who has said “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as President.”
Call the White House switchboard 202-456-1414 and tell Trump to stop the destruction of America and go back to Mar-a-Lago.
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Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader is a politician, activist and the author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, a novel. In his career as consumer advocate he founded many organizations including the Center for Study of Responsive Law, the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), the Center for Auto Safety, Public Citizen, Clean Water Action Project, the Disability Rights Center, the Pension Rights Center, the Project for Corporate Responsibility and The Multinational Monitor (a monthly magazine).
