Four Themes, Three Things to Do

My name is Deborah. I am a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. I am a woman of faith. I voted for Ronald Reagan. I was a volunteer EMT for over 10 years in a very small town. I am a living kidney donor.   

Additionally, I’ve been aware of and I have disliked Donald Trump for over 40 years. That’s because I lived in New York City during the 1980s and 1990s. He  had a bad reputation back then for being a racist, a womanizer, and for stiffing his contractors and subcontractors. Character matters, and his character is bad.

Today, I feel compelled to speak up, to make my voice heard as best I can, to speak against the actions of the Trump administration. I also wanted to offer three suggestions for constructive things to do today if you share these concerns. 

This administration came into office and into power very well prepared to take action. Way back in a 2019 Frontline interview, Steve Bannon did an excellent job of describing the strategy we’re seeing. He said, “We’ve got to start with muzzle velocity and we’ve got to flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang.”

Today in 2025, the administration has improved on that strategy. We are being sprayed every day with a buckshot of changes. It’s not just three a day. It’s more. We have not been able to dodge or to focus, because the spread is too big. Those of us who have concerns about the administration weaken our efforts by scattering them among different cherished causes.  

 If we understand that there are four common themes that run through every action the administration has taken, then we can mobilize and coordinate our efforts. Here are the four common themes: Everything the administration is doing is bad government, bad business, bad national security, and cruel.

Let’s start with bad government. In the U.S., it’s difficult to pass laws and budget. That’s intentional. The agencies and programs and people that we had in place at the beginning of this year were not created by the Biden administration. They were established and grown over many decades, voted for in Congress, signed into law by Presidents of both political parties, and upheld in the courts. They survived within a system of checks and balances, through multiple administrations at different ends of the political spectrum.  That’s why American farmers were comfortable entering into contracts with the government to produce food for US AID. Good government is predictable, stable and trustworthy. When our President suspends laws, regulations and approved spending by executive order or by Tweet, he is not behaving like a  President. He is behaving like the emperor he wants to be.    

Second, what the administration is doing is bad business. It is ALWAYS bad business, in any business, to fire or lay off people in a wholesale way without understanding what it is they do, and the implications of losing their skills and labor.  The underlying assumption is that the work federal employees do is useless and will not be missed. Bad assumption. Last week, the Trump administration fired a whole lot of people who worked for the National Nuclear Security Administration. This week, when they figured out that those employees are responsible for safeguarding our nuclear warheads, they are scrambling tofind and re-hire them. It sounds insane – actually, it is insane – but it is also true.

Third, what our government is doing hurts our national security. Our allies around the world have fought and bled with our troops in all of our wars. Firefighters from Canada and Mexico came to help us fight the recent wildfires in California. Our President cozying up to the world’s dictators and dissing our democratic allies should be of concern to all of us.

Finally, this administration is cruel. All of us should be appalled at President Trump’s repeated pattern of scapegoating and petty vindictiveness. The examples are legion. I will mention just wo. First, there is President Trump’s behavior toward retired General Mark Milley, who served as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during President Trump’s first term. President Trump has initiated an investigation to see whether he can strip General Milley of rank, removing one of his stars in retirement. He has removed his portrait from the Pentagon and taken away his security detail, which was put in place because of threats from Iran. That’s just pure petty spite.     

A second example of the President’s cruelty is his giving Elon Musk – the richest man on the planet Earth and someone whom absolutely NONE of us voted for - the power to fire huge numbers of people without cause, without notice, and without consideration of the harm done to those employees, their families, and the people they serve.     

So what do I suggest? Three things.  

• First, we should all broaden our news intake. I don’t ordinarily watch Fox News, but I MAKE myself watch it from time to time, just because it hits me over the head that people who get all their news from Fox News are really living in a different universe. If that’s you, try listening to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” or reading even one day of the New York Times, or listening to the BBC’s Global News Podcast. And if you’ve never watched Fox News, listening to it will open your eyes to what your MAGA neighbors are being told and hence why they believe what they believe.

• Second, if you share any of these concerns, then don’t be silent. Call your Senator. Call your Representative. Tell them what worries you. Ask them, “Whatever changes we want to make, can we please make them lawfully and with due consideration for the millions of people who will be affected? Can we bring some humility, some grace to our work? Can we hold President Trump accountable for keeping his oath of office?

• And third, if you are someone who has supported this administration, please take some time to reflect on that. If you are a praying person, then pray about it. The Canadian novelist Robertson Davies said that when he was a boy, he was taught that prayer has three modes – petition, which is for yourself, intercession, which is for others; and contemplation, which is listening to what is said to YOU. In this situation, I suggest contemplation. Or if you need to listen to some good preaching to get started on that contemplation, I suggest listening to the preaching of James Talarico.

To sum up:

To sum up: It’s always easier to destroy things than to build them. Since assuming power, Elon Musk has taken a Wreck-It-Ralph approach to the federal government.  He reminds me of my youngest grandson knocking down his Magnetiles.

Democrats are not going to stop the Administration’s slash and burn approach. Neither are the courts. The courts are doing their job, but their work takes time. During that time, we will lose people and data and – I am not overstating this – lives.

Fundamentally the only way to slow the momentum of this American Great Leap Forward, this Cultural Revolution – is for a very broad group of Americans, and especially Republicans, to speak up for values that I hope and believe that we share: a commitment to the Constitution and a respect for the common man, woman and child.

There is only one group of people who have the power to quickly change our current trajectory. That group is Congress. And there is only one group of people that can change Congress’s current practice of rolling over and playing dead. That group is Republicans. Old school Republicans, as well as MAGA folks who are having second thoughts. If that group lifts their voice in large numbers, Congress will listen. And Congress does have power, if it chooses to use it, to change the trajectory that we’re on.

Thank you for listening.

Deborah Griesbach is a writer, mother and grandmother.