Donald Trump and the Future of the Presidency

President Donald Trump (Wikimedia commons)

(9/17/2026) On September 24 I will present the concluding lecture in a four-part series on "The History of the Presidency" at Coe College. The history ones were easy, because "hindsight is 20/20."  The present and future of the presidency are complicated, so the concluding talk needs some sorting out, which I will try your patience by attempting to do here.

Donald Trump turned 80 this summer, and given his age, physical condition, and public approval in the mid-to-upper 30s, his time in the White House is likely to be over in a little over two years. Even before then, his influence is likely to diminish. But his impact is likely to be lasting. In terms of our common life, we are likely to be living a long long time with four aspects of his distinctive presidency: checks and balances, corruption of the economy, threats to free elections, and world politics. None of these challenges originated with Trump's presidency, but with his approach they have exploded in magnitude. It's the difference between having a leaky roof over your house, and having no roof at all. (This is not to overlook his policies, his manner of expression, and his ghastly taste in decorating, just to say those will be easier to overcome.) 

I. Checks and Balances

"Checks and balances, Jefferson... are our only security"--
JOHN ADAMS

How did we get here? Checks and balances were under pressure before Donald Trump was even born. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution devised these mechanisms to ensure accountability in the national government, presuming that each branch would have the incentive to oversee the others in order to protect its own powers. With the modern presidency, however, a variety of factors have driven the presidency to the center of the national government, and partisan legislators have increasingly seen their fates bound up with that of their party's Presidents. 

What has Trump done? Under Trump, though, the challenges to checks and balances have expanded as ideological allies have seen unilateral presidential action as the fastest way to get what they want. On Trump's authority alone, the American security state has focused on immigrants, violently occupying cities and acting as a secret police force seizing people off streets, at airports, at hospitals, and even at immigration centers. Thousands, including some American citizens, have been imprisoned in squalid conditions and/or deported to countries like El Salvador and Liberia that are not their countries of origin, but that have agreed to cooperate with the Trump administration (Putsch and Seagbeh 2026). An executive order redefining citizenship contrary to the 14th Amendment was at least struck down by the Supreme Court in Trump v. Barbara. Similar brutal displays of executive authority have been used on tariffs, as well as governmental reform via the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE, Sollenberger and Rozell 2026). 

In order to prevent reviews of his actions, Trump has decimated safety mechanisms within the executive branch. In his first week in office, he fired 13 inspectors general, the departmental officers in charge of internal oversight (Haberman, Savage and Karni 2025; Broadwater 2026). He also fired the judge advocates general in each of the military branches (MLT staff 2025), the entire Foreign Influence Task force in the FBI (Penn 2026), the Director of Governmental Ethics, the head of the National Archives and Records Administration, the head of the Office of Special Counsel, and 34 of 36 members of the Public Integrity section within the Department of Justice. He also fired all Democratic members of several independent regulatory agencies. Whatever the merits of the individuals involved, the systematic nature of these actions is difficult to miss.

Congressional Republicans' incentives have been to protect Trump, not their own prerogatives or good policy, and the Supreme Court has, with some exceptions, by and large upheld Trump's assertions of authority, notably in the Slaughter v. Trump case that expanded presidential authority to fire independent regulators (Jouvenal 2026).

What happens next? It's possible that future Congresses and courts will act to restrain presidents, particularly if they were of the opposite party. (See the Court's striking down Joe Biden's forgiveness of some college student loans.) But for this to stick, there must be some way for future presidents to act in cooperation with Congress and the courts, rather than running into pure partisan opposition.

The bad scenario is that future presidents use Trump's precedents to justify their own unilateral actions, making all presidents into temporary (we hope!) dictators. In that case, it's up to voters to choose presidents as responsibly as possible.

II. Corruption and the Economy

Trump memecoin (swiped from cryptonews.com)

How did we get here? Corruption has probably been endemic to governments since humans first formed states, but at least in America, it has never risen to such a level as to distort the economy. If anything, the rise of civil service and the decline of political machines has made American politics increasingly clean. Professional oversight, in secretary of state's offices across the country as well as the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, have ensured that votes are counted as fairly as humanly possible. Trump's various challenges to 2020 vote counts were swiftly dismissed in court. But his innate sense of grievance was clearly communicated to his supporters as well as opportunistic job-seekers.

What has Trump done? Trump's personal corruption is on a staggering level. For one example, he has reaped more than $1.4 billion since returning to office from cryptocurrency alone--and those are numbers he's copped to on federal forms, so the reality could be even greater. His crypto ventures have been pitched to those seeking influence with the administration, such as the government of the United Arab Emirates, which poured $500 million into Trump's World Liberty Financial Venture (Morse, Allison, and Tran 2026; Yaffe-Bellany and Lipton 2026). The ventures are not good business investments, being structured so that Trump gets his money up front while everyone else takes their chances. Investors had lost $3.81 billion on Trump's meme coin by mid-2026 (Lipton, Fuller and Yaffe-Bellany 2026). Trump has also monetized early access to his statements, which have moved markets, particularly during the Iran war (Uberti 2026).

Trump has returned the financial favors, too, with donors to his campaign, his various projects, and his sons' ventures being rewarded with federal contracts, presidential pardons, eased economic sanctions, and access to top officials (Yourish Vogel and Smart 2025, Halper 2026, Vogel and Aleaziz 2026, Sonne and Lipton 2026, Kaplan Elliott and Mierjeski 2026, Edwards 2026). Transportation companies have prudently sponsored Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's reality-TV show as well as his son-in-law's campaign for a Wisconsin congressional seat (Hartnett 2026). The Department of the Treasury announced last month that it will eliminate a unit established to track financial misdeeds. Even presidential pardons have been exchanged for favors or political support (Vogel and Craig 2026).

As Trump uses the power of the federal government to reward friends (and punish enemies), it increases the risk that business investment will be driven by what will please the President rather than what will bring a return in the marketplace. At the same time, important government data that investors use has been compromised by Trump's retribution against news that he feels makes him look bad (Grossman 2025, Rampell 2026a). As Trump violates economic rules and norms without facing any consequences, it encourages more such behavior.

What happens next? The best case scenario is that Trump has given corruption a bad name, and that future presidents will be angelic because they fear being compared to Trump. It is possible that Congress will close some loopholes, but I wonder if the lesson of the 1970s reforms post-Watergate is that the law is a clunky instrument where the incentive to self-regarding official behavior is strong enough. The worst case scenario is that the modicum of trust that underlay Western capitalism has been badly damaged, and that prosperity will be more difficult to achieve and particularly to spread, because people will be loath to risk capital when they might be subject to the capricious actions of others.

III. Electoral interference

Bethany Lutheran Church in Cedar Rapids,
where your humble blogger casts his humble votes

How did we get here? Twenty years ago, Republican control of Congress was threatened by the unpopularity of the President. How much that would affect congressional candidates was unknown until Election Day, but there was never any suggestion that Republicans would not honor the result, and their graciousness in defeat was symbolized when Dennis Hastert (R-IL) handed the House Speaker's gavel to Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). 

The historical tendency of leadership selection processes to be corrupted or end in violence was well-known to the American Framers. They would have been aware of two European continent-wide wars, the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) and the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), as well as all the many machinations documented by Niccolo Machiavelli in The Prince. That awareness informed Article II's weird design of presidential elections by an Electoral College, which itself was never to gather in one place. Then when President John Adams lost his bid for reelection in 1800, and voluntarily yielded power to his rival Thomas Jefferson, it was a watershed moment in American history. Even with some of the sketchiest election results--in 1876, and arguably 1960 or 2000--the winner was allowed to govern, and the loser waited for another day. Trump, by contrast, complained about being cheated before votes were even cast in 2016, and has never stopped insisting that he was the rightful winner in 2020 (Zakrzewski 2026).

What has Trump done? Unfortunately, non-stop complaining has been only the beginning of Trump's attacks on electoral democracy. He has actively intervened in the 2026 elections, including calling for states to change congressional district lines, limit voting by mail, and aggressively cull their voter rolls (Marley and Binday 2026, ProPublica 2026, Marley and Sanchez 2026). He has disabled or taken over the Election Assistance Commission as well as election security agencies including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at Homeland Security, the public corruption team and Foreign Influence Task Force at the FBI, and the Civil Rights division voting team at the Department of Justice (Marley 2026).

This month, it emerged that hundreds of personnel from the Department of Homeland Security have been trolling through state election files, ostensibly in search of illegal voters, often without the state's consent, and always with access to off-limits personal identification data (Corasaniti and Aleaziz 2026). He has raised the possibility of sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling places, which at least one Republican candidate (Bobby Charles in Maine) have endorsed. Other candidates, including Rick Jackson in Georgia and Mike Rodgers in Michigan, have called for similar voter intimidation tactics (Hausmann 2026). Even if he is not successful in perverting the outcome, barring a big wave day for Democrats he has cast dangerous doubt on their legitimacy.

What happens next? Trump's claims of electoral fraud in 2020 were all laughed out of court, and none of his emulators have been taken seriously. So far, so good, and maybe that will continue, and the 2026 and 2028 elections will be accomplished with a modicum of fairness. The second-worst case scenario is anything that works in 2026 will be redoubled in 2028, and elections will feature candidates choosing voters--through constant efforts to redistrict, disenfranchise, and make voting more difficult--rather than the other way around. The worst case is that American elections become arenas for displays of raw power--think of what would have happened if J.D. Vance had been Vice President on January 6, 2021--and decreasingly free or fair.

IV. America in the World

The U.S. won the Cold War, and then managed the aftermath
(Wikimedia commons)

How did we get here? America's historic distance from European conflicts--"We go not abroad in search of dragons to destroy," said John Quincy Adams--wobbled by the late 19th century with the temptation to get ourselves an empire like all the cool kids had. Fifty years later, World War II showed clearly isolation was no longer an option, and America suddenly became the leader of the free world. For all our faults and poor decisions, America served as the backbone for world order, macroeconomic stability, and the spread of democratic values.

Trump and the world. It is not clear that President Trump values any of those goals. His language is that of dominance and "winning," so there is a constant concern that our allies are taking advantage of us, and need to be put in their places. Cooperation and multilateral approaches are inherently suspect, while he openly admires autocrats like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and even Kim Jong Un. Probably the most emblematic picture of this facet of the Trump presidency is when he and Vice President J.D. Vance sat on either side of Ukrainian President Volodomir Zelensky and took turns berating him (neither one making any sense as they did).  

Trump has brandished tariffs as a weapon against trading partners, highlighted by "Liberation Day" on April 2, 2025, and implemented erratically since; talked about annexing Canada and the Danish territory of Greenland; favored politically-connected ambassadors over career diplomats; and captured the Venezuelan leader, installing a puppet regime that made substantial oil concessions to Americans. The Iran war has been an ongoing bizarre spectacle, with unclear objectives and constantly shifting pronouncements during the course of the war.

Trump is not the U.S., but he has made us harder to trust. Now these things are happening, as international actors realize they need to plan for a very different United States:

• Finland became the tenth European country to join the French Forward (Nuclear) Deterrence program, begun in March 2026 to be an independent alternative to the U.S. (Last 2026)
• The Netherlands announced it is shifting its gold reserves from America to London, and other countries are considering similar moves. "Trump is erratic and one cannot rule out that someday he will come up with creative ideas how to treat foreign gold reserves," explained Markus Ferber, a member of the European Parliament (Rampell 2026b).
• Saudi Arabia has been described as stuck between an assertive Iran and a disengaging United States. "In some sense it's their worst-case scenario," said former U.S. ambassador Michael Ratney (Nereim 2026).
• The European Union has invited Canada to seek "associate member" status. "We must urgently reexamine our partnerships," said leading EU official Ursula von der Leyen (Smialek and Stevis-Gridneff 2026).

What happens next? I'm spitballing here, but there is no one who can fill the world role the United States has played since 1945. China is less principled and more self-serving. The European Union has an inherent collective action problem. Who else ya got? It is difficult to imagine a world without American ballast being other than unstable, more expensive, and more violent.

***

In 2020 and 2021, after Trump lost his bid for reelection, I thought we could quickly return to something like normality. Clearly, I was wrong. I didn't reckon with the pandemic, or the deeply-seated emotions and interests among the general public that gave so much air to Trump's pretensions. Now, even if 2026-2028 go as well as can possibly be expected, I am not nearly as sanguine. The underlying trust in America that made so much of our lifestyles thinkable is shattered, and can't just be snapped back into place. International trading partners, allies, immigrants, domestic political actors, jobseekers, any Americans with life challenges--they have all been bitten not once but twice, they know the MAGA attitudes remain, and that a few votes in a few states could bring it all back. I expect us to be dealing with this mess for the rest of my life.

SEE ALSO:

"The Authoritarians' War on Cities is a War on All of Us," 26 August 2025

"Constitution Day: Whatever Happened to the Separation of Powers?" 17 September 2020

"Priests, Prophets, and the Fourth of July," 3 July 2019

Stoning Stephen, again

Stoning of St. Stephen, by Paolo Uccello (1397-1475)
(Source: Wikimedia commons)

And Saul approved of their killing him--ACTS 8:1

(1/28/2026) According to the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament, the first Christian apostle to be killed for his faith was Stephen, "full of grace and power," who "did great wonders and signs among the people" (6:8). Summoned before the council of religious leaders, he has a vision of Jesus in heaven, sitting at the right hand of God, which infuriates them.

But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the foot of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against him." When he had said this, he died. (7:57-60)

I'll leave to others whether Stephen's theology, quoted at length in chapter 7, was on point. As described in Acts, he is inspired and inspiring, and not the least bit shy about appearing in public. The religious leadership sees people like him as a threat to their power, however, and he is killed. Maybe he had a target on him all along, or maybe he just was in the wrong place when they'd had enough of this new preaching, but he was cut down.

Stoning was an official sentence, though the members of the religious court are described as being in a state of rage when they carry it out. But support for this action went beyond the immediately enraged. There was the group of people who threw the rocks, of course, but also a number of "witnesses" mentioned in verse 58. Among the witnesses was Saul, who kept track of the coats. These were they who saw Stephen as a threat, such a threat that he needed killing. Though they did not do the killing, who knows what distorted picture of Stephen they held in their minds that allowed them to justify it? Saul at least accepted some measure of responsibility, as he later recalled: "And while the blood of [Jesus's] witness Stephen was shed, I myself was standing by, approving and keeping the coats of those who killed him" (22:20). After some serious life changes (ch. 9), he became able to see the ministry of Stephen, as well as his own role in Stephen's death, from a different perspective.

Can Politics Be Christian?

November 2024 issue

But as it is, they deserve a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.--HEBREWS 11:16

(1/01/2026) I ran across this back issue of Christian Century this week, thanks to Jerry from our mens' group who is a subscriber. Christian Century was founded in 1884 in Iowa, and reflects the liberal theology and politics associated with mainline Protestant denominations. The theme of the November 2024 issue, published at the time of our last presidential election, was certainly provocative!

What would it mean for politics to be "Christian?" Christianity comes in multitudinous forms, and The Holy Bible contains a wide variety of texts written by various people in various times and circumstances. The phrase could refer to a formal 18th century style establishment, where Christians have certain legal and financial advantages over other people, or even assertive policy actions that reflect preference Christian interests over those of others. President Trump's Christmas Day bombing of Nigeria was framed as protecting Nigerian Christians, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) posted a social media video (AI generated, of course) of Santa Claus handcuffing an immigrant. (See Anh 2025 and Richardson 2025 for more on the Trump administration, and Goldford 2012, cited below, for why the U.S. has never been an explicitly Christian nation.)

Jesus may not have been born in a manger,
but for sure he never voted

Alternatively, Christian politics could look to Jesus as a model for policy making and advocacy. It's not unconstitutional for people to be motivated by faith to pursue specific policy goals. However, doing what Jesus would have done is less easy than it sounds, as the historical Jesus was extremely marginal in the (autocratic) Roman Empire, and the New Testament has very little to say about how to exercise political power.

The first featured article in that issue of Christian Century, "Wisdom from Augustine in an Election Year," by Calvin College philosopher James K.A. Smith, begins, not with definitions, but by recounting his own experience as an immigrant who came to feel "invested as a member of this flawed but noble project that we call the American experiment, which welcomed me and enabled me to forge a meaningful life" (p. 42). Observing that many Christians are ambivalent about liberal democracy, while many Americans are ambivalent about Christianity, he draws on St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) to describe a sort of tension that requires negotiation. 

Augustine of Hippo
(from athanasiuscm.org)

Augustine called his time the saeculum, in which humans live on Earth, and God's promised kingdom, whatever that may be, has not yet come. We're still in it. "We ought not to want to live ahead of time with only the saints and the righteous," he wrote a Roman official named Boniface in 418 (quoted on p. 44); instead, we in the 21st century, just like those of the 5th, are charged to live in our communities with everyone else. 

How we live in our communities matters, though. In The City of God (c. 426), his most famous work, Augustine argues all earthly communities consist of both the City of Man, whose highest values are self-love and domination, and the City of God, whose highest values are love of God and neighbor. (Those values may do for a working definition of Christian politics.) Thus there is ongoing tension, which must resolved through negotiation among all (permixtum). Smith concludes that "citizens of the city of God are called, as an expression of loving their neighbors, to contribute to the common good by collaborating in the messiness of the permixtum" (p. 45). 

For Smith, Christian politics a la Augustine would not be theocracy: What currently passes for Christian politics is a sub-Christian syncretism that prays to a vaguely moralistic god who plays favorites, a deity of our making whom we trot out to license nationalism and self-interest... little more than Jesufied renditions of the libido dominandi (p. 46). (Does that ever sound familiar!) Instead, he looks to reaffirmed "institutions and practices of liberal democracy," informed by "more robust Christian political witness."

What might such a Christ-haunted, biblically saturated politics look like? Well, it looks like a lot like the civil rights movement: unapologetically biblical, rooted in the practices of the church, and speaking to the public in the cadences of the prophets.... The witnesses and martyrs of that beloved community learned to long for a better country, as the author of Hebrews puts it (Heb. 11:16), but they also imagined that this country could look more like it. That is the posture of an Augustinian politics (p. 46)

A Christian politics that is not about moral judgment and exclusion, but about building a better world for all our neighbors, looks more like what Russell Arben Fox (2025) called "universal leftism" than what the loudest voices in contemporary American Christianity are saying. It also looks a lot like urbanism! (See also Lenz 2023.)

Christian Century's other writers provide more suggestions and examples in the same issue:

• Jeannine Marie Pitas ("Bridging the Ideological Divide") describes places where people of vastly different perspectives can meet, sometimes non-partisan (charity work) but often multipolar discussion groups where people actively listen to each other. 
• Tony Tian-Ren Lin ("Can We Save Democracy in the United States?"), who came to the U.S. from Chiang Kai-shek's Taiwan via militarized Argentina, urges immigrants and refugees to use their experiences as well as their "voices and votes" to remind Americans not to give into easy authoritarian answers. 
• Annalise Deal ("Cecil Williams Kept His Ear to the Ground") eulogizes the decades-long ministry of an activist San Francisco pastor (who I'm pretty sure knew my Uncle Clare).

Beloved readers, I too long for an American politics that is all-inclusive, committed both to vigorous meaningful conversations about our common life, and to sustaining even the poorest and meanest among us. Having "nice" conversations that avoid fundamental issues may avoid giving offense, but won't serve to maintain relationships, much less build communities. 

Source: spiritpunktransmissions.substack.com/

After this last year, though, I confess I don't know where to start. As someone whose career has been focused on the U.S. Constitution for decades, and whose future (however long) will have all the vulnerabilities of senior citizenry, America since the publication of the November 2024 Christian Century has been distressing to watch. At the same time, I'm afraid of not being taken seriously. I'm afraid of being played. I don't like tension, and despite my avid reading of Parker J. Palmer, I don't think I'm very good at holding it. I'm afraid of too quickly becoming impatient with what sound like pat answers.

Maybe a good resolution for urbanists and other community builders for the New Year would be at least to be attentive and open to opportunities to have those conversations.

PRINT SOURCE: Dennis J. Goldford, The Constitution of Religious Freedom: God, Politics and the First Amendment (Baylor University Press, 2012)

"Who Would Jesus Bomb" by Jordan Smart (3:12)

Thinking positively about Marjorie Taylor Greene

 

(11/25/2025) I don't know quite what to make of the whirl of events surrounding Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), third term member of the U.S. House until recently known for a series of inflammatory statements that made her one of President Trump's most vocal supporters in Congress--and, however weirdly, one of the most effective at rallying the base and getting under the skin of Democrats: "Once greeted with derision by Washingtonians as a shrill and zany show pony, she is now seen more as a savvy operator who understands the conservative base like few others" (Draper 2025).  

I also don't know what to think about the Epstein files, information related to the superpedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019. Releasing the files won't get anyone fed or access to health care, nor will they help us mitigate climate change. Nevertheless, the Trump administration has been turning themselves into pretzels to keep them under wraps, so I can only conclude there must be something in there that Trump needs us not to know.

Yet, while Attorney General Pam Bondi, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Sassmonger in Chief Karoline Leavitt have done what they can to protect the President from Epstein revelations, Greene was one of four Republican House representatives to sign a discharge petition directing the files be released by the Justice Department. All four personally resisted Trump's calls to unsign the petition, which passed both houses and then was signed by Trump. Shortly thereafter, Greene (alone among the four hardheads) announced she would resign her congressional seat after the first of the year.

[A}ccording to interviews with friends and associates... she had become politically isolated, feeling betrayed by Mr. Trump, disgusted with her own party and friendless among the Democratic opposition. When Mr. Trump announced on Truth Social last week that he had had enough of Ms. Greene’s apostasies, labeling her “Marjorie Traitor Greene” and threatening to run a primary opponent in her district, Ms. Greene felt blindsided. Terrified by the ensuing wave of death threats aimed at her and her family from apparent supporters of Mr. Trump, she could no longer see any upside to duking it out in the political arena. (Draper 2025)

I am not imagining that Greene has had a road to Damascus experience, and that she will now be advocating for abortion rights and citizenship for immigrants, or that she will join a holy order like Duke Frederick at the end of As You Like It. If she is a candidate again, or if she attempts conservative media stardom (Drenon 2025), I expect she'll be the same old MTG. (Call it the Megyn Kelly rule?) I don't feel at all sorry for her; she is reaping the whirlwind that she herself sowed. I am, however, impressed that she found her moral core, a line across which she would not take her partisan hackery.

In our city, we're not going to agree on everything, and on some things we will find ourselves to be strongly opposed. But I for one can respect, and deal with, people who find some core values that are more important to them than partisanship or financial advantage.

The authoritarians' war on cities is a war on all of us

Capitol Hill neighborhood, Washington, January 2018

Strongman rule is a fantasy.  Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman.  He won't.  In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents.  We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance.  The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing.  We get abused and we get used to it.--TIMOTHY SNYDER (2025), quoted in Richardson (2025) Emphasis in original.

(8/26/2025) I'm taking the Trump administration's military occupation of Washington, D.C., a lot more personally than I took the occupation of Los Angeles earlier this year, or of Portland, Oregon in his first term. This is only because I lived there for a few months in 2018, not because it's more important. If James Madison (1785) was correct to write "It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties," we should be fully alarmed by now at any of these displays of hostile force. It's certainly gone beyond the "experiment" stage.

Trump and his coadjutors like U.S. Attorney Jeannine Pirro have presented a false picture of violent crime in Washington (Qiu 2025). Like most of America, really, Washington has seen dramatic declines in violent crime since a spike in the latter half of the pandemic years (Lopez and Boxerman 2025, Altheimer Douglas and Contreras 2025). The U.S. as a whole is mostly back to the long-term nationwide decline in violent crime that began about 1990. 

The capital city is far from pacific, though, as Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle (2025) notes: "The problem isn’t as big as it was a few years ago, but with crime, as with cancer, 'somewhat less of a problem than it was' is not really very good news." Shadi Hamid (2025) adds:

Homelessness is worse today than before the pandemic. We don’t need data to tell us that. The encampments are impossible not to notice. And though they might not be the end of the world, they make D.C. feel more dystopian than it actually is, creating the sense of a governance vacuum. No one wants to feel that way about their city, least of all when their city happens to be the capital of the richest, most powerful nation in the world.

Still, the homicide rate in June 2025 was lower than that of St. Louis, Missouri; Richmond, Virginia; Memphis, Tennessee; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Atlanta, Georgia, some of whose governors have opportunistically sent National Guard troops to assist the occupation. In 2024 Washington was less violent than Cleveland, Ohio, or New Orleans, Louisiana, two more states with governors who are sending guardsmen to Washington while not deigning to attempt similar tactics at home. I'm calling bullshit. 

Entering downtown Providence:
Mayor Brett Smiley says "I know my colleagues around the country
are very concerned [occupation] could happen to our cities" (Bendavid 2025)

So, what's the emergency? If crime in Washington is an improving though ongoing serious problem, what's left to justify the occupation? Is the real emergency that Trump's public approval is flagging (Pew Center 2025)? Or that people won't stop talking about Trump's association with sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein?

People like my Senator Joni Ernst, who say they want to reign in "out of control" spending, will want to know this occupation is costing us taxpayers upwards of $1 million per day. And today they're picking up trash and spreading mulch--some awfully expensive landscapers!

And now he's got Chicago in his sights (Saunders 2025b, Lamothe 2025). (Saunders links to this Wikipedia page showing Chicago ranking 92nd among U.S. cities in violent crime though as high as 22nd in homicides.)

Two Shades Cafe in Chicago's Little Italy:
Cities have coffeeshops. We like cities.

If the occupation of D.C. were a serious crime reduction effort, we would have seen some planning that included city officials; a mix of enforcement and prevention methods (Hohmann, McArdle and Mangual 2025); and attention to areas like the Southeast where crime is concentrated. Instead we see prominent appearances in tourist areas like the National Mall, and assaults on food delivery workers (Schulze 2025). Everyday life for residents has been complicated if not outright scary (cf. Lerner 2025, Silverman Benn and Lumpkin 2025). Fox News has some dramatic video for its followers to devour (Wiggins 2025), while normal people doing normal things get pushed around by masked secret police who make no pretense of their political mission (Kabas 2025), and homeless people just get pushed around to different streets (Wild 2025).

It should be noted that National Guard troops are in D.C. to make a show of force, not to actually reduce crime. It’s not an effort to help residents of Southeast D.C., for example, who live with higher rates of violent crime than I, or most readers of this, do. It’s an effort to let people who are fearful of the crime over there that someone’s doing something about it. (Saunders 2025a)

Poster, National Public Housing Museum:
Hating on cities is a way to ignore the legitimate demands of their residents

If we've learned nothing else ten years into Donald Trump's political career, we've learned that:

1. He has no policy commitments whatsoever, making him unique among American presidents in my lifetime. This lack of interest extends to criminal justice (Green 2025).
2. He has no vision for America, or if he does it's rooted in gauzy nostalgia for the post-World War II years. He does make exceptions for stuff like meme coins, the sales of which have gotten him richer through an appalling pay-for-access scheme (Sigalos and Collier 2025)
3. His principal objectives seem to be attention and praise, material wealth, and sexual gratification (though maybe the latter has declined in importance over the years)
4. Losing face is to be avoided at all costs. This leads to false statements on a regular basis, sometimes on the most trivial matters, retribution against anyone who questions him, and the appalling injustices being visited on the accidentally-deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
5. His hatred for anyone who obstructs his access to any of those objectives is deep and enduring (cf. Stein Jacobs Goba and Roebuck 2025, Jacobs Rizzo Roebuck and Stein 2025, Siegel 2025)
6. He relies on drama and display as means of gaining attention, and is adept at using the power of his office for the purpose of creating spectacle.

Nevertheless, Trump has retained considerable political support, and the Republicans who control Congress and the Supreme Court find it prudent to support his actions and personal aspirations regardless of merit or practical consequences. As I suggested when he was reelected, his sizable public support is likely a mix of opportunism (how else do we get to conservative policy outcomes?), fantasy (he is a great leader making America strong), and hatred (he wants to hurt X Group and so do I). It's disturbing that there's so much of these attitudes out there, but it's hard to account for the Trump phenomenon otherwise. As of today he's still at 44 percent in the New York Times polling average.

Not blood-soaked: Community garden, South Ada Street, Chicago

So am I just complaining? My candidate didn't win the last election, boo hoo. My Cubs haven't won a single measly postseason game since 2017. And I have a nagging feeling I personally could be more popular.

Am I just whinging? Does any of this matter?

The Cubs and my popularity, no. But Trump's fondness for what blogger Jennifer Schulze calls "made for TV authoritarianism," and indeed his whole approach to the Presidency, matter deeply and dangerously.

1. Authoritarian approaches represent the failure of the American project. The U.S. Constitution was written over 200 years ago, by imperfect people in a very different world. Its tenuous balancing act between governmental capacity and individual liberties was rooted in a system of checks and balances, which was mostly rooted in a Biblical conception of universal human sinfulness. Unchecked power is antithetical to the whole fabric, and will only end in tears.
2. He appeals strongly to hatred of cities. At issue is not about where you personally would rather live; it's about defending access to vibrant urbanism for all. Urban areas generate the vast portion of American gross domestic product, and are where people go for economic and social opportunity. When Trump claims "the cities are rotting, and they are indeed cesspools of blood," full of "roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs, and homeless people," the truth is not in him. He is speaking to a decades-old stereotype, that to be frank was largely fueled by federal and corporate policies. In the words of Kansas City mayor Quinton Lucas, "They are looking to exploit issues for political gain, not to solve them" (all quotes from Bendavid 2025). You can't find common humanity in people you never see, which is why...
3. Cities are fundamentally about association with others. Pete Saunders recently pointed to an interview with anthropologist Anand Pandian, who has a new book about American society that looks interesting. In his travels Pandian noted the walls Americans keep building around themselves: The US is a vast country, and things look very different in various parts. Yet there are certain patterns in how everyday life is changing that I document in the book: the rise of fortress-like homes, patterns of neighbourhood isolation and segregation, new developments in American automotive and roadway culture that reflect a more defensive orientation concerning others, body cultures that lead people to think of their bodies as needing armouring and protection, and what I call walls of the mind, separating people into different information ecosystems, into completely different realities (Radhakrishna 2025). The more we bury ourselves in fortresses, whether physical or social, the scarier cities seem.
4. We need cities in order to solve our most serious problems. In a world full of seemingly intractable problems--climate change, housing, immigration and refugee flows, the costs of health care and education, and the future of employment, to name a few--we need cities. It's precisely the rollicking diversity of cities that make them places where problems get solved. Freedom, and conversation across differences, lead to innovation. Encounters across social differences make progress possible. Urban living arrangements are more environmentally and financially sustainable, not to mention better for public health. 

Whether you live on a noisy downtown street or by yourself in the woods, the quality of life you enjoy depends on cities. Trump's attack on them is an attack on all of us.

SEE ALSO: 

"Portland: Authoritarianism, or Nothing to See Here?" 24 July 2020

Theodore R. Johnson, "Trump's National Guard Deployment Echoes Hurricane Katrina Mistakes," Washington Post, 27 August 2025

VIDEO: Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker responded to Trump's threats to occupy Chicago in a magnificent speech August 25 (14:59):

Book review: On Tyranny

 

Snyder, Timothy. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. New York: Tim Duggan, 2017. 127 pp.

These are weird times in America. This month President Trump dusted off the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in order to deport hundreds of immigrants to prisons in El Salvador; when federal district judge James E. Broasberg issued a temporary restraining order, Trump called Broasberg a "Radical Left Lunatic" and called for the judge's impeachment, while "border czar" Tom Homan said, "We're not stopping... I don't care what the judges think (Caputo 2025). Meanwhile, a number of American citizens as well as legal residents have been caught up in the administration's zeal for deportation and reckless disregard for due process (Foy 2025). At Trump's and/or Musk's behest, years of research data (Shendruk and Rampell 2025) and references to nonwhite troops (Warner 2025) are being removed from government websites. The Voice of America is gone, and the Federal Trade Commission disabled by (illegal) firings (cf. Mitchell 2025). And that's just this week. Congressional Republicans have approved everything Trump and Musk have done after the fact--including joining the effort to intimidate Judge Broasberg--while congressional Democrats seem baffled and helpless.

All this has been justified in the language of "emergency," against which Yale historian Timothy Snyder warns us in chapter 17 ("Watch for dangerous words"). Has America in 2025 become a tyranny? Is the elected President fomenting a coup? Whatever is going on, it's not the democratic constitutional system I taught about for decades. We need a new guidebook for a new regime.

Professor Snyder wrote On Tyranny after the presidential election of 2016, when no one knew what to expect of the newly elected President. Given Trump's petulant, hate-spewing campaign, and his disregard for either facts or norms, it wasn't unreasonable to expect him to try to do some very bad things once in office. And he certainly did try, but--thanks in large part to "babysitters" like Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Attorney General William Barr, and ultimately Vice President Mike Pence--he didn't get as far as some had feared. Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms, and Trump lost his bid for reelection in 2020. The American constitutional system seemed to survive four years of Trump, and while the COVID epidemic kept threatening to spiral out of control, it too eventually subsided.

Now, after an improbable series of events, Trump is not only back, but with a plurality of the 2024 vote--an achievement that escaped him in 2016, and making him only the second Republican to do this since 1988. Trump brought the hate back with him, but not the "babysitters." The two months-plus of Trump's second term have been chaotic and destructive, with particular animus directed at political opponents, regulatory agencies, minority groups, and Ukraine. Public approval has dipped a little of late, but so far is nearly ten percentage points higher than during his first term. It seems quite a few of us like Trump's promises, or are entertained by his antics (though see Morris 2025 for the complicated polling picture).

So it seems timely to pick up Snyder's little volume of advice again. He suggests, from observing authoritarian regimes in Europe, several ways that ordinary citizens can respond to what's going on with maybe some degree of effectiveness.

The first is Do not obey in advance, acting in ways that accommodate the regime before they even give a specific order. For towns, educational and medical institutions, arts organizations, private firms, and anyone else who relies on federal funding for much of their income, this can be difficult, especially when the regime is erratic or vague in their demands. Anyone trying to keep up with the Trump administration's many and varied threats might understandably do whatever they can to minimize the uncertainty. Iowa's laws about "obscenity" in school libraries came with similar lack of clarity, probably in hopes the librarians would overcomply.

The second "lesson" is Defend institutions, which leads into the next lessons on elections, symbols, professional ethics, the military and police. Trump has replaced the leadership of the military and FBI, all inspectors general, and Justice and Homeland Security officials, while gagging or defunding regulatory agencies. Before hobbling the FCC, he fired Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, National Labor Relations Board, and Equal Opportunity Commission to bring those panels below the number needed to act. And on and on. Snyder calls actions like these flashing red warning lights, but so far they have not visibly alarmed many people who weren't already opposed to Trump. Someone in our book group asked "How could we support" those who are being sidelined or who are being ordered to carry out Trump's orders? Maybe pointing out the trend and its significance can be a start, but pretty much anything you can say about Trump has already been said.

Some of us have less power than others, but we also might be less exposed, and so in a position to take more risk. The middle chapters of the book deal with taking personal responsibility. We are responsible for how we use language, treat others, and process information (especially when Internet rumors are too delicious to check out). Particularly poignant was his urging those in law enforcement to "be reflective." It is important to remember that Trump in his first term didn't tear children away from refugee families (in some cases losing track of them), charge into Portland and Seattle to use violence against protestors, or deport COVID-infected immigrants to countries that were ill-prepared to treat them. He ordered those regrettable actions, but somebody--a lot of somebodies, really--had to agree to carry them out, putting their jobs ahead of their humanity.

Chapters 12-15 discuss everyday life, particularly using our time (ch. 13) and social skills (ch. 12) and money (ch. 15) to build strong communities that can support vulnerable people. He concludes chapter 12: Having old friends is the politics of last resort. And making new ones is the first step toward change. Be out in public, but maybe keep your electronic profile lower (ch. 14; see also Ingram 2025, cited below.) Chapter 15 also talks about building civil society by associating with people who share our interests. A group of amateur brewers or cyclists can sustain vulnerable members, while also softening the attitudes of those who now seem indifferent or even supportive of tyranny.

On Tyranny is brief and direct. Those who wish more comparative political context can hunt up Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018, and discussed here); those seeking more insight into the tyrannical mindset will be rewarded by Martha Nussbaum's The Monarchy of Fear (Oxford, 2018). But for a quick basic introduction to the inflection point that is 2025 in America, with pointers on how to respond, On Tyranny is an excellent start.

SEE ALSO: 

Anthony Faiola, "Autocrats Roll Back Rights and Rule of Law--And Cite Trump's Example," Washington Post, 24 March 2025

Matthew Ingram, "Be Careful What You Put on Social Media, They Are Listening," The Torment Nexus, 13 March 2025

"Constitution Day: Whatever Happened to the Separation of Powers?" Holy Mountain, 17 September 2020

Free online version: On Tyranny

Subsidiarity, congestion pricing. and books with sex in them

Shelf of probably-not-obscene children's books at
Trailside School library

David T. Koyzis (Political Visions and Illusions: A Survey and Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies [InterVarsity, 2003]) defines subsidiarity as the belief that "wherever possible, tasks are to be fulfilled by the lowest conceivable element in the social hierarchy" (2003: 218). He quotes Pope Pius XI, whose 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno Koyzis credits with first articulating the concept:

Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice... to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body [politic] and never destroy and absorb them.

Here at Holy Mountain, we are all about furnishing help to the members of the body politic, not to mention the knowledge that comes when diverse people are doing diverse things, so of course we are down with subsidiarity. Assuming voices are equal and individual rights respected--these are big assumptions, I realize--and that the capacity exists, citizens of local places should be charting their own courses, drawing in higher levels of government only when absolutely necessary. 

In our fondness for subsidiarity, we are joined by such urbanist icons as Jane Jacobs and Chuck Marohn. Jacobs, whose book Dark Age Ahead (Random House, 2004) I reviewed here, argued in chapter five that governmental powers that are exercised and taxes collected by distant, national governments instead of those directly in touch with people's needs and possibilities were eroding a core pillar of our culture.

The social and economic needs of urban residents and businesses are extremely varied and complex compared with those of simpler settlements. They require wide ranges of awareness and knowledge that are humanly beyond the comprehension of functionaries in distant institutions, who try to overcome that handicap by devising programs that disregard particulars on the assumption that one size can fit all, which is untrue. Even when sovereignties and provinces or states give special grants to this or that locality, the special grants almost always reflect the priorities of the disbursing institutions, not those of the recipient settlements. (2004: 105)

The Roman Empire's extracting wealth from cities "for schemes and needs according to its own, frequently crazed, priorities" (2004: 103) led to the medieval Dark Age; city-level innovations and economic activity began the long process of digging out. (Maybe such innovation can produce similarly happy results in America, too? I just hope it doesn't take 500 years.)

In 2020 I spent several posts chatting about Marohn's book Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity (Wiley 2020). In chapter nine, he argued that local governments with restored decision-making power could make more rational decisions, and wouldn't have to rely for needed revenue on sprawl (or business subsidies, or game-changing projects, ...).

State and federal officials frequently express their reluctance to turn over decison-making to local officials they view as incompetent, ignorant, or worse. They fail to recognize how turning city councils into glorified dog catchers, by simplifying their authority and degree of action, Congress and state legislatures have created the conditions where the most competent, innovative, and dynamic local leaders tend to stay away from city hall. (2020: 197)

Local communities won't always make great decisions, even when they're in the best position to decide. But, Marohn concluded, local responsibility for local conditions will improve the quality of policy decisions. "By remaking local government to focus on the broad creation of wealth, local leaders will develop the capacity to assert their own competence. America needs this to happen" (2020: 198). (See also Marohn 2017 on how cities' dependence on national government funding got them into this predicament.) 

Earlier version of proposed Cedar Rapids casino:
City officials' relentless advocacy is not the best advertisement
for subsidiarity

Subsidiarity, like balanced budgets or checks and balances, is easier to get behind when someone other than you is trying to do something. But this year the news is full of local places trying to solve their own problems and getting shot down by higher levels of government. In Cedar Rapids, our mayor is fond of saying "Welcome is our language," but threatened with the loss of $306 million in federal money we shut down our diversity efforts faster than you can say "King Trump" (Hanson 2025).

Trump's Department of Transportation acted February 19 to revoke approval for New York City's first-in-the-nation congestion pricing program (Duggan 2025). Based on successful implementation in several European cities, the city was attempting to collect some of the social costs of traffic congestion by charging a fee on cars entering the core of Manhattan. Two months into the program, congestion and traffic deaths had both noticeably declined, while the city's transit system got an infusion of much-needed revenue. Trump argued that it threatened to draw visitors and business away from the city, which seems like a problem for the city itself to sort out. (It was this action that led him to post "LONG LIVE THE KING!" in characteristic self-praise.)

The Iowa state legislature has for years had a similar penchant for micromanaging local governments. A recent hobbyhorse has been books in community libraries that someone might consider "obscene." A 2023 law already prohibits "sexual descriptions" in school library books (Cheng and Gerlock 2025); a new bill aims to eliminate exemptions for "appropriate educational materials" in school and public libraries from state obscenity laws (Luu 2025). Neither the standards of obscenity nor who will decide on books is made clear in the legislation, possibly in hopes that libraries will censor themselves. Libraries are run by professionals, and are overseen by city councils and school districts. Who does Rep. Helena Hayes (R-Mahaska), sponsor of this latest salvo, think she is protecting us from?

The through lines that connect these two initiatives (and too many others) are rejection of community initiatives uncontrolled from above. Commenting on U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy's efforts to reorient federal transportation spending around marriage, birth rates, and motor vehicles, Lyz Lenz argues

It’s about isolating people into nuclear family units that have little connection to how people actually derive joy and happiness; cutting them off with the work of family and home. This isolation means the inability to act, to organize, to change. It makes it harder to create any communities, social ties or mutual aid — any meaningful connection outside heterosexual marriage. (Lenz 2025)

What traditionalists see as weird and threatening can prove adaptive to the many challenges we face as a country and as a species. But America in 2025 seems to be responding to these challenges with a gigantic act of self-mutilation, led nationally by Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and cheered on by their many fans. Cities, those scruffy diverse and exciting places, might save us yet, but only if the judgy haters in Des Moines and Washington go soak their heads and leave them to it. 

SEE ALSO:

The War on Cars podcast episode on congestion pricing, 27 February 2025 (1:04)

American Library Association page on banned and challenged books