Reckoning with the future

Things I'm worried about

Acclaimed author and beautiful soul, George Saunders, has a thought experiment he likes to bring up to make a point about our current politics:

Imagine a baseball stadium. Fill it with twenty thousand Americans. Require Democrats to wear blue and Republicans red. At a podium at second base, have a person make a speech about, say, immigration.

Soon enough, fights break out.

Rewind.

Same twenty thousand people. Let them dress however they like. Instead of the speechmaking guy, put two baseball teams out there. Instantly, it’s a different energy. Among the fans for Team One will be both liberals and conservatives, suddenly united in common cause. Ditto Team Two. There will be disagreements, sure, but because we’ve been taught about acceptable baseball-game discourse, these will tend to be relatively good-natured.

When a person’s politics are on full display, it doesn’t always cause a fight. Often people who ‘wear the other color’ just close their metaphorical eyes and ears. We are all subject to cognitive biases and errors of motivated reasoning that make us shut down. These are psychological defenses that literally act as a kind of immune system, on the lookout for various trigger words and ready to block out anything that challenges our priors. And when we put our politics on display, we tend to use a lot of those trigger words, words that we borrow from our respective echo chambers.

Saunders continues:

Doesn’t it sometimes feel that it would be simpler if you each just brought over a small TV and left it running in the kitchen, tuned to your respective network, while the two of you went into the yard and talked about something about which you possess some original knowledge?

For example I have mentioned fascism before, a word that is guaranteed to cause a whole swath of people to stop listening to anything else I might say. It doesn’t matter how many facts I point to, or how many respected historians or political scientists or people with first-hand knowledge I am echoing. I also get triggered by words. The other day I was knocked off balance when someone close to me revealed they voted for Trump, but I completely lost my ability to listen to them as soon I heard the phrase “open border.”

There are plenty of trigger words like this on both sides of the political divide that cause people to shut down, and then we just end up talking inside our respective bubbles. It sucks, because this stuff is important for us to talk about across the divide.

In that spirit, I’m going to lay out some things I am super worried will come from the Trump administration and GOP Congress, with help from the conservative Supreme Court. I’m going to do my best to avoid using trigger words and frame things neutrally and in terms of my own fears. I won’t moralize here or issue judgements. I will simply share what I’m worried about, using facts that are easily verifiable.

In no particular order, these are some things explicitly promised by Trump and/or the GOP, in their words…

• Mass deportations

• National abortion ban

• Repealing the Affordable Care Act

• Eliminating government agencies (most mentioned: Education, EPA, FDA, FCC, FBI, CFPB)

• Military purge to remove “woke" leaders

• Carte blanche for Israel against Gaza

• Ending the war in Ukraine

Before I get into specifics, I feel like I have seen a range of responses from Trump voters to these promises—excitement, skepticism, uncertainty, minimizing, and obliviousness. It is not clear to everyone how sincere or realistic these things are, let alone what the implications might be, but as the next administration takes shape, the picture is starting to become clearer. I shall dive in…

Mass deportations

Just to establish a baseline, DHS stats indicate that 4-5 million migrants entered the U.S. during the Biden administration (about 2.5 million apprehended and turned away, about the same number apprehended and released into the U.S. awaiting hearings, and about 1-2 million estimated to have “escaped,” meaning they crossed illegally). Trump meanwhile, along with various campaign surrogates and more recently some elected Republicans in Congress, have vowed to deport 10-20 million people.

It’s not clear precisely who they would target, but a number that large would go far beyond “criminal migrants” and certainly would have to include not only people with credible asylum claims (meaning a rigorous interview determined that deporting them back to their home country would put them in grave danger), but also many people who have been in the U.S. for a long time, raising families, working, and paying taxes (undocumented immigrant workers paid about $97 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022).

Sincere?

Trump recently announced the appointments of Tom Homan and Stephen Miller to become part of the incoming administration. They helped write the Project 2025 playbook for immigration, which proposes deputizing the National Guard for this purpose and establishing concentration camps, so there is every reason to consider it a sincere campaign promise.

Realistic?

To identify and round up even 10 million people—the low end of what they have promised—would involve unprecedented surveillance plus a large number of boots on the ground. We would likely see widespread checkpoints as well as door-to-door patrols, requiring a lot of Americans to keep our immigration status papers handy at all times. It would cost a lot of money and feel hugely invasive.

I am most worried of course for the people who will be targeted, and the families who will lose loved ones to deportation. But I also worry about the economic impacts and unforeseen consequences of deporting large numbers of people who work in agriculture, construction, and other industries.

I don’t understand what the upside is supposed to be. What is gained from inflicting this much trauma on people, let alone the economic pain the rest of us would experience?

National abortion ban

We already understand the consequences of abortion bans from what’s already happening in Texas, Idaho, and other states that have imposed strict bans: Women and girls have died because doctors are afraid to provide necessary care. Hospital lawyers are sitting in on doctor-patient consultations. Thousands of women and girls have been forced to carry the children of their rapists. Penalties for doctors who provide abortion care, by the way, are harsher than penalties for rape in at least a few of the states in question.

Sincere?

It’s clear that a majority of Americans support a woman’s right to choose, even in many red states, which have recently enshrined abortion rights into state constitutions. It’s also clear that the minority is still relatively large and very committed to banning abortions. It would not be surprising at all to see a GOP Congress put forward a national ban.

Realistic?

Because of the supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution, a federal abortion ban would take precedence over all the state-level laws and constitutional amendments. An ugly battle would surely follow, with a number of states defying the federal ban.

Repealing the Affordable Care Act

Republicans finally have the numbers to do what they’ve been promising and attempting to do for years. The alternative plans they have proposed to replace the ACA would all allow insurance companies to deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions. Millions of people would lose their healthcare coverage. The ACA also expanded Medicaid, so those benefits could get rolled back too.

Sincere and realistic?

Absolutely. This is something the GOP has long promised and attempted to do many times through Congress and the courts. Now they have the numbers to make it happen.

Federal government purge

Before the Department of Education was established, there was no requirement for schools to accommodate kids with learning disabilities, neurodivergent kids, or those with other challenges. That’s just one thing the Department of Education guarantees. Before the EPA, corporations could pollute our air and water more or less with impunity. Before the FDA… well, my point is that I think people depend on these agencies more than we probably realize. It’s hard to know what the actual consequences would be if we were to simply shut them down, but some of it could be pretty terrible. Suffice it to say it worries me.

Sincere?

Again, this is something conservatives have campaigned on for years. Remember Rick Perry and his “oops” moment from 2011?

Realistic?

The GOP Senate would need 60 votes to kill a whole agency unless they get rid of the filibuster. I think the chances of them doing away with the filibuster is probably 50/50, and then we will see.

Military leadership purge

The essence of a democracy is that things are reversible. A leader is elected, but next time they might be voted out. A law is passed, and then later that law can be reversed. When people talk about the end of democracy, the main thing they are thinking about is the end of reversibility.

Maybe the most consequential thing dictators do to solidify their power is purge the military leadership and install loyalists. Without the military to back it up, an authoritarian regime is fragile. With the military to do their bidding, a leader becomes a dictator who is terrifyingly dangerous and nearly unstoppable. Nothing they decide to do can be reversed by anyone other than themselves. Regimes like that tend to fall only through military coups, often one after another, because the military becomes the only entity with real power.

Sincere and realistic?

Until yesterday I would have largely dismissed the possibility of a military leadership made exclusively of Trump loyalists. But yesterday the WSJ reported that Trump’s transition team was already working on an executive order to create a “warrior board” to review military leadership, and Trump in the past has said he wanted “the kind of generals that Hitler had.” This truly terrifies me.

Carte blanche for Israel

Trump has promised to let Netanyahu do “anything he wants” with Gaza, and he repeatedly denounced the Biden administration for wavering in its support of Israel whenever anyone the administration expressed even the mildest critique of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Sincere and realistic?

The appointments of Mike Huckabee and Elise Stefanik are telling. Stefanik has been extremely vocal in her support of Israel, and Huckabee has expressed the view that the West Bank has no legitimacy to exist. This is frightening for the people of Palestine.

Ending the war in Ukraine

On its face, the idea of ending the war in Ukraine is appealing. Nobody wants war. But what might it look like to quickly end this war, as Trump has promised? Both Trump and Vance indicated that they would negotiate a “deal” between Russia and Ukraine to end the war, and Vance more explicitly indicated that it would almost certainly involve large territory concessions of Ukraine to Russia. In other words, the end of the war on Trump’s terms would have Ukraine surrender to Russia.

Sincere?

Trump has been consistent here. There’s no reason to doubt his sincerity.

Realistic?

I think the GOP Congress will do whatever Trump asks, and at minimum I imagine we will stop providing aid to Ukraine. Whether that results in surrender depends on what our European allies decide to do, and on the resilience of Ukraine.

A few other things

More tax cuts for corporations and the very wealthy—I can’t say I’m worried about this. I might even benefit, depending on where the line is drawn. But it just seems sort of gross and doesn’t address actual needs.

Going after “the enemy within”—Trump has used that disturbing phrase a few times, indicating that he means pretty much anyone from “the radical left” but especially the press, “RINOs” like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, and Democrats including Adam Schiff and Jeremy Raskin who played key roles in his impeachments. I think this kind of rhetoric should have been disqualifying, but I don’t know if I should be worried about it. It’s really hard to imagine an American president using the Justice Department or military to go after ideological enemies. It would be an entirely different America at that point.

Climate change and gun violence—I’m worried about these to the extent that I think they are extremely important issues, and I would characterize the GOP stance on them as aggressive inaction. To the extent that there is any movement on these things at all, it will be backsliding.

In conclusion

Trump is an open book, and he made these promises repeatedly at high volume for a long time. If you voted for Trump, I assume you weren’t very worried about any of it. I would be very interested to understand why, or what you saw in the alternative that you judged to be worse.

If you’re a conservative reading this, what did I get wrong? Did I mischaracterize any of the promises? Do you disagree about how sincere or realistic I think they are? Most importantly, what is your position? Are you in favor of these things? Excited? I would really like to understand why.

I’ll give the mic back to George Saunders for a final word:

For those of you who voted for Trump, I’d just say, in the most loving way: Friends, you’re on the hook. 

It's your movement now.

It's on us too, of course, on those of us who were and are against what he stands for – but you have a special role in whatever happens next.  No excuses: he made it very clear what he intended, and you gave him a mandate to do it.

So, when and if the rounding up of undocumented immigrants begins, and it’s brutal, that’s on you.  When and if he comes for those “enemies from within,” that’s on you. When and if people on the periphery (gay people, trans people) suffer, when the economy tanks, because tariffs are a terrible idea, when we jettison even our currently ineffective attempts to reverse climate change, when women’s reproductive healthcare continues to degrade…well, I’m sorry to say so, but you voted for all of that.

You did.