The Closing of the United States
If there is a thing that is predictable in authoritarian spaces, it is that their leaders follow a well-trodden path. Yes, they follow in other authoritarians’ footsteps because it works. Chiefly, most normal people deny that the new leader intends to do these things because normal-thinking people would not even think of doing this.
No, authoritarians are not mad. They are mad with power, maybe. They are not crazy. Nor did they hide their intent. What they are doing is clearly in places like Project 2025 or the campaign speeches. So here is some of the current chaos with the National Institutes of Health:
President Donald Trump’s return to the White House is already having a significant impact at the $47.4 billion U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), with the new administration imposing a wide range of restrictions, including the abrupt cancellation of meetings including grant review panels. Officials have also ordered a communications pause, a freeze on hiring, and an indefinite ban on travel.
The moves have generated extensive confusion and uncertainty at the nation’s largest research agency, which has become a target for Trump’s political allies. “The impact of the collective executive orders and directives appears devastating,” one senior NIH employee says.
Today, for example, officials halted midstream a training workshop for junior scientists, called off a workshop on adolescent learning minutes before it was to begin, and canceled meetings of two advisory councils. Panels that were scheduled to review grant proposals also received eleventh-hour word that they wouldn’t be meeting.
“This kind of disruption could have long ripple effects,” says Jane Liebschutz, an opioid addiction researcher at the University of Pittsburgh who posted on Bluesky about the canceled study sections. “Even short delays will put the United States behind in research.” She and colleagues are feeling “a lot of uncertainty, fear, and panic,” Liebschutz says.
Like foreign aid, this is another area where we discuss the spare change in the national couch. But I digress. Why are they doing this? Like, oh, USAID and NIH work through grants. Grantees use this money to research how viruses work, for example. This may be relevant to things like COVID…or bird flu. Incidentally, speaking of bird flu…the eggs are still going up. It’s by the tune of 33 percent.
So why do this? Well, if you are a local university with a biology department worth its salt…guess where the grant money for that research comes from? Do you mean a psychology department? What about an academic medical center? Victor Orban disciplined his universities by metering up research money. This is partially what this is about.
The other aspect is to control the direction of this research. A consequence is the acceleration of brain drain from the United States, making us less competitive and ending our dominance in the scientific fields.
There is also a government-wide hiring freeze. They promised to do it. Now they have. This is by design. Why? Make government as inefficient as possible. Now, when it comes to closing of society, this is a lovely way to do it:
The Trump administration, seeking to stamp out federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, is calling on government employees to snitch on any colleagues that continue to follow such policies.
Driving the news: In a series of form letters sent to government departments Wednesday, President Trump’s acting agency chiefs threatened “adverse consequences” for anyone still doing work related to DEI initiatives in defiance of a Trump executive order.
The letters followed an order from the new administration directing agencies to close their DEI offices and place those staffers on paid leave by 5pm ET Wednesday, in advance of being laid off.
To those of us who study authoritarian spaces, this is utterly familiar. This creates an environment of distrust. This is the whole point of the exercise. Some people will leave the government of their own accord, with people leaving if they are near retirement as soon as they can. There goes that institutional memory by the by.
Again, the whole point is to make the government inefficient and destroy any sense of camaraderie and trust among employees. This is insidious and perfectly exemplifies how authoritarian leaders consolidate power. And if the objective is to create loyalists, all those woke, lazy federal employees leaving on their own is a better way than trying to fire them. They still have some protections, though soon they may not.
Now, let me deal with two advisory committees that have been frozen:
Members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee received a memo Tuesday saying that the department is eliminating the membership of all advisory committees as part of a “commitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security.”
The aviation security committee, which was mandated by Congress after the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, will technically continue to exist but it won’t have any members to carry out the work of examining safety issues at airlines and airports. Before Tuesday, the group included representatives of all the key groups in the industry — including the airlines and major unions — as well as members of a group associated with the victims of the PanAm 103 bombing. The vast majority of the group’s recommendations were adopted over the years.
This is textbook if there is one way to make civil aviation less safe. And I will remind you that Russia is now a clear and present danger to civil aviation. This is but one example that targeted DHL.
Then there are the usual suspects: Al Qaida, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah…the cartels, maybe.
Here is the second:
Members of all Department of Homeland Security (DHS) advisory committees, including the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB), were removed from their posts on Monday.
The move reflects the Trump administration’s “commitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security,” according to a memo signed by acting Secretary of Homeland Security Benjamine Huffman.
The CSRB includes public and private sector experts who issue reports and recommendations addressing major cybersecurity incidents. The board is currently investigating the Salt Typhoon hacks in which Chinese-linked attackers have penetrated networks belonging to at least nine telecommunications companies.
This disrupts the investigation into a recent Chinese hack, but I digress. A lot of our infrastructure is open to attack. These people also issue warning letters to relevant industries, like, I don’t know, your electric grid. Did I mention banking and finance? Good…like civil aviation, this makes us less safe.
Can we talk of US troops deployed within the United States?
Washington — Trump administration officials are considering deploying as many as 10,000 soldiers to the U.S.-Mexico border and using Department of Defense bases to hold migrants awaiting deportation as they plan their dramatic crackdown on illegal immigration, according to an internal government memo obtained by CBS News.
In an executive action Mr. Trump signed upon taking office on Monday, he declared a national emergency along the southern border and ordered the Defense Department to provide troops and resources “to support the activities of the Secretary of Homeland Security in obtaining complete operational control” of the border. He also instructed the military to help build border barriers to repel migrants.
Using military bases to house detainees is part of the plan. This is to seal a border that was already pretty calm. This is about starting a process that we were told would come. This is a plan of mass deportations, with, of course, the expected result. Get ready to pay a lot more for your food… we are not seeing the tariffs take hold yet; it’s not quite day one, just February 1. But just with food production, it already disrupted:
The country’s agricultural sector is in full-blown panic mode as President Donald Trump’s long-promised mass deportations are starting to become a reality in farming communities across the United States.
And the ripple effect could soon hit supermarkets, as the chaos surrounding Trump’s strict immigration policies — which already include stepped-up ICE raids — is already threatening to send food prices soaring before long, according to a report in The New Republic.
“Bakersfield, California saw a massive drop off in the number of field workers showing up for work Tuesday while ICE agents in unmarked Chevy Suburbans rounded up and detained immigrants in the area, profiling individuals they believed to be field workers,” the outlet reported.
So what is this about? Control. Authoritarians use manufactured crises, this one, to consolidate power. Just because we have seen this in Russia does not mean we are not watching the same process here at speed.
And none of this was hidden. Some people will say you suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Not quite, I suffer from experience and deep reading into closed societies. The markers are here. You ignore them at your peril. Oh, and yes, I read Project 2025…
The question is whether Americans are as badly depoliticized as Russians. Because if they are, Trump will have no problem consolidating power. As they say, time will tell. I guess a bright spot here is that Trump seems to see Russia as a weak state he can order around, and given where they are, he might be able to. Never mind, the work to get them here has been done over the last three years. He will never admit it.
Oh, and we are primarily on our own. Expecting the institutions to hold is a fool’s errand because they did not over the last four years. The pardons to the participants of the January 6 attacks are getting his support with the radicals shorn up, possibly for street-level fights. Again, we have seen this repeatedly in authoritarian spaces. Fun fact: This is not what a president of law and order does, so I don’t want to hear this again. Or one that backs the blue.
Alas, raising these issues was important before returning to the Russo-Ukraine war. And no, there is no way we can entirely ignore Trump. I will leave you with this from last night’s interview with Hannity:
Donald Trump said that he’s considering scrapping the Federal Emergency Management Agency because he’d “rather see states take care of their own problems.”
During an interview Wednesday night with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Trump claimed that his thinking about FEMA had recently shifted, not the least bit because it sometimes helps people in liberal states and cities.
“Los Angeles has changed everything. Because a lot of money is gonna be necessary for Los Angeles, and a lot of people on the other side want that to happen,” Trump said, admitting that he didn’t want to give disaster aid for the sole purpose that Democrats wanted it.
This is about creating even more crisis. But it also attacks the we in We the People. Suffice it to say, as a former emergency worker who’s worked a disaster or two or a fire reporter who’s covered them as well, this is not good.
But creating a crisis consolidates power. On the bright side, there are no more San Diego Fire task forces driving across the country to help our fellow countrymen and women because, quite honestly, we will need those trucks here. (They went to Helene as part of that FEMA response.)