The Consequences of Chaos

It’s been another roller-coaster month for the United States and our global allies as the Trump executive branch demonstrates what happens when “tit for tat” decisions are made without respect to the longer-term consequences. Those consequences affect citizens, the global markets, and a global diplomacy infrastructure that was built after two world wars, ongoing Mideast conflicts, and tensions with nation-state players like China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. Foreign relations with organizations like NATO or the European Union are at an all-time low, and the USAID program has been destroyed. The executive branch is staffed with ignorant but vicious political appointees, whose inept decision-making is hollowing out or destroying bipartisan agencies, initiatives, and programs that have been at the heart of our democracy for years. Among the three branches of government, the executive has operated mostly unrestrained this term, except for lower federal court judges, and several times as well by the Supreme Court.

We watched the Senate (the legislative branch) approve the president’s nominees for cabinet positions. Congress has historically approved the candidates the president puts forward unless they appear unfit because it is felt that he is entitled to build his own executive team. From the outset, there were questions on the fitness of a number of the nominees, but only several nominations were withdrawn. Senators were lobbied hard to vote yes, threatened with the prospect of Trump financing a rival in the next primary. As a result, we are left with less experienced cabinet members, who are being directed by Trump while infiltrated with DOGE staff to cut their payroll and renege on grants or contracts already awarded by those departments. Here are a few examples:

• The Homeland Security secretary seems more concerned with her ICE wardrobe and creating threatening public service messages for television networks while glorifying the president than on doing her job in departments under her control other than ICE.
• The Health & Human Services secretary has consistently discounted the growing numbers of measles infections, only recently suggesting mildly that the MMR vaccine might be helpful to children, having earlier recommended Vitamin A. 
• At a time when relations between China and the United States have never been worse the State Department secretary has practiced Trumpian diplomacy where the Panama Canal, Greenland, and Canada are concerned rather than working on larger issues like our festering relationship with China.

There are more examples but two I want to highlight: the Education Department and the departments involved in the Signal group chat debacle.

• The Education Department secretary was brought in to dissolve the Education Department but has little experience with education or educational programs. She was most recently recorded on a panel exclaiming about a new “A1” program for elementary schools, clearly indicating either a lack of understanding of the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) or an inability to read and listen. Again, here’s another cabinet secretary with little knowledge of how government works, carrying out Project 2025.
• The final example is the Signal group chat replete with details about a military attack planned on Houthi rebels. The most high-profile members of the group chat included the vice president and three cabinet members (Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent); as well as National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Other prominent participants included White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Alex Wong, Waltz's deputy. We know all this because Mike Walz, who set up the call, inadvertently included The Atlantic magazine editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. Goldberg wrote about the call and provided transcripts of parts of it. The event has horrified national security experts and emboldened our enemies, particularly since the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is also facing significant workforce reductions.

Many of you have already been writing or calling your Congressional representatives or attending their Town Halls. Some of you participated in the “Hands Off” protest on April 5, estimated to have included around five million people. There is some evidence that these tactics have reversed some DOGE decisions. There is a lot more on the line than I covered here – I have not mentioned the cancellation of university, medical, and science research funds or the gutting of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, for example – or the cuts to critical FAA, CDC, NOAA, NPR, and PBS funding. Another protest will be organized across all 50 states by 50501 on Saturday, April 19. Please check your local media for details in your city.

Some cracks have begun to form in previous support for the president’s tit-for-tat actions. Certainly, the next 90 days are unpredictable when you couple actions from cabinet heads like I’ve described here with the lack of a firm policy on tariffs, which even Trump’s sidekick Elon Musk has called “stupid.” We still have a relatively free press in this country, who will find themselves stepping up more as citizens do. Though the Supreme Court is supposed to make decisions based on constitutionality, it is aware of public sentiment and a lack of resilience right now in the financial markets. Trump’s actions have shown the world that the integrity of the United States is not to be trusted.

We have a long road ahead, but the midterm elections are closer than we think. The State Supreme Court election in Wisconsin showed that change is possible in the face of monied interests.