The Constitutional Crisis Cabal, Part II

Our "Federal Correspondent" says under Trump, discrimination gets a green light.

Imagine your neighbor and their family dying from cancer after a mega-corporation dumped sludgy toxic waste that leached and poisoned the local aquifer. Or picture your uncle in rural Maine, working down at the lumber yard, getting a traumatic brain injury after a pallet of poorly stacked 2x4s fell off a forklift and onto his head. Suddenly, he’s out of work, can’t get access to local health care and there’s no help with his medical bills or paying for groceries. Or your kid with disabilities doesn’t have the Direct Support Professionals providing the services they need to live an active and productive lifestyle. All the while, an onslaught of foodborne illnesses turn supermarkets into ticking time bombs, digestive and otherwise. E. coli, Listeriosis and Salmonellosis outbreaks become commonplace. Social Security disability coverage and Medicaid disappear. The U.S. Department of Education eliminated. And all this because there are zero federal scientists, medical experts or lawyers investigating environmental crimes. OSHA gone by the wayside so workplaces go uninspected.  All just part of the on-going structural deregulation by a cabal of ignorant tech bros and craven yes-men eager to destroy over a century of progress.

Donald Trump, Elon Musk and their posse of MAGA Republicans don’t think Americans need and want the many services provided by the government. Musk’s minions, who aren’t auditors, say they’re finding massive fraud, but that’s not true. Actual waste, fraud and abuse in federal agencies is found by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the inspectors general. Instead, as the Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler explained, Musk largely planted the fraud label on what he and Trump don’t want government to do - investigating corporate crime, fighting climate change and promoting inclusion.

Meanwhile, Trump has showered Musk with benefits. Despite Musk’s Cybertrucks being recalled six times last year due to safety issues, the State Department is expected to spend $400 million on an armored edition of the ugly and poorly functioning vehicle.

Also thirty-two investigations of Musk’s businesses stalled after Trump fired eleven inspectors general overseeing them. And then Musk returned the favor, sending money to Trump’s personal bank account. On Wednesday, the South African immigrant agreed to pay Trump ten million bucks to settle the president's so-called "censorship" lawsuit against X, formerly known as Twitter, filed because Twitter suspended Trump’s account used to incite and encourage January 6 insurrectionists.

So, in short, while helping the powerful, the constitutional crisis cabal is illegally deleting agencies that protect workers and consumers. Agencies which were created and funded by Congress. The oligarchs are stealing from us while enriching themselves. Cabal leaders are acting quickly to grab and consolidate power, knowing their agenda would face serious opposition from the public and trouble from Congress.

Part I of this series discussed the money and power aspect of our current constitutional crisis. The illegitimate cabal’s project, though, includes more bad news geared to hurting members of America’s most vulnerable communities and the middle-class trying to pay their bills and get ahead. 

Thanks to the cabal, discrimination now gets the green light, allowing for the exclusion of certain Americans. They’re literally waging a war on rights, respect and inclusion. Trump and his GOP minions' are intent on reversing the accomplishments of decades-long struggles for civil rights, women’s rights and LGBT+ rights. Brazenly, thanks to Trump’s scheming, it’s highly likely the federal government will no longer stop federal contractors from using discriminatory HR practices. Employers with federal contracts, for instance, will be able to pay women less than men doing the same job. In Trump-world, it won’t be a big deal for bosses getting federal monies to decide not to hire Black people or to fire employees because of sexual preference. 

Unabashedly, Trump is attacking anti-discrimination laws with Orweillian language. After issuing an executive order titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit Based Opportunity,” Trump rescinded an order Lyndon B. Johnson issued in 1965, a year after the Civil Rights Act, prohibiting discrimination by federal contractors and in federal employment. Next, Trump put compliance staff on leave, making it impossible for the federal government to track and tackle biased behavior. While individual employees could still sue their employers, this administration won’t prevent businesses from discriminating. That’s just more proof that Trump is part of a reactionary, anti-worker movement eager to oppose and oppress the activists, voters, lawyers, courts and elected officials who labored for decades to safeguard the constitutional principle of equal treatment for all.

Trump’s reversal of LBJ’s 60-year-old anti-discrimination law was only the start. After prohibiting D.E.I. (whatever that means), under Trump, agencies began to exclude folks who aren’t white, straight, cis and/or male from services and recognition. That’s not “restoring merit.” 

It’s also ludicrous to think Trump and company stand for free speech.

NASA staffers, for example, were told to remove from websites any mentions of “indigenous people” and “women in leadership.” Transgender people can no longer get passports that match their gender identities. The Department of Justice threatened to defund the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children unless they removed LGBTQ+ issues from their public materials. The National Science Foundation issued a list of words prohibited from grant proposals, including “female” (but not “male”), “Black” (but not “white,”) and even the words “biases,” “stereotypes” and “equality.” The National Cryptologic Museum, dedicated to the memory of the many excellent federal code-breakers, was forced to paper over the pictures of women and people of color displayed in their Hall of Honor. Schools in Germany run by the Department of Defense for dependents of military personnel removed classroom pictures of suffragist Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. while banning the biography of astronaut Sally Ride, a physicist and the first American woman in space.

Refusing to acknowledge excellence by marginalized people who broke job and cultural barriers is a blatant attempt at rewriting history. Also, such actions exclude role models who can inspire others to achieve greatness. And such censorship means fewer real-life examples of how change happens. Which was probably the cabal’s motivation to remove path-breakers from places of honor and recognition in the first place.

While they’re at it, Trump’s henchmen might as well remove “Equal Justice Under Law” from the front of the Supreme Court building.

Speaking of the nation’s top court, Trump’s attack on civil rights comes less than five years after the very conservative body actually extended who is covered by anti-discrimination laws. In Bostock v. Clayton County, the Justices considered whether employers can fire people “for simply being homosexual or transgender.” One man, Gerald Bostock, lost his job as a “Child Welfare Services Coordinator” because he played in a gay softball league. Another, Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor, was fired because he mentioned, at work, that he was gay. Funeral Director Aimee Stephens was let go after announcing she planned to transition and live as a woman. Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, penned the court’s 6-3 decision, writing “an individual’s homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions.”

In other words, some of Trump’s own judges decided it’s not legal for employers to discriminate

Besides the glaring symbolic message that only White Christian cis-males matter, there’s also the stark reality of life to consider. The needs of people who are women, indigenous, transgender, gay, Black and Latino don’t vanish just because MAGA Republican government opposes acknowledging their existence and contributions.

Consider the situation of transgender teens kicked out of their homes by parents who don’t accept them. Often, those kids end up living on the streets. They need help and appropriate information from an organization whose mission it is to help missing and exploited youth. In Trumpland, though, that sort of assistance seems doomed to disappear.

Meaning vulnerable teens will likely face troubles and fates worse than death. And to what end? 

Consider environmental and air-quality programs aimed at marginalized communities being slashed or eliminated. Trump probably thinks these programs were only to serve racial minorities in cities. Truth is, such initiatives help an awful lot of poor rural folks, many of whom are Trump’s base. Thanks to the cabal, though, Trump supporters will experience more cancer and asthma. Even more, there’s nothing remotely new (or woke, whatever that means) about studying and including particular populations in public policy. In the late 19th century, for instance, public health experts analyzed patterns of illness and environmental conditions in London neighborhoods to prevent deadly typhoid fever. 

This isn’t the first time the U.S. shifted toward discrimination in this country. Jim Crow was adopted after Reconstruction failed, thanks to courts and politicians letting the Civil War slavers re-impose segregation and white supremacy. It’s also striking how recently most of the major moves toward equality in the U.S. happened. After all, civil rights activist Ruby Bridges and many of the other Black children who braved hateful mobs when striding into segregated schools in the early 1960s are still alive. In 1964, my mother, an elementary school teacher, got called to the principal’s office, where he told her she had to stop working because she was pregnant. And it’s only been since June 2015 that gay and lesbian couples have the right to marry nation-wide. And as I mentioned earlier, it’s been less than five years since the Supreme Court decided employment discrimination against LGBTQ+ is people illegal. Obviously, citizen-led movements have had success in pressuring politicians and convincing judges to make real change.  

Trump, with help from J.D. Vance, along with hordes of Christian nationalists (including certain Project 2025 authors) feel emboldened to attempt to turn back the clock on civil rights and inclusion. They want to go back to a time when it was legal — even laudatory  -– to discriminate. Take Darren Beattie, a State Department spokesperson hired by the Trump administration. Four months ago he wrote “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.” Promoting discrimination only makes sense when one believes hierarchy is proper and that all governmental entities should promote that worldview. Abortion bans fit with this perspective because, without women controlling when and whether they reproduce, women can’t make other key decisions about their lives. Some loud and proud haters are secular eugenics, including some working on Musk’s team. Also Christian Dominionism backs helping the chosen few, who God purportedly created to rule, while harming everyone else. That theology – and the subsequent Trumpian actions – don’t respect the constitutional principle of equal treatment and ignore the laws passed by Congress prohibiting discrimination. Trump’s underlings neutralize Congressional rules by firing people whose jobs it is to enforce them. 

Most Americans didn’t sign on for a war on civil rights and inclusion that’s negatively impacting award-winning, barrier-breaking women and racial minorities, abandoning runaway gay and trans teens, harming the health of white rural people exposed to toxic chemicals, all while assuming everyone but white men are incompetent. Most Americans don’t back book bans or the effort to forbid mentions of past and current discrimination. Although voters didn’t want or expect this onslaught of exclusion, Trump and the rest of the constitutional crisis cabal have injected their pro-discrimination project with steroids. And, appallingly, the malefactors continue using their heinous mission to transfer power to the most powerful.

With nary a quibble from the GOP.

Next in Part 3 of this series, I’ll explain how Trump’s mobster-like agenda undermines our security and the Constitution. It’s not all doom and gloom, though. In Part 4 of “Constitutional Crisis Cabal,” I’ll discuss tactics average citizens can use to fight back and make their voice heard, despite the ongoing efforts of the Trump regime.

Amy Fried spent many years as a political scientist at the University of Maine, teaching and mentoring, earning multiple awards and her current title of Professor Emerita, and publishing research in numerous academic books and articles. At various times, she served as the faculty advisor for the College Republicans, College Democrats and the Young Americans for Liberty. She is probably best known in Maine for her biweekly column in the Bangor Daily News, which ran from fall 2011 to early 2025. Fried also publishes outside of academia in national venues and is interviewed widely for her political analysis. Fried has helped other professors develop skills for engaging with the public, press, community groups and elected officials. She loves to kayak, box and travel. You can find her on Bluesky at @asfried.bsky.social.