Understanding the Trump whirlwind: An interview with activists from the Democratic Socialists of America’s Bread & Roses caucus
United States President Donald Trump has used the first month of his term to push through a dizzying array of changes that have left many shocked and stunned. Isaac Nellist from LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal sat down with Cyn Huang and Michaela Brangan, both members of the Bread & Roses caucus inside the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), to discuss the significance of Trump’s attacks on hard-won rights and the US’s shifting policy on Gaza, Ukraine and Europe.
Trump has implemented big changes on a range of fronts. Could you guide us through this whirlwind? What has happened so far?
Cyn: Since taking office in January, Trump has signed a torrent of executive orders touching on virtually every aspect of the US’ economy, society and politics — with devastating consequences for millions of Americans and people around the world. There are simply too many things to name but I will try to list a few.
Very notably on the foreign policy front, he said the US should seize control of Gaza, permanently displace the Palestinians, and construct a seaside enclave. He made this proposal as they were trying to make a ceasefire deal. He has appointed a hawkish secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who made a presidential run a couple of years ago. Trump also said he wants to take possession of Greenland and the Panama Canal and extend the US’ sphere of influence in Latin America against the Chinese. In one of his sillier moves, he renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. He also ordered the suspension of all US foreign aid programs for 90 days, with a few exceptions, and introduced tariffs.
Domestically the situation is not much better. He has pardoned the January 6 rioters, and wants to deny citizenship to people born in the US whose parents are not citizens to go after specific racial and ethnic minorities. He has declared an emergency at the southern border, cancelled asylum appointments and deporting thousands of people. There are so many other things: attacks on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, LGBTIQ rights, etc. Ultimately, he is clawing back historic gains made by social and labour movements and trying to beat people into submission.
If this is any indication of what is to come, it is going to be a battle. A few weeks ago, Trump’s newfound ally Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, captured the intentions of the tech business class and the Trump administration when he said: “The whole structure of society will be up for debate and reconfiguration” — of course not for the better.
Michaela: It has been an assault on democracy in the broad sense. It is a real challenge to what has been a normative view of executive power being limited by Congress and the courts. The challenges that are happening now are a no-holds-barred bulldozer, using the administrative state against itself.
You have probably heard of DOGE at this point, the Department of Government Efficiency, headed-up by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, who has been given carte blanche to run an unfettered purge of the federal civil service. That entails the dismantlement of the New Deal administrative state. The New Deal was the other side of the coin to what is happening now. It was a strong presidential mandate to remedy longstanding problems in capital crises, culminating in the Great Depression, that gave Franklin D Roosevelt carte blanche to both regulate capital and create a deal with labour to stop striking and allow the first federal labour laws to come into action.
From my perspective, Musk, as the avatar for a whole host of ruling class desires, is trying to undo the administrative state, in particular the regulation of capital. Whether or not they crash the economy is of no consequence to them. They are thinking along the lines that a previous capital crisis was remedied through the introduction of an administrative state and a regulatory apparatus, so what if instead of that we answer it with labour discipline and complete social control. While there has been a lot of promising activity from the labour movement, it is still at its weakest point. Private industry is at 6% unionisation and public sector unions are also under assault. I see what is happening with DOGE as the wish-fulfilment of a longstanding conservative desire to see the end of the New Deal and put capital in the driver's seat. Even if we do not want to use the “F” word, to do it this overtly has fascistic implications.
There is a whole host of other things happening. For example, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wrote to the Washington Post editorial board and said we are not going to publish opinion pieces anymore, just propaganda. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been going into communities and grabbing people for deportation. The debate around that is comparing it to what Trump did in his first term or what [Joe] Biden or [Barack] Obama did. While it is hard to say how many people are being deported, Trump is determined to claim the mantle of “deporter-in-chief” and is willing to use emergency and wartime powers to empower ICE even more. Those two things are perhaps the most scary.
There is also the decimation of leadership in the defence department and the Pentagon, installing loyalists whose only qualification is that they are sycophants for Trump. It is happening across Trump’s whole cabinet. Robert F Kennedy Jr is one example: he dropped out of the presidential race and was made the Secretary of Health and Human Services despite having no qualifications. His only connection to health and human services is that he thinks it is a crock. There are people being installed in these positions who have no experience or loyalty to the actual departments they are put in charge of. It is uniquely destructive.
The fact that it is happening so fast looks to people like it is apocalyptic. In most other developed countries you do not dismantle the federal government. That is something a foreign invader would do. You cannot have a modern nation without a federal civil service. Undoing the modern state requires a powerful person with no loyalty to country or party, such as Musk, and an elected representative who has no loyalty to country or party, such as Trump.
Republicans are afraid they will be voted out if they oppose Trump, so they are not doing anything. Democrats are not doing much. [Democratic House of Representatives leader] Hakeem Jeffries got up and said: “we have no leverage, they won”. The political party system has been frozen.
How are activists in various movements responding? In particular, could you tell us about the organising efforts to stop the mass deportation of immigrants?
Cyn: As you would expect, the response to the second Trump administration is really fragmented, especially as this country lacks an independent workers party that could coordinate struggles and build a national movement against Trump.
In light of that absence, it is important to resist generalisations like that there is “no resistance” to Trump just because we are not seeing large-scale, nationwide mobilisations like last time. Last time Trump took office, about 5 million people across the country protested his inauguration, including more than 500,000 people in Washington DC. Whereas this time only about 5000 protested in the capital. What should we make of that? We certainly should not take it to mean that there is widespread support or lack of critical opinion towards Trump’s administration. Rather, it signals a profound exhaustion and disillusionment on the part of the public.
These sentiments are supported by the hollow, half-arse resistance the Democrats put up last time, but also the failure of the left to provide concrete political alternatives, especially in the form of democratic, bottom-up movement organisations that not only mobilise on the street but educate and train people in between upsurges. There is not a lot of that in the social fabric. A lot of people in my life have voiced something to the effect of “last time I went to a bunch of protests and it didn’t produce the outcome we wanted, so what are we supposed to do?” In response to that, the problems certainly will not go away if we do not mobilise and demonstrate that there can be a social majority that stands against Trump.
People do have a strong, intuitive sense of the balance of power in society right now and many of them have chosen to keep their heads down and get through it. The younger generation growing up have had their whole lives bookended by Trump. Their lives started with the financial crisis. Then when they come of conscious political age Trump is in office, cycles through Biden and then back to Trump — they think this is the norm.
The general shape of resistance right now is that struggle is being waged by those who need it most, by those who are on the chopping block first. On the immigration front, communities and teachers unions have been building intelligence infrastructure to understand the movements of ICE and training their members on how to deter ICE when they get to campus. In various cities there has been a “Day without immigrants” actions, which encouraged immigrants to refrain from going to work, school or businesses to highlight their essential role in the economy and communities.
On another front, various democracy watchdog groups, unions and some states have been filing lawsuit after lawsuit against the Trump administration to prevent his orders from going ahead. There have been legal challenges over things such as Trump’s ban of the Associated Press from going to press conferences, stripping birthright citizenship and purges of federal employees. These attempts are very precarious given Trump’s hold on the federal judiciary and the overall balance of forces. We know the legal interpretations are going to reflect that balance and that is why Trump has been able to steamroll.
On the topic of federal workers, there is a new burgeoning unionist group called the Federal Unionist Network (FUN). They organised a day of action on February 19 to tell Musk to get his hands off the federal government and build awareness of the essential services federal workers provide. Unions around the country from education and healthcare protested on this day as well, including my union UAW 4811, which represents 48,000 academic and student employees who have been hit hard by cuts to National Institute of Health funding.
People are throwing a bunch of tactics at the wall and seeing what sticks — from rallies and mobilisations to lobbying and lawsuits, and also building contract fights that can enshrine further protections. Bernie Sanders has been touring the country on his “Fight the Oligarchy” tour and has been more on-point with his messaging, pointing his fingers at the right people. But it is unclear what organisational vehicle that is tied to. We do not just need to point fingers, we need to take action and build ourselves for the long haul. That is the missing piece. But it is really great that Sanders is doing this, especially on a national scale. Lots of people are flooding into DSA, there is so much desperation and people want to figure out how to do something. But we have to translate that into a real organising plan and program.
I just listed some important initiatives but the battle is going to be bigger than any single fight against an individual employer. In this coming period it is going to be really important to get movements and unions to unite their struggles and stand together to break out of the narrow, defensive approach that is characteristic of initial stages of struggle. We are going to have to build unity to defeat something as big and broad as Trump’s administration.
Michaela: Because everything is happening so quickly and at such a wide scale it is really difficult to mobilise in defence of undocumented immigrants, because you do not know who is being taken away at any particular point. They are reportedly shipping people to Guantanamo Bay if they cannot be immediately deported back to their country. So, it is difficult to do much besides show up and rally in support of immigrants in a general way.
I personally think protesting as a tactic to stop deportations may not work, considering Trump does not really care about popular power in the sense of making a lot of people “mad” at him. It is difficult to say what the impact of the protests will be, whether it is immediate or puts pressure on Congress to do something. If Trump invokes the emergency and wartime powers, he will not need Congressional approval to deport people. Various organisations, including Make the Road and DSA, have been organising rallies against the deportation.
One thing we can do is “Know your rights” campaigns. For example, ICE does not have the authority to come into homes or businesses to take people away without a search warrant. We are trying to build a critical mass of people who are refusing to cooperate by not opening the door, not turning in your neighbour or not letting kids be taken out of schools. But this is not happening en masse yet.
There have not been any political strikes from the labour movement at this point, but there have been a flurry of lawsuits to stop certain actions from taking place. The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, both national educator’s unions, have successfully sued for injunctions to stop DOGE from accessing private data and enforcing anti-diversity initiatives. From my perspective this is buying time, rather than actually creating any basis for a powerful movement. A powerful movement is going to have to come out of the rank-and-file.
The assault on public education on the state and federal level has been taking place for years. Dismantling public education and hurting teachers unions has been on the wish-list of conservatives for years. The dismantling of the Department of Education and the flurry of letters being sent to educators and school boards telling them to implement things such as transgender bathroom bans and opposing certain language had been Red State initiatives, but they are now being emanated top-down from the federal government.
The responses to that on the K-12 level and in higher education will be very important. So far it has been mixed. For example, New York Governor Kathy Hochul sent a letter to Hunter College and told them to de-list a Palestinian Studies job they had listed, and launched an investigation around antisemitism. This is unheard of in a Blue State like New York, especially to a venerable public education institution like the City University of New York, which Hunter College is a part of. It indicates how far this has gone and how much politicians will throw educators and students under the bus.
It is all part of a broader attack on the public good and indicates there will need to be a lot more rank-and-file and community action to demonstrate displeasure with this kind of censorship and authoritarianism.
At his inauguration, Trump was surrounded by the richest people on the planet. What do the close ties between the Trump administration and billionaires such as Musk and Bezos mean for working people?
Michaela: Ruling class solidarity is on display. I see an emboldened ruling class that is being led by powerful moguls. There is a concerted effort to put capital in the driver’s seat, ruling alongside, or in place of, politicians. I am not seeing many elected leaders saying anything, whether they are Republicans or Democrats.
It is unique because these are not widely popular figures. But I do not think it matters to them whether they are popular; what matters is if they have a direct hold on power and Trump is giving it to them. I do not know how much that translates to realisations by average working-class people unless they are feeling it directly themselves. There have been town halls where Republican elected officials are coming home to angry people who are finding out they have lost jobs or support.
There is an idea that all that is happening is the identification of waste. I just visited my conservative dad who reads right-wing media, and he had no idea that Musk was cutting jobs. This resonates with so-called conservative values of cutting back on government, lowering taxes and “letting people live their lives”. Having billionaires call the shots to many just means that these are experts who have gotten to that position through brilliance in business acumen. A lot of people are thinking “it's about time” business people are running the government. It is hard to explain that this is going to make their lives worse, unless they are immediately facing it. A lot of people are cynical about government itself. The idea that government is good is considered a “woke” or liberal view.
Meanwhile the left is out of view. Even if people agree that, for example, healthcare should be a human right, you will get a million different answers about how that should happen, and very few have to do with creating a democratic society. There is an idea that this might be painful, but will it be as painful as COVID? Or the financial crisis in 2008? People have a reasonable view, which I do not think is correct, that this could not be any worse and it might be better to see what happens. I think when people are noticeably worse off they will start to complain, but the Democrats also do not offer much. People have a right to feel disillusioned and frustrated.
Cyn: Everyday brings a new “mask-off” moment, and that is saying so much considering how high the bar was set at the inauguration. In other times, capitalists have tried to maintain a veneer of separation between business interests and the state, but those days are gone. Never before have the interests of the state and capital been so nakedly aligned, and the reason is that the ruling class feels confident they can get away with it.
Around the world we have seen right-wing movements go on the offensive and take advantage of the discontent created by traditional neoliberal governments. The leaders of these movements from Trump to [Argentinian President Javier] Milei to far-right figures in Germany have made every indication that they want to restore business confidence by giving tax cuts to the rich and making lives worse for working people. What better way to illustrate that confidence and allegiance than having three of the wealthiest people in the world line up behind you at your inauguration.
It is notable that all of them are tech giants, signalling what kind of dimensions 21st century exploitation has: hyper surveillance, rapid horizontal and vertical integration of the market, unfettered development and deployment of artificial intelligence. Of course, technology is not inherently good or bad, but in the hands of these rich, evil people it is going to be bad. The implications for working people are horrible.
Before Trump was inaugurated it was already horrible. This oligarchy has already been waging war on their workers: terrible working conditions, long hours, impossible production quotas, horrible defunded public transportation, everything. Everything that matters in life has been systematically degraded by these people. Now that they are at the helm of the government, they get to wage war from above. Musk, for example, has ransacked the federal government agencies that are investigating his company for all sorts of malpractice. It is very clear that the agenda is to clear the way for profits by beating workers into submission, and that is what they will continue to do until we stand up.
Trump has introduced wide reaching tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico, as well as a 25% tariff on all aluminium and steel exports, including from Australia. This has drawn criticism from sections of the ruling class. What impact will they have and what is behind the decision?
Cyn: This is hard to answer because it involves a lot of speculation when we start talking about the potential motives for introducing these tariffs. There are a lot of factors at play. One calculator is that Trump made certain campaign promises regarding things such as the immigration and drug trafficking crises. Even if the facts about crime and drug trafficking contradict his narrative, introducing these tariffs will please large swathes of his base. It will also give him foreign policy leverage to force countries such as Mexico and Canada to more tightly control their borders.
Economically, it is more complicated. The economies he has targeted are not small, he has targeted big economies that are so thoroughly integrated into the US economy that these moves inevitably have to be met with pushback from various sections of capital. That is why we have seen some pauses on tariffs against Canada and Mexico.
Further speculation is that the goal for all of this is to target China, but the scale and efficiency of their economy means they can potentially handle it and have significant ability to inflict pain on the US economy as well. This has led some people to suggest that the real aim is to balance the tax revenue lost by the tax breaks that Trump wants to push. For working people, the greater costs of these imports are going to be passed on to us. So much for the idea that Trump is going to go hard on inflation.
Trump sat alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and announced his plan to clear Gaza of Palestinians and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”. What does this indicate when it comes to assessing US policy on Gaza?
Cyn: Trump’s foreign policy, particularly when it comes to the Middle East, makes a complete sham of a lot of things— including the idea that he was the “anti-war guy”. Trump’s ambitions for Gaza represent not only a continuation of Biden’s carte blanche support for Israel but an escalation of it. Should he act on his plans to evict Palestinians and make a luxury settlement out of Gaza it will require more war, whether economically or militarily.
It is helpful to think about Gaza, Israel and the Middle East in the context of the global economic competition that the US is struggling to assert itself in. Israel is a great guarantor of US interests in the region and since the genocide and Israel’s advancements against Hezbollah and Iran, the US’s position in the Middle East has significantly strengthened. That is one reason to continue giving cover to Israel. Additionally, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine convinced sections of capital that they have to exert more control over Middle Eastern oil, particularly as the US gears up for industrial warfare against China.
A point of continuity between Biden, Trump and Obama is dependence on oil, and all of these administrations have addressed this by making the US the number one oil producer in the world again. But the task is tall, facing up to Russia, BRICS and especially China. I see a lot of continuity — the means in which they pursue their aims are slightly different, but the basic political frameworks remain the same.
What is your response to Trump’s comments about the war in Ukraine?
Cyn: Trump said Ukraine started the war and that [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky is an unelected dictator whose administration is at best negligent and at worst deliberately mishandling US aid. He has made exacting demands for $500 billion worth of mineral riches in exchange for continued support in the defensive war against Russia. [Since this interview was conducted, Trump has announced that the US will withdraw all aid from Ukraine until a minerals deal is signed.] People have made astute historical comparisons, such as the steep penalties imposed on Germany after World War I, which underpinned hyper-nationalist revenge schemes and ultimately the rise of Nazism.
It is important to understand his comments and deeds within the context of the US ruling class’ material interests. It has never been about national sovereignty for Ukraine, despite whatever Biden said. History has shown that whenever the US describes itself as doing what is principled and moral — in this case aiding efforts to defend from imperialist aggression — it is not because they care about democracy but because they believe they can get something out of it. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said it well in 2023 when he said: “People ask me if the war in Ukraine is worth it? Here is what we’ve got out of it. We haven’t lost one soldier, we’ve reduced Russia’s combat power, none of us have died … tell me that is not a great deal for the US.” They have said it straight to our faces: Ukraine is a chess piece in a greater power struggle. The US is looking to subordinate its biggest competitors, many of them in BRICS, but especially China.
If you do not understand that, then these sudden 180 degree turns when it comes to US foreign policy are going to make no sense at all. Washington has gained almost as much as possible from this war. Russia has been severely weakened militarily, its government has tanked in public opinion and it has lost its hold on the market for military equipment. Also the European Union has been severely weakened as an economic competitor to the US because of Russia backing out of the energy deal with the EU. Having gotten our share, it is no surprise that the US ruling class is willing to pull the rug out from under Ukraine and use this situation as an opportunity to rake in more profits.
Trump’s foreign policies in many ways represent a break from those of Biden, but do they represent some kind of overall coherent alternative foreign policy? If so, how do you define this policy? And do these differences reflect broader differences within the US ruling class over foreign policy and the US’s role in the world today?
Cyn: People are right to pronounce a significant shift from the approach of Biden and previous administrations — which was a liberal, internationalist approach where you have a network of world institutions guaranteeing a business-friendly climate, especially for US businesses — to this new kind of gangster, mob-rule foreign policy. The tariffs, pulling back from NATO and his actions around Ukraine are all evidence of this kind of approach.
Michaela: Trump is abandoning the “speak softly and carry a big stick” of the Ronald Regan neo-con right and is instead treating everything as if it is a real estate transaction. Like, we need to stop the war in Gaza, but the way we are going to do it is by getting rid of Palestinians and turning it into capital investment. The same applies to his approach on Ukraine, the idea that we will “get our money back” in the form of mineral rights.
I do not see it as a continuation of the Biden administration’s policy because he has replaced everyone who was doing “Bidenism”. It is more openly capitalist, in the crudest way. The “Trump Gaza” AI video shows how he is thinking. He thinks peace is good for business and war is bad for business.
Getting rid of the US Agency for International Development is interesting because one of its primary functions is to promote free markets internationally. The idea is that we no longer need that to exert power, what we need is a tight web of capital investment and private ownership so we can force other countries to allow the US to do what it wants.
What is the next step for socialists to resist Trump?
Cyn: For socialists, the tasks at a broad level remain the same as they do for socialist anywhere in the world, that is to build social movements and to build the party or connect protests to politics. We have been saying these things for years but it is time to make rubber hit the road and get really concrete about what that means in our context.
Recent conferences within DSA and other organisations are starting to give promising hints of what that looks like. There is a lot of enthusiasm, given the vacuum left open by the Democrats, to experiment with independent political action, whether that means running people as independents, building community struggles around which independent political party infrastructure can form, uniting labour struggles and moving beyond bread and butter struggles for better wages.
To build concrete initiatives like that will be our task in the coming period so that this magic buzzword of “independent political action” is not just a nice-sounding thing but something that has real meaning out in the world.
Michaela: The recruitment bumps for DSA are encouraging. I was part of the original “Bernie Bump”, which is when the “new DSA” came about through Bernie, having supported his candidacy and that being so popular and attracting so many people. During Biden there was a downward shift as there were a lot of “back-to-brunchers” who stepped back after Trump was out of office. Now, the new people joining feel less like they are exploring it as one of many options, but as an actual alternative to the Democrats.
The war in Gaza turned a lot of people’s heads and made many people who had supported the Democrats turn away. Also the fact that the Democrats lost the popular vote. Some blamed the lack of a primary, others said the US is not ready for a woman president. I think it is because people looked at that campaign and thought: “you’re not saying anything differently than the Republicans”.
People knew about DSA through Bernie, as well as some other elected representatives such as Cory Bush and Jamaal Bowman who lost their offices due to a tonne of American Israeli Political Action Committee money. We are more prepared now to take on the huge numbers of new people and get them involved in things.
In my chapter we have two candidates running for City Council in Jersey City, Jake Ephros and Joel Brooks. While City Council may sound like small potatoes, we have realised we need to build a stable bench of people who can put our politics out honestly in the world and build a constituency around those politics. A lot of people are very attracted to that. They are attracted to an organisation that is trying to become a true alternative to the Democrats.
I am in committees for growth and development and political education and I am very encouraged to see how chapters are growing and improving their organising so they can attract people and develop their politics. We are making more and better socialists now, rather than just depending on a “Bernie Bump” or “Trump Bump”. We are trying to attract people on the basis of our program, instead of around a single person who calls themself a democratic socialist. We will always need both, but we are getting to the point where people are willing to show up and talk to a normal person, and it is not so dependent on the “celebrity” figures. We do want more people in office, but I do not think prioritising getting a representative in Congress is the best approach.
At the recent Bread and Roses caucus convention in Louisville we passed a resolution to explore running a socialist candidate for president in 2028. Zohran Mamdani, a DSA member running for mayor of New York City, is coming second to Andrew Cuomo, who was governor of New York State and is part of a legacy Democrat family. He has a chance to get a big vote in what is one of the most publicised elections in the whole country, it is a huge opportunity for us to put our politics out there.