It’s been another grueling week.
Several of you have asked me how to live in a nation whose leader has embraced cruelty as public policy. How do we inhabit Trump’s America without becoming complicit in this cruelty?
Molly watched Trump sign the executive order initiating criminal investigations of Miles Taylor (who wrote an anonymous 2018 New York Times op-ed describing internal resistance to Trump in his first term) and Christopher Krebs (who played a major role in undercutting Trump’s false claims about 2020 election fraud).
Molly asks: Is this America?
No, Molly, it is not — at least not the America we have known and loved.
Others of you are thunderstruck by Trump’s cruelty toward refugees who fled violence and have been living in the United States legally but are now being forced to return to their home countries and face more violence.
And the Trump regime’s cruelty toward people here on temporary visas who are deported arbitrarily, without a hearing — some sent to a gruesome prison in El Salvador even after the regime has admitted error in sending them.
And children in poor countries who are in desperate need of vaccines but are now doing without them because Trump has ended USAID.
The cruelty toward vulnerable people in Gaza, in Ukraine, and in Yemen who are being bombed, wounded, or killed because the Trump regime is doing nothing to stop these bloodbaths or is contributing to them.
Cruelty toward tens of thousands of public servants who are suddenly and without warning fired — some just months away from retirement and a pension.
Revoking security protection for Biden’s son and daughter. And for General Mark Milley and Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Revoking security protection for other former members of his first administration despite warnings of ongoing threats from Iran because of actions they took on Trump’s behalf.
Firing more than a dozen prosecutors who worked for the special counsel Jack Smith on criminal investigations of Trump.
Revoking security clearances of 51 people who merely signed a letter suggesting that the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop could be Russian disinformation.
Targeting law firms that employ or have employed lawyers who worked on investigations into Trump or on causes Trump objects to.
Targeting universities that have allowed international students freedom of speech.
And on it goes, day after day — the Trump regime’s abject cruelty, viciousness, heartlessness, brutality.
How does a moral person live with this? How do we not become complicit?
The answer, I think, is to do whatever we can to protect those who are vulnerable to this cruelty.
We speak out against Trump’s use of criminal investigations to punish public servants who helped expose his venality.
We make our communities into sanctuaries that limit local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
We urge our universities to protect free speech and expression of everyone, at whatever the cost.
To the extent we can, we fund groups that are helping poor families around the world get the medical assistance they need.
We call our senators and members of Congress to tell them to retrieve their constitutional authority over government spending.
We tell them to stop the brutality in Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, and everywhere else America is either encouraging it or failing to discourage it.
We tell them to stop Trump’s criminal investigations of opponents.
We protest. We organize. We mobilize. We do what we can to put good people into office and keep them there, and we help regain control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.
In other words, we become organized activists against Trump’s organized cruelty.
We try to make this country an America we can love again.
Years from now, when our children and grandchildren ask what we did during Trump’s reign of terror, we can tell them that we worked tirelessly to curb his cruelty — and we did it with our compassion.
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Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/