As President Trump and Congressional Republicans use their slim majorities to try to foist a radical regime change on America, Democrats need to reckon with why they’re watching helplessly from the sidelines.

Having lost control of both the White House and Congress, and with Republicans marching in lockstep, there is little they can do to stop Trump’s drive to monopolize political power and rule by diktat. Only the courts are putting speed bumps in his way.

Democrats, yoked to the status quo, are extraordinarily unpopular. Less than a third of Americans view the party favorably, while 57 percent disapprove. Independents are even more likely to express negative views. During the Biden years, Republicans also erased the Democrats’ longstanding advantage in party registration.

Progressive activists nonetheless are pressuring party leaders to make a show of resisting the Trump-Elon Musk blitzkrieg on the federal government. This is tricky: Democrats are duty-bound to speak out against Trump’s unconstitutional usurpation of legislative power. But they must also avoid falling into the trap of defending a federal bureaucracy most Americans believe is badly broken.

Keep reading in The Hill.

In just three weeks, President Trump has set an all-too-familiar tone for his White House sequel: chaotic, dishonest, bullying and contemptuous of the rule of law.

Only it’s worse this time because Trump erroneously believes his narrow victory last November — he won the popular vote by just 1.5 percent — has given him a mandate to rule the U.S. by decree.

He’s lashing out madly in every direction — threatening our neighbors with massive tariffs, bullying small countries like Denmark and Panama whose territory he covets, proposing to depopulate and take over Gaza and settling scores with the very government he heads, which he imagines to be his worst enemy.

Americans are witnessing a naked power grab that would shred the Constitution’s checks and balances, rob Congress of its most important powers, neuter the courts and create the imperial presidency that Richard Nixon dreamt of long ago.

Keep reading in The Hill.

One thing all Americans should be able to agree on is that our government (and how it operates) leaves a lot to be desired.

Unfortunately, Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) seem ready to bring the same kind of arbitrary and ego-driven reforms that cut the value of Twitter (now X) by 80%, to the federal government. As its name implies, DOGE is supposed to focus on improving efficiency. But instead of presenting reforms to streamline government sensibly, Musk’s initial forays are mostly focused on political retribution and a desire to gut the federal workforce no matter the cost to efficiency, expertise, and security.

For too long both Republicans and Democrats have shied away from the hard choices needed to reform the federal government. If President Trump and Musk continue on their current path, another window of opportunity will have been tossed away. Fortunately, there is time to halt the madness, and instead adopt a reform agenda that draws on successful government reform initiatives—like the first Hoover Commission (1947 to 1949) and the Clinton-Gore reinventing government (REGO) policies—that offer a clear roadmap on how to save taxpayers dollars and enhance government performance.

Read more in Forbes. 

The inauguration of Donald Trump has the potential to be much more significant in our world history than his first inauguration in January 2017. Rather than complacently assuming the four years of the first Trump presidency to be an interruption on an otherwise centrist path to greater progress and freedom, a second Trump presidency shows the first not to be an anomaly and begins in a world that has taken a sharp turn towards authoritarian leadership.

The incoming administration has a clear political agenda for its second term and the outline of a plan to achieve it. While the primary focus of that plan is domestic, America’s relationship with the world is at the centre of the incoming government’s political philosophy. As we have already seen with the impact on UK domestic politics of the global markets anticipating potentially inflationary policies coming from the US, decisions taken well beyond our borders can have a big impact here at home. This is before Trump has even started his second presidency. What does Trump’s second term mean for the British Labour government and the global centre-left? And what next for Democrats in the US?

Continue reading in Future Governance Forum.

It’s not hard to lampoon DOGE, the misnamed “Department of Government Efficiency” sprung from the fevered brains of President-elect Donald Trump’s favorite tech oligarchs, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

The DOGE has grand ambitions — eliminating government regulations, jobs and agencies and slashing federal spending by $2 trillion — but no powers.

It won’t be a government department or even a formal advisory committee, say Musk and Ramaswamy. Instead, it will be a “lean team of small-government crusaders” feeding the Trump White House ideas for cutting the “deep state” down to size.

They maintain, implausibly, that Trump can drastically shrink the federal government through executive orders alone. Apparently, they expect Congress and the courts to roll over and grant Trump autocratic powers to “restore” democracy.

But before Democrats dismiss the DOGE as just more MAGA trollery, it’s fair to ask — where’s their plan for making government more efficient and effective?

Continue reading in The Hill.

Americans voted for radical change in November, and judging by the chaos he’s already generated before taking office, Donald Trump might give them more than they bargained for. Can Democrats offer a saner alternative?

So far, the signs aren’t encouraging. Instead of taking a hard look at how they managed to lose to the most ethically tainted and unpopular presidential candidate in memory, many in the party seek refuge in self-exonerating excuses.

President Biden was too old. Kamala Harris didn’t have time to wage a real campaign. Republicans and Elon Musk dominated social media and flooded the campaign debate with lies and bigoted attacks on immigrants and transexual people. The high cost of living warped voters’ perception of the nation’s economic health.

Keep reading in The Hill.