Can We Repair The Damage?

I'm not optimistic that the damage caused by Trump is fixable. 

Even if there is a "blue wave" next week, even if we elect a Democrat in two years, the scale of the damage is worse than most of us realize. It's not just that we have a horrible human being who is incompetent at his job and willfully ignorant of everything. It's the fact that we have a president who seems to revel in destruction that can't easily be repaired. 

Sure, some things are easily fixed. Another president can install competent cabinet secretaries and agency heads. That's easy. It's like redecorating the Oval Office and removing all that cheap gilt décor  — that's something that will occupy White House staff for an afternoon while the Inaugural Balls are happening. Appointing men and women who actually support the missions of their agencies is easy, rebuilding those agencies, restaffing all the positions that were eliminated under DOGE is more like rebuilding the East Wing after it has been bulldozed. Where are those people going to come from?

Perceptions about government waste and the supposed indolence of government employees is one of those things that people have strong opinions about. Since they don't really know in any detail what they do, they assume that it can't be very important. Most people don't think about government employees until they need a government service. Wait times at veterans'' hospitals, Social Security, and the IRS have been evident since the cuts last year — all common contact points between citizens and the federal government. HHS has reduced its workforce, significantly cutting thousands of positions across agencies like the FDA, NIH, and CDC. The NIH terminated thousands of research grants and over 160 clinical trials spanning cancer, HIV/AIDS, and chronic diseases. In Pittsburgh, a VA clinical trial for advanced head and neck cancers was placed on hold due to hiring and contract freezes. During the 2025 Texas measles outbreak, canceled CDC grants forced local health officials in Lubbock to pause response work and eliminated access to federal public health experts. Dallas County Health and Human Services had to cut staff and cancel 50 community vaccination clinics. Rebuilding any of those programs will take time, assuming anyone would want to risk working for the government again. 

The remaking of the military into an organization loyal to Trump, rather than the Constitution will be difficult to undo. The Judge Advocate General corps has been gutted in order to remove any legal obstacles to the Trump agenda. Generals and Admirals who objected to potentially illegal actions, such as blowing up boats of suspected drug runners, or kidnapping another nation's president, have been eliminated.  Secretary of Defense Hegseth is trying to convert the military into a caricature of a bad Steven Seagal movie where everyone is a "warrior" (or warfighter) and apparently you don't need cooks or IT people. The Department of Justice has become the Department of Retribution after anyone who was suspected of being insufficiently loyal has been purged. A Democratic president can appoint a new Secretary of Defense and Attorney General, but rebuilding the leadership structure in each agency will take time. 

Our standing among our allies I fear will never recover. Why should any of our allies ever trust us again when we can so swiftly turn against them, both militarily and economically? When we cozy up to dictators like Putin? And if a legitimate national security goal is to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons, have we guaranteed that they'll never negotiate with us again?  

My concern is that a hypothetical Democratic president will be tempted to undo Trump's damage in the same way that Trump caused the damage, by extensive use of Executive Order. The use of Executive Orders as a way around Congressional inaction isn't new, it has been steadily building over several administrations. The next president can undo some of the more egregious Trump EOs by more EOs, but Congress is going to have to step up and do their job. I'm not optimistic that they will. Politicians are more interested in maintaining an adversarial relationship with the other party than with getting anything done. There is scant incentive to compromise or work together. President Biden went into office deluded into thinking that he could reanimate the old way of doing things, he thought he could cajole Congress into passing a comprehensive immigration bill, when they were only interested in preventing one from passing, ensuring that Trump would have a solid campaign issue. 

We have a huge mess and I don't think we have a big enough broom to sweep it all up.