“This is going to be great television, I will say that,” said Donald Trump at the end of the February 28 “Oval Office showdown” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

When Vice President JD Vance complained that Zelensky was “trying to fight it out in the American media” rather than “litigating” their disagreements behind closed doors, Trump cut in:

But you see, I think it’s good for the American people to see what’s going on. I think it’s very important. That’s why I kept this going so long.

The president made by reality TV knew exactly what he was doing. The “Oval Office showdown” was one in a procession of choreographed spectacles—Trump signing a tsunami of executive orders surrounded by his adoring disciples, Elon Musk brandishing a symbolic chainsaw at CPAC—designed to shock and awe the world into submission.

The MAGA revolution

As anybody not living on a desert island without internet access cannot fail to have noticed, Donald Trump has begun his second term in the White House with a flourish.

A Republican budget promising $5 trillion in tax cuts for the rich and enhanced funds for the military and immigration enforcement, to be financed by $880 billion in cuts to public expenditure, threatening the social security and medicare and medicaid on which poorer Americans rely, was only to be expected from the party of Jesus.

But the speed and comprehensiveness of the rest of Trump’s MAGA revolution has left many reeling, not just in the US (or Canada) but across the globe. It is astonishing just how much has been done—and undone—in just six weeks.

The following list is not exhaustive.

Foreign relations

Trump has:

• Withdrawn the US from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Paris Climate Agreement, and the United Nations Human Rights Council, and ordered a review of US funding and involvement in the UN, including the “anti-American” UNESCO.
• Frozen all foreign aid while dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), cancelling “about 90 percent of the agency’s work and tens of billions of dollars in spending” and devastating humanitarian aid projects across the world.
• Voted against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; stopped offensive cyber-operations against Russia; and directed the State and Treasury departments to draw up a plan to give Russia relief from sanctions.
• Trashed EU and NATO states (see speeches by Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth), and threatened not to defend NATO allies “if they don’t pay”
• Suspended military support for Ukraine and paused the flow of intelligence to Kyiv.
• Floated a plan to expel Gaza’s two-million-strong Palestinian population and transform the strip into a “Riviera of the Middle East” under US control.
• Sanctioned International Criminal Court officials and family members for the court’s indictment of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
• Rescinded the Biden administrations temporary pause on supplying 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, and used emergency powers to bypass Congress and “expedite the delivery of approximately $4 billion in military assistance to Israel.”
• Threatened to annex Greenland (“I think we’re going to get it—one way or the other, we’re going to get it”), “take back” the Panama Canal, and apply economic pressure on Canada to force it to become “a cherished and beautiful 51st state.”
• Imposed 20 percent tariffs on Chinese goods and 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, and promised unspecified tariffs on the EU (which Trump says “was formed to screw the United States”).

Immigration and the border

Trump has:

• Declared a national emergency and halted asylum at the US–Mexico border; suspended the refugee resettlement program; revoked deportation protections for Venezuelans; detained the first of a promised 30,000 migrants in Guantánamo; threatened to prosecute officials who impede ICE operations and remove federal funding from “sanctuary cities”; and pushed the IRS to provide the addresses of 700,000 undocumented immigrants to the Department of Homeland Security.
• Moved to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.
• Reportedly considered revoking the temporary legal status of 240,000 Ukrainian refugees in the US.

Diversity, equity and inclusion

Trump has:

• Terminated programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in “virtually all aspects of the Federal Government … from airline safety to the military,” and halted new civil rights cases or investigations by the Justice Department.
• Required all government-issued documents, including passports, to reflect sex assigned at birth; ordered transgender women inmates to be transferred to male prisons; barred transgender soldiers from the US military; restricted all gender-affirming treatments for minors under 19; ordered federal employees to remove “any gender identifying pronouns” from their email signatures; and moved to exclude transgender athletes from women’s sports.
• Taken down thousands of government web pages with content related to diversity and “gender ideology,” including information about vaccines, scientific and medical research, hate crimes, and veterans’ care (among the images caught in this cull by AI was the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima).

Science, arts, media

Trump has:

• Canceled scheduled biomedical scientific meetings, including grant review panels, at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—thereby blocking millions of dollars in funding for research on cancer, addiction, and other health threats—and imposed a moratorium on all public communications from federal health officials.
• Halted funding to Fulbright Scholarships and other US international exchange and study abroad programs, leaving thousands of students stranded abroad in limbo.
• Created “chaos” across American university campuses with cuts to “billions of dollars in research” that amount to “a complete, utter, destruction of the United States research infrastructure” and have led to hiring freezes or layoffs at MIT, Stanford, Brown, Johns Hopkins and numerous other schools.
• Stripped the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) of its 70-year-old role in deciding which journalists have access to the president in the Oval Office and on Air Force One and taken control of the White House press pool.
• Appointed himself chair of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, firing board members who don’t “share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.”

“Antisemitism”

Under the pretext of combatting antisemitism, Trump has:

• Ordered US colleges to “report activities by alien students and staff” that “could be considered antisemitic or supportive of terrorism,” threatening that “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS!”
• Cancelled “approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students,” and warned that “additional cancelations are expected to follow.”
• Given notice “to every school and university that receives federal dollars that this Administration will use all the tools at its disposal to protect Jewish students and end anti-Semitism on college campuses.”
• Changed the Student Loan Forgiveness Program (affecting approximately two million people) to allow disqualification of federal and non-profit employees, teachers, police, and pastors, among others, who engage in “improper activities,” including providing legal support, advocacy, or education work on behalf of undocumented immigrants, or “whose work had been tied to foreign terrorist groups.”

On previous experience at Columbia and elsewhere, virtually any criticism of Israel—including from Jewish organizations and individuals—is regarded as “antisemitic” and virtually any support for Palestine considered to be “support for terrorism.”

Environmental policy

Trump has:

• Declared a “national energy emergency”; halted federal approvals for new offshore windfarms; opened up wilderness areas of Alaska to mining and drilling; ordered a 60-day pause on approvals for renewable energy developments on public lands; revoked Biden’s prohibitions on offshore oil drilling; and instructed federal agencies to end subsidies for electric vehicles.

Other domestic initiatives

Trump has:

• Restored the federal death penalty.
• Designated English as “the official language of the United States.”
• Renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America (and banned Associated Press from presidential press conferences and news events until it adopts the name change).
• Granted a “full, complete and unconditional” pardon to almost all the 1,600 rioters charged in the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, some of whom injured police officers, and commuted the sentences—in one case, of 22 years—imposed on 14 members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militias for seditious conspiracy.

You’re fired!

Since the US is not—yet—a dictatorship, some of this is being challenged in the courts. Whether or not the administration will abide by their judgments remains to be seen.

Ominously, a recent executive order from Trump instructs government agencies to request judges to require anyone suing the government to post a bond in advance to cover government legal costs should the suit not succeed. While judges are not bound to grant such requests, the clear intent is to discourage court challenges by putting them beyond the pocket of most potential plaintiffs.

Emboldened by the US Supreme Court’s July 1, 2024 ruling that “presidents can never be prosecuted for actions relating to the core powers of their office, and that there is at least a presumption that they have immunity for their official acts more broadly,” Trump is clearly testing the limits of his power.

Among other measures whose legality is dubious, he has asserted the supremacy of the president over all federal independent agencies, which regulate critical areas of the US economy and society, including the stock market, product safety, fraud and corruption, the money supply, labour relations, monopolies, nuclear power, the media and elections.

Trump’s newly-created so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), a shadowy entity that operates entirely outside the previous framework of US governance, with no mandate from Congress, no requirement that its billionaire head, Elon Musk, be confirmed by the Senate, and no security clearances for the handful of young tech bros it employs, has taken a chainsaw to federal departments—and the men and women who staff them. Its depredations have reportedly already caused pushback from cabinet heads of government departments, including secretary of state Marco Rubio.

In the supposed interests of “cutting costs,” Trump and Musk’s assault on the machinery of US governance has included:

• Freezing all federal government hiring “except for members of the military” or “positions related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety.”
• Offering all federal employees “inducements” to resign or face being fired, beginning with the “Fork in the Road” offer to two million federal employees to receive nine months pay if they quit now—which was accepted, it is claimed, by about 75,000 workers.
• Ending remote work for federal workers and requiring “employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis” (the assumption being this will push many of them into quitting their jobs).
• Terminating at least 20,630 federal employees during the probationary period of their contracts—including not only newly hired but newly promoted workers.
• Demanding that all federal agencies provide a detailed list of divisions to be consolidated or cut by March 13 and submit plans for relocating Washington DC offices to areas of the country where the cost of living is lower by April 14.
• Putting all federal staff in DEI programs on paid administrative leave and closing all DEI program-related offices; cutting thousands of jobs at USAID, with the goal of reducing its workforce from over 10,000 to 290 employees; and closing six out of 10 regional Social Security Administration offices, eliminating 7,000 jobs.
• Inflicting substantial job losses at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, prior to its anticipated closure; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; and the Pentagon, which plans a “5-8 percent reduction in its civilian workforce.”
• Reportedly planning to cut the IRS workforce of roughly 100,000 by a half, and to lose 82,000 out of 400,000 employees at Veterans Affairs.

No less worrying than this often arbitrary slashing is Trump’s targeted purge—the term, with its Stalinist echoes, is the appropriate one—of individuals, and their replacement by MAGA loyalists.

Among the people Trump has so far removed from office are:

• Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Q. Brown Jr., only the second African American to hold the chairman’s job; Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy; General James Slife, vice chief of the Air Force; the top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force; and the commandant of the US Coast Guard, Admiral Linda L. Fagan, the first female officer to lead any branch of the US military.
• More than a dozen prosecutors who worked on the criminal investigations into Donald Trump for the special counsel Jack Smith; another dozen prosecutors at the US Attorney’s Office in Washington hired to investigate the January 6 riot; and at least nine high-ranking FBI officials who were involved in Trump investigations.
• Fifteen immigration judges, eight supervisory assistant chief immigration judges, and five senior managers at the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the branch of the Department of Justice’s branch that runs US immigration courts.
• At least 17 inspectors general—the independent watchdogs who oversee federal government agencies—at the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury and Veterans Affairs and elsewhere; as well as USAID inspector general Paul Martin, who was fired the day after he warned that agency cuts risked the waste of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
• Democratic commissioners and general counsels at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Labor Relations Board; Democrat-selected members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board; Office of Government Ethics Direct David Huitema; Federal Elections Commission Chair Ellen L. Weintraub; and the Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan.

Trump has also revoked security clearances for political opponents, including former President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan; 51 senior former intelligence officials who (allegedly) “engaged in misleading and inappropriate political coordination with the 2020 Biden presidential campaign”; a raft of lawyers with whom Trump has crossed swords, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco; and Trump’s one time National Security Advisor John Bolton.

While some of these targeted actions against individuals send out ideological messages, and others are clearly about Trump settling personal scores, their cumulative effect is to sideline or neutralize potential sources of opposition to the implementation of the MAGA agenda in the government apparatus—including, crucially, the judiciary, the military, and the police.

A not-so-slow-motion coup?

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are watching a not-so-slow-motion coup in real time, involving the simultaneous unraveling of American democracy and the destruction of the post-war “rules-based order,” and its replacement by—at best—a Viktor Orban-style “illiberal democracy.”

The characteristics of the latter have been ably summarized by one political scientist as follows:

• Consolidation of power in the executive
• Charismatic leader
• Erosion of the independence of the judiciary
• Weakening status of the parliament
• Recourse to direct democracy (plebiscites/referenda)
• Populist rhetoric/propaganda
• Discrimination of minorities
• Monitoring and moulding of civil society
• Media and internet censorship
• Curbs on academia and educational curricula
• Targeted repression of opponents
• Restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly
• Disregard for rule of law and human rights
• Misuse of state resources (cronyism)
• Emasculation of the electoral process
• Forging of external enemies

Almost every one of these has accelerated in the United States since Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. What used to be called the free world has ample reason to worry—and little time to act. Maintaining Hakeem Jeffries’ “dignified presence” will not be enough to save us.

But it does make for great TV—which we mostly watch, these days, on the two-way Orwellian telescreens we carry in our pockets that monitor and monetize our every move as we sleepwalk on into the darkness, mesmerized by a spectacle that lies somewhere between Antonin Artaud’s theatre of cruelty and Samuel Beckett’s theatre of the absurd.

Derek Sayer is professor emeritus at the University of Alberta and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His most recent book, Postcards from Absurdistan: Prague at the End of History, won the 2023 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Scholarship and was a finalist for the Association of American Publishers PROSE Award in European History.