By Harper Cleves
Trump’s resounding victory in the 2024 election was a huge blow to millions living in the United States and around the world. From promises of deporting ‘one million immigrants,’ to spending tens of millions of dollars in the final weeks of the election campaign on ads with anti-trans messaging, Trump’s presidential campaign was shot through with hate and bigotry.
And yet, the reality of a Trump presidency is proving to be even more harrowing than his campaign threats. We must ask ourselves: what do Trump’s actions entail concretely for people living in the United States and around the world, and how can his significant popularity be undercut?
Trump’s first 50 days: A dizzying assault on the senses
Since Trump took office on 20 January, 2025, he has signed 72 Executive Orders, the first 40 of which were signed within the first week.
Most executive orders are typically made within the first 100 days of a presidency as a tone-setter and a way to create a sense that the recently elected president is abiding by election promises.Even so, Trump’s barrage of executive orders has already exceeded the highest number ever signed within the first 100 days of a presidency, with over 50 days to spare.
These orders, which range from designating English as the official language of the United States to ‘reducing the federal bureaucracy,’ to ending school COVID-19 vaccine mandates, to ending ‘radical’ Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programmes – have wide-reaching implications. They are also designed to be an overwhelming assault on the senses, demoralising people, spreading confusion and fear – and diverting the attention of Trump supporters away from directives that might negatively impact their lives, and focusing their anger dislocation instead towards other vulnerable, oppressed and exploited people.
White supremacist in chief
Trump’s racist rhetoric was a central feature of his campaign and has continued to be a central feature of his presidency. Since acceding the presidency, Trump has vowed to remove birthright citizenship, deployed US troops to the US-Mexico border, halted the processing of migrant and asylum seeker applications, cancelled all existing immigration appointments, and expanded the powers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – in particular allowing immigration raids to happen at previously protected places including schools, churches and hospitals.
While his average monthly rates of deportation still fall far below his promised figure, he has still successfully stoked a culture of fear amongst immigrant communities. In one harrowing example of this, in Texas, a young 11-year-old girl named Jocelynn Rojo Carranza tragically took her own life after being relentlessly bullied in school by peers who were going to report her parents to ICE. Such a horrendous bullying dynamic and deadly outcome were absolutely fuelled and normalised by Trump’s far-right and racist rhetoric.
Another example of Trump’s racist policy can be seen through his disdain for diversity. One of Trump’s first executive orders calls on federal agencies to dismantle DEI programmes. According to the Trump administration, “merit-based” hiring should be race, gender, and ability blind. The inherent structural and personal biases against people of colour, women, LGBTQIA+ folk, and disabled people mean that slashing DEI programmes will privilege the hiring of white, cisgender men. This is not an accident. Trump and his administration seek to reassert gender and racial hierarchies in order to exploit but also to divide working class and oppressed people from one another to keep them from realising their collective power.
Gender trouble and reproductive justice
Some of Trump’s most virulent attacks have been targeted at the trans community. Among his first executive orders is one disgracefully titled; ‘Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.’ This executive order rolls back policies which would have provided on paper legal protections to trans people and takes steps to bar trans folk from entering ‘single-sex spaces’ such as prisons, sports teams, toilets, and domestic violence shelters.
It also provides a directive to only issue identification cards that correspond to a person’s assigned sex at birth. Not only is this a violent act of erasure, but also this change will likely put trans folk in tangible danger. TSA agents, bar staff, bouncers, future employers and whomever else might need to check their IDs will now be able to easily spot a difference between someone’s outward appearance and their government-issued sex markers. Being publicly outed in this way, in a context where everyday people are fed poisonous myths about trans people being abusers and groomers, will lead to instances of verbal and physical abuse.
This executive order also has potential implications for reproductive rights. The document defines ‘female’ as ‘a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell (emphasis ours).’ Defining sex and personhood as beginning at conception, lays the basis for establishing ‘fetal personhood’ – an aspiration long held by anti-abortion advocates who would like to ban abortion outright.
Such underhanded additions to an already destructive directive make the promise of the document to ‘defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience’ ring hollow. Attacks on trans rights are a gateway to attacking bodily autonomy more broadly, as well as pushing all of us into our gendered boxes so that we are more easily exploited and controlled.
Trump’s foreign policy has promised destruction and instability for millions around the world.
One of the most stark examples of this is the slashing of the US Agency for Aid and Development (USAID). Critics have referred to USAID programmes as a form of ‘soft imperialism,’ a charity-based model which allows countries like the US to continue to exploit the neocolonial world, preventing the development of local infrastructure and internal stability. This critique is true. And yet, the reality of the situation is that locales around the world rely heavily on this aid in order to mitigate health crises, and its sudden collapse promises death, as well as potentially the return of epidemics. For instance, 17% of the funding for South Africa’s HIV/AID prevention programmes came from the US. Cutting such programmes is not a blow to imperialism but rather the cutting of an already insufficient lifeline to essential care for millions in the neocolonial world.
Another callous example of Trump’s international relations can be seen in his treatment of Palestine. While Trump’s incoming team may have played a crucial role in negotiating a ceasefire for Gaza, his commentary on Palestine since has made clear that that act had nothing to do with any concern for human dignity and safety. He has alluded to turning Gaza into a ‘Middle Eastern Riviera’ with a sickening AI depiction of what this might look like featuring himself, Netanyahu and Musk to boot. In the last days he has even further amped up his genocidal rhetoric, saying: ‘This is your last warning! For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza, also, to the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD! Make a SMART decision.’ This amounts to an explicit threat of continued genocide.
Even Trump’s relations with neighbours and so-called ‘Western countries’ is creating fractures with likely global implications. In the first week of March, Trump issued tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China – leading to economic uncertainty and causing the Dow to drop by 700 points within the day. While the tariffs on most Mexican imports have been delayed – uncertainty reigns, and as is always the case with capitalist economic instability, working class people stand to lose the most.
Finally, Trump and JD Vance’s public berating of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has caused shockwaves and outrage around the world. The patronising tone taken by Trump and Vance with Zelensky, demanding to be thanked and speaking loudly and slowly as if they were talking to a child rather than an adult with fluency in three languages, would have rightly outraged Ukrainians and many others all around the world. Zelensky has since issued a policy letter to Trump, backing down on previous demands of not conceding to Russia unless total security of Ukrainian territories was ensured. The late Secretary of State and staunch imperialist Henry Kissinger once said in relation to the Vietnam War, “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.” The poisoned chalice of US support has been laid bare, revealing that the truth of US support is not attributable to any ideal of global democracy and human rights but rather amounts to a chess move in a global fight for power and spheres on influence in an increasingly atomised geo-political landscape.
How can Trump be undermined?
In this era, it can be hard to see a pathway forward beyond the current despair, especially as far right and fascist parties around the world continue to see success. In recent German elections, for instance, the far right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) did disturbingly well. However, Die Linke, the most largest left electoral party in Germany, also performed much better than expected, demonstrating that polarisation is also moving in a leftwing direction and that the social basis for leftwing fightback exists. They drew on significant support among young people and young women in particular.
This significant minority of progressive people also exists in the United States, even as ordinary people lack the confidence to fight back en masse. In recent years, two Harvard professors who studied social movements of the previous decades determined through their studies that it only takes 3.5% of people participating in a protest or movement to enact political change. Given that nearly half of US voters voted against Trump, it is not a huge leap to say that 3.5% of the population would have progressive ideas about race, gender, ability, and class that would be willing to protest if given a lead.
Mass protests will eventually emerge as Trump’s actions continue to make life untenable for more and more people. Getting organised now, in preparation for the movements to come, will allow us to collectively fight for desperately needed socialist change and break with the rule of the increasingly authoritarian and brutal capitalist system.
