Between contemplation and anxiety. This is the state of mind in which Kim Fischer, an employee of a university in the Washington region, met along Pennsylvania Avenue during the official funeral of Jimmy Carter.
“Everyone is very worried in Washington DC with the return of Donald Trump to the White House,” said the woman in her fifties, responsible for a sustainable development program in a “very progressive” school. she clarified. “People are afraid for their jobs, for the environment, for the rights of women and minorities… We are preparing to enter a dark period again, and our hope now rests in the resilience of the rule of law and its ability to limit damage. »
A few days before the Monday induction of the Republican as 47e president of the United States, the American capital holds its breath, but not only that. The city, with a strongly democratic spirit, is also organizing its response to the announced – and, above all, predictable – attacks of the populist against the progressive ecosystem of the country, but also against a public service that he believes, since his first mandate, turned against him.
“The president-elect and his allies have not hesitated for several months to denigrate the men and women who make up the public service,” notes Skye Perryman, president of the non-governmental organization Democracy Forward, from her offices in the American capital.
Along with several other groups, the NGO has just set up on the front line with a project called “Civil Service Strong”. It is a one-stop shop for information and legal resources aimed at helping federal government employees deal with the ongoing attacks and the climate of harassment and constant denigration in the public square that threaten to become their daily lives in the over the next four years.
“During his last presidency, Donald Trump accused the so-called “deep state” of being at the origin of his numerous scandals and of obstacles to the implementation of his political program,” she continues. However, for the second term of his presidency, the Republican and his allies, hidden behind Project 2025 (a vast plan of ultraconservative reforms with religious overtones), wish to be more belligerent. They announce “massive layoffs of civil servants to replace them with people loyal to Trump,” adds M.me Perryman. And that should worry anyone who cares about a functioning democracy and a government that serves the people.”
Progressive organizations in Washington and across the country, research and interest groups documenting authoritarian excesses, those defending civil rights and freedoms and freedom of expression, among others, are also preparing to be in the crosshairs of the populist, his radical supporters and his new government.
Abuse monitoring
“Donald Trump and his MAGA movement allies [Make America Great Again] have spent the last month announcing their intention to use their new positions of power to persecute their political enemies,” Adrienne Watson, senior advisor to the Civic Defense Project, which aims to organize the American civil society against the far-right policies promised by the next American president.
Led by the Congressional Integrity Project, the program promises to “demystify political attacks by government investigators [Trump] and Congress [à majorité républicaine] » against progressive organizations, to defend people and groups who are “unfairly targeted”, and to continue the “essential work of holding accountable those who abuse their positions”.
-“After having lived through four years of Donald Trump’s first presidency – and in view of his many past declarations – we are aware of what is coming for us,” said in an interview with Duty Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, an organization dedicated to defending American democracy. “It’s going to be a more aggressive and more punitive climate. We believe that government agencies, the Treasury, the Department of Justice, the police authorities will be mobilized against us and will seek to silence us or make us disappear. It will be unpleasant, more intense, cumbersome in terms of procedures, but we have the legal tools and the teams to deal with it. »
For months, Donald Trump has deployed revanchist and sometimes violent rhetoric which directly targets several figures in the Democratic camp, but also the American progressive environment as a whole, whose components are regularly portrayed as the “enemies of the people”. From words, the next occupant of the White House now suggests that he is ready to take action, with several appointments in his entourage already announcing the regime of reprisals.
Loyalists in power
He entrusted a post of commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the American tax authorities, to Republican Billy Long, a regular critic of non-profit organizations. Pam Bondi, spokesperson for right-wing conspiracy theories, must become the country’s attorney general. Donald Trump’s candidate for FBI director, Kash Patel, promised, for his part, to “go after” the media and NGOs who, according to him, “helped Joe Biden rig the presidential election » in 2020. An accusation of electoral fraud which has survived, for four years, despite its contradiction with the facts.
The populist also entrusted Elon Musk with the keys to an informal agency responsible for radically reducing spending and, de facto, the human resources of the state. During the election campaign, cuts of $2 trillion were announced by the Silicon Valley billionaire, a sum larger than the budgets of the Departments of Defense, Education and Homeland Security combined.
Campaigns to denigrate federal officials are also organized with projects like that of the American Accountability Foundation, which decided to produce lists of employees from several agencies and departments (Justice, Homeland Security, Defense) suspected of acquaintance with wokism, liberal culture and progressive schools of thought, the better to make them targets for layoffs.
Last November, the House of Representatives, with a Republican majority, also adopted a law that could give the Treasury the unilateral power to close NGOs by removing their right to income tax exemption in the event of support for terrorism.
In several authoritarian regimes around the world, accusations of tax fraud and terrorism are regularly used by dictators and autocrats to silence their political opposition, as in Hungary, Algeria, Turkey and Russia… The tactic is also accompanied campaigns of dehumanization of opponents and intellectuals, preceding physical attacks and imprisonments.
“I don’t think Donald Trump’s next government is going to get that far,” says Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen. I have the impression that his attacks will be intense, but remain within the framework of legal procedures and the rule of law. But maybe I’m wrong. »
