It is the political party seeking to kill virtually everything that is important in American life. Law and Order. The Constitution. Justice. Human Rights. Fairness. Opportunity. Virtue. We the People. People.
This is not the Party of Lincoln. It is not even our fathers’ and mothers’ Republican
Party. It is the astonishing Party that created Trumpism. It remains one of only two major parties in American politics, and it vigorously opposes democracy. It is a fascistic party that seeks elite domination over all of the nation’s life forces: the economy, education, science, knowledge, freedom, health.
Over time cult followers have often given their very lives for fantasies spun by their deceitful leaders. This appears to be happening again, with the exceptions that these cult leaders control the U.S. Government and are victimizing nonbelievers and true believers alike. They are doing so with the active support of the national GOP.
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Trump Administration policies are on track to kill millions of people around the world, children numbering highly among the dead.  In just its first several months, the Administration has cut thousands of the foreign assistance programs of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which ceased all of its foreign assistance programs as of July 1. An international research study published this summer1 estimates that these cuts in humanitarian and development assistance will cause more than 14 million additional deaths from poverty-related disease and associated conditions2 worldwide over the next five years, more than 4.5 million of the deaths occurring among children under five years old.
On the home front, Trump and the GOP have mounted a wide-ranging assault on Americans’ health. On the 4th of July, the president signed into law his One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by both houses of Congress without a single Democrat’s vote in support.
There is nothing to celebrate in this fireball of a law. In the largest reduction to the national safety net in U.S. history, the law cuts the federal budget for Medicaid, the health insurance program for poorer, disabled and elderly Americans, by about $1 trillion over the next 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this will cause 10.9 million of these vulnerable citizens to lose their health insurance. It will also put rural hospitals at risk of closing and nursing home residents at risk of being put out. Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and economist Lawrence Summers estimates that this loss of insurance would result in 100,000 or more excess deaths over the decade.
The law also cuts food support for the poorest among us. In reducing the budget for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), more commonly known as food stamps, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that between three and four million Americans will lose this support entirely. Not that federal food support has been nutritionally adequate in the first place. In the 2024 fiscal year the average individual recipient–adults and children–received SNAP funds of just over $6 per day. This cut can also be expected to increase the death rates in the world’s richest nation, which currently ranks only 48th in the world in life expectancy,3 behind such countries as Japan, Australia, France, Chile, Iceland, Israel, and Slovenia.
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Denying access to nutrition and health care to the nation’s and world’s most vulnerable children and adults is a relatively efficient means of increasing premature death rates.  So is reducing vaccination rates in the U.S., as with flu and Covid, especially in children. This is largely due to the unrelenting Republican drumbeat against vaccination, fueled by conspiracy thinking born during the first Trump Administration and by the appointment of anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as head of the Department of Health and Human Services in Trump’s second Administration. In its wake the measles–declared in 2000 to have been eliminated in the nation–is already making a comeback in the U.S.
As of mid-July, there have been more than 1300 confirmed measles cases in country, the largest number in 33 years. These cases have disproportionately affected young and school-age children, and only eight percent of the cases involve persons known to have been vaccinated against measles.4 In all of 2024 there were only 285 confirmed cases.
Already this year there have been three deaths from measles, two unvaccinated children and one unvaccinated adult. This number must be understood in context. According to the Center for Disease Control data, there were only three deaths in total from measles in the U.S. between 2001 and 2024. It is likely that we are seeing only the tip of a growing iceberg.
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Current Trump Administration policies also take more leisurely routes in how they shorten people’s life spans. Dismantling much of the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s rules and enforcement apparatus designed to protect the nation’s air and water from toxic contaminants will increase deaths from cancer and pulmonary disease. Trump budget cuts at the federal Occupational Health and Safety Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission will also put workers’ and consumers’ health and lives at greater risk.
Trump’s radical assault on science will similarly cut lives short in the future, both in the U.S. and abroad. Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services has already cancelled billions of dollars in grants that had been approved to fund research on cancers, other chronic diseases, and vaccines, as well as on pandemic prevention. These include cuts of $5.8 billion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, $3.2 billion at the National Institutes of Health, and $543 million at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. In addition, these major cuts to scientific research threaten a reverse brain drain as top scientists choose to leave–or no longer migrate to–the U.S. to do their work elsewhere, and hence to abolish the country’s long-held position as the world’s leading scientific innovator.
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It’s ironic, isn’t it? The party of the sanctity of life–beginning at fertilization!–is, in fact, a party that routinely now supports having people die, millions of people around the world, children being especial victims.
The Trumpist approach to human life is indeed very selective, especially of poor and nonwhite populations. But it is not new. It is the familiar GOP position, but on steroids. Of the Party’s draconian approach to life the social critic and comedian George Carlin put it this way almost three decades ago:
“They’re all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you’re born, you’re on your own! Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don’t wanna know about you. No nothing! No neonatal care, no daycare, no Head Start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you’re pre-born, you’re fine. If you’re preschool, you’re f****d.”
And it puts the final lie to the farce that the GOP is–or ever was–America’s populist party.
- Funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the UK Medical Research Council, and EU Horizon Europe[↩]
- HIV/Aids, malaria, tropical diseases, tuberculosis, maternal mortality, nutritional deficiencies, natural disasters[↩]
- Measured as average years of life males and females are expected to live.[↩]
- The other 92 percent were either unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status.[↩]
spawn of this fertile soil, for the record.]
reach of our laws, that the Rule of Law–the bulwark of our democracy that asserts that laws apply equally to everyone without fear, favor, or position–is simply suspended for the most powerful individuals in the nation, that in fact presidents do enjoy the rank privileges of monarchs and despots. The nation’s founding generation fought a war to ensure against this result.
witnesses despite a federal court order to not tamper with the legal process and its personnel, including potential witnesses.
come. In the meanwhile, the indictment by the New York City grand jury and prosecutor has already created feverish media reactions and the expected bombast from the former U.S. president. What to make of it all? These thoughts come to mind.
now only from one side of the political aisle? Does it matter? Does it exist?