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Amy Fried is a retired political science professor at the University of Maine. Her views are her own and do not represent those of any group with which she is affiliated.
Since Donald Trump won the 2024 election, his core agenda has come into focus: destruction.
Trump wants to tear things down, not carefully but chaotically. His actions are like an unskilled homeowner who takes a sledgehammer to a bearing wall, endangering the home’s structure. Trump’s large hammer is aimed at the core institutions and operations of our public sector, and would harm the American people.
It’s up to all of us to be clear and specific about what this damage will do and to whom and to try to stop at least the worst of it.
Part of what Trump aims at harming are our systems of justice, health and security, which, while imperfect, are staffed by people who know a lot and do quality work.
For attorney general, Trump wants Matt Gaetz, a former congressman who resigned, it appears, to prevent the release of an ethics report about him allegedly having sex with minors. With little experience practicing law, Gaetz seeks retribution against people, media, business and groups that opposed Trump. Rather than pursuing equal justice under law, he’d likely make the Department of Justice the instrument of a single man.
The secretary of defense manages more people than any entity in the U.S. Trump nominated Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host who paid a woman hush money to settle a sexual assault claim, defended war crimes and failed a 2016 vetting process for much lower government positions in the previous Trump administration. Hegseth was barred from working at Biden’s inauguration as a member of the National Guard because his white supremacist tattoos made him an “insider threat.” As the Trump transition team considers court-martials and charges of treason against officers, Hegseth wants to purge generals and doesn’t oppose using the military against American citizens.
For director of national intelligence, Trump wants former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who has no intelligence experience and has been called a security risk because of her support for Vladimir Putin and other dictators.
To lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Trump wants conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who supports mass firings at the National Institutes of Health, a premier medical research organization in the world. He’d like NIH to “give infectious disease a break for about eight years” and said he would sue peer-reviewed medical journals for their publication decisions.
This would endanger people’s health and lives, set back medical research for decades and put in danger of survival Maine’s Jackson Laboratory, which received more than $81 million in NIH grants this year, and similar centers.
And, as public policy scholar Don Moynihan explains (in an excellent piece called “What happens next?”), Trump plans to reclassify civil servants en masse so he can fire them and likely use the government to corruptly reward allies and hurt others. This would reduce competence in government (which will undermine services and do less to check harmful private actors), creating fear and chilling opposition.
In short, Trump’s sledgehammer will bring down our century old system for creating greater expertise and less corruption in government, while making it more authoritarian.
As part of all this, ordinary people would lose help and protections while Trump and his allies push national wealth toward the richest. Even before the election, Elon Musk, Trump insider and wealthiest man in the world, acknowledged that a second Trump presidency would lead to economic “hardship” and turmoil.
While some voters who backed Trump wanted this destruction, many mostly yearned for pre-pandemic grocery prices.
In doing all this, Trump talked about bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role of confirming nominees, and may be assisted by the House. Individuals installed this way can be challenged in court. But it’s possible that, if the courts rule against Trump, he’ll ignore them. After all, a few years ago, Vice President-elect JD Vance said “when the courts — because you will get taken to court — and then when the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.”
Our founding fathers would roll over in their graves to hear such plans and rhetoric. Much will be up to elected officials — in our state, U.S. Sens. Angus King and Susan Collins, U.S. Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden, Gov. Janet Mills, the state Legislature, constitutional officers and local officials — and the rest of us acting as citizens, sometimes with others, to preserve and protect our Constitution and institutions.
