Have you ever noticed how quickly highway guardrails are repaired if they are damaged in a wreck? Potholes can remain for an eternity, but guardrails are seen as essential in saving thousands of lives each year. If you’ve ever driven on a winding mountain road that lacks guardrails, you can attest that it’s easy to take them for granted until they’re not there.
Now that we are approaching two months in to the Trump presidency, it’s become increasingly apparent that we are about to lose, or have already lost, some crucial government guardrails that functioned so effectively we didn’t even think what life would be like without them.
Despite the expected changes that occur when a Democratic administration is followed by a Republican administration, the guardrails are disappearing in an almost scattershot pattern that should concern liberal and conservative voters alike.
Although the roadmap was laid out in detail in Project 2025 (remember, the one Trump said he knew nothing about), we are learning that the execution of the ideas described in Project 2025 does not seem to have been planned at the same level of detail.
I wonder if conservatives would still have cheered if it said, “an unelected and widely disliked unstable billionaire will gather a crew of twenty- something tech bro’s and rampage through all the computer records in the federal government with the power to alter codes, issue termination notices, and study the private financial data of every American citizen.”
As I said in my last column, the rule of law is one of the guardrails that only protect us if everyone obeys the law. Numerous lawsuits have been filed to push back against the wholesale ransacking of our legal protections and the laws governing how changes are to be made, but meanwhile, thousands of federal employees have been terminated illegally or prevented from performing the crucial tasks of their employment.
In one of the more absurd events of this debacle, when Elon Musk discovered, or was told, that some extremely essential employees had been fired, including those working on controlling the Ebola virus and those managing the nuclear codes, he found that they could not be easily reached to be rehired because all of their contact information had been deleted from the database. He joyously (manically) brandished a chainsaw at the conservative CPAC convention as if to celebrate the ease with which he was hacking up the evil federal government. No mention of his own government contracts worth billions, of course.
The list of agencies that lie bleeding on the operating table or are on life support is overwhelming. I refuse to believe that all, or even most, of Trump’s voters had any idea that this was going to be the methodology used to “trim the fat” in the federal government. I would bet that even some of the minds behind Project 2025 are wondering if the desired ends justify these over-thetop means.
And some of the steps are really stupid: for instance, firing all new hires who are still on probation simply because they don’t yet have the legal job protection afforded to permanent employees. Where will our young blood come from, with new ideas and familiarity with modern technology? Deciding to trim the fat should mean you have to find out where the fat is first. Did you vote for Elon Musk and sign a release for him to access all your personal information? For all the hollering about protecting our privacy, that apparently is so old school. Maybe we’ll finally get to see Trump’s tax returns, now that all our tax data has been exposed.
Our new Secretary of Defense, Fox weekend news anchor Pete Hegseth, made some high-level cuts by firing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Charles Q. Brown and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the highest-ranking officer in the US Navy, but even more destructive was his firing of the three judge advocates general (JAG) officers of the Army, Navy and Air Force. These officers deploy to battle zones and ensure that military tactics, weapons and battle plans comply with the laws of war. Their presence assures the enlisted forces that they are not being asked to follow orders that violate constraints on the use of deadly force. There goes another guardrail.
Probably the most fundamental guardrail in the federal government, put solidly in place by our Constitution and protected vehemently by citizens and lawmakers for almost 250 years, is the separation of powers.
Our unique system of government allows for the three branches of government to “check” each other if one seems to be taking too much power, and to “balance” the governing of our nation by assuring us that there is always recourse should somebody decide they want to be our king.
This is the biggest disappointment of the current administration, in that our Congress, even though the Republican majority can be assumed to generally support Trump’s goals, has basically turned into a rubber stamp for whatever illegal, unconstitutional, or just plain crazy idea he comes up with. Even previously steadfast support for Ukraine, in its struggle to repel Russia, turned on a dime among some Republicans after Trump and Vance’s shameful betrayal of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in the White House last week.
Since 1992, our nation has followed a pattern of alternating control of the government between parties, by using the midterm elections to shift the balance of power away from total control by one party.
The checks and balances will, it is hoped, resume working effectively when the House or the Senate, as predicted by the pattern, changes to Democratic control in 2026. That is, if our nation as we know it still has free and fair elections in 2026. Guardrails have a purpose, not to control us but to save us from our own recklessness.
Susan Hull is a retired clinical psychologist and horse trainer. She admires the courage shown by some of her Republican friends in Bandera who are risking speaking up for democracy and freedom, even though they may have voted for Trump but have no taste for the abandonment of our veterans and our vulnerable citizens in favor of wealthy elitists.
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