Surviving Autocracy

by Masha Gessen

Trump chose people who were opposed to the work, and sometimes to the very existence, of the agencies they were appointed to lead. His pick for the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, had, as attorney general of Oklahoma, sued the EPA fourteen times for what the state alleged was regulatory overreach. In his opening remarks at his Senate confirmation hearing on January 18, 2016, Pruitt claimed that the extent of the human impact on climate change—and our very ability to measure it—were still subject to debate. For Health and Human Services, Trump nominated Georgia congressman Tom Price, who said that he wanted to get rid of the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid. For attorney general, Trump’s choice was Jeff Sessions, an Alabama senator who was once denied a judgeship and was an outspoken opponent of civil rights law. For labor secretary, Trump picked Andrew Puzder, a fast-food executive who was opposed to labor rights; when, in February 2017, Puzder withdrew his nomination because even Republican senators’ support could not be assured (this, however, was because Puzder favored immigration reform with a focus on labor legalization), Trump nominated Alexander Acosta, a law school dean and former U.S. attorney for southern Florida. In that capacity, Acosta had overseen a sweetheart deal with billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. But by the already established standards of the Trump era, in March 2017 the media generally covered Acosta as a “conventional candid...

This excerpt might get cut off but it is a staggering list of incompetence and toxic entitlement.