‘This Is Trump 1.0 on Steroids’

‘This Is Trump 1.0 on Steroids’

Santa Barbara Rep. Salud Carbajal Talks
Trump’s First 100 Days of Second Term

By Jean Yamamura | May 1, 2025

Read more from our Reign of Administrative (T)error cover story.

Congress was on holiday last week, but we caught up with Representative Salud Carbajal between a post office dedication to former Santa Maria mayor Larry Lavagnino and a town hall in San Luis Obispo with Senator Adam Schiff to ask a few questions about Trump’s current term. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

You’ve experienced a number of administrations since you became a House representative in 2016. What have Trump’s first 100 days been like?

Well, I think this is Trump 1.0 on steroids. We’re seeing the usual recklessness, incompetence, chaos, distractions, all the things we saw the first time around. Then [in his first term], at least, he had to try to run for reelection; he was trying to find what might be the middle ground before the American people fired him.

Now, he can’t run again, even though he says [he can] as a distraction. He is just full of artful distractions so that the media, the American people see the new shiny object and focus on those issues instead of the broader issues. Remember, he said, “I’m going to bring down prices on day one, inflation.” And guess what? He has not signed one executive order to bring down any essential cost for everyday Americans: childcare, groceries, housing, energy — he hasn’t done anything.

As a matter of fact, he’s a president that has passed the least amount of legislation in his first 100 days. He wants to distract from the fact that he is not passing laws because he doesn’t have the votes. Republicans have very few things that they are able to pass.

The House passed the SAVE Act last month, which requires a proof of citizenship to register to vote.  

This is from the same Republican playbook. Any chance they get, they’re just putting up barriers to voting. This is a voter suppression bill that would disenfranchise our military voters; they couldn’t use their military IDs to register to vote. Married women who have changed their name, whose name is different than the birth certificate, would not be able to register to vote. Rural voters — so many people would be impacted by this.

In California alone, seven million women have a name that does not match their voter registration. And many Americans don’t travel abroad, so they don’t have a passport. And sometimes locating your birth certificate could be a pain.

This one barely passed out because Republicans have a fairly slim majority. I voted no. They don’t have the votes in the Senate…. They would need eight Democrats to be able to overcome a filibuster.

What in the Trump administration is not a distraction?

He’s really jeopardizing our national security, our alliances overseas…. There’s Signal-gate, and now more information is coming out about the incompetence in that Cabinet and administration.

Trump has gotten rid of some of our most senior, senior leaders in the military, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles Q. Brown Jr.; our former chief Navy admiral, Lisa Franchetti; General Timothy D. Haugh, who was commander of the U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency. He has put in people who are incompetent and loyal to him and unqualified, as we saw with [U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth and so many others. Not loyal to their oath to the Constitution, but first and foremost to him.

They want to move forward a $4.5 trillion to $7 trillion tax cut, and, the last time, 83 percent of the benefit went to the one percent wealthiest Americans and corporations. All of this DOGE bullshit that he’s trying to do — arbitrary layoffs, employee cutbacks, reorganization — he’s trying to say, “Look, we funded some of our tax breaks by all these savings.” He’s not doing it for any other reason, other than to destroy government as Project 2025 outlines in their blueprint, and to gather as much revenue as he can to offset trillions in tax cuts.

You know, you can look at the Kilmar [Abrego Garcia] case, the deportations to El Salvador. I don’t want to get distracted by talking about this, but the issue there is not Kilmar; the issue is due process, the rule of law in our Constitution.

The courts are perhaps one of the most significant defenses against what he’s trying to do, because it’s all through executive orders, many of which are illegal. And the courts are speaking out, the courts are acting, and, you know, he’s threatening to fire judges, which he cannot do. But for me, the biggest danger — he’s undermining our democratic institutions and our confidence in our democratic institutions.

You’ve been a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in Congress. What do Republicans tell you now?  

The people that have spoken out, you could count on one hand, that have the conviction, the integrity, the courage to speak out. Many of them are fearful that [Elon] Musk is going to spend the money, that Trump is going to undermine them in their primary. Behind the scenes, I have had many conversations where many of them roll their eyes. Some have said, “I need to find the issue where I’m going to fall on my sword, but I can’t do this on every issue.” And there may be an issue where the tipping point comes about. I don’t know what that is.

Trump doesn’t like wind farms, but you’ve been instrumental in the lease sales off Morro Bay. Is there any danger of losing the project? 

There’s been a lot of rhetoric coming from the administration against renewables and the Inflation Reduction Act tax breaks that would go to companies that are involved with renewable energy. The Morro Bay companies already won the leases. They’ve paid their money so that they could develop these offshore wind energy leases. Trump just can’t come in and take their property that they have bid on in the free enterprise economy that we abide by in this country. It is concerning, but I’m watching it.

What it’s like in D.C.? We’ve seen how staff has been slashed at agencies; do you ask for information and the staff just is not there?

It’s a mixed bag, but overwhelmingly, I would say that we are not seeing the responsiveness to information requests at the level that we need and not at the level that we ask for. They laid off a bunch of employees in different departments, including the VA [Veterans Affairs]. And we made inquiries as to, “Well, what’s the strategy?” And we get no responses. Twenty to 30 percent of our federal workforce across the board are veterans, and many of them have been let go.

We’re hearing from constituents that they cannot get through federal agencies, whether it’s IRS, whether it’s issues regarding Medicare, veterans’ benefits, you name it. They are not getting a return call or somebody on the phone, and they’re not getting the information that they’ve requested. We try to put in the inquiries and try to get some responses, and sometimes we get a response. Sometimes we don’t.

We went through this DOGE closures of NOAA, National Parks, U.S. Forest Service, Head Start’s office in San Francisco. The major actions the administration is taking, closing certain agencies, certain offices, cutting back — they are giving us little to no information when we respond, when we request information.

Is Congress unable to push back on the executive orders? What happened to the power of the purse?  

Many of the executive orders are illegal, and the courts are looking at that. He could do something, reorganization to some extent, within his executive authority that Congress has given him over the years. We’re looking at all the authorities, and we want to take some of that back. We’ve seen what could happen when Congress has abdicated its authority.

It’s important to recognize that we will also assert our power of the purse as we look at budget negotiations because they don’t have to vote to pass their budget. They’re going to have to work with Democrats.

Are you supporting anybody in particular to try to win back the House or the Senate?  

There are many Democrats in Republican districts that we have won over the years. And we need to keep them. Secondly, we need to go after a number of seats that Republicans right now have that we could take back. New York has a few. There’s a number in California.

What I tell people is, Congress is not going to be the one that’s going to do it all. People have to come out and vote; people have to get engaged. This is an all-hands-on-deck. And we’re seeing it throughout the country, through town hall, through protests.