A unifying theme of President Trump and his Republican Party’s approach to governing is to politicize every facet of citizens’ lives. Medical research, higher education, science, the military, public radio and television, the judiciary system, social welfare programs, disaster relief, even weather forecasting are now accused of being partisan. Any federal government activity that denies or criticizes this regime’s ideology or cultural values is subject to de-funding.
In response to President Trump’s efforts to cut federal funding for public radio and television, National Public Radio filed a lawsuit. Its CEO, Katherine Maher, said, “We are not choosing to do this out of politics. We are choosing to do this as a matter of necessity and principle. All of our rights that we enjoy in this democracy flow from the First Amendment: freedom of speech, association, freedom of the press. When we see those rights infringed upon, we have an obligation to challenge them.”
The U.S. Constitution is based on principles … the rule of law, morality, ethics, justice, the common good, incorruptibility. In America, those who govern at the federal level swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Yet, many Republicans disparage and belittle these values claiming they’re “woke.” But if woke means waking up our sensitivities to injustice and inequality, letting moral values guide us in deciding what’s right and wrong, then woke citizens are exactly what we need today.
Woke citizens recognize corruption when they see it. President Trump and his family have monetized the White House more than any other occupant. According to the New York Times, in recent months, the Trump family and its business partners have collected $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered overseas real estate deals worth billions of dollars and are opening an exclusive club in Washington called the Executive Branch charging $500,000 apiece to join.
Donald Trump disregards ethical norms and standards of accountability that constrained his predecessors. There will be no official investigations because he has fired government inspectors general and ethics watchdogs, and installed partisan loyalists to run the Justice Department, F.B.I. and regulatory agencies. Fearing his retribution, the Republican-controlled Congress is unwilling to hold hearings to hold the administration accountable.
Speaking on the U.S. Senate floor, Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn) said, “In the first six weeks of the Trump presidency, Trump and Elon Musk and their billionaire friends have engaged in a stunning rampage of open public corruption.” “These are efforts to steal from the American people to enrich themselves. And their strategy is to do it all out in the open, to do it at such a dizzying pace that the country just gets overwhelmed or anesthetized or dulled into a sense that we just all have to accept the corruption.”
Woke citizens see corruption in Trump’s “pay-to-play” approach to governing. Elon Musk contributed nearly $300 million to get Trump elected and he is already gaining more than that from increased political influence and the opportunity to shape government policies to support his businesses. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) claims he has increased his net worth by over $100 billion.
Last year, Trump told a group of oil executives and lobbyists that if they contributed millions to his campaign, when elected, he would roll back environmental rules and promote fossil fuels. Oil and gas interests spent a stunning $445 million throughout the last election cycle to influence Donald Trump and Congress. From his first day in office Trump has proclaimed an energy emergency, prioritized oil and gas projects, and delayed or de-funded government efforts to transition to clean energy.
Behind the Republican frenzy to deport millions of immigrants (documented and undocumented), woke citizens see racism and the creation of a convenient societal scapegoat to justify their anti-democratic policies. Woke citizens value the fact that our founders rejected a government ruled by a king and instead established the rule of law as the highest authority. The right to due process before the law is a foundational right. Abducting people off the street and sending them to foreign prisons without a chance to make their case in a court of law is not just illegal, it’s also unamerican.
Woke citizens understand the so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” now being rushed through Congress for what it is: a morally bankrupt scheme to steal from the poor to give to the rich. This massive tax and spending bill would reduce taxes by over $600 billion for the top one percent of wage-earners while cutting $1 trillion from Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps) leaving 8 million Americans uninsured and potentially ending food assistance for 11 million people, including 4 million children. The Elon Musk/DOGE spectacle of eliminating so-called ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ by firing tens of thousands of federal workers and closing-down essential support services for the poorest Americans, was all in the shameful service of garnering more dollars for the mega-rich.
Woke is employed today by Republicans mostly as an insult, but citizens could re-claim it as a rallying cry to awaken principles and values that are foundational to America. Polling shows that cruel, racist, unjust, corrupt, and anti-science policies are not supported by the majority of Americans.
Our democracy is in danger. Let’s demand that our representatives in Congress uphold their oath of office. Let’s work to elect woke leaders.
Robert Reich said, “We are no longer Democrats or Republicans. We are either patriots fighting the Trump regime, or we are complicit in its tyranny.”
Robert Taylor is a journalist who focusses his writing on the climate crisis. He volunteers locally with the Santa Barbara Chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby, and is a contributor to the new book, “The Global Climate Crisis: What to do about it,” Elsevier Publishers, 2024.
