I have the unnerving sense that some liberals have allowed a seed of hope to germinate in their hearts. The change in the administration’s tone by the beginning of February, shifting from calls to lock up pesky protesters in Minneapolis to acknowledging that shooting citizens in the street might, perhaps, be wrong, has given some on the left the idea that the Donald Trump project is cracking. One congressional representative, Ro Khanna, has called it a “turning point”, while another, Becca Balint, said the electorate had finally been “move[d]” by the federal overreach.
It’s too soon for such convictions. Trump’s partial de-escalation over Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s operation in Minneapolis was little more than a tactical retreat. The blowback over the killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents did lead to a slapdown of the most zealous figures in the administration, such as the Border Patrol commander, Gregory Bovino, who was removed from his role. Yet the administration is now arresting journalists, such as CNN’s Don Lemon, who was detained for entering a church in Minneapolis with protesters. Meanwhile, 3,000 Ice agents remain in the city.
We’ve seen this pattern throughout Trump’s second term. He will push his power as far as he can until there is enough outrage for him to feign retreat, all the while ploughing on towards what he really wants.
Take Greenland. The Europeans left Davos tootling about how their united front in the face of tariff threats had forced the president to say he wouldn’t invade their territory for the foreseeable. Victory! But, of course, the real story was that they had reportedly ceded pockets of sovereignty to Trump in the form of forthcoming US military bases to be built across the island, creating the staging grounds for future annexation. Three steps forward, one step back.
Or take the president’s decision to close the newly renamed Trump-Kennedy Center in Washington for two years. He said this was for renovations, but liberal Washingtonians would have smugly noted it was because no musician worth their violin wants to perform under the gold lettering of the philistine-in-chief. Cue a chorus of satisfied smirks at plush parties across DC. But of course, Trump is still planning to build a triumphal arch bigger than the Arc de Triomphe, just a few hundred metres from the Center. And I suspect he is only closing the Center to provide an excuse to reopen it bearing a single name. Three steps forward, one step back.
Ditto with tariffs. The idea “Trump always chickens out” falls flat when you realise he has raised the average effective tariff rate by around 15 percentage points this term. A liberal obsession with day-to-day shifts in tone occludes the severity of Trump’s revolution. It is denial. Or to adapt Camus, certain liberals take comfort in illusions that obstruct the absurdity of Trump.
Perhaps the biggest sleight of hand took place last year when Elon Musk left the administration after a public falling out with Trump. As Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff write in their new book Muskism, Musk thought Doge (the Department of Government Efficiency) was the precursor to a reactionary technocracy in which “engineers disciplined society like a factory floor”. But although Doge butted up against the reality that the government is not a factory floor and his planned efficiencies didn’t happen, Musk’s young myrmidons continued to ferret away with his broader project – the melding of tech firms and the state. In July 2025, his xAI announced a new contract with the Pentagon.
The pushback against Doge did not stop Muskism from becoming the governing political economy of Trump’s second term. And that political economy matters much more than the daily churn of Trump’s performative retreats. Note that the co-founder of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, has recently made a big donation to Trump’s super Pac. Capital sniffs out power and lurches onwards whatever the politics.
Civil servants often speak to me about the stench of fear that hangs in the corridors of Washington’s federal buildings. Control over core departments, such as justice, is very much with Trump’s cadres. They believe in the Maga project much more than their leader. The fact is that Doge was simply the first wave of Trumpians sent to take over federal departments. Many are much more serious about Trumpism than Trump himself. It’s worth noting once again: Trump is a moderate in the Maga movement, and if someone like JD Vance took office, perhaps with a starring role for Stephen Miller, then they would be even more intransigent towards opposition. They were both far louder in their support for Ice in Minneapolis than Trump.
Yet Trump’s power is not unassailable. No power is. The polls suggest the Republicans are poised to lose control of at least the House of Representatives in the November midterms. But if anyone tells you that a change in tone of the president’s Truth Social posts indicates a change in the direction of the Maga revolution, you should ignore them. Maga is strutting through America’s institutions.
Congress has not yet mustered any opposition to the tyrannical reach of the White House. It’s true that protests can sometimes shift the narrative. But in this age of hard power, until the Democrats take back Congress and, possibly, the White House, Trump will keep marching on.
[Further reading: Militarised police have taken America to a new level of brutality]
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This article appears in the 04 Feb 2026 issue of the New Statesman, The Mandelson affair
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