The Wall Street Journal comprises two entities that coexist uneasily. On one side, there is its editorial board, full of capitalist acolytes promoting the laissez-faire, low-tax, regulation-light policies so beloved by the oligarchs and their impecunious and clueless MAGA fanboys and girls. On the other side exists a professional news organization informed by facts and respectful of the truth.
The dichotomy is so evident that an old joke has it that there is no evidence the WSJ's editorial board actually reads the WSJ.
Therefore, it is unsurprising that the news side of the enterprise reports a raw but increasingly robust resistance to Trump's unprecedented and unconstitutional usurpation of power.
On Saturday, the WSJ published a piece titled and subtitled:
Trump Is Taking On America's Institutions but Resistance Is Building
Courts and universities try to preserve guardrails on presidential authority in the face of administration's assertions of power
The report starts:
WASHINGTON—In moving to accumulate unprecedented power, President Trump has bulldozed his way through the traditional constraints of presidential authority with such force that institutions including universities, law firms and parts of Congress have been left reeling. This week, some started fighting back.
The WSJ then enumerates who the "some"are, along with the actions they have taken:
- Harvard University refused to comply with the Trump administration's demands for changes to address alleged bias.
- Columbia University, facing criticism for acquiescing in negotiations over federal funding, took a tougher tone.
- Federal courts raised the prospect of holding Trump officials in contempt.
- Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has resisted calls to pre-emptively lower interest rates to cushion any economic fallout from Trump's trade war.
- Former cybersecurity official Chris Krebs, targeted with a federal investigation for not going along with Trump's claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, quit his private-sector job so he could more freely battle the White House.
It isn't just institutions and officials girding their loins for the fight back. Citizens are stepping up their game. The paper reports:
Voters are more loudly voicing opposition to some Trump policies, criticizing Republican lawmakers during town-hall meetings.
The report points out that despite the opposition, the administration is delighted with the nature of the resistance.
So far, the president and his top advisers are unbowed. They say the pushback presents an opportunity to paint Democrats, courts and universities as out of touch with voters who sent Trump to the White House a second time.
A senior White House official said Trump's team was eager for Democrats to stay focused on Trump's deportation policies. The official said advisers to the president think fights with Harvard and the judiciary are similarly politically advantageous.
The administration should heed the advice, "Be careful what you wish for. You might get it."Trump and his crew cannot long prosper with policies that benefit few besides the oligarchs. Their only road to autocracy is paved with division. Trump came to power by convincing the MAGAs and enough independents that he was fighting to protect them against the elites and 'illegals.' But that strategy is producing smaller returns.
Consider the fight for civil rights. In the 1950s, many white people didn't pay much mind to the struggle by Blacks for equality. But when white America turned on their TV news and witnessed the Jim Crow authorities siccing dogs and fire hoses on non-violent civil rights marchers, the mood shifted. The US did not become non-racist, but many felt that things had gone too far.
In another contemporaneous example, TV news footage of the brutal reality of the Vietnam War caused many reflexively pro-war Americans to question if they had backed the right horse.
Trump and his brain trust may think that picking on academia's ivory towers; unelected judges; evil aliens; and woke, white wine-swilling, effete urbanites will keep his base howling for more of the same. But now that people have seen the extent of his malevolent ambition, many are repulsed by it.
In addition, many Americans who support Trump's promises to rid the country of criminal aliens are disgusted by the capricious and due process-free treatment of people legally in the US.
It is not just those repelled by his overreach. Trump voters who believed his promises of an economic golden age are now terrified of the inflationary and job-killing potential of his tariff and expulsion insanity. It doesn't help Trump's cause that his on-again, off-again whipsawing on tariffs points to a man with no plan.
The WSJ points out that the resistance to the executive will need help from at least one of the other two branches of government. In their words:
It would take another power center in Washington to limit the president's authority—either the courts, which are flooded with cases challenging Trump's actions, or Republican lawmakers. The party's congressional wing has stood almost uniformly behind the president. But if GOP lawmakers sense that voters will punish them in next year's midterm elections, they might present more resistance to his agenda in Congress, Washington veterans said.
So far, the lower courts have shown independence, but congressional Republicans have not. However, the 2026 midterms are looming, and there are cracks in the GOP's House hegemony. A dozen Republican Representatives (most in marginal seats) sent Speaker Mike Johnson a letter begging him not to cut Medicaid to their constituents.
Even GOP Reps in ruby-red states must have noticed that opposition by liberals to Trump's policies is attracting some of their constituents. MAGA's magical thinkers may dismiss the enthusiastic crowds Bernie and AOC's Fighting Oligarchy Tour attracted in liberal precincts. But it should make them nervous that the Tour's event in Wyoming played to a standing-room-only, sell-out crowd.
Trump and his bully-boys have been compared to Hitler and the Nazis. But that comparison misses a key difference. When Hitler first came to power in 1933, he embraced deficit spending to fund an infrastructure and jobs program. Granted, most of it was to benefit the military. However, it did increase his support among the favored Christian, straight, Aryan German population.
Trump, conversely, seems to be doing everything he can to diminish the economic prospects of 'regular Americans'. This political myopia is driving an increasing number of citizens into the 'not-Trump' column — a fact reinforced by his cratering poll numbers.
Perhaps I'm a Pollyanna. However, I believe that Trump's war on the establishment will not produce the result he thinks it will. Certainly, an increasing number of Americans aren't buying his bullshit. I think when the damn cracks the flood will be biblical. Let’s keep the faith.