President Donald Trump’s effort to do as much as possible as quickly as possible to remake the federal government would gut agencies that have existed for decades or longer. His larger plans would remake elements of the government infrastructure that have been around for centuries.
He’s not “trying to undo” it. He’s largely already undone it.
He has done permanent and irreversable damage to our relationships with our allies around the world. Countries like Denmark and Canada now have to look at us as potential adversaries as we repeatedly threaten to use military force to annex their territories.
He has obliterated our ability to maintain strong political and economic ties. Sure, with every administration comes tweaks to various foreign and economic policies, but American policies in general have been considered stable and reliable over the long term. Countries now believe, and have every right to believe, anything the US says only has a shelf life of 4 years before the next administration comes in and flips the table on a whim, and that anything Trump says only has a shelf life of until he has a conversation with someone else and randomly changes his mind. Businesses and governments can’t be expected to function under those conditions, and it is going to take us decades at best to show the rest of the world that Trump and MAGA were just short blips on the radar and that the US can once again be trusted in the long term. That’s assuming we ever get that trust back.
Even domestically, how many collective centuries of experience has been purged from federal government operations as a result of Trump’s mass firings? Even if these agencies were re-opened and fully re-staffed tomorrow, how long would it take them to wind things back up and get back up to full strength? If they’re re-instated after the Trump administration, how much damage would be caused in the interim, and how many years or even decades will it take to fix it? How much data that these agencies relied on has already been permanently lost?
How many years of scientific research has already been destroyed as time-sensitive experiments and studies get cancelled due to de-funding? Again, even if these institutions would be able to restart work tomorrow, how many experiments have already been invalidated in the interim? How many years are we now going to be behind in scientific research?
Same goes with vaccinations. Environmental damage. Race relations. The list goes on and on and on. What he has already destroyed in four months will likely take four decades to repair.
Along with all this, he has undermined trust in systems that were largely held together by trust. How many times were we taught about the “checks and balances” built into the system, only to see they’re ultimately a facade. The court rules against an action the president takes, but they can’t actually enforce it. The president overules congress’s power to write the budget, but they can’t actually stop him.
All checks and balances required a faith in the system working along a myth that was created. Not that myth has been shown to be false and there’s no going back. It’ll take serious amendments to the constitution to repair, or a new one altogether. I don’t think either of those are happening in the current political climate though.
So yes, he’s done a lot of harm externally, but also internally.
To be fair, this is a problem that has always existed with our Constitution. The Constitution gave us a framework for government and rules to abide by, but its fatal flaw is that it said exactly nothing about what to do when someone breaks those laws. The entire document is basically little more than a glorified gentleman’s agreement. There’s nothing in the document that says what to do if those elected to support and defend the Constitution instead decide to take a shit on it.
If anything, we should consider ourselves lucky for a couple of things. One is the fact that it took 250 years for someone to realize that our Constitution has absolutely no teeth to it and the answer to the question of “What are you going to do about it?” is effectively “Nothing.” The other is that the first person to go down that path is an inept moron. Now granted, the man has still done permanent and irreparable harm to our country and our standing in the rest of the world. But imagine the damage the man would be able to do if he were competent. Imagine if Trump had the political savvy and intelligence of Mitch McConnell. We’d be in a fuck of a lot more trouble.
Even if these are restored, the spell has been thoroughly broken.
Trump has shown that the supposedly sacred institutions intended to protect democracy absolutely disintegrate the first time a 3rd rate dictator shows up and knocks them down.
Trump has shown that the office of the presidency itself can be obtained by the most dipshit motherfuckers imaginable.
Trump has shown that our electorate is hilariously unqualified for the responsibility of choosing our elected officials.
Rebuild everything, and what are we left with but a system that is utterly incapable of protecting itself against fascism? How in the absolute fuck can we ever be expected to respect the office of the presidency again after seeing that the absolute worst among us is capable of achieving it?
At this point, I think people are just hoping that the next election will restore the illusion. But for a lot of people, the perception of what this country is will be forever compromised.
They shut of the systems that kept research cell lines alive and viable. Those cell lines are gone. There is no replacement. Knowing this, in retrospect we should have have cell lines located in many locations, not just one. I can’t stand it. This is ‘crimes against humanity’ level of action by this administration.
There’s some detail towards the beginning of this epitope (they like to say epitope rather than episode because they are nerdy virology folks, gotta love 'em) of TWIV #1215 What’s the worst that could happen?: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-1215/
I can’t find a transcript, or I would point you to the specific quotes. I listen to most of this podcast since 2020,
“NIOSH’s frozen tissues include commercially produced immortalized cell lines—cells that can proliferate indefinitely and enable small tissue samples to grow into larger ones that can more easily be experimented on.” - These cell lines allow experimentation on animal cells, instead of using live animals. Which is beneficial for reducing cruelty to animals, as well as in decreasing costs, and increasing the shear volume of research that can be done.
There is a huge expense / loss engendered by such rapid closure of labs, in terms of lost equipment, lost cell lines from literally cutting power to the freezers and other equipment so the cell lines defrost and rot.
That’s the best I can do for you at this time. You might want to look up topics like Primary Cell Line, Immortalized Cell Line.
it is going to take us decades at best to show the rest of the world that Trump and MAGA were just short blips on the radar
The fun part is we don’t have decades. We’re already at +1.7C. Insurance actuaries are predicting 4 2 billion deaths worldwide at +2C. We will literally never recover from Trump.
Yeah, everyone underestimates climate impact and the fact that we are already past points of no return. It feeds into the cultural nihilism we have today. We’re kinda doomed. People just dissociating and pointing fingers at each other. The system is designed to cater to sociopathy and no good leaders can rise to the top to navigate us around the icebergs we’re headed straight towards.
He’s not “trying to undo” it. He’s largely already undone it.
He has done permanent and irreversable damage to our relationships with our allies around the world. Countries like Denmark and Canada now have to look at us as potential adversaries as we repeatedly threaten to use military force to annex their territories.
He has obliterated our ability to maintain strong political and economic ties. Sure, with every administration comes tweaks to various foreign and economic policies, but American policies in general have been considered stable and reliable over the long term. Countries now believe, and have every right to believe, anything the US says only has a shelf life of 4 years before the next administration comes in and flips the table on a whim, and that anything Trump says only has a shelf life of until he has a conversation with someone else and randomly changes his mind. Businesses and governments can’t be expected to function under those conditions, and it is going to take us decades at best to show the rest of the world that Trump and MAGA were just short blips on the radar and that the US can once again be trusted in the long term. That’s assuming we ever get that trust back.
Even domestically, how many collective centuries of experience has been purged from federal government operations as a result of Trump’s mass firings? Even if these agencies were re-opened and fully re-staffed tomorrow, how long would it take them to wind things back up and get back up to full strength? If they’re re-instated after the Trump administration, how much damage would be caused in the interim, and how many years or even decades will it take to fix it? How much data that these agencies relied on has already been permanently lost?
How many years of scientific research has already been destroyed as time-sensitive experiments and studies get cancelled due to de-funding? Again, even if these institutions would be able to restart work tomorrow, how many experiments have already been invalidated in the interim? How many years are we now going to be behind in scientific research?
Same goes with vaccinations. Environmental damage. Race relations. The list goes on and on and on. What he has already destroyed in four months will likely take four decades to repair.
Along with all this, he has undermined trust in systems that were largely held together by trust. How many times were we taught about the “checks and balances” built into the system, only to see they’re ultimately a facade. The court rules against an action the president takes, but they can’t actually enforce it. The president overules congress’s power to write the budget, but they can’t actually stop him.
All checks and balances required a faith in the system working along a myth that was created. Not that myth has been shown to be false and there’s no going back. It’ll take serious amendments to the constitution to repair, or a new one altogether. I don’t think either of those are happening in the current political climate though.
So yes, he’s done a lot of harm externally, but also internally.
To be fair, this is a problem that has always existed with our Constitution. The Constitution gave us a framework for government and rules to abide by, but its fatal flaw is that it said exactly nothing about what to do when someone breaks those laws. The entire document is basically little more than a glorified gentleman’s agreement. There’s nothing in the document that says what to do if those elected to support and defend the Constitution instead decide to take a shit on it.
If anything, we should consider ourselves lucky for a couple of things. One is the fact that it took 250 years for someone to realize that our Constitution has absolutely no teeth to it and the answer to the question of “What are you going to do about it?” is effectively “Nothing.” The other is that the first person to go down that path is an inept moron. Now granted, the man has still done permanent and irreparable harm to our country and our standing in the rest of the world. But imagine the damage the man would be able to do if he were competent. Imagine if Trump had the political savvy and intelligence of Mitch McConnell. We’d be in a fuck of a lot more trouble.
Even if these are restored, the spell has been thoroughly broken.
Trump has shown that the supposedly sacred institutions intended to protect democracy absolutely disintegrate the first time a 3rd rate dictator shows up and knocks them down.
Trump has shown that the office of the presidency itself can be obtained by the most dipshit motherfuckers imaginable.
Trump has shown that our electorate is hilariously unqualified for the responsibility of choosing our elected officials.
Rebuild everything, and what are we left with but a system that is utterly incapable of protecting itself against fascism? How in the absolute fuck can we ever be expected to respect the office of the presidency again after seeing that the absolute worst among us is capable of achieving it?
At this point, I think people are just hoping that the next election will restore the illusion. But for a lot of people, the perception of what this country is will be forever compromised.
They shut of the systems that kept research cell lines alive and viable. Those cell lines are gone. There is no replacement. Knowing this, in retrospect we should have have cell lines located in many locations, not just one. I can’t stand it. This is ‘crimes against humanity’ level of action by this administration.
Could you (or someone else here) expand on what that means? What were these cell lines used for on more concrete terms?
There’s some detail towards the beginning of this epitope (they like to say epitope rather than episode because they are nerdy virology folks, gotta love 'em) of TWIV #1215 What’s the worst that could happen?: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-1215/ I can’t find a transcript, or I would point you to the specific quotes. I listen to most of this podcast since 2020,
This article (https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/08/health/harvard-biodata-trump-cuts-wellness) details some of the losses, of tissue samples used in long term research, such as The Nurses Health study (https://nurseshealthstudy.org/)
This article https://www.wired.com/story/cdc-job-cuts-niosh-human-samples/ - goes into some detail as well:
“NIOSH’s frozen tissues include commercially produced immortalized cell lines—cells that can proliferate indefinitely and enable small tissue samples to grow into larger ones that can more easily be experimented on.” - These cell lines allow experimentation on animal cells, instead of using live animals. Which is beneficial for reducing cruelty to animals, as well as in decreasing costs, and increasing the shear volume of research that can be done.
There is a huge expense / loss engendered by such rapid closure of labs, in terms of lost equipment, lost cell lines from literally cutting power to the freezers and other equipment so the cell lines defrost and rot.
That’s the best I can do for you at this time. You might want to look up topics like Primary Cell Line, Immortalized Cell Line.
Thank you!
Medical research.
The fun part is we don’t have decades. We’re already at +1.7C. Insurance actuaries are predicting
42 billion deaths worldwide at +2C. We will literally never recover from Trump.I’m gonna need a source on that.
Here you go: https://actuaries.org.uk/document-library/thought-leadership/thought-leadership-campaigns/climate-papers/planetary-solvency-finding-our-balance-with-nature/
I recalled incorrectly, it was 2 billion deaths at 2C, and 4 billion at 3C.
Thanks.
Sigh
It’s a very nice, very depressing, document. More people should read it.
Yeah, everyone underestimates climate impact and the fact that we are already past points of no return. It feeds into the cultural nihilism we have today. We’re kinda doomed. People just dissociating and pointing fingers at each other. The system is designed to cater to sociopathy and no good leaders can rise to the top to navigate us around the icebergs we’re headed straight towards.
Honestly you couldn’t have been more on the nose. Trump has harmed the world in deep and foundational ways. Mostly involving trust and good will