Questionable Mandates

Guest Opinion

By Tom Bousamra | March 1, 2025

Surveys have reminded us numerous times that the main issue in the recent presidential election was the cost of living and high prices. So, does Trump have a mandate to do something about this? Perhaps. Indeed, he said he would fix it on day one.

But what has his month in office accomplished in helping the working class maintain their existence paycheck to paycheck? Nothing that I can see. In fact, the reverse is actually happening. Inflation moved up from 2.9 percent to 3.0 percent in January. (Have you bought eggs recently?) Ill-advised by most economists, tariffs now promise to exacerbate the problem. The stock market is slipping south because of Trump’s wrecking ball approach to the federal government. And what will the firings of approximately 30,000 federal employees soon do to the unemployment rate or the accompanying contraction in the economy with this loss of jobs?

More importantly, can Trump legitimately claim to have a mandate to throw our allies under the bus? Who voted for a betrayal of Ukraine or the absurd claim that President Zelenskiy is a dictator who somehow encouraged Putin to invade his country?

Was there any plurality of votes favoring the destruction of NATO and the alienation of our longtime friends in Europe, Canada, and Mexico? Did anyone opt for a transactional approach to our one-time ally Ukraine, of whom we are now demanding 50 percent of their rare earth minerals without any guarantee of security against further aggression?

Could any of us imagine that electing Trump would bring about Vice President J. D. Vance’s insulting interference in Germany’s election process or the promotion of an extreme far-right political party there?

Was there a landslide that I missed that okayed the idea of opposing our friends in the United Nations and to instead protect a dictator who wantonly aggressed against a sovereign state in Europe, reminiscent of WWII? Putin—who we, NATO, and the European Union have been sanctioning for his naked aggression—is now invited to the White House?

Was there a mandate I missed that calls for the elimination of community health monitoring by the CDC, our protection against future pandemics, the weakening of disease research at the NIH, the reduction of help for our citizens who rely on Medicare, Medicaid, Veteran, WIC, or SNAP benefits?

Did anyone vote for our national parks to be understaffed, our air traffic made less safe through a reduction in FAA workforce, our food supply to be without guardrails, our IRS without the manpower to do their job, and U.S. Postal Service to be privatized and thereby upended? Who benefits from having tax loopholes go uninvestigated? Hmmm.

Did I miss a mandate to eliminate all those in the federal government who protect the non-one-percenters as inspector generals or as consumer advocates in the Consumer Protection Agency?

And where was the mandate to strip migrants and the LBGTQ+ community of human dignity and to trample on their rights? Do we profit in any way by having large segments of our population live in fear for themselves and their loved ones?

Did you vote for the elimination of USAID, effectively stopping famine relief, increasing preventable disease worldwide, leading to rotting food in warehouses, and harming our American farmers, who are helped by having these humanitarian outlets? When people voted for the current administration were they picturing malnourished infants dying by the hundreds or diseases like Ebola spreading like wildfire?

Did you understand that your vote would mean that members of Congress would completely abdicate their authority to check the overreach of the executive branch and lie supine without access to their moral center? Did anyone think that incompetent, inexperienced Trump loyalists would be put in charge of agencies and departments with which they have ideological animus, ALL approved by Congress?

Did you think that a non-elected, unvetted immigrant would have unfettered access to power in the White House and be able to access your private financial and personal data?

Perhaps most alarming of all is Trump’s recent attempts to make the military his lapdog by firing without cause faithful top brass in the joint chiefs and faithful JAG officers and replacing them with unqualified lackeys willing to swear allegiance to the president rather than uphold the Constitution. Did you think any vote could bring about and validate a “palace guard” in this fashion? I certainly didn’t.

If you are as puzzled as I am about these interpretations of Trump’s narrow-win vote margin, and if you believe that all these cuts to essential programs and increased harms to our constitutional rights are simply a means to justify greater tax cuts to billionaires and corporations who don’t need them, then I have one word for you: RESIST.

Tom Bousamra is a community activist who has always fought for the underdog. He is a co-founder and past president of Before, During, and After Incarceration, BDAI, Inc., and a retired public school teacher who is concerned about all our societal institutions. As a deacon in the Catholic Church, he has ministered to the folks in Grand Traverse Jail these past 38 years.