Frustration Leading to Absurdity
Terry H. Schwadron
Aug. 5. 2025
Sports fans enjoy watching how good athletes compete within a prescribed set of rules. It explains why fans get upset when referees choose not to call fouls or one team starts cheating by stealing signs from the other team.
If there are enough complaints, leagues look off-season at whether the rules need adjustment. But there always are rules.
With the daily push by Donald Trump’s administration to bully his way against all restraints, our politics have thrown out the rule book.
Frustration is giving way to absurd tactics, regardless of political orientation. What somehow works for Trump is being picked up by Republican governors, and Democrats are countering with inanity of their own.
Thirty Democratic state senators have left Texas to keep the legislature from adopting gerrymandered redistricting to give Republicans a permanent edge in the U.S. House. Republicans want to change the rules in the middle of the game with a redistricting plan which would be illegal except for a Supreme Court decision that has allowed partisan factors (the plans may violate racial considerations still considered illegal). It is hard to think of the Democratic response as more than a tantrum. It certainly won’t be effective beyond the short-term. But now Democratic governors are talking about undertaking their own district rewrites to counter the Republican moves.
In Washington, Democratic maneuvering resulted in senators leaving town on recess without rubber-stamping scores of Trump appointees, infuriating Trump. In fact, his social media posts invented a new word — ‘Panicans’ — that according to Trump, reflects a “political party based on weak and stupid people” who are panicking.
Let’s just say that if Trump thinks that this tumult is what American voters want, he is seriously wrong.
The MAGA Push
None of the rule-changing would be going on if the back-and-forth of politics were anywhere near what we still cling to as a hope for democracy.
Trump’s insistence on installing a government filled with political toadies and running the White House as a bulldozer to run over Congress and the Supreme Court have kneecapped any substantial oversight of his actions and prompted any number of theater-like responses that pass as opposition. Effectively, there are no referees or umpires.
Worse, of course, is that along the way, Trump is trampling civil rights concerns, accepted rules to prevent “weaponization” of Justice efforts, treaties and agreements with international friends and those dependent on government support. His campaigns against immigrants and the most vulnerable are routinely described as cruel.
Picking on universities in pursuit of loyalty is just self-serving and will backfire on a nation that depends on researchers and critical thinking for the vitality of creative innovation that drives our economy. That campaign, too, is drawing absurd responses with required payments of hundreds of millions that should go into education being paid to settle “fines” with no publicly defined destinations.
The most recent attempt by Senate Democrats to even raise questions about Trump appointees have prompted Trump to rage at Democratsfor “slow walking” more than 150 of his nominees, branding the party’s lawmakers as “CRAZED LUNATICS.” The Senate left town in disarray — and Trump’s nominees in limbo — after failing to strike a bipartisan deal.
Texas Democrats think that fleeing to Illinois to deny Republicans a quorum will halt a redrawing of the congressional map to “continue pushing his disastrous policies,” while Republicans, including Gov. Greg Abbott, consider ways to oust them. This is not what we elect these people to do, however fervently they believe in their causes.
Maybe the exodus works temporarily. Call me skeptical, but I doubt that leaving the state will stop Texas from redrawing district maps for partisan gain.
Where Does This Lead?
With a combination of executive orders, legal maneuvers and staffing decisions, Trump has already put in motion his next effort to subvert upcoming federal elections in 2026 and 2028, the Huffington Post opines. In short, its argument is that Trump is changing the rules to dominate in the next elections — midterm elections that normally favor the party out of power.
The Brennan Center for Justice has a new report that says that this year “a new threat to free and fair elections has emerged: the federal government itself.”
The Center argues that unprecedented, legally questionable moves to pardon Jan. 6 defendants, attack democratic institutions, repeal and withdraw voter protections and undertake these redistricting efforts are part of a Trump concerted campaign to make MAGA permanent.
The administration has sought to rewrite state election rules to burden voters and usurp control of election systems, threatened local election officials, appointed federal loyalists to undermine election administration.
By the rules, of course, only Congress and the states can set election regulations. The executive branch, especially the Department of Justice (DOJ), is charged with enforcing federal laws. But that has not stopped Trump officials from targeting elections, nor interfered with the growing number of instances in which the lines between governing and electioneering are blurred.
Surely, previous elections were marred by rules and practices that hindered full participation. Restrictive voting laws (some of which had already been ruled unconstitutional), skewed maps, and bomb threats at polling places impeded the freedom to vote. Federal officials had an important role in countering disinformation and combatting racial discrimination. This federal protection for fair elections may no longer exist, according to the Brennan Center.
The report says an unprecedented federal push will place new pressure on American elections and will require vigilance and actions from those determined to defend the integrity of the vote.
This is the frustration. The response should be judged by effectiveness.
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