As many of us tried to warn for years, the second Trump administration has so far been a nightmarish project of punitive vengeance on multiple fronts. It's a form of political terrorism designed not just to steamroll and demoralize the GOP's political opposition in Congress and spread fear and paranoia on the left nationwide, but to destroy entire industries and force their workforces into either unemployment or a terrified crouch within institutions under permanent siege. It is simultaneously despicable and ham-fisted, but also potentially effective at its core goal of eroding the institutional basis for liberalism in the United States.

If you work for the federal government in any capacity including as a contractor, or in non-profits, K-12 schools or higher education—fields that collectively employ about 24 million Americans, your experience of the past week has been sheer pandemonium. Add to that the legions of state employees, contractors and other workers whose work has been gratuitously threatened or interrupted, and the real number of Americans worried about their livelihoods, families and future right now is probably closer to 50 million, to say nothing of the undocumented immigrants and their loved ones and communities who are preparing to have their lives forever upended by the merciless retribution of the president and his movement of grievance-addled goons.

President Donald Trump has issued executive orders pausing almost all federal grants and loans, halting medical research, gumming up payment systems for Medicaid recipients in the states. He threw the passport system into complete mayhem by rescinding designations for trans and........

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