In its early days, the second Trump administration is delivering a clear message: The United States is full of the wrong kind of people.
Federal civil servants, for example, have been deemed the wrong kind of people. Their political and ideological allegiances are questionable, their ideas destructive and their low-productivity jobs not worth their salaries. Too many are lawbreakers or just “evil.” Whether they toil at the U.S. Agency for International Development or the Treasury, the CIA or the Food and Drug Administration, in Washington or throughout the country, they should look upon that fork in the road and opt to resign. In some cases, they should be purged.
Children born in the United States to parents in the country illegally – or to parents who are here legally but only temporarily, such as people on work or student visas – are also the wrong people.
Refugees and asylum-seekers are the wrong kind of people and should be prevented from entering the country. Transgender Americans lack the “humility and selflessness” needed in the U.S. armed forces, according to a Trump executive order, and can no longer serve. Former officials such as Mark Milley, who served as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Trump administration, are disloyal and undeserving of government protection or even of a Pentagon portrait. And anyone fitting a “diversity” category of any kind is automatically suspect, a convenient scapegoat whenever something – wildfires, plane crashes – goes wrong.
If, according to the Trump administration, so many people in the United States are the wrong kind of people, who makes up the right kind? Who belongs here – in our military, our government, our territory?