Philippa Kaur

It seems Britain has one key inducement to offer US President Donald Trump: a state visit hosted by King Charles.

One can only imagine what the king thinks of this, but he will undoubtedly maintain a stiff upper lip and preside over several lavish dinners.

Following reports of this offer, which would make Trump the only US president to be twice hosted by a British monarch, stories surfaced that the US might become an associate member of the Commonwealth.

Read more:
The king has a tricky diplomatic role to play in inviting Trump for a state visit

There has been no official confirmation of this, but the story has been floated in several British newspapers.

What is the Commonwealth?

The Commonwealth came into existence as a means of retaining links with former British colonies, so there is a certain historical justification for the idea.

Almost all of Britain’s former colonies are now members of the Commonwealth of Nations, with Ireland and the US notable exceptions.

The Commonwealth is an organisation that ties together 56 countries, including a few in Africa that have been admitted despite not having been British colonies.

Of the 56, only a minority recognise the British king as their head of state, a point local monarchists are reluctant to acknowledge.

Indeed, some members of the Commonwealth, such as Malaysia, Brunei and Tonga, have their own hereditary monarchs.

In theory, all members are democratic, and several, such as Fiji, have at times been suspended from membership for failing on this count.

Whatever doubts we might have about the state of US democracy, it is hard to argue the US would fail to meet a bar that allows continued membership to states such as Pakistan and Zimbabwe.

The Commonwealth is largely seen as less important than other international groupings, and its heads of government meetings are often skipped by leaders of the most significant members.

Other than turning up to the Commonwealth Games, few recent Australian prime ministers have paid it much attention, compared to our membership of the G20 or the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

Nonetheless, the Commonwealth does include a remarkable range of countries ranging from significant states such as India, Canada and South Africa to the many island states of the Pacific and the Caribbean.

While its work is largely unreported, it does provide a range of international assistance and linkages that otherwise would be out of reach for its smaller and poorer members.

Why is Trump interested in joining?

Trump, it can be assumed, has no interest in the Commonwealth as a means of better working with states such as Namibia and Belize.

The attraction seems to be linked to his strange reverence for royalty and a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the British sovereign.

King Charles is head of the Commonwealth through agreement of its members, probably in recognition of the extraordinary commitment his mother showed as the Commonwealth developed out of the old British Empire. Indeed, she clashed several times with her British ministers because of her loyalty to the Commonwealth.

But unlike the king’s British – and Australian – crown, this is not a position that belongs automatically to the British monarch.

So, while inviting Trump to Windsor Castle may be the gift of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, admission to the Commonwealth would require the agreement of all its members.

Given Trump’s demands to acquire Canada and to punish South Africa for recent land expropriation law, it is hard to imagine unanimous enthusiasm.

Read more:
Donald Trump is picking fights with leaders around the world. What exactly is his foreign policy approach?

Most member states are cautious about being too closely linked to either the US or China, although Australia might end up the last true believer in US alliances. Others, such as Ghana and Pakistan, depend considerably on Chinese aid.

In a world dominated by increasingly autocratic leaders, a middle power like Australia needs as wide a range of friends as possible. Most of us have only a vague sense of what the Commonwealth entails.

Like all international institutions, the Commonwealth often seems more concerned with grand statements than actual commitment.

But there is value in a global organisation whose members claim to be committed to:

democracy and democratic processes, including free and fair elections and representative legislatures; the rule of law and independence of the judiciary; good governance, including a well-trained public service and transparent public accounts; and protection of human rights, freedom of expression, and equality of opportunity.

Would Trump’s America meet those demands? More

In modern times, who was the first presidential candidate to have their campaign almost destroyed by a sex scandal?

The answer, surprisingly, is Jimmy Carter, probably the most pious of all recent presidents. In 1976, when ahead in the polls, Carter gave an interview to Playboy magazine. He said he had looked on a lot of women with lust, “committed adultery in [his] heart many times”, and he would not be condescending to someone who had “screwed” around.

Jimmy Carter greets Cher in 1976.
David F. Smith/AAP

Support among evangelical Christians immediately eroded. Prominent Christian evangelist Jerry Falwell said, “four months ago most of the people I know were pro-Carter. Today that has totally reversed.” Fortunately for Carter, after an intense week or so, the scandal faded.

Morality was much more explicitly an issue in the 1976 election than previously. It was the first election since the Watergate scandal had forced Richard Nixon to become the first president in American history to resign in 1974. It was also the year after America’s long and contentious war in Vietnam had finished in defeat, with many Americans feeling they had been lied to by presidents Nixon and Lyndon Johnson.

An ironic after-effect of Watergate was belated attention to President John F. Kennedy’s sex scandals. Until then, for many decades, American presidents’ private lives had been off limits. Franklin D. Roosevelt had two long-term lovers and his wife Eleanor probably had a live-in lesbian lover. Roosevelt used a wheelchair, due to polio-related paralysis. Yet of 35,000 photos of him, only two showed his wheelchair. Most of the American public were ignorant of his condition.

Neither Kennedy nor Johnson were probed during their presidencies. (One night on Johnson’s ranch a female aide was woken by a man standing at the foot of the bed: “Move over, this is your president.”)

John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson pictured in 1960.
Anonymous/AAP

One source of the new attention was a tragedy involving Senator Edward Kennedy. In July 1969, Kennedy drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. He swam to safety but his companion, young staffer Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned. He immediately made many phone calls, but only called the police the next day. Many journalists knew of Kennedy’s affairs, drunkenness, tendency to speed and general recklessness, but nothing had been published.

A few years later, a decade after his death, President John F. Kennedy himself was in the public spotlight. After Watergate and defeat in Vietnam, a Senate committee under Frank Church was tasked to investigate American security agencies’ involvement in the assassination and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders. This revealed that Kennedy and Chicago Mafia boss, Sam Giancana, had the same mistress, Judith Campbell. Moreover, Giancana had been hired by the CIA in an assassination plot against Cuban president Fidel Castro.

Judith Campbell in 1960.
AAP

At first, Church, a Democrat and friend of the Kennedys, treated the revelations with as much discretion as he could. But a New York Times columnist, ex-Nixon speechwriter William Safire, waged a campaign that argued journalists were pro-Democrat and went softer on Democrat scandals than on Republican ones. It was the opening of the floodgates. Over many years, more and more revelations of Kennedy’s sexual exploits were revealed. Indeed his relentless promiscuity makes Bill Clinton look like a choirboy.

The next time a sex scandal figured prominently was the 1988 presidential contest. Gary Hart already had a reputation for “womanising”, and at one stage challenged journalists to follow him. Unfortunately for him, they did. He and a young woman, Donna Rice, spent a night aboard the inauspiciously named yacht Monkey Business. Hart went from Democratic front runner to ex-candidate in less than a week.

A Bush denial and ‘bimbo eruptions’

Bill Clinton’s 1992 election campaign brought a huge escalation in attention to a candidate’s private life. It was the first time a person had publicly claimed to have had an affair with a presidential candidate. Gennifer Flowers said she had had a 12-years-long affair with Clinton. Flowers admitted she had been paid more than US$100,000 to go public, and her account included many lurid details.

Gennifer Flowers in 1992.
Alex Brandon/AAP

Clinton denied the affair but his recall of events seemed uncharacteristically hazy. (And six years later, he would admit they had a sexual encounter.) He was greatly helped by the prominent role his wife Hillary played. They admitted without giving any specifics that there had been difficulties in their marriage but stressed how these were all in the past. Eventually, in the absence of new developments, the scandal ran out of steam.

Nevertheless, throughout the campaign, the Clinton team had a “bimbo eruption watch”, and although several claims arose and Clinton often seemed evasive, he won the election relatively easily.

Some Democrats in 1992 thought there had been a double standard with intense attention to Clinton’s sexual escapades contrasting with the lack of media attention to allegations of George H.W. Bush having had an affair, rumours that had been around since the early 1980s.

But the two were very different – there was no publicity-seeking by an ex-lover or admissions by the Bushes. When the rumours began to circulate in 1988, George Junior asked his father about them and then issued a short statement: “The answer to the Big A [ie adultery] question is NO”. Although his father was apparently angered by this public intervention, it effectively killed the issue.

President George H. Bush and president-elect Bill Clinton at the White House in November 1992.
Doug Mills/AAP

Likewise later there were rumours that the Republican candidate in 1996, Bob Dole, had had an affair, but it was a long time in the past, and received minimal coverage.

In 2008, it was known that John McCain, a war hero, and his wife lived largely separate lives. But his opponent Barack Obama did not seek to make it an issue, and again there was almost no coverage. While it is often argued that the media have salacious appetites for sex scandals, cases like these also show the media is reluctant to push allegations where there is not clear evidence, and no public interest or political dimension.

Nothing thus far had prepared anyone for the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Lewinsky had been an intern in the White House and had had consensual sexual relations with Clinton. She confided in a colleague, Linda Tripp, who then started taping their telephone calls.

Later Tripp gave the tapes to special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, who was investigating Whitewater property deals by the Clintons in Arkansas. He found no evidence of wrongdoing in that case, and now broadened his scope to include perjury, finding that Clinton had lied about his relations with Lewinsky. Thanks to Tripp’s tape and Starr’s investigations, the public were treated to details such as Lewinsky’s stained dress.

The story broke in early 1998 and the Zippergate scandal as it was dubbed, received intense news coverage for most of the year. Clinton gave a series of misleading denials, and eventually confessed. It led to an impeachment by the House of Representatives but the motion failed in the Senate, and Clinton survived.

A video of Monica Lewinsky being sworn in for her deposition at the Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton in 1999.
AAP

The scandal may have had an effect on the extremely close 2000 presidential election. The Democrat candidate Al Gore, who had been Clinton’s vice-president, sought to distance himself from the Clintons. Even after all that had happened, though, the Clintons were still fairly popular, and were an electoral asset Gore could have used more.

The two Obama elections were broadly scandal free, but this was the quiet before the storm.

How Trump rewrote conventional wisdom

Donald Trump has rewritten the conventional wisdom of American presidential sex scandals. Most importantly, Trump is the first president where sexual harassment and assault have been so central. Whereas Kennedy’s affairs, for instance, seem to have been overwhelmingly consensual, in a “hot mic” from 2005 (released during his 2016 presidential campaign), Trump was heard saying “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything […] Grab ‘em by the pussy.”

What became known as Pussygate looked as if it might sink Trump’s candidacy, but for a variety of reasons, not least the FBI’s public announcement that it was investigating more possible email offences by Clinton, eventually Trump triumphed.

The second notable feature of the Trump sex scandals is their sheer number. In October 2019, a book All the President’s Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator by Barry Levine and Monique El-Faizy contained allegations by 43 women of sexual misconduct by Trump.

Trump is the first presidential candidate to be convicted in a civil court of sexual assault. The writer E. Jean Carroll testified – and a jury unanimously agreed – that Trump pushed her up against a wall and assaulted her.

Writer E. Jean Carroll in May 2023: a New York jury found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in 1996.
John Minchillo/AAP

Trump is also the first presidential candidate in modern times to be associated with paying hush money to cover up sexual relationships, most famously to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, and also to a lift attendant in the Trump Tower.

Stormy Daniels departs the Supreme Court of the State of New York after testifying in the hush money trial of US President Donal Trump in May 2024.
Justin Lane/AAP

Finally – despite or because of all this – he is the first presidential candidate in modern times to directly accuse his opponents of immoral sexual behaviour. Speaking of his two female opponents, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, he said, “Funny how blow jobs impacted both their careers differently”. His supporters had banners saying “Say No to the Hoe”. (Earlier in 2024 Trump and his supporters had been spreading the claim that Biden was “all jacked up” on drugs, and demanded a drug test before the first debate.)

Trump’s verbal attacks on women often have a particularly bitter edge, but they are part of the new coarseness and violence that mark his rhetoric from his predecessors, as are the vituperative personal attacks on whomever his opponent is – judge, prosecutor, journalist, bureaucrat or political opponent.

Trump’s shamelessness was on display days after the “Pussygate” revelations in 2016. For the second presidential debate, he wanted to have in his “family box” three women who had made accusations against Bill Clinton, and one who was sexually assaulted as a 12-year-old, with Hillary Clinton as the public defender representing the suspect. The idea was to throw Hillary off her stride and damage her performance. The debate organisers stopped the move. As a fallback an hour before the debate, Trump had a media conference with the four, attacking the Clintons.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during the second presidential debate in 2016.
Rick T. Wilking/AAP

An evangelical about face

What a wondrous trajectory America’s white evangelical Christians have been on. In 1976, they were shocked that a candidate had lust in his heart. In 2024, around 80% of them voted for a serial sexual predator, a liar and fraudster.

At one rally, a donor told the crowd, “Donald J. Trump is the person that God has chosen.” The evangelicals have indeed shown Trump amazing grace.

One reason Trump was able to survive this surfeit of potential scandals is because of the much more polarised media environment now. Much of Trump’s base consume media such as Fox News, which is willing to ignore or downplay his outrages.

In addition, podcasts played a bigger role in 2024 than in any previous election, and some of these, such as Joe Rogan’s, have audiences that are overwhelmingly young males, perhaps helping Trump mobilise the “bro vote”. In 2000 against Biden, 41% of young men aged 18–29 voted for Trump; in 2024 against Harris, 49% did; an eight-point gain for Trump.

Recently, Trump joked with an audience:

you used to be able to say a young beautiful waitress but […] if you call a woman beautiful today, it is the end of your political career, so I will not do it.

In fact, his career shows the exact opposite. He has survived all sorts of moral transgressions, which earlier would have been politically fatal.

Given Trump’s invulnerability despite his multiple and serious transgressions, does this mark the end of presidential sexual scandals having a dramatic impact?

There has never been a direct, simple or logical relationship in political scandals between the seriousness of the alleged offence, the amount of media attention and the severity of the political consequences. However, we’re now post-Trump: what might a presidential sex scandal look like in 2028 and beyond? More

The second Donald Trump administration has already sent shockwaves through the political establishment on both sides of the Atlantic. Overseas, the focus has been on the administration’s apparent dismantling of the post-war international order and Trump’s apparent pivot away from America’s traditional allies towards a warmer relationship with Russia and Vladimir Putin. But within the United States itself, the greatest concerns are associated with administration actions that, for many, suggest a deliberate destruction of American democracy.

Such fears in the US are not isolated to the political elites, but are shared by citizens across the entire nation. But what is also emerging is a concerted assault on people’s ability to push back – or even complain – about some of the measures being introduced by Trump 2.0. This will inevitably result in what is often called a “chilling effect”, where it becomes too hard – or too dangerous – to voice dissent.

Many of Trump’s policies – the mass deportations, the wholesale sacking of public servants by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), the decision to revoke birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants – have been challenged in the courts. The Trump administration is now embroiled in a range of legal challenges. It is here that Trump’s disdain for a legal system that has temporarily blocked the wishes of the president has emerged.

Chilling effect

Judicial decisions calling for the administration to reverse or pause some of these policies have been greeted by Trump and some of his senior colleagues (including Musk and the vice-president J.D.Vance), with noisy complaints at judicial interference in government. Even, in some cases, calls for the impeachment of judges who rule against the government.

Not only did the administration ignore the court’s ruling that suspended the forced expulsion of Venezuelans to El Salvador, some of whom were in the US legally, but Trump attacked the judge on social media calling him a corrupt “radical left lunatic” and called for his impeachment.

This stirred the chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Glover Roberts Jr., to intervene. He reminded the president that America doesn’t settle its disputes, saying that the “normal appellate review process exists for that purpose”. Later, Tom Homan, Trump’s chief adviser on immigration issues, told ABC News that the administration would abide by court rulings on the matter.

The pressure being brought to bear on America’s legal system has not stopped at the judiciary. Trump has recently targeted some of America’s biggest and most powerful law firms, seemingly for no other reason than their acting for clients who have opposed his administration.

On March 25, Trump signed an executive order targeting Jenner & Block, one of whose partners, Andrew Weissmann, worked with special prosecutor Robert Mueller on the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The executive order calls for the firms to be blacklisted from government work and for their employees to have any security clearances removed, for them to be barred from any federal government contracts and refused access to federal government buildings. A death warrant for the firm in other words.

Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

This follows the news that the head of the prestigious law firm Paul Weiss, Brad Karp, had signed a deal with the White House committing to providing millions of dollars worth of pro-bono legal work for causes nominated by the president. He’s also agreed to stop using diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, which had been faced with a similar fate.

Silencing dissent

This administration’s chilling effect has also extended to an attack on press freedom. Trump has expelled established news organisations from the Pentagon, curtailed access to press events for the esteemed Associated Press, and taken control of the White House press pool, sidelining major media outlets.

These actions mark a significant downgrading of press freedom in America. They are undermining the role of independent journalism in their key function of holding power to account. By restricting access and silencing critical voices, his administration has raised concerns over transparency and the free flow of information in the domestic media landscapes.

Dissent: student activists protest the arrest of Columbia university graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil.
EPA-EFE/Sarah Yenesel

Universities have traditionally been bastions of independent thought. We saw that with the massive protests against US policy towards Israel and Palestine which have roiled campuses during the conflict in Gaza. But universities are also seen by many in the administration as a hotbed of “woke” activism. Accordingly Trump 2.0 has fixed its sights on one of the most prominent US universities: Columbia.

Citing what it says is a repeated failure to protect students from antisemitic harassment, the administration cancelled US$400m (£310 million) of federal contracts with the university. Columbia caved in to the pressure moments before the administration’s deadline passed. It agreed to overhaul its disciplinary procedures and “review” its regional studies programmes, starting with those covering the Middle East.

Columbia’s academic staff are horrified. They are launching legal action against the government, alleging that “the Trump administration is coercing Columbia University to do its bidding and regulate speech and expression on campus”.

Democracy in peril

Why is this all so worrying? The legal system, the media and universities are the pillars of US democratic freedoms. The Trump administration’s undermining of these institutions is a blatant attempt to impose an authoritarian rule by bypassing any counterbalance to executive power. And the US Supreme Court has ruled that he is almost entirely immune from prosecution while doing it.

The checks and balances system of government in the US was designed to ensure that no single branch could dominate the political process. But partisan loyalty, and loyalty to Trump over the party, now outweighs constitutional responsibility for the majority of those within the Republican Party.

American democracy is under threat. Not from the external existential threats it faced over the past century such as communism and Islamic fundamentalism, but from within its own system. Those Americans who are terrified about this threat are trying to fight back, but Trump’s assault on dissent is so chilling that this is becoming increasingly dangerous. More

Heads of state are the symbolic leader of a country. Some of them, like King Charles III of the United Kingdom, carry out largely ceremonial roles these days. Others, like Saudi Arabian King Salman, are absolute monarchs and involved in governing the country’s day-to-day activities and policies. It also means that the Saudi monarch gets to do whatever he wants without much consequence from others.

In the United States, the president is both the head of state and head of government. The head of government works with legislators and meets with other world leaders to negotiate agreements and navigate conflicts, among other responsibilities.

Some presidents, like Jimmy Carter, got so bogged down in the specifics that the nighttime comedy show “Saturday Night Live” made fun of it in 1977. “SNL” spoofed Carter responding in extreme, mundane detail to a question about fixing a post office’s letter sorting machines.

As a political scientist who studies American presidents, I see that President Donald Trump loves the power and prestige that comes with being head of state, but does not seem to particularly enjoy the responsibility of being head of government.

Trump rarely talks about the often-tedious process of governing, and instead acts with governance by decree by signing a flurry of executive orders to avoid working with other parts of the government. He has also likened himself to a king, writing on Feb. 19, 2025, “Long Live the King!”

As much as Trump loves hosting sports teams and talking about paving over the White House’s rose garden in a remodeling project, he seems to begrudgingly accept the role of head of government.

President Donald Trump is driven around the track prior to the Daytona 500 in Daytona Beach, Fla., on Feb. 16, 2025.
Chris Graythen/Getty Images

‘You have to be thankful’

Trump revels in social events where he is heralded as the most important person in the room. On Feb. 9, 2025, Trump became the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl. A week later, he attended the Daytona 500 at Daytona Beach, Florida, where his limousine led drivers in completing a ceremonial lap.

Trump’s preference for serving as head of state and not head of government was on full display during his now infamous Feb. 28, 2025, White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

In the televised Oval Office meeting, Trump repeatedly told Zelenskyy, “You have to be thankful.”

Trump was demanding deference from Zelenskyy to show his inferior and submissive position as a recipient of U.S. aid and military support. These are mannerisms of absolute kings, not elected officials.

Governing through executive orders

The beginning of Trump’s second term in office has been filled with announcements of changes – mostly through executive actions. The Trump administration has ordered the Pentagon to stop cyber operations against Russia and fired hundreds of employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The administration has also closed the Social Security Administration’s civil rights office and, among many other things, named the president chair of the Kennedy Center, a performance arts venue in Washington.

Trump has enacted policy changes almost exclusively through executive orders, instead of working with Congress on legislation.

Executive orders do not have to be negotiated with the legislative branch and can be written by a small team of advisers and approved by presidents. Within the first six weeks, Trump has signed more than 90 executive orders. By comparison, former President Joe Biden signed 162 executive orders during his four years in office.

Many of Trump’s executive orders are being challenged in court, and some have been found to likely not be constitutional.

More importantly, Trump’s successor can turn executive orders into confetti in an instant, simply with a signature. Trump himself has signed at least two executive orders that rescind over 60 previous executive orders, mostly signed by Biden.

The fact that Trump has removed almost all of Biden’s executive orders highlights how the orders can create change for a moment, or a few years. But when it comes to long-term policy change, congressional action is needed.

President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders at the White House on March 6, 2025.
Alex Wong/Getty Images

Trump gets bored

Early in Trump’s first term in 2017, the administration planned themed weeks called “Made in America” and “American Heroes,” for example, to emphasize changes it intended to pursue.

Trump’s staff launched, stopped and then relaunched a themed infrastructure week seven times in 2019. This happened after Trump repeatedly derailed infrastructure events to focus on a more interesting event or topic, ranging from defending his comments that seemed to suggest support for white supremacists to discussing the reboot of Roseanne Barr’s sitcom.

In his second term, Trump has farmed out many head of government tasks to other people, notably billionaire Elon Musk, who is leading the new so-called Department of Government Efficiency. By mid-February 2025, Trump gave Musk, who holds the title of special government employee, oversight for hiring decisions at every governmental agency.

But as DOGE has initiated widespread cuts at different government agencies and offices in an effort to trim government waste, Musk has reportedly clashed with Trump’s cabinet members. This includes Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as well as other independent agencies funded by Congress.

Government agencies, funding recipients and others are pushing back against the cuts and at times are succeeding in getting court rulings that halt the dismissal of government workers, or reinstate other workers at their jobs.
Trump also seems to have abdicated most responsibility of bureaucracy to others by allowing Musk’s team unprecedented access to sensitive government programs and documents that include people’s personal information.

Absolute kings, queens, emperors and dictators are heads of state who demand obedience because they hold the nation in their grip.

Presidents from elected democracies may, as in the case of the U.S., have a ceremonial aspect to the job, but it is only a part of it. The people democratically elect American presidents to serve everyone and provide the best government possible. More

In just two months back in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump has tested the limits of the US Constitution, from overhauling immigration to drastically reducing the federal workforce and dismantling government agencies.

With Republicans now in control of both the Senate and House of Representatives, Congress has so far shown little sign it will stand in Trump’s way.

The judiciary is the other branch of government that can check the power of the president. However, the Trump administration has appeared increasingly willing to simply ignore decisions handed down by judges.

There has also been a notable lack of unified opposition from the Democratic Party.

Congressional Democrats are demoralised and deeply divided over how to respond to Trump. They face criticism, too, over their apparent lack of strategy.

This has led some to ask why the United States lacks a formal political opposition leader.

How opposition leaders operate in other countries

In the American political system, the loser of the presidential election doesn’t retain a position as leader of the party in opposition. Instead, they tend to disappear from view.

Kamala Harris is considering a run for governor of California — and could well attempt another run for president in 2028 or beyond. But she hasn’t remained a vocal counterpoint to Trump since he took office.

By contrast, in countries with Westminster-style parliamentary systems, such as Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and India, the main party not in power selects an opposition leader from among their ranks. In most countries, this position is defined by convention, not law.

The opposition leader in many countries serves as the main face — and voice — of the party not in power. They work to keep the government accountable and are seen as the leader of an alternative government-in-waiting.

Kemi Badenoch is the new Conservative Party leader – and leader of the opposition – in the UK.
House of Commons handout/EPA

What it takes to lead the opposition in the US

During Trump’s first term, the Democratic speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was widely recognised as the de facto Democratic opposition leader.

A skilled negotiator, Pelosi was largely able to unite the Democrats behind her to lead the opposition to Trump’s legislative agenda — famously ripping up a copy of Trump’s State of the Union address on the House podium in 2020.

As Senate majority and minority leader, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell successfully blocked swathes of legislation during Barack Obama’s presidency. He even thwarted a US Supreme Court nomination.

In the 1980s, then-Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill led the Democratic opposition to Republican President Ronald Reagan’s domestic agenda, without resorting to obstructionism.

Nancy Pelosi was the de facto opposition leader in the US during Trump’s first term in office.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP

However, for an opposition figure to have this level of influence, they usually need decades of experience, political skill, and a party in control of the House or Senate.

The Democrats no longer have a majority in either chamber and are no longer led by Pelosi. Hakeem Jeffries has been the House minority leader since 2023, but without the speaker’s gavel or control of any committees, he has limited influence.

Party discipline is typically far more unwieldy in the United States compared to other countries. In Australia, for instance, crossing the floor to vote against your own party is very rare.

Unruly party caucuses make it significantly more difficult for a single party figurehead to emerge unless they command near-universal party loyalty and respect among their members in both chambers.

Will Democratic cracks shatter the party?

The Democratic caucus, already strained by Joe Biden’s late withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, is now even more fractured.

The Democrats continue to grapple with their resounding defeat in November, which saw the party lose ground with almost every demographic across the country. Polling shows public support for the Democrats has slumped to unprecedented lows, with just over a quarter of voters holding a positive view of the party.

Most dramatically, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer defied fellow Democrats (including Jeffries) by voting in favour of a resolution in recent weeks to avoid a government shutdown. His decision sparked an uproar from his party colleagues.

Visual images of the party’s disarray were also on clear display during Trump’s joint address to Congress earlier this month. While some representatives protested loudly, others followed leadership instruction to remain silent.

Democrats were in near lock-step on almost all issues during Trump’s first term, as well as Biden’s presidency. Now, some are calling on Schumer to step aside as minority leader — and for the Democrats to coalesce behind a younger, more outspoken leader such as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, left, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been among the most vocal Democrats since Trump came back into power.
David Zalubowski/AP

Where next for the party?

In the fractious debates now consuming the party, some see parallels with the emergence of the Tea Party movement within the Republican Party during Barack Obama’s first term in office.

The current Democratic division could result in the emergence of a stronger dissident faction within the party. And this could push a harder line in opposition to Trump, no longer toeing the line from party leadership.

Yet, while the political outlook for Democrats may appear bleak, electoral turnarounds can happen quickly in the United States.

Few expected a demoralised Democratic party to turn John Kerry’s heavy defeat to George W Bush in 2004 into a generational victory just four years later. Similarly, after Obama decisively won reelection against Mitt Romney in 2012, few Republicans could have predicted they’d soon be back in power with Trump.

But, as was the case 20 years ago, the soul-searching process will be painful for the Democrats. Whether it’s Ocasio-Cortez or another figure, the 2026 midterm elections are likely to be the best opportunity for a new central leader to emerge on the national stage. More

President Donald Trump gave no specific reason for firing Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff less than halfway through Brown’s four-year term in office.

Nor did he give an explanation for similarly ousting other senior military leaders, including the only women ever to lead the Navy and the Coast Guard, as well as the military’s top three lawyers – the judge advocates general of the Army, Navy and Air Force.

The president is the commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces. But since the days of George Washington, the military has been dedicated to serving the nation, not a specific person or political agenda. I know this because I served 36 years in the U.S. Air Force before retiring as a major general. Even now, as a lecturer in history, national security and constitutional law, I know that nonpartisanship is central to the military’s primary mission of defending the country.

Trump’s actions could raise concerns about whether he is trying to change those centuries of precedent.

If so, military personnel at all levels would face a crucial question: Would they stand up for the military’s independent role in maintaining the integrity and stability of American democracy or follow the president’s orders – even if those orders crossed a line that made them illegal or unconstitutional?

After the American Revolution, George Washington resigned his military commission and returned to civilian life.
Herman Bencke via Library of Congress

Political neutrality from the start

Washington and other U.S. founders were very aware that a powerful military could overthrow the government or be subjected to political whims as different parties or factions controlled the presidency or Congress, so they thought long and hard about the role of the militia and the use of military power.

Julius Caesar, who used his army to seize power in ancient Rome, was a cautionary tale. So was Oliver Cromwell’s use of his military power in the English Civil War to execute King Charles I and rule England.

One of Washington’s most significant contributions to the apolitical tradition of the military was his resignation as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army after the American Revolution officially ended, in 1783. By voluntarily giving up his military power and returning to civilian life, the man who would become the nation’s first president demonstrated his commitment to civilian control of a military grounded in allegiance to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, not allegiance to any one party, faction or person.

Washington’s act set a powerful example for future generations. A few years later, the founders embedded civilian control over the military in the U.S. Constitution. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to declare war and fund armies, while Article II, Section 2 designates the president as the commander-in-chief of the military.

This check and balance ensures the military remains neutral and subordinate to elected leaders. It also solidifies the allegiance of military leaders to a principled document, not to the ebbs and flows of politics.

As part of their training, U.S. military members learn about their duty to obey lawful, constitutional orders.
Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Training and response to orders

Polling consistently shows that the American people trust the military more than any other element of the U.S. government. In part that trust comes from the military’s professional dedication to political neutrality, which includes training its personnel to uphold values like duty, honor and integrity.

Military members up and down the ranks take their allegiance to the Constitution seriously. At the beginning of their service, at every reenlistment and usually during promotion ceremonies, all military members – officers and enlisted – swear to support and defend the Constitution. The enlisted oath also includes a promise to follow the lawful orders of the president and of the officers appointed above them.

This foundational oath ensures that if members of the military receive orders that they believe are questionable, they will not follow those orders blindly. They are taught throughout their career – during basic training, officer candidate training and in recurring sessions through the years – to seek clarification. If necessary, they are told to challenge those orders through their chain of command, or through attorneys associated with their units, or by contacting their branch’s inspector general.

Depending on their ranks, military members’ responses to questionable orders can vary. Senior officers, who have extensive experience and higher levels of responsibility, have the authority and the duty to ensure that any orders they follow or pass down are lawful and in line with the Constitution. When evaluating uncertain orders or navigating unclear situations, they often consult with legal advisers, discuss the implications with peers and thoroughly analyze the situation before taking action.

Junior officers and senior enlisted personnel often find themselves in positions where they must make quick decisions based on the information available to them. While they are trained to follow orders, they are also encouraged to use their judgment and seek guidance when they believe an order to be unlawful – including getting advice from people with direct access to attorneys.

Junior enlisted personnel, who make up more than 40% of the military force, are also taught the importance of the legality and constitutionality of orders. They have the right to seek clarification if they believe an order is unlawful.

Even so, their training focuses heavily on discipline and obedience. This can make it challenging for them to question orders, especially in high-pressure situations.

Members of the U.S. military swear an oath to the Constitution.
Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Ultimate responsibility

The responsibility of scrutinizing orders falls on senior military leaders – admirals and generals, colonels and Navy captains. Junior officers and senior enlisted and junior enlisted personnel rely on their leaders to navigate the complexities of politics and ensure orders they receive are lawful and focused on national defense, not politics.

If senior military leaders fail in their responsibility, chaos could ensue: Units may end up following conflicting orders or ignoring directives altogether. This can lead to a breakdown in command and control, with some units acting independently or based on politically motivated directives. This would be a dangerous shift, making the military extremely vulnerable to operational failures and enemy attack.

President Lyndon Johnson, center, and Gen. William Westmoreland visit troops in South Vietnam in 1967.
AP Photo

Such a situation has never happened in the history of the U.S. military. But some events have come close to crossing the line. For instance, during the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson was determined to demonstrate American strength and resolve, famously stating, “I will not lose in Vietnam.” His pressure landed on the shoulders of Gen. William Westmoreland.

Westmoreland responded by publicizing the numbers of enemy personnel killed in battle, attempting to show that U.S. efforts were reducing the size of opposing forces. But historians have found that this emphasis lacked clear military objectives, meaning troops faced confusion and contradictory orders. The price was a longer war, and more deaths for Americans and for Vietnamese civilians.

Ultimately, Westmoreland was accused of manipulating enemy troop strength estimates to create an impression of progress – in service of Johnson’s political desire to avoid defeat. His decisions did not directly violate the Constitution or U.S. law, but they exemplify how political pressures can adversely influence military strategies, with devastating consequences.

Unbiased sources of information

In addition to senior military leaders’ responsibility to remain apolitical, leaders also have clear responsibilities to the civilians elected and appointed above them.

For example, the president needs factual and unbiased information about the military’s capabilities from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, based on their experience and professional opinions. If advisers are hesitant to speak freely about what is and is not possible in any given situation, and about potential consequences both good and bad, the president will miss out on the kinds of critical insights that shape effective strategies.

The bottom line is that when top military experts give advice and take action influenced by politics, they undermine the centuries-old system of military training and ethics. Some traditions are worth keeping. More

“Trump’s golden age looks an awful lot like a new Gilded Age,” wrote Politico this month, reflecting on the second inauguration of the United States’ president, prominently attended by tech billionaires. The day after that inauguration, historian Beverly Gage “couldn’t stop thinking about the Gilded Age” and its “rapid technological change as well as stark inequality, corporate graft and violent clashes between workers and bosses”.

But what was the Gilded Age – and does the comparison hold up?

The term, which spans the 1870s–1890s, came from an 1873 novel by celebrated satirist Mark Twain, The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day, co-written with journalist and neighbour Charles Dudley Warner. It meant a nation that glittered from its growth and the accumulation of economic power by the extremely wealthy. The title referenced Shakespeare’s King John, in which the Earl of Salisbury states, “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily […] is wasteful and ridiculous excess” (Act IV, scene 2).

Trump himself has cited this era as an aspiration. “We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913. That’s when we were a tariff country. And then they went to an income tax concept,” Trump said, days after taking office. “It’s fine. It’s OK. But it would have been very much better.”

Experts on the era, however, say he is idealising “a time rife with government and business corruption, social turmoil and inequality”, and “dramatically overestimating” the role of tariffs.

“The most astonishing thing for historians is that nobody in the Gilded Age economy – except for the very rich – wanted to live in the Gilded Age economy,” said Richard White, emeritus professor of history at Stanford University.

Elon Musk arrives before the 2025 presidential inauguration in the Rotunda of the US Capitol in Washington.
AAP

What is ‘the Gilded Age’?

For Twain and his co-writer, the message of their novel was plain: the early 1870s was full of gilded lilies – a period of wasteful excess, shady dealing in business, and political corruption.

The year 1872 saw a massive scandal over the railroads’ influence in politics, after “a sham construction company”, Crédit Mobilier, had been chartered to build the Union Pacific Railroad “by financing it with unmarketable bonds”.

Representative Oakes Ames of Massachusetts sold the shares at bargain rates to high-ranking House colleagues to secure political clout for the company. While most sold them quickly, representative James Brooks of New York (also a government director for Union Pacific Railroad) profited from a large block of shares.

Ames and Brooks were censured by the House in 1873 for using their political position for financial gain. The Crédit Mobilier Scandal, as it was called, became nationwide news.

A political cartoon depicts Uncle Sam directing Congressmen implicated in the scandal to ritually suicide.
Joseph Keppler, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper/Wikimedia Commons

The Gilded Age satirised such blatant pursuit of wealth. Its story centred around the members of the fictional Hawkins family, trying to get rich by selling their essentially worthless land in Tennessee under false pretences that misrepresented its value. The novel employs pathos as well as satire. An adopted daughter, Laura Hawkins, kills her married lover. She is tried and acquitted, but before her death, she feels guilty about her past behaviour.

Though amusing and clever as political and social satire, critics at the time were unimpressed by its rambling plot and uneven narrative – and it has never been regarded as great literature.

The Gilded Age, as an era, was a time of great economic booms and busts. It saw the accumulation of millions by the savvy and the rise of systemic corruption in the halls of Congress, state and local legislatures. Tammany Hall, the Democratic headquarters in New York, became almost a synonym for urban corruption in the awarding of municipal contracts.

Politics was trench warfare between the closely matched Democrats and Republicans. The themes of political battle included the supposed evils of the banking and credit system, how to remember the meaning of the recently ended American Civil War (the Democratic Party was still accused of being “the party of rebellion” in 1890), and how to incorporate formerly enslaved people into the body politic without giving them significant power. These are enduring issues.

The Gilded Age, as we think of it today, probably wasn’t set in concrete as an era covering the whole of the late 19th century until 1927, when Charles Austin Beard, then America’s most famous historian, plucked the term from Twain’s 1873 book for a chapter in his hugely influential textbook, The Rise of American Civilization, co-written with his wife, Mary Ritter Beard.

The Beards used the term to cover the period from approximately the late 1860s to the mid-1890s in domestic American history. The Civil War and Reconstruction period (1865–77) and the Gilded Age overlapped: corruption had already been present during the war, due to government contracts for the materials of war. Their book was assigned to several generations of mid-20th-century university and high school students in the US, and the term entered common usage.

Waves of progressive advance and reaction

Beard was an advocate of civil liberties and a sharp critic of the rich and politically powerful. He excoriated the plutocracy of the Gilded Age and their kitsch imitations of the European aristocracy’s tastes and possessions. But he quietly rejoiced in the underlying growth of a mass of people who loomed as a separate base for later progressivism in politics. His idea of periods of democratic and progressive advance on the one hand, and reaction on the other, has endured.

The extremes of the Gilded Age prompted a wave of progressive reform in the US between the 1890s and 1920. In 1890, came the first federal act that outlawed monopolistic business practices, enforced through the court system by Theodore Roosevelt, beginning in 1902.

Laws were introduced for protection of workers (mostly at the state level and through the courts), for direct election of senators, and for women’s suffrage. New laws also increased the regulation of industry, with measures like the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Federal Meat Inspection Act (both in 1906), and increased certain trade union rights, highlighted in Roosevelt’s intervention in the Anthracite Coal Mining Strike of 1902.

The extremes of the Gilded Age prompted a wave of progressive reform in the US, including presidential intervention in the 1902 Anthracite Coal Mining Strike.
The Strike in the Coal Mines, Harper’s Weekly/Wikimedia Commons

History doesn’t repeat; it may rhyme

Journalists, politicians and historians are talking about today’s “Gilded Age” as a repetition of the excessive wealth and power of the 1870s. However, Twain is sometimes quoted saying: “History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

No written record exists to show Twain ever used these exact words, but we can find the sentiment expressed in The Gilded Age, which seems to be where this gem originated. Twain and Warner actually wrote:

History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.

The original Gilded Age was a rising, yet flawed empire of the wealthy. Today’s second Gilded Age is a story of a plutocratic challenge for power in a democratic republic stuck in long-term anxieties over its potential decline – led by a showman helming a wild, unpredictable ride.

Another similarity between then and now is the attempt to legislate morality in the image of often ill-informed – but prone-to-vote – rural and small-town minorities. In the 1880s, one finely balanced moral struggle was over whether the US should have statewide alcohol prohibition. In some ways, this parallels debates over state anti-abortion legislation today.

The 1880s moral struggle over prohibition in some ways parallels debates over state anti-abortion legislation today.
Adam Davis/AAP

There are more superficial similarities, too.

Donald Trump is one of only two presidents to serve two nonconsecutive terms. The other was Democrat Grover Cleveland, in the Gilded Age. But the differences between Trump and Cleveland also strike me.

Cleveland was well connected with the business community, but he was not a convicted felon. The worst he did was this: he had fathered an illegitimate child, and his indiscretion became the stuff of humorous campaign literature in 1884’s presidential contest. “Ma Ma, where’s My Pa?” chanted Republicans seeking to undermine his moral integrity within Victorian-era morality.

After Cleveland won, Democrats replied: “Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha.” Trivial campaigning issues are as old, almost, as the American republic itself.

Gilded Age president Grover Cleveland and Donald Trump have been the only two US presidents to serve two nonconsecutive terms.
Library of Congress, Pool/AAP

The 1880s, the time of Grover and his reputedly crooked Republican alternative, James G. Blaine, saw morally suspect candidates rise to the surface. Democrats labelled Blaine “the continental liar from the state of Maine”, for using his influence to obtain favours from railroad companies. That pattern of extreme and often frivolous partisanship has been renewed since the Obama presidency.

American presidential politics – then as now – is gladiatorial sport, signifying little in the long-term history of the US except the recurrent failure of the nation to become more fully democratic, let alone a republic of equals. In the 1880s and 1890s, legalised racism was on the rise, most African Americans were losing the right to vote, and the women’s suffrage issue was only starting to be influential, later than in Australasia.

Like today, the Gilded Age was an era of a global communications revolution. Railways spread across North America, increasing from 35,000 miles of track in 1865 to 254,000 miles in 1916. A roll-out of submarine telegraph cables connecting the US to the world was also well underway. This pattern parallels our own communications revolution, with social media and now AI continuing to eclipse traditional media and in-person interaction.

A ceremony for the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad.
Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library/Wikimedia Commons

In the Gilded Age, the economic greatness of America was laid out. It was pushed forward by rich entrepreneurs, otherwise known as robber barons: such as John D. Rockefeller in oil, Andrew Carnegie in steel, and George Westinghouse in electrical power and railroad brakes.

Today’s entrepreneurs are epitomised by the tech billionaires so prominent at Trump’s inauguration, including Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, whose other enterprises include space company Blue Origin.

Chief among them is Elon Musk, owner of social media company X, SpaceX, and electric car company Tesla. Musk, who helped fund and organise Trump’s election campaign, has received “at least US$38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits, often at critical moments”, according to the Washington Post.

There is currently a backlash against electric vehicle company Tesla, owned by Elon Musk, who helped fund and organise Trump’s campaign.
Tolga Akmen/AAP

Musk represents an escalation in the influence of the rich and powerful. He has an office in the White House, from which he runs the department of government efficiency (DOGE) and is regularly seen in the Oval Office itself. (However, a federal judge ruled this week that the Musk-led DOGE’s shutdown of USAID likely violated the US constitution, and ordered the administration to reverse some of the actions taken to dismantle the agency.)

Mark Twain would have felt at home – and yet not impressed – had he lived today.

Changing empires

Where the landscape looks most different today is our geopolitical context. The US in the Gilded Age was an up-and-coming force, but was not yet the dominant world power.

From 1865 to 1873, its industrial production would increase by 75%, putting the US ahead of every other nation save Britain in manufacturing output. Its economic advance, achieved under a security blanket of protectionism, created an enormous internal market for capitalist growth. Economists and economic historians differ on how influential the tariffs were, as they still do today.

Again, this sounds familiar, but the tariffs of the 19th century were mainly introduced as part of internal political machinations, seeking to bind voters to one party or the other. For Trump they are, more significantly, bargaining chips in a geopolitical contest.

Economists and economic historians differ on how influential the tariffs were, as they still do today.
Justin Lane/AAP

China, the world’s second biggest economy, is the true enemy in this regard. In the 1890s, China was the site of the dying Qing Empire, with Britain the dominant world force.

In the 1890s, reporters from the world’s newspapers did not hang on every unnuanced word from a US president. Today is very different. The US president is the controversial leader of the “free world”, closely watched by all. He incites the inward-looking anxieties of a fractious republic at a moment when the so-called “unipolar order” (where one state is by far the most powerful) is disintegrating. He is trying to sustain America’s role, since the fall of the Soviet Union, as the undisputed, number-one power in the world.

In 1901, another American president marked the end of the Gilded Age. He was young, highly intelligent, Harvard educated and cosmopolitan. He had ideas about how to make America great, yet respected in the world. His name was Theodore Roosevelt, and he became president by accident.

Theodore Roosevelt, who became president by accident in 1901, sought to limit the power of those ‘malefactors of great wealth’ who thrived in the Gilded Age.
AAP

It took an assassin’s bullet to the stomach of his predecessor, William McKinley, to give momentum to the post-Gilded Age progressive era. Roosevelt sought to corral and limit the power of those “malefactors of great wealth” who thrived in the Gilded Age. But he also wanted the US to become – and remain – a world-leading imperial power. He succeeded.

Like Trump, Roosevelt bypassed Congress to use the powers inherent in the presidency. Executive orders flowed out: for example, to protect forests for future use and create more national parks. The influence of people of great wealth was checked to some degree, though not enough.

Roosevelt railed against trusts and Standard Oil was broken up by the Supreme Court, but the wealthy industrialists continued to be influential. Congress rebelled against his iconoclasm after the midterm elections of 1906 and denied him the money to do many further reforms, including his idea of making his conservation agenda a worldwide movement.

This 1889 cartoon depicts powerful businessmen towering over senators, symbolising corporate dominance in politics.
The Bosses of the Senate by Joseph Keppler, Puck/Wikimedia Commons

Unqualified to lead a major world power

Unlike Theodore Roosevelt, Trump is probably the least qualified figure to lead a major world power in living memory, in my opinion. In his first term, he was notoriously “difficult to brief on critical national security matters”, according to the New York Times. “He has a short attention span and rarely, if ever, reads intelligence reports, relying instead on conservative media and his friends for information.”

In his 2018 book The Fifth Risk, journalist Michael Lewis showed how much Trump’s hubris and disregard of detail – which was reflected in his first-term transition team – affected his first administration’s ability to be informed about the workings of the US government and prepare to manage risk. “At most of the federal agencies, there were no real briefings,” a former White House official who closely watched the transition process of the first Trump presidency told him. “They were basically for show.”

But who could replace Trump? The US is replete with Republican politicians happy to say yes to Trumpism. They are anxious and ambitious to take control of the MAGA movement in the 2028 presidential contest.

I like to call them Trumpistas, because Trump’s first term as president often seemed to me like the antics of a banana republic’s leader. Today, one thinks of Argentina’s showman president Javier Milei. In Pope Francis’s words, Milei is in the category of “messianic clowns”.

Protesters outside the Department of Justice in Washington.
Jacquelyn Martin/AAP

Just as Milei has acted like a crazy showman, Trump played at being an ill-informed expert in his first term. During the unfolding COVID-19 epidemic he acted as a kind of chief medical advisor to the nation, repeatedly advocating non-remedies like hydroxychloroquine, on national television, while the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, had to sit near him and endure. Trump appointed many unqualified people to administrative roles and refused to take advice from the presidential transition teams. It was chaos.

So far, Trump’s second time around is only more hectic, more determined, more focused and, I believe, more dangerous in his policies for the world.

Twain was a wise man. He understood we should never expect things to be the same the next time around. Instead, we should seek both the similarities and the differences in any era, to help us make more informed choices about the politicians we elect in the present.

Like the historian who named the first Gilded Age, we should watch for the movement of underlying waves (or trajectories) of power and class within history. The excesses of that era were followed by a reactive wave of progressive reform, from 1900 to 1920. It remains to be seen how Trump’s Gilded Age might rhyme with the first – and what might follow. More

Across its nearly 250-year history, the United States has never had an official language. On March 1, U.S. President Donald Trump changed that when he signed an executive order designating English as the country’s sole official language. The order marks a fundamental rupture from the American goverment’s long-standing approach to languages.

“From the founding of our Republic, English has been used as our national language,” Trump’s order states. “It is in America’s best interest for the federal government to designate one — and only one — official language.”

This new order also revokes a language-access provision contained in an earlier executive order from 2000 that aimed to improve access to services for people with limited English. Federal agencies now seem to have no obligation to provide vital information in other languages.

Despite some reactions in the New York Times, Washington Post and elsewhere, it remains unclear whether Trump’s executive order will face legal or political challenges. Amid continual attacks from the Trump administration on established norms, this decree may pass with relatively little resistance, despite a deeper meaning that extends far beyond language.

Multilingual realities and monolingual fantasies

The U.S. has a long multilingual history, beginning with the hundreds of Indigenous languages indelibly linked to these lands. The secondary layer are colonial languages and their variants, including French in Louisiana and Spanish in the Southwest. In all historical periods, immigrant languages from around the world have added substantially to the linguistic mix that makes up the U.S.

Today, New York is one of world’s most linguistically diverse cities, with other U.S. coastal cities not far behind. According to data from the Census Bureau, one-fifth of all Americans can speak two or more languages. The social, economic and cognitive benefits of bilingualism are well-established, and there is no data to support the assertion that speaking more than one language threatens the integrity of the nation state.

A building in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City, which hosts speakers of diverse South Asian languages and their associations, April 17, 2017.
(Ross Perlin)

English has long functioned as a pragmatic lingua franca for the U.S. Yet an American tendency towards ideological monolingualism is gathering momentum.

The emergence of Spanish as the nation’s second language, with well over 40 million speakers, has generated a particular anxiety. During the last few decades, more than 30 American states have enshrined English as an official language.

Linguistic insecurity

The March 1 executive order is a crowning achievement for the “English-only movement.” Trump has tapped directly into this sentiment and its xenophobic preoccupations, rooted in white fragility and white supremacy.

In 2015, during his first bid for the Oval Office, Trump reprimanded Jeb Bush, the bilingual former governor of Florida, during a televised debate, stating: “This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish.”

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2024, Trump gave voice to his own linguistic insecurity:

“We have languages coming into our country. We don’t have one instructor in our entire nation that can speak that language…These are languages — it’s the craziest thing — they have languages that nobody in this country has ever heard of. It’s a very horrible thing.”

Beyond the brazen untruths and intentional exaggerations, such statements only reflect weakness and fear. The March 1 executive order states that “a nationally designated language is at the core of a unified and cohesive society.”

It is in fact a sign of strength that Americans have not needed such a mandate until now, effectively navigating their complex multilingual reality without top-down legislation.

English around the world

It’s instructive to compare the language policy of the U.S. with other settler colonial contexts where English is dominant.

In neighbouring Canada, the 1969 Official Languages Act grants equal status to English and French — two languages that were brought European migrants — and requires all federal institutions to provide services in both languages on request. Revealingly, only 50 years later did Canada finally pass an Indigenous Languages Act granting modest recognition to the original languages of the land.

While Australia’s constitution specifies no official language, the government promotes English as the “national language,” and then offers to translate some web pages into other languages.

Navigating the distinction between de facto and de jure, New Zealand has taken a more considered approach. Recognizing that English is unthreatened and secure, even without legal backing, New Zealand legislators have focused their attention elsewhere. Te reo Māori was granted official language status in 1987, followed by New Zealand Sign Language in 2006.

Even the colonial centre and origin point for the global spread of English, the United Kingdom assumes a nuanced position on language policy. Welsh and Irish have both received some official recognition, while in Scotland, the Bòrd na Gàidhlig continues to advocate for official recognition of Gaelic.

People walk past a sign encouraging them to order a coffee in Māori, during annual Māori language week in Wellington, New Zealand, in September 2024.
(AP Photo/Charlotte GrahamMcLay)

Principle and practice

Trump’s recent executive order is both practical and symbolic.

Practically, it remains unclear what the order means for Spanish in Puerto Rico, the Indigenous languages of Hawaii and Alaska — which have received official recognition — for American Sign Language and for all the multilingual communities that make up the nation.

Language access can be a matter of life or death.

Interpretation in courts, hospitals and schools is a fundamental human right. No one should be barred from accessing vital services simply because they don’t speak English, whether that’s when dealing with a judge, a doctor or a teacher. The consequences of government agencies abandoning their already limited efforts at translation and interpretation could have huge ramifications.

Symbolically, Trump’s order is red meat for his MAGA followers. Associating national integrity with the promotion of one language above others might seem to reflect American exceptionalism, but it in fact destroys the cultural and linguistic diversity that makes the U.S. exceptional.

Ironically, this executive order brings the U.S. into alignment with most of the world’s other nation-states — albeit not the ones that speak English as their first language — which seek to impose the standardized language of an ethnic majority on all of their citizens. The consequences can be both polarizing and homogenizing.

Most of the world’s people are resolutely multilingual and are only becoming more so. Americans will not stop speaking, writing and signing in languages other than English because of an executive order. The linguistic dynamism of the U.S. is essential to the country’s social fabric. It should be nurtured and defended. More