In Trump’s America, Every Cut Is A Collapse

Sometimes late at night, when the house is still, I scroll through the news for the latest stories before I finally fall asleep. This is not the healthiest thing to do, because I end up feeling the weight of it pressing in. Another program gutted. Another protection gone. Another truth silenced. But I refuse to look away.

Last night, just before I put my phone down, I remembered what a Holocaust survivor once said: evil doesn’t arrive all at once. Evil comes step by step. And I can’t help but recognize that we are living through those steps right now.

I know I’m not alone in feeling overwhelmed. I was just talking with a neighbor about everything happening, who sighed and said, “It’s hard to keep up. None of it makes sense anymore.” I told her that it does make sense, not in a comforting way, but in a terrifying way. Because every cut, every silence, every program dismantled is part of a pattern. And if we don’t see the pattern, we won’t stop it.

Every time Donald Trump takes something away, it doesn’t just disappear here. The effects go much farther than our borders. It shakes the whole world. And desperate nations, like desperate people, do desperate things.

This isn’t about America thinking it’s the center of the universe. It’s about the reality that the world order is fragile. Cut one thread, and the whole net starts to unravel. And by the time we see the big tear, it will already be too late.

For decades, even when America stumbled, there was still a sense that we played the role of stabilizer. Not perfectly. Not always honorably. But there was balance. There was a net strong enough to catch us before we fell into chaos. Trump has been cutting that net thread by thread. And every single cut doesn’t just weaken America. It weakens the world. And it puts everyone at risk. It puts our health at risk. It puts our safety at risk. And it puts our freedom at risk.

I think about that when I read that at Voice of America, more than 532 journalists and staff are losing their jobs. That’s not just a payroll decision. That’s silencing one of the only global voices still broadcasting into countries where free press doesn’t exist. VOA has been on the air since 1942, countering Nazi propaganda, Soviet disinformation, and later extremist messaging from Al-Qaeda and ISIS. When those reporters are gone, it won’t be silence that fills the air. It will be lies.

And we need to stop and ask ourselves: why would anyone want to cut this program? Why would a president want fewer journalists telling the truth to people living under dictatorships? Why would he weaken one of the few tools America has to fight disinformation abroad? The answer isn’t about budgets. It’s about power. Because when truth is silenced, lies don’t just win overseas. They win here, too. And let’s be honest: cutting off the voice that challenges authoritarian propaganda serves one person most, Vladimir Putin, and others like him. Every story VOA doesn’t tell is another story Putin gets to write unchecked. And Trump has already shown us which side he’s on. So while he is working on silencing the truth worldwide, you can’t help but wonder if he has bigger plans to continue stopping the spread of truthful information here, too.

He isn’t just trying to destabilize the truth abroad. He’s trying to physically destabilize the housing market here at home. At the HOME housing program, Trump wants to eliminate a grant that since 1992 has built or repaired over 1.3 million affordable homes, nearly half in rural districts. Appalachia. Kentucky. Tennessee. Small towns that already struggle. I think of the parents I’ve met who tell me how a safe home changed everything for their kids. Without it, families fall back into housing insecurity. And when communities lose stability, they become easier to manipulate. Desperation is fertile soil for extremism.

And again, we need to ask: why would he do this? Why would a president target a program that keeps roofs over the heads of struggling families in red states as much as blue ones? Why cut something that has quietly stabilized entire communities for decades? The answer isn’t about budgets. It’s about control. When families are desperate, they’re easier to scare. Easier to divide. Easier to use.

The same playbook shows up in security. At the Department of Homeland Security, Trump cut $800,000 in prevention grants in Minnesota. That money helped the state’s Department of Public Safety and Hennepin County identify threats before they became tragedies. Weeks later, a shooter walked into a school. Children died. I can’t stop thinking about the parents in that community, who will always wonder if the funding that was cut could have stopped the nightmare before it began. That’s not coincidence. That’s consequence.

And again, we have to ask: why would he do this? Why would any president strip away programs designed to keep children safe from violence? Why weaken the very systems that can spot danger before it explodes? The answer isn’t about money. It’s about creating chaos. Because chaos breeds fear, and fear makes people easier to control. And if we are really being honest, he does not care about the American people.

And we’ve seen it before. In 2018, Trump dismantled the NSC pandemic team. In 2019, he slashed the CDC’s presence in China from dozens to almost none. He canceled the $200 million PREDICT program that trained scientists to spot new viruses. So when COVID struck, America was flying blind. That wasn’t bad luck. That was a choice.

National security hasn’t been spared either. Tulsi Gabbard, his Director of National Intelligence, publicly exposed the name of an undercover CIA officer. The last time this happened, the Valerie Plame affair, it crippled U.S. intelligence operations for years. This time, it sent a new message: protecting Trump’s politics matters more than protecting national security, and more than protecting the lives of our operatives. I think of the countless nameless officers whose lives depend on secrecy, who now have to wonder if their own leaders will betray them.

And then, of course, there’s the ballot box. Trump’s new executive order on voter ID might sound harmless. But studies show over 21 million U.S. citizens lack the required documents like passports or birth certificates. Seniors. Low-income families. Naturalized citizens. Women who changed names after marriage. They’re the ones who will be turned away. I picture my own elderly relatives, or the single mom working two jobs, or the new citizen proud to vote for the first time. Locked out. Silenced. That’s not about protecting elections. That’s about controlling them. Trump knows he’s on thin ice. Every move he’s made has been for himself and his billionaire friends. He knows that his chances of holding power are slim to none with free and fair elections, so he is doing everything he can to make sure that does not happen. Making it harder to vote will give him a huge advantage.

One cut here, another cut there. Each one might look isolated. But when you line them up, they fit together like pieces of a puzzle. And the picture they form is unmistakable: Trump is dismantling every safeguard that holds democracy and stability together.

And the world feels every cut. This week, China and India announced they would rebuild their ties, after years of bitter border conflict. At the same time, Russia is deepening cooperation with Iran and North Korea, trading weapons, energy, and technology. Authoritarian states are banding together. They see the cracks. They see America stepping back. And they are filling the space.

We’ve lived this story before. After World War I, the United States retreated inward. The League of Nations, meant to preserve peace, collapsed without us. That vacuum helped fascism rise in the 1930s. And the world paid in blood. After World War II, we tried something different. Through the Marshall Plan, America invested billions to rebuild Europe. Not out of charity. Out of strategy. By feeding hungry people and rebuilding economies, we prevented desperate nations from falling into authoritarian hands. That investment kept Western Europe free. During the Cold War, alliances like NATO weren’t just military pacts. They were proof that democracies could stand together. That unity deterred authoritarian expansion for decades.

Now Trump is unraveling that unity. Cutting aid. Silencing journalists. Weakening alliances. Every cut doesn’t just shrink America’s role. It pushes nations into the arms of those eager to rewrite the world order in their image. And by the time those alliances harden, it will be too late to undo them.

Trump has already chosen what side he is on. And he is dragging us all there with him.

And as that Holocaust survivor reminded us: Evil comes step by step. Not all at once. Not in a flood. But in a drip, a silence, a cut. And then another. Until one day it becomes the flood.

But we know where we stand. We are not on Putin’s side. We are not the ones cutting the housing lifeline that keeps families stable. We are not silencing journalists or scientists. We are not closing the ballot box to millions of voters. We are standing on the side of history that believes truth still matters, science still saves lives, prevention is stronger than reaction, and democracy belongs to everyone. The people in power right now may not stand with us. But history always turns on the moment when ordinary people refuse to let the net collapse.

And yet, even in the middle of all these cuts, there are signs of resistance. At the CDC, scientists staged a walkout after leaders resigned in protest. Not anonymous bureaucrats, but people with decades of experience, doctors who have guided this country through outbreaks, who have saved lives most of us will never know about. They could have stayed quiet. They could have protected their paychecks. Instead, they walked out.

And here’s the thing: you probably didn’t see it on the evening news. Because stories about resistance don’t get the same airtime as stories about collapse. But it happened. People on the inside said no. They put their careers on the line to defend science, to defend truth, to defend us. And that, at least, is good news. Proof that while Trump keeps cutting, not everyone is willing to go along.

So what do we do? We start by refusing to look away. Every time there’s a cut, we name it. Every time there’s a silence, we fill it with truth. We ask the question out loud: why would he do this? And we don’t stop until everyone around us is asking it too. Because once people start asking why, they start to see the pattern.

We remember that evil doesn’t arrive in a flood. Evil comes step by step. Which means we have to push back step by step. This isn’t about one big heroic act. It’s about small acts of courage, repeated until they add up to something stronger than the fear Trump is trying to create.

That is how we hold the line. That is how we remind the world, and ourselves, that the net hasn’t broken yet. The story of America has never been written by the people who gave up. It’s been written by the people who chose to stand, even when the ground shook beneath them.

I still believe in America, and I hope you do too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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