The Week Ahead - the impact of what it means to be America under Trump 2.0

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance - March 23, 2025

This week, the impact of what it means to be America under Trump 2.0 will continue to hit hard. One important indicator: Tourism to the U.S. is on the decline.

Foreign countries including Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, and the U.K. have issued traveling warnings to their citizens who are considering trips to the United States. The United Kingdom warned of arrest or detention for those who violate the rules for entering the U.S., noting authorities “set and enforce” entry rules strictly. Finland and Denmark warned that trans people may encounter special difficulties, since the U.S. no longer recognizes their existence.

I can remember checking carefully before we traveled to destinations in Central America or ahead of a trip to Jordan. When I was doing that, it never occurred to me that the United States of America might be on a list of countries people are warned about. It’s a shock. It’s an embarrassment. And strangest of all, despite the reporting, Trump seems to be getting off scot-free, despite the economic ripples a downswing in tourism is certain to cause, let alone the additional hit our global reputation takes.

The thing is, these countries know. They understand what everything Trump is doing adds up to, even if the frogs here at home are letting themselves get boiled before they realize how hot the water is. Will Republicans in Congress ever wake up?

A French scientist was blocked from entering the country because he had criticized Trump in private messages. It’s important to note that at the border, before entry into the United States, there are far fewer restrictions on searches the government can conduct, including of your electronic devices.

Then there is the case of a Canadian, Jasmine Mooney, who was detained by ICE for two weeks. She wrote in an opinion piece for the Guardian, “There was no explanation, no warning. One minute, I was in an immigration office talking to an officer about my work visa, which had been approved months before and allowed me, a Canadian, to work in the US. The next, I was told to put my hands against the wall, and patted down like a criminal before being sent to an Ice detention center without the chance to talk to a lawyer.”

Her situation seems unprecedented, and her courage in speaking out, which likely means she’ll be unable to reenter the U.S. to work as she had hoped, really matters. Democracy does die in darkness; it’s important that we understand just how far the excesses in this administration go. Moody said no one would answer her questions about what was going on while she was held in a cell for two weeks—someone with a visa, who instead of being returned to Canada because customs had questions about the validity of her documentation, was held in custody in what she characterized as a freezing cell where she was given an aluminum blanket to cover herself. This sort of treatment of people who enter the country without documentation is appalling. Now, even people who believe they have a legal right to enter are at risk. Moody told me over the weekend, “I choose to use my voice — because remaining silent will never bring progress to this world. Change begins when we dare to speak the truths others are too afraid to say, especially when they challenge the system.”

A Punk rock band from the U.K. encountered similar problems:

“Members of punk bank UK Subs were detained upon entering the US yesterday. After 24 hours of being locked up, with little to eat or drink and no sleep we’re sent back to London. They had the correct paperwork for the visit and can only conclude that their public statements regarding the tangerine toddler resulted in this treatment. Everyone not American whose need to travel to the US is not essential should avoid the country until this reginm is gone.”

Parents in Peru have decided it’s not safe to send the children to the United States on a study trip…An exchange program [has] been working together and sending students to Peru for the last 13 years, but “everything changed with this election.”…

So much for the important bonds forged between the United States and other countries and the soft diplomacy and business development that result from these early interactions. It’s more than just a trip canceled here and a school program on hold there, it is the slow but steady erosion of global trust in the United States in progress. It takes decades to build those relationships but apparently only a few months to strip them away.

Meantime, Trump is trying to take out the lawyers who have been successfully taking him to court. First you kill all the lawyers, and that’s where Trump has set his sights with a succession of executive orders that resulted in the Paul Weiss firm entering into an agreement with the White House that has sent heads spinning in the legal profession. If he succeeds in intimidating lawyers, there will be no one to challenge unlawful action.

Now Trump has ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to go directly after lawyers who refuse to bend the knee, and it’s yet another measure of how completely unsuited she is for the job that she’s still smiling and showing up on Fox News to support the president’s blatant efforts to still the practice of democracy. The ironically titled “Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court” presidential memorandum bears yesterday’s date and orders Bondi to:

• ask courts to use their authority to impose sanctions against lawyers or to refer them for disciplinary action before their state bar if she believes they’ve engaged in misconduct in litigation during the last 8 years

• hold law firms accountable for whatever she deems “ethical misconduct” committed by associates or partners, a step that could cause firms who are concerned to discontinue pro bono work, which is essential to many of the legal challenges being taken on against the administration by pro-democracy groups who rely on their support and resources

• work with the White House to rescind security clearance for lawyers with firms on her naughty list, which means those firms can’t work on cases where classified information or documents are involved and will cost them clients

Note the broad discretion implicit in all of these directives: Bondi is free to use this authority to curry favor with Trump by going after whomever he perceives as an enemy. His orders to her are clear.

This is just one snapshot of where we are at the moment. The larger question that looms is, will we still be a democracy when this is over; are we still one now? One answer comes from a global watchdog that has suggested the United States could lose democracy status in its next report. “If it continues like this, the United States will not score as a democracy when we release [next year's] data,” Staffan Lindberg, head of the Varieties of Democracy project, at Sweden's University of Gothenburg wrote. The Project involves a serious study of democracies worldwide, involving 202 countries and 31 million data points, with work done by 4,200 scholars and contributors, who measure 600 different attributes of democracies.

It’s a disturbing picture as we enter the week ahead, but one where Americans are continuing to wake up and express alarm for where we are headed. All across the country, plans are in progress for protests on April 5, and if you haven’t already heard about a local one, you’ll be able to find information online or even start one of your own if you’re so inclined. We are the guardrails. We are significant. Trump can only disband democracy is we accept what he does and stay silent.

Yesterday on Bluesky, someone posted a 1945 “War Department education film” from the National Archives, circa 1945. It’s “Don’t Be A Sucker” and it explains how bullies divide people in order to take control of a country, using the obvious example at that time of Hitler and Nazi Germany. It’s a concept that we are all familiar with, but you may find this helpful for sharing with others who haven’t quite made the connection. There is something about its vintage World War II feel that lured me into watching the entire 22-minute clip and I feel better able to explain what’s going on today in America after doing so. Many thanks to the poster who shared it originally.