In A Global And American Political Scene Where Transformations Are Accelerating Until They Almost Outpace The Ability To Interpret Them, And Where The Rules That Governed The Democratic System For Decades Are Breaking, The Book By The American Media Figure Brian Tyler Cohen Published In 2026 By HarperCollins】 Under The Title “The Day After: How To Wield Power In A Post- Trump World The Day After: How To Wield Power In A Post- Trump World” Does Not Come As Just Another Book, But As A Political Action Manual And A Manifesto For The Forces Of American Democracy, Telling Them That What Happened Is Not A Temporary Deviation That Can Be Corrected By Returning To Before 2016, But A Complete Fall From The Cliff Of Democracy That Requires Building A New Republic Not Restoring An Old One.
The Book Begins Where Most Other Books End. The Foreword Written By Lawyer Marc Elias, One Of The Defenders Of Voting Rights In America, Leaves No Room For Illusion For The Reader. It Lays Out The Whole Truth Without Embellishment About Trump’s Return To Power In The 2024 Elections And What Followed. The Second Term, In Elias’s Description, Is Not A Repetition Of The First But Its Darker And More Complete Version. An Old Authoritarian President Surrounded By A Narrow Circle Of Cowards And Sycophants, Without Safety Valves, Without Adults In The Room To Restrain The Impulse, Without Advisors Who Dare To Say No. And More Dangerous Than The President Himself Is The Transformation Of The Republican Party In Congress From A Constitutional Branch Equal To The Executive Branch, Whose Mission Is To Oversee The President And Levy Taxes And Declare War, Into A Compliant Tool Waiting For A Post On Social Media To Execute. Here The Separation Of Powers Collapses Not By A Presidential Decree But By A Voluntary Legislative Resignation.
And The Collapse Does Not Stop At The Walls Of The State. Elias Monitors How The Fortresses Of Civil Society That Were Thought To Be The Last Line Of Defense Fell. The Largest Law Firms Founded To Protect The Rule Of Law Rushed To Strike Deals Worth Hundreds Of Millions To Provide Free Services To The Administration, And The Major Media Institutions That Were Supposed To Be The Darkness In Which Democracy Dies When They Go Silent, Accepted To Die In Bright Sunlight Through Sham Financial Settlements That Filled The President’s Coffers. This Opening Picture Puts The Reader In Front Of The Central Hypothesis Of The Book Upon Which Cohen Will Build All His Chapters: America Is No Longer On The Brink Of Authoritarianism, But Has Already Fallen.
And From This Heavy Legal Foreword, Brian Cohen Moves In The Introduction He Called The Prologue To A Novelistic Scene That Is Almost Cinematic, But Realistic To The Point Of Cruelty. He Takes Us To Late January Of 2029, To Two Parallel Places. The First Is Mar-A-Lago, Where Former President Donald Trump Sits In His Golden Ballroom, Not As A Statesman But As A Fading Entertainment Phenomenon, Suffering From The Most Dangerous Thing A Person Like Him Can Suffer, Which Is The Waning Of Attention. The Lights Go Out, The Crowds Shrink, But The Cracks He Created In The American Structure Are Still Bleeding. And The Second Place Is Washington, Where A New Democratic President Stands In The White House After All Manifestations Of Golden Fakery Have Been Removed, The Offices Bare, The Walls Stripped, As If The House Itself Needs To Be Cleansed.
This Visual Contrast Is Not A Literary Decoration, But A Diagnosis Of An Internal Conflict That Will Intensify Inside The Democratic Camp On The Day After. A Conflict Between Two Currents. A Current Of Traditional Veterans Who See Their Mission As Healing Wounds And Turning The Page And Returning To Old Washington Based On Decency And Consensus And Calm, And A Current Of New Rebels Who Realize That Return Is Impossible And That Trying To Turn Back The Clock Is Political Naivety That Will Allow The New Fascism To Return Stronger. Here Cohen Places His Message That Will Echo In Every Chapter: Protecting Democracy Is Not Done Through Restoration But Through Building Impenetrable Fortresses That Are Impossible To Destroy, And The Success Of Progressives Requires Them To Be Both A Fox And A Lion At The Same Time, A Fox To Discern Traps And A Lion To Frighten Wolves. Hesitation, In A World Where Rules Have Been Broken, Is Not A Virtue But Suicide.
This Machiavellian Duality Is What Explains The Subtitle Of The Book: How To Wield Power. For The Book Does Not Ask How We Win Elections, But How We Wield Power When We Win, And It Is A Question That Democrats Have Not Seriously Asked For Decades. They Have Become Accustomed To Being The Party Of Moral Reform That Comes To Clean Up The Mess Left By Republicans, Then Loses Because It Fears To Appear Strong. The American Voter, As Cohen Observes With Psychological Precision, Prefers A Wrong But Strong And Decisive Leader, Over A Right But Hesitant Leader Worried About Violating Norms. This Paradox Is What Turned Democrats Into A Permanent Cleanup Crew.
And To Prove That What We See Is Not A Coincidence Nor The Product Of Trump’s Individual Genius, Cohen Returns In The Foundational Chapters To Half A Century Of Systematic Planning By The American Right. He Does Not Start From 2015 But From The Forties And Fifties Of The Last Century, From The Era Of McCarthyism, From Senator Joseph McCarthy And His Infamous Legal Advisor Roy Cohn Who Would Later Become Donald Trump’s First Mentor In Manhattan. There A Poisonous Mixture Of Lies And Bullying And Exploitation Of Fear Of Communism And Foreigners And Defamation Of Institutions Under The Cover Of Fake Patriotism Was Established. Then The Sixties Of The Twentieth Century Came Like A Resounding Earthquake That Shook The Pillars Of White Conservative America: The Civil Rights Act Of 1964, The Voting Rights Act Of 1965, Medicare And Medicaid, Women’s Liberation Movements, And Historic Supreme Court Decisions Such As Griswold V. Connecticut In 1965 And Roe V. Wade In 1973.
These Liberal Reforms Are What Awakened The Forces Of Reaction. After The Shock Of Barry Goldwater’s Fall In 1964, The American Oligarchy Realized That The Electoral Battle Alone Is Not Enough. And Here Emerges The Pivotal Event That Cohen Places At The Heart Of His Narrative: The Secret Lewis Powell Memo Of 1971 Addressed To The U.S. Chamber Of Commerce. That Document Was Like A Declaration Of Organized Class War Calling On The Business Sector To Launch A Counterattack To Regain Control Of Universities And Media Platforms And Publishing Houses And Courts By Pumping Huge Amounts Of Money To Create Right-Wing Think Tanks. From The Womb Of That Memo The Heritage Foundation And The Cato Institute Were Born, And From Them Project 2025 Was Born Which Laid Out A Detailed Plan To Politicize The Civil Service And Destroy The Department Of Education And Expand The Theory Of The Unitary Executive To The Limits Of Absolute Dictatorship.
The Current American Moment Cannot Be Understood, As Brian Tyler Cohen Sees It, Without Going Back Long Before Trump, To The Moment When The American Oligarchy Decided That The Liberal Democracy That Formed After World War II No Longer Served Its Interests. This Is The Essence Of The First Chapter Which Bears A Significant Title: The Long Game. Trump, In Cohen’s Reading, Is Not An Innovator Nor A Political Genius, But The Lucky Heir And The Last Beneficiary Of An Ideological Investment Project That Lasted Fifty Years Without Interruption, A Project Not Measured By The Logic Of Four-Year Elections But By The Logic Of Structural Transformation.
Cohen Returns To The Forties And Fifties Of The Last Century, To An Era That Today’s Generation Reads Only As A Footnote In History Books. The Era Of Senator Joseph McCarthy And His Young Infamous Legal Advisor Roy Cohn. There, In Televised Hearings And Political Inquisitions, The Recipe That Trump Would Later Reproduce Without Notable Change Was Established: Creating A Mysterious Internal Enemy, Exaggerating Its Existential Danger, Accusing Federal Institutions And Universities And The Press Of Treason, And Using Fake Patriotism As A Cover For Bullying And Defamation And Lies. The Irony That Cohen Captures Cleverly Is That Roy Cohn Himself Would Become Two Decades Later The First Mentor Of Young Donald Trump In Manhattan, Teaching Him How Never To Apologize, And How To Attack The Judge And The Journalist And The Prosecutor, And How To Turn A Losing Case Into A Media Show. McCarthyism Did Not Die, But Moved From The Senate Chamber To Trump Tower.
Then The Sixties Of The Twentieth Century Came As An Earthquake From Which White Conservative America Has Not Recovered To This Day. Cohen Describes It As The Decade That Shook All Certainties. The Civil Rights Act Of 1964 Which Ended Legal Racial Segregation, And The Voting Rights Act Of 1965 Which Gave Blacks The Actual Right To Vote, And Medicare And Medicaid Legislation That Brought The State Into The Treatment Room, And Women’s Liberation Movements And Demands For Equality, And The Beginnings Of The Gay Rights Movement, And Victories Of The Liberal Supreme Court That Established The Right To Privacy In Griswold V. Connecticut In 1965 Then The Right To Abortion In Roe V. Wade In 1973. For A Wide Sector Of Conservative Whites And Businessmen, These Were Not Reforms But A Cultural And Demographic And Economic Coup Threatening An Old Hierarchy.
Here Comes The Strategic Transformation That Cohen Considers The True Birth Moment Of What We See Today. After The Crushing Defeat Of Right-Wing Candidate Barry Goldwater In The 1964 Elections, Money Leaders Realized That Winning The White House Is Not Enough If Universities And Media And Courts Remain In The Hands Of Liberals. In This Context Lawyer Lewis Powell, Who Would Later Become A Justice On The Supreme Court, Wrote His Famous Secret Memo In 1971 To The American Chamber Of Commerce. The Memo Was Like A War Plan. It Calls On Businessmen To Stop Complaining And Start Systematic Investment In Controlling Ideas. It Says Clearly: We Must Invade Universities, And Establish Our Research Centers, And Control Media Platforms And Publishing Houses And Courts.
From This Memo The Intellectual Empire We Know Today Was Born. The Heritage Foundation In 1973, The Cato Institute, The Manhattan Institute, The Federalist Society, And A Dark Money Network That Pumped Billions Of Dollars Over Decades. This Network Did Not Just Produce Research Papers, But Produced Judges And Officials And Ready-Made Legislation. And Its Logical Culmination Is Project 2025 Which Cohen Details Precisely. It Is Not Just An Electoral Statement But A Detailed Plan Of Nine Hundred Pages To Dismantle The Federal Civil Service And Turn It Into An Army Of Loyalists, And Destroy The Department Of Education, And Revive The Theory Of The Unitary Executive That Grants The President Absolute Royal Power To Do Whatever He Wants Without Oversight.
And This Long Path Reaches Its Peak In Control Of The Supreme Court. Cohen Explains How The Current Conservative Majority Of Six To Three Is Not A Reflection Of Popular Division, But The Product Of A Precise Ideological Selection Process That Lasted Forty Years. And This Court Is What Paved The Way For The Latest Coup Through Its Catastrophic Decision In Trump V. United States In 2024 Which Granted The President Absolute Criminal Immunity For His Official Acts. A Decision That Turned The President From An Elected Employee Into A King Above The Law, Which Cohen Considers A Constitutional Death Certificate That Cannot Be Fixed By Restoration.
In Contrast, Cohen Dedicates The Second Chapter Titled The Wrong Game To A Scathing Critique Of The Democratic Party’s Path From Bill Clinton To Joe Biden. He Sees That Democrats Fell Captive To A Deadly Myth He Called The Third Way And National Consensus. They Imagined That Offering Concessions To Republicans And Adopting Centrist Policies And Caring About Institutional Norms Would Be Met With Mutual Respect. However History Proved The Exact Opposite. The More Democrats Moved Toward The Center, The More Republicans Moved Toward Scorched Earth.
Cohen Gives Irrefutable Examples. Barack Obama’s Economic Stimulus Package In 2009 At The Height Of The Financial Crisis Received Zero Republican Votes Although It Saved The Economy, And The Health Care Law Obamacare Received Zero Republican Votes Although It Was Originally A Conservative Idea. Even Ordinary Budgets Turned Into A Weapon Of Obstruction. While Mitch McConnell Openly Declared That His Sole Goal Was To Make Obama A One-Term President, Democrats Were Searching For Moderate Republicans Who No Longer Existed.
And Cohen Analyzes Psychologically And Politically The Paradox Of The Strong Man Versus The Weak Man That Governed American Elections. The Republican President Exercises Power Relentlessly, Issues Executive Orders, Demolishes Wings Of The White House, Grants Comprehensive Pardons, And Does Not Care If Courts Later Overturn His Decision. While The Democratic President Flounders In Calculations Of Fear Of Judicial Failure And Reaction Of The New York Times And Anger Of The Supposed Centrist Voter, Avoiding Necessary Battles Under The Pretext Of Protecting Democracy, Appearing As A Hesitant And Feeble Figure. And The Voter, As He Says, Prefers Even A Wrong But Decisive Leader, Over A Right Leader Who Apologizes For His Strength.
This Strategy Turned Democrats Into What He Calls The Cleanup Crew. They Are Elected After Every Republican Disaster To Fix The Economy And Restore Alliances And Reduce The Deficit, Then Lose The Midterms Because The Voter Does Not Reward Who Cleaned The Mess But Judges Who Governs Now. And From Here Cohen Calls To Break The Vicious Circle And Abandon The Moral Muzzle That Democrats Placed On Their Mouths. If The Opponent Has Broken The Rules Repeatedly, Then Clinging To Them Is Not A Virtue But Suicide. What Is Required Is Not That Democrats Become Republicans, But That They Understand That Power Is Not A Flaw And That Using Tools Of Power Such As Abolishing The Filibuster And Expanding The Court And Imposing Fair Taxes Is A Defense Of The Republic Not An Attack On It.
Brian Tyler Cohen Moves In The Heart Of His Book From The Long Ideological History To The Momentary Dissection Of The Republic As It Is Emptied From Within, And Begins Where The American Constitution Itself Begins, From Article One Which The Founding Fathers Dedicated To Congress. The Constitution Does Not Begin With The President Nor The Court, But With The Legislative Authority That Alone Was Granted The Right To Impose Taxes And Draw The Budget And Regulate Commerce And Declare War. However What Cohen Documents In Chapter Three Titled Blank Checks And Balances Is That This Article Has Turned Into An Abandoned Document, And That The Republican Congress Voluntarily Abandoned Being An Equal Branch To Become Merely An Office For Certifying The President’s Posts On Social Media.
The Chapter Opens With An Incident That Seems Marginal But Reveals The Essence Of The Transformation. Elizabeth MacDonough, The Nonpartisan Official In Charge Of Parliamentary Rules In The Senate, Found Herself Alone Standing As A Legal Bulwark Against A Huge Tax Cut Package That The Trump Administration Wanted To Pass At Any Cost. MacDonough Was Not A Progressive Activist Nor A Political Opponent, But A Professional Employee Guarding Procedural Rules. Nevertheless Loud Populist Voices Demanded Her Immediate Dismissal Merely For Doing Her Job, Because Any Respect For Procedures Became In The Logic Of Personal Loyalty Treason. This Moment, As Cohen Sees It, Summarizes A Silent Constitutional Coup. When Adherence To Rules Becomes A Reason For Expulsion, Congress Becomes A Flock With Empty Ideology Granting The President A Blank Check.
And The Erosion Does Not Stop At The Budget. The Book Dives Into A Conflict Of Interests Unparalleled In American History. The Trump Family And Its Associates Did Not Just Benefit From Office, But Turned The Office Itself Into An Investment Platform Through The Gateway Of Cryptocurrencies And Companies Like World Liberty Financial Which Harvested Hundreds Of Millions From Suspicious Foreign Entities Seeking Commercial And Diplomatic Facilitations. While The Oversight Committee In The House Of Representatives, Which Was Supposed To Be The Sword Of Congress, Was Busy Holding Empty Show Sessions That Neither Hold Accountable Nor Review, Because Real Accountability Became A Danger To The Majority Itself. And Cohen Reaches A Bitter Conclusion That The American System Is Approaching A Model He Calls Elected Monarchy Or Deviant Parliamentary System, Where The Executive Power Merges With An Obedient Legislative Majority So The President Becomes A Prime Minister With Absolute Powers Constrained Only By The Date Of The Next Election, A Model That Cannot Be Confronted By Clinging To Dead Partisan Traditions.
And From Congress He Moves To The Fortress That Was Thought To Be The Last, The Supreme Court, In A Chapter Titled The Untouchables. Here Cohen Does Not Settle For Ideological Criticism But Builds His Case Like A Prosecutor. He Begins With A Tragic Real Story Of Citizen Renee Good, A Mother Of Three Children Killed By Bullets Of Masked Agents Of Immigration And Customs Enforcement In The Streets Of Minneapolis During A Raid Targeting Latino Neighborhoods Based On Extremist Security Directives. When The American Civil Liberties Union Rushed To File A Lawsuit Based On The Fourth Amendment Which Protects Citizens From Search And Detention Without A Warrant, The Supreme Court Intervened Through The So-Called Shadow Docket, That Is Without Public Hearings And Without Detailed Legal Justification, To Rescue The Administration’s Policies And Legitimize The Practice.
Cohen Reveals How The Conservative Majority Of Six To Three Does Not Reflect Street Division But Has Turned Into A Closed Political Club. He Narrates How Justice Samuel Alito Raised An Upside-Down Flag Outside His House, Which Is The Symbol Adopted By Supporters Of The January Sixth Insurrection, And How He And His Colleague Clarence Thomas Were Involved In Accepting Gifts And Luxurious Trips Aboard Private Planes And Yachts Worth Millions Of Dollars From Right-Wing Billionaires Such As Harlan Crow, Not To Mention The Involvement Of Ginni Thomas, Thomas’s Wife, In Direct Correspondence With The White House To Pressure For Overturning The Results Of The 2020 Elections. In The Face Of This Deterioration Cohen Invokes The Precedent Of Abraham Lincoln Who Did Not Hesitate To Expand The Court And Restructure It When It Stood As An Obstacle To Abolishing Slavery With The Infamous Dred Scott Decision. And He Proposes A Reform Package That Cannot Be Delayed: Expanding The Number Of Justices, A Fixed Term Of Eight Years Instead Of Lifetime Appointment, Mandatory Retirement At Seventy, And A Strict And Enforceable Judicial Code Of Conduct Applicable To All.
Then He Dives In Chapter Five Titled We The People Into Tools For Emptying Democracy Of Its Content, Which Is Gerrymandering And Voter Suppression. He Takes North Carolina As A Model. There, After Republicans Seized Control Of The State Supreme Court, Maps Were Redrawn In A Way That Guarantees Their Winning An Overwhelming Majority Of Seats Regardless Of Voters’ Votes. Democrats Got Forty-Six Percent Of Votes And Harvested Only A Handful Of Seats, In A Brazen Electoral Engineering Whose Sole Goal Is Protecting The Party From Popular Accountability. And When Democratic Legislators In Texas Tried To Use The Quorum Weapon And Leave The State To Protest, They Faced Threats Of Civil Arrest From Governor Greg Abbott.
In Contrast Cohen Highlights The Counter-Response Led By Democrats In California Led By Gavin Newsom Under The Slogan Fighting Fire With Fire. With A Successful Popular Referendum To Redraw Maps To Confront Republican Deviation, It Proves That Settling For The Role Of The Meek Lamb In Front Of An Opponent Who Tears Up Rules Is Political Suicide. And Manipulation Is Not Limited To Maps But Extends To A Comprehensive War Against Vote By Mail, And Random Purging Of Voter Rolls, And Closing Hundreds Of Polling Centers In Black And Latino Neighborhoods To Create Long Frustrating Lines, And Obstructive Legislation Such As The SAVE Act Which Imposes Expensive Documents For Registration. All Are Strategies Aimed At Reducing Participation Because Increased Voting Historically Benefits Progressive Forces.
And Cohen Concludes This Institutional Trio By Emphasizing That The Solution Is Not Technical But Political. Enacting The Freedom To Vote Act And Reforming The Electoral College Through The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact Are The Lifeline To Restore Consideration To The Slogan We The People, But They Require The Courage To Break The Filibuster, That Procedural Weapon That Turned The Senate Into A Graveyard Of Reforms. For Democracy, As He Says, Is Not Protected By Dead Norms But By Living Decisions.
Brian Tyler Cohen Reaches In The Middle Of His Book The Moment When He Removes The Mask From The Essence Of The Trump Experience, Which Is The Moment Of Stark Contradiction Between Rhetoric And Practice. Chapter Six Bears A Sarcastic Title Not A King, Which Is The Phrase Donald Trump Repeatedly Told Journalists Aboard Air Force One While Affirming That He Works Very Hard For The Good Of The Country And That He Is Not A King Nor A Dictator. However Cohen Places This Phrase Side By Side With What Trump Was Saying In Closed Meetings Of His Cabinet Members, Where He Declares Without Equivocation That He Has The Absolute Right To Do Anything He Sees Fit, Including Sending The Army To Cities And States Governed By His Opponents, Wondering Whether The People Prefer The Dictator As Long As He Imposes Order In His Own Way.
This Imperial Tendency Did Not Remain Words. The Book Documents How It Was Translated Into Material Decisions That Exceed All Constitutional And Engineering And Historical Frameworks. Most Prominent Is The Decision To Demolish The Historic East Wing Of The White House, That Part That Witnessed Two Centuries Of American History, To Make Room For Building A Luxurious Golden Ballroom Costing Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars. The Decision Was Taken Without Legislative Approval And Without Historical Study, In A Crude Visual Imitation Of The Palaces Of Banana Republics That Surround Themselves With Gold To Hide The Flaw Of Their Despotism. The White House Itself, Which Was A Symbol Of The Simple Republic, Turns Into A Mirror Of The New Owner’s Taste.
And The Deviation Does Not Stop At Stone, But Extends To The Most Dangerous Tools Of Power, Which Is The Power Of Presidential Pardon. Pardon In American Constitutional Traditions Was A Last Moral Refuge To Correct Miscarriages Of Justice, Granted Cautiously And For Humanitarian Cases. In Trump’s Era, As Cohen Documents, It Turned Into An Open Letter Of Forgiveness And A Free Exit Card From Prison For All Corrupt Allies And Drug Dealers And Election Forgers, Up To A Comprehensive Pardon For All Those Involved In Storming The Capitol On January Sixth 2021, Including Those Proven To Have Brutally Assaulted Police Officers. Transforming Pardon From A Tool Of Mercy Into A Tool Of Loyalty Empties The Principle Of Equality Before The Law Of Its Content.
And This Path Reaches Its Legal Peak In The Catastrophic Decision Issued By The Supreme Court Granting The President Absolute Criminal Immunity For Any Official Acts He Commits While In Power. Cohen Literally Quotes What The Liberal Justices Wrote In Their Dissenting Opinions: The Decision Theoretically Legalizes The Worst Political Nightmares, From The Possibility Of Issuing Orders To Liquidate Political Opponents To Accepting Brazen Bribes Under The Cover Of Presidential Immunity. Then The Citizen Is No Longer Facing An Elected President, But A King Above Accountability, Which Makes The Phrase Not A King Not A Denial But An Inverted Confession.
And From Monarchy Cohen Moves To Economic Genius. Chapter Seven Titled The Con In The Economy Dismantles One Of The Biggest Lies Upon Which Trump Built His Image. For The Real Estate And Commercial Biography Of The Trump Family, As The Book Mentions, Is Full Of Repeated Bankruptcies And Distressed Debts And Failed Projects, To The Extent That It Does Not Qualify Its Owner To Manage A Small Cafeteria Let Alone The Largest Economy In The World. However The Propaganda Machine And The Success Of His Television Program The Apprentice Succeeded In Crafting A False Aura Of Financial Success, Turning The Struggling Businessman Into A Symbol Of The Genius Of Deals.
When Tracking Real Numbers, This Illusion Collapses. Cohen Clarifies With Numbers That Economic Performance Under Trump Administrations Was The Worst Since The Great Depression Of The Thirties In Terms Of Job Creation, Compared To The Huge Growth Achieved In The Eras Of Barack Obama And Joe Biden. The Jobs That Trump Boasted About Were A Continuation Of An Upward Curve That Began Before Him, Then Declined Due To His Trade War And Chaotic Policies. As For Economic Policy Itself It Was Never Directed At What He Calls The Common Man, But Was A Huge Package Of Tax Cuts Directed Exclusively To The Obscenely Rich Elite And Large Corporations, Financed Through A Frightening Increase In Fiscal Deficit And Depletion Of State Resources.
And More Ironic Is The Weapon Of Tariffs Which Trump Portrays As A Tool To Punish China And Other Countries. Cohen Proves Through Economic Analysis That The Simple American Consumer Is The One Who Pays The Price Of Those Tariffs From His Own Pocket In The Form Of Insane Rise In Prices Of Daily Goods, Exactly Like An Indirect Tax. For Tariffs Are Not Paid By The Foreign Exporter But By The American Importer Who Passes Them To The Consumer. And In The Background Cross-Border Corruption Deals Take Place, Accepting Luxurious Gifts Such As Pure Gold Bars From Foreign Governments In Exchange For Commercial Facilitations, And Turning Trade Policy Into A Market For Personal Barter.
For This Reason Cohen Emphasizes That The Democratic Party Will Not Win The Economic Battle By Defending The Status Quo, But By Adopting A Truly Populist Economic Agenda: Raising The Minimum Wage, Fighting Monopoly That Strangles Competition, Imposing Fair Taxes On The Rich And Large Corporations, And Investing In Green Infrastructure. For The Working Class Does Not Need Rhetoric That Reassures Wall Street, But A Policy That Saves It From Right-Wing Deception.
And This Methodical Decay Reaches The Citizen’s Body Itself In Chapter Eight Titled Live And Let Die, A Title That Quotes Black Humor From James Bond’s Slogan. Here Cohen Sheds Light On The Devastating Impact Of Right-Wing Policies On Americans’ Health And Lives. Trump And His Party Spent Years In Feverish Attempts To Destroy The Affordable Care Act Known As Obamacare, Not Because It Failed, But Because It Succeeded In Granting Millions Of Families Insurance They Did Not Have. Repeated Attempts To Repeal It In Congress And Courts Pushed Millions Toward Health Limbo And Rising Insurance Premiums.
Then Came The Harshest Blow Through Legislation That Cut Billions From Medicaid Program Dedicated To Low-Income People To Finance Tax Cuts For The Rich. The Direct Result Documented By The Book With Numbers Is The Closure Of Hundreds Of Rural Hospitals And Maternity Clinics Throughout The Country, Because They Could No Longer Operate Without Funding. And In Conservative States, The Abolition Of The Constitutional Right To Abortion Led To Creating Maternity Deserts Completely Devoid Of Care Services For Women, And Rising Rates Of Maternal Mortality To Levels Comparable To Third World Countries.
And Cohen Adds To That The Appointment Of Controversial Figures In The Public Health Sector, Most Prominently Robert Kennedy Jr. Known For His Anti-Science And Anti-Vaccine Theories. In His Era, As The Book Documents, Dangerous Diseases Such As Measles And Whooping Cough Reappeared In States That Had Eradicated Them, Due To Declining Vaccination Rates And Cutting Budgets Of The National Institutes Of Health And Vital Cancer Research. Turning Public Health Into A Cultural War Battlefield Has A Price Paid By Children First.
In Contrast, Cohen Mentions A Political Truth Many Overlook: Programs Such As Medicare And Medicaid Enjoy Overwhelming Popularity Among The Vast Majority Of Americans Regardless Of Their Partisan Affiliation. Even Republican Voters Defend Them. And This Opens The Door Wide To An Alternative Strategic Proposal Based On Adopting A Comprehensive And Just Health System Along The Lines Of Single Payer Or Health Care For All, Considering That Health Is Not A Commodity Subject To Profit And Loss Logic, But A Fundamental Right And A Condition For Restoring The Health Of Democracy. For A State That Leaves Its Citizens To Die Because They Are Poor Cannot Claim To Be Free.
Brian Tyler Cohen Reaches In The Last Third Of His Book The Areas He Considers Most Dangerous Because They Do Not Destroy A Specific Institution But Destroy The Conditions For The Possibility Of Reforming Any Institution, Which Are Truth And Air And Law. In Chapter Nine Titled Breaking The News He Moves From Political Washington To Symbolic Washington That Manufactures Consciousness, And Begins With An Unexpected Figure, An Obscure Legal Employee At The Federal Communications Commission Named Brendan Carr. This Employee Whom No One Knew Outside Bureaucratic Corridors Turned In Cohen’s Narrative Into A Docile And Effective Tool To Intimidate Major Media Institutions And Subjugate Them Before He Officially Assumed His Position.
The Book Narrates How ABC News Network Rushed To Pay A Huge Financial Settlement Amounting To Fifteen Million Dollars Under The Cover Of A Charitable Donation To Trump’s Sham Presidential Museum, And That Against The Background Of A Simple And Unintentional Professional Mistake Made By One Of Its Anchors. Fifteen Million In Exchange For A Slip Of The Tongue Corrected On Air. The Amount Was Not Legal Compensation But A Tribute Of Loyalty. And It Did Not Stop There. Paramount And CBS Network In Turn Paid Millions Of Dollars To Settle Lawsuits That Cohen Described As Fabricated, And That Coincided With Canceling Satirical Programs That Criticized Power And Removing Prominent Editorial Leaders To Avoid Angering The White House. The Whole Scene Embodies What He Calls The Foxification Process Of American Media, That Is Turning It Into A Version Of Fox News Not By Ownership But By Fear.
And Cohen Traces The Roots Of This Dominance To The Legacy Of Roger Ailes Who Founded Fox News In The Nineties Of The Last Century With One Philosophy: Exploiting People’s Tendency Toward Cognitive Laziness To Feed Them A Daily Meal Of Artificial Fears And Conspiracy Theories. This Empire Was Not Searching For Truth But For Loyalty, And Was Not Selling News But Selling Identity. Up To A Pivotal Moment In The History Of American Journalism When Jeff Bezos Personally, Owner Of The Washington Post, Intervened To Stop The Newspaper’s Endorsement Of Democratic Candidates And Empty Its Opinion Sections Of Their Progressive Content, Protecting The Interests Of His Giant Companies And Its Federal Contracts Worth Billions With The Department Of Defense And Government Agencies. The Collapse Of Press Independence, As Cohen Says, Does Not Represent A Professional Fall But A Fall Of The Last Safety Valves That Protect Citizen Awareness, Because Democracy Does Not Collapse With One Blow But Dies Gradually When Guardians Of Truth Abandon Their Roles Out Of Fear Or Greed.
And From The Arena Of Falsifying Consciousness He Moves To The Arena Of Falsifying Material Reality Itself In Chapter Ten Titled Greenhouse Gas. Here He Captures A Relationship That Appeared To The World As An Eternal Alliance Between Donald Trump And Elon Musk, Then Documents How It Quickly Collapsed On The Beat Of Dispute Over Financial Subsidies For Electric Cars. The Story Is Not Personal But Symbolic, For It Reveals Superficial Handling Of An Existential Issue. He Narrates How Trump Was Attacking Wind Turbines In Scotland Claiming They Kill Birds And Spoil The View, While Deliberately Ignoring The Sober Scientific Reports Issued By His Own Agencies.
The Author Points Out That Trump Did Not Just Withdraw For The Second Time From The Paris Climate Agreement Nor Freeze Billions Of Dollars Allocated To Reduce Emissions Within The Inflation Reduction Act, But Went So Far As To Erase And Abolish Comprehensive Historical Databases About Natural Disasters And Temperatures That Were Kept By The National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration, And Expel Senior Scientific Advisors And Purge Environmental Agencies Of Any Mention Of The Term Climate Change. As If Denying The Word Abolishes The Phenomenon. And More Ironic Is The Global Strategic Contradiction. While Washington Was Erasing Its Data, Beijing Was Leading The World Unchallenged In Investment In Wind Farms And Solar Energy And Electric Car Industry, America Relinquishing Its Technological And Economic Leadership To Appease Oil Companies And Appease Electoral Bases Living In Nineteenth Century Illusions.
And Cohen Affirms That Nature Does Not Care About Populist Rhetoric. Disasters That Struck The Conservative States Themselves In The South And East, Devastating Floods And Unprecedented Hurricanes, Prove Day After Day That Denying Scientific Reality Does Not Abolish Its Catastrophic Consequences. And Confronting This Danger Requires Courageous Political Will Similar To What Franklin Roosevelt Did With A New Deal, A Green New Deal That Protects Lives And Saves The Economy And Ensures The Planet’s Survival For Future Generations, Not A Deal That Sells The Planet For Electoral Votes.
Then The Book Reaches The Most Sensitive And Dangerous Files, Chapter Eleven Titled Lawfare. Cohen Explains How The Department Of Justice For Decades Maintained Deep-Rooted Traditions Making It A Neutral Zone Isolated From The White House, To The Extent That Democratic Administrations Allowed Prosecution Of Close Associates And Members Of Presidents’ Families In Order To Preserve The Rule Of Law. However The Scene Turned Upside Down. The Department Witnessed A Wave Of Mass Resignations And A Wide-Scale Purge Affecting Thousands Of Lawyers And Prosecutors, To Be Replaced By Loyal Figures Lacking The Simplest Rules Of Integrity. Here The Role Of Pam Bondi At The Head Of The Department And Todd Blanche As Assistant Emerges, Who Turned The Federal Prosecution Apparatus Into A Vengeful Arm For Settling Scores.
Cohen Narrates Failed And Scandalous Attempts To Fabricate Criminal Charges Against Figures Who Dared To Hold Trump】 Accountable, Such As Former Director Of The Federal Bureau Of Investigation James Comey And Attorney General Of New York Letitia James Who Convicted His Real Estate Empire Of Financial Fraud. Prosecutions Relied On Unqualified Lawyers And Flimsy Evidence That Fell Successively Before Federal Judges. The Message Cohen Wants To Convey Is That The Collapse Of Justice Is Not A Side Glitch But Is The Essence Of The Project. Without Independent Justice No Homeland Is Hoped For And No Democracy Is Preserved.
And Here The Book The Day After Places Its Program For The Day After Itself. It Does Not Settle For Diagnosis But Presents A Practical And Shocking Roadmap For A Current Accustomed To Apologizing For Its Strength. First, Breaking The Filibuster In The Senate Which Turned It Into A Graveyard For Every Reform. Second, Expanding The Supreme Court And Imposing A Fixed Term And Mandatory Retirement And A Code Of Conduct. Third, Enacting The Freedom To Vote Act And The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact To End Minority Rule. Fourth, Forming Independent Investigative Committees And Appointing Immunized Special Prosecutors To Pursue Corruption And Rebuild The Constitutional Wall Between Politics And Justice. Fifth, Adopting A Truly Populist Economic Agenda And Comprehensive Health And A Green New Deal.
The Conclusion With Which Cohen Ends His Review Is That America Does Not Need To Return To Its Normality Before 2016, Because That Normality Is What Gave Birth To What Came After. Nostalgia For Old Washington Based On Decency And Consensus Is A Deadly Illusion. Rules Have Been Broken And Re-Gluing Them Will Not Protect Anyone. What Is Required Is Building New Fortresses, Legislation And Laws And Institutions Difficult For New Fascists To Destroy In The Future. The Duality Of The Fox Who Discerns Traps And The Lion Who Frightens Wolves Is Alone What Can Save The Republic. For The Day After Is Not A Day For Rest, But A Day For Wielding Power Without Hesitation And Without Apology, Because Hesitation This Time Is Not A Virtue But Suicide.
