Documenting harms inflicted by the Trump Regime

The nation is going to need extensive detrumpification.

It’s an idea from the Maryland Democratic Party, so even registered Democrats could be tempted to dismiss it as partisan schtick. But even partisan schtick can have significant merit, and this bit does — and not just for Marylanders but for everyone trapped in die Trump-Welt right now.

On August 13, the MDP launched what it calls the Federal Harm Registry, described as “a new tool for Marylanders to share how federal policies are negatively impacting their lives.”

The state chairman, Steuart Pittman, wants “every Marylander whose livelihood and rights are threatened by the federal government’s assault on our well-being and our dignity” to register and tell a story.

That’s potentially a few million people, even some of our 221,000 millionaires and Maryland’s 10 billionaires. They might be getting more tax breaks thanks to Trump and the Republicans in Congress, but many wealthy Democrats are just as disgusted at the obnoxious authoritarianism as the rest of us.

Declares the MDP in its press release: “Whether it is about cuts to healthcare, rising costs, job losses, housing challenges, attacks on democracy, or any of the other harmful policies coming out of this White House, these stories will help shape the conversations happening in Maryland and in DC.”

Sorry but “shape the conversations” undersells this idea.

The Federal Harm Registry, aggressively promoted and filled with hard data and personal stories, would provide a compelling record of the insane destructiveness of the Trump Regime. Think of it as a check list of everything that will have to be recalled, restored and rehabbed once we get our country back.

The nation is going to need extensive detrumpification.

The Federal Harm Registry could potentially be used by a future Department of Justice to prosecute members of the Trump regime on corruption charges. The future Attorney General might use evidence in the registry — specifically, video of Trump goons roughing up immigrants — to make a referral to the International Criminal Court. It’s worth considering the possibility that Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem could be charged with crimes against humanity.

Same with Elon Musk and Marco Rubio and their ugly collaboration on shuttering the U.S. Agency for International Development, a critical life line for starving children and adults suffering from disease. It’s estimated that millions will die because of Musk’s and Rubio’s destruction of USAID.

There’s plenty of time to gather evidence about all that and enter it into the Federal (or National) Harm Registry.

Harm by the regime is everywhere, if not immediately apparent, then soon:

• Federal agencies were arbitrarily downsized and left short of staff in critical areas — air traffic control, weather and climate vigilance, tax return processing, food inspection, local police training, cancer research, vaccine research, foreign relations, public broadcasting, public education.

• More federal workers or contractors will lose their jobs, some because of Trump’s stupid tariffs and ill-advised trade war.

• Millions of Americans will pay more at the supermarket, in part because of the tariffs. Somehow, someone will have to turn that around. A record of the financial harm to small businesses and farmers, in particular, would be good to have.

• By the time we get our country back, potentially millions of Americans who benefited from the Affordable Care Act will have lost their Medicaid or subsidized health insurance, and some will have died prematurely. Their survivors should be encouraged to report what happened to the National Harm Registry. The Democratic National Committee should pay for television ads directing people to a centralized website — or one in each state — where people can report harm inflicted by the Trump Regime.

• Families or friends of immigrants pulled off the streets by Trump goons need to make a record of the hardship that resulted from the loss of a bread winner or parent of small children. There are by now thousands of citizen-made cellphone videos of masked thugs rounding up immigrants for deportation; the files of each could be uploaded to a National Harm Directory and kept as a record of life under die Trump-Welt.

• Congress will have to strip ICE of the $50,000 signing bonuses for new agents and transfer those funds for the hiring of new police officers, teachers, nurses, doctors and social workers.

And then there are the intangibles — the shame we feel, the embarrassment, the loss of pride in the country, loss of faith in our fellow citizens, the revulsion we feel when Trump sides with Putin over Ukraine, or whenever he opens his mouth and rambles ad nauseam and nonsensically; it damages our brains.

I would write all that into a National Harm Registry for future reference — so that we have a record of what was damaged and what needs to be restored, once we get our country back.