Based on Merit Again?

By GENE NICHOL

President Donald Trump issued an executive order gutting DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs in the federal government. Employees in DEI offices were placed on paid administrative leave straight away and agencies were required to submit plans “for executing a reduction in force by Jan. 31. Trump explained: “Our country’s going to be based on merit again, can you believe it?” Really.

You might think it “rich” that Trump, whose father, according to The New York Times, gave him $413 million and who rose to prominence in the country famed economist Thomas Piketty said embraces economic inequality “probably higher than in any other society, at any time in the past, anywhere in the world,” would speak, unembarrassed, about “merit”. But there it is.

So, I had a look, then, at the rest of the newspaper, thinking on “merit.” Trump announced 1,500 pardons for folks who tried to overthrow the American government – hundreds of whom violently beat and maimed heroic police officers defending the Capitol. I read, too, of wives, sons, former friends, neighbors and witnesses who spoke of going into hiding or leaving the country to escape the brutal “revenge” of these insurrectionist “patriots.” Merit.

Other stories reported Trump’s claims that he had suffered through four years of outrageous abuse at the hands of the justice system, so vengeance was in order. In truth, of course, Trump’s indictments, and dismissals, demonstrated, beyond peradventure, that his power and wealth could utterly defeat the American justice system. So, as to avoid offending him, our hideously embarrassing United States Supreme Court decided to abandon a centuries old commitment to the American notion that “no man is above the law.” Rarely did Trump attempt to show that he wasn’t guilty of these charged transgressions. He claimed, instead, that laws don’t apply to him. Now they don’t. Merits.

An astonishingly brave Episcopal Bishop, Rev. Mariann Budde, stood before the aspiring tyrant at an inaugural ceremony and pled: “In the name of God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.” (Why is it always women who have the guts to confront Trump?). Trump responded, as he so frequently does with women, that she was “nasty” in tone. A Trump supporter, Kristan Hawkins, a Catholic anti-abortion activist, was reported in the Times saying: “Female bishop is all you needed to know about how it was going to turn out.” Merit.

Next, papers reported that Trump had issued a decree purporting to end birthright citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, says in its opening words: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside.” It meant, explicitly, to overturn the horrifying U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford. Trump thinks the 14th Amendment can’t tell him what to do. Merit.

And, finally, I thought and read of Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kristi Noem, Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker, Charles Kushner, Kari Lake and Matt Gaetz. Merit. All around.

Gene Nichol is Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law and in 2015 started the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund after the UNC Board of Governors closed the state-funded Poverty Center for publishing articles critical of the governor and General Assembly.

From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2025

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