Written anonymously because I work in a field where there is a currently low but non-negligible and possibly high future risk of negative consequences for criticizing Trump and Trumpism.
This post is an attempt to cobble together some ideas about the current situation in the United States and its impact on EA. I invite discussion on this, not only from Americans, but also those with advocacy experience in countries that are not fully liberal democracies (especially those countries where state capacity is substantial and autocratic repression occurs).
I've deleted a lot of text from this post in various drafts because I find myself getting way too in the weeds discoursing on comparative authoritarian studies, disinformation and misinformation (this is a great intro, though already somewhat outdated), and the dangers of the GOP.[1] I will note that I worry there is still a tendency to view the administration as chaotic and clumsy but retaining some degree of good faith, which strikes me as quite naive.
For the sake of brevity and focus, I will take these two things to be true, and try to hypothesize what they mean for EA. I'm not going to pretend these are ironclad truths, but I'm fairly confident in them.[2]
- Under Donald Trump, the Republican Party (GOP) is no longer substantially committed to democracy and the rule of law.
- The GOP will almost certainly continue to engage in measures that test the limits of constitutional rule as long as Trump is alive, and likely after he dies.
- The Democratic Party will remain constrained by institutional and coalition factors that prevent it from behaving like the GOP. That is, absent overwhelming electoral victories in 2024 and 2026 (and beyond), the Democrats' comparatively greater commitment to rule of law and democracy will prevent systematic purging of the GOP elites responsible for democratic backsliding; while we have not crossed the Rubicon yet, it will get much worse before things get better.
- The United States is very likely entering a period of democratic backsliding, and that may result in a hybrid regime, wherein elections are still held and contested, albeit on an uneven playing field, but concurrent civil liberties and protections are not universal. It is also possible that in the event of a GOP loss, it adopts rhetoric along the lines of the 2020 Big Lie, and refuses to concede power altogether.
Some initial thoughts on what this could mean for EA. Overall, EA advocacy areas will almost certainly become much harder, if not permanent nonstarters:
- On AI: The United States may see the emergence of oligarchic politics, wherein business magnates are exceptionally politically influential. AI oligarchs would not take kindly to attempts to slow them down and may lean on the state to use state pressure to weaken AI safety advocacy.
- On global health and development: The political costs of foreign aid and helping others—especially Black Africans—will be much higher. EA advocacy on global health and vaccines may risk being branded as unpatriotic or "woke" because it is aimed at people outside the US. I worry that for the sake of retaining influence in AI, there might be a temptation to cease the critical work done on this front for risk of incurring the wrath of the GOP.
- On nuclear risk reduction: The current administration's foreign policy is in flux and seems subject to the vagaries of Donald Trump. Marco Rubio maintains that we're trying to "peel off" Russia from China. I think that's a post-facto justification for otherwise shocking behavior vis-a-vis Russia and Ukraine, but even so, advocacy for detente or dialogue in any form with China may risk being branded as a Chinese sympathizer. (I'm unsure on nuclear risk reduction vis-a-vis Russia right now.)
- On animal advocacy: This may also be viewed as "woke" and suspect. Oligarchic/agribusiness influence may take advantage of the GOP's willingness to deploy state power against political opponents and try to silence or harass civil society groups engaged in animal advocacy.
Additionally, at the meta-advocacy level, EA will suffer insofar as the bureaucracy is drained of talent. This will be particularly acute for anything touching on areas with heavy federal involvement, like public health, biosecurity, or foreign aid/policy.[3]
Finally, on a darker note, one may reasonably conclude from this that the solution is to keep our heads down collectively, because the cost of even perceived opposition could be quite high in the coming years. Setting aside my immense moral opposition to that, for the reasons outlined above, I think that would not do much for EA: without democracy, space for advocacy seems like it will be very limited within the US. But maybe that just makes earning to give all the more important.
- ^
I am not the first to point this out by far, but I struggle a lot with not sounding like a completely delirious, partisan hack when describing the status quo. Just to put (some of) it out there: "A bunch of barely-out-of-college followers of Elon Musk, including a 19-year-old with the online alias BigBalls and an blatant racist whose dismissal for blatant racism was reversed because of support from the Vice President, are systematically gutting Congressionally authorized programs and agencies in clear violation of the law. The President has executed a complete reversal of US foreign policy and the US has begun voting with Russia and against its traditional allies at the UN. The US has also entertained invading Canada, which most US elites seem to think is at most a quirky bluster, but has deeply disturbed Canadians. We might also invade Denmark, a NATO ally, in Greenland. The man who runs Health and Human Services does not appear to fully understand or believe in germ theory. The health and lives of millions are on the line as programs like PEPFAR, famine aid, and NIH research are halted."
- ^
It may end up being the case, for example, that in the next several months actors like the Supreme Court, Congress, and civil society form robust checks on Trump and Musk. Large Democratic victories in 2026 and 2028 could result in reversal of democratic backsliding. There are also plenty of other ways things could go back to more normal, constitutionally bound politics. I certainly do hope I am wrong/overreacting, but I'm not especially optimistic.
- ^
Autocrats tend to prioritize loyalty over technical competence among elites because elite coups/competition are one of two primary threats to their power (the other being mass uprising). Two influential papers summarizing this line of thinking are Egorov and Sonin 2011 and Zakharov 2016. The dynamic here is a bit different, given that elections are likely to occur in the next few cycles, but seems broadly similar: RFK is a good example of someone chosen for loyalty (and electoral benefit) over competence. It is also clear that the Trump administration largely views the current federal civil service (the "deep state") adversarially. Education polarization in the US means that at least for now there are limits on the number of competent, sufficiently MAGA people who would be able to fill the federal bureaucracy's more technically demanding roles, though the goal is almost certainly not to replace civil servants 1:1 with loyalists anyway.
"And fundamentally opposition to wokism is motivated by wanting to treat all people equally regardless of race or sex"
I think this true of a lot of public opposition to wokeism: plenty liberals, socialist and libertarians with very universalist cosmopolitan moral views find a lot of woke stuff annoying, plenty working class people of colour are not that woke on race, and lots of moderate conservatives believe in equality of this sort. Many people in all these groups genuinely express opposition to various woke ideas based on a genuine belief in colourblindness and its gender equivalent, and even if that sort of views is somehow mistaken it is very annoying and unfair when very woke people pretend that it is always just a mask for bigotry.
But it absolutely is not true of all opposition to woke stuff, or all but a tiny minority:
Some people are genuinely openly racist, sexist and homophobic, in the sense that they will admit to being these things. If you go and actually read the infamous "neoreactionnaries" you will find them very openly attacking the very idea of "equality". They are a tiny group, but they do have the ear of some powerful people: definitely Peter Thiel, probably J.D. Vance (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-interview.html).
But in addition very many ordinary American Christians believe that men in some sense have authority/leadership over women, but would sincerely (and sometimes accurately) deny feeling hostile to women. For example the largest Protestant denomination in the United States is Southern Baptism, and here's the NYT reporting on them making women even more banned from leadership with the organization than they already were, all of 2 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/14/us/southern-baptist-women-pastors-ouster.html There are 13 million Southern Baptists, which isn't a huge share of the US population, but many other conservative Protestant denominations also forbid women to serve in leadership positions and there are a lot of conservative Protestants overall, and some Catholics, and officially the Catholic Church itself share this view. Of course, unlike the previous group, almost all of these people will claim that men and women in some sense have equal value. But almost all woke people who openly hate on white men will also claim to believe everyone has equal value, and develop elaborate theory about why their seemingly anti-white male views are actually totally compatible with that. If you don't believe the latter, I wouldn't believe this group either that men being "the head of the household" is somehow compatible with the good, proper kind of equality. (Note that it's not primarily the sincerity of that belief I am skeptical of, just it's accuracy.)
As for sexuality, around 29% of Americans still oppose same-sex marriage: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx Around a quarter think having gay sex/being gay is immoral: https://www.statista.com/statistics/225968/americans-moral-stance-towards-gay-or-lesbian-relations/
More generally, outgroup bias is a ubiquitous feature of human cognition. People can have various groups that wokeness presents itself as protecting as their outgroup, and because of outgroup bias some of those people will then oppose wokeness as a result of that bias. This is actually a pretty weak claim, compatible with the idea that woke or liberal people have equal or even greater levels of outgroup bias as conservatives. And it means that even a lot of people who sincerely claim to hold egalitarian views are motivated to oppose wokeness at least partially because of outgroup bias. (Just as some Americans liberals who are not white men and claim to be in some sense egalitarian in fact have dislike of white men as a significant motivation behind their political views: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45052534 There are obviously people like Jeong on the right. Not a random sample, but go on twitter and you'll see dozens of them.)
Literally all of these factions/types of person on the right have reason to oppose wokeness that are not a preference for colourblindness and equality of opportunity (the last group may of course also genuinely be aggravated by open woke attacks on those things yes, it's not an either or.) Since there are lots of these people, and they are generally interested enough in politics to care about wokeness in the first place, there is no reason whatsoever to think they are not well represented in the population of "people who oppose wokeness". The idea that no one really opposes wokeness except because they believe in a particular centre-right version of colourblind equality of opportunity both fails to take account of what the offficial, publicly stated beliefs of many people on the right actually are, and also fails to apply very normal levels of everyday skepticism to the stated motivations of (other) anti-woke people who endorse colourblindness.