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President Donald Trump and his legion of fascists and oligarchs marched their way into the White House this January, and the Democrats handed him the golden key while doing an interpretive dance to protest his ever-growing power.

The Democratic Party has been aware of the overwhelming influence Trump holds within the Republican electorate since his victory in the 2016 Presidential Election, and they have done almost nothing to stop it.

In doing so, the Democrats have not only failed the interests of their own party; they have failed the United States of America. 

Trump certainly never made his intentions a secret. Leading up to the election, he ran on a platform of mass deportation, cutting funding to schools that support diversity, equity and inclusion, allowing Elon Musk to cut any government spending he sees fit and drastically slashing protections for transgender Americans.

It’s now more obvious than ever that he intends to keep every single one of those promises.

Since his Jan. 20 inauguration just over a month ago, Trump has signed 70 executive orders. In his four years as president, Joe Biden signed 162 — 78 of which were immediately repealed on Trump’s first day in office with Executive Order 14148.

The power of the executive office is expanding at a rate never seen before in American history. What are Democrats doing to stop it? Almost nothing.

In a Feb. 7 press briefing, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries stood in front of a room of journalists, looked the American people in the eyes and asked, “What leverage do we have?”

This is not an excuse. This is not a simple policy dispute. This is not an argument over funding new roads or designating a new United Nations ambassador. These are policies that are affecting — and ruining — the lives of real human beings.

Democrats are standing to the side, angrily shaking their fists while the Trump administration posts ASMR videos of immigrants being chained up and ripped away from their livelihoods and repeals funding to academic institutions for implementing diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

Crying that they have no power in the face of impending fascist dictatorship is not just cowardice — it is compliance.

The Democrats have the blood of every human being caught in the crosshairs of Trump’s dangerous policies on their hands — every migrant ripped from their families and communities, every transgender American who lives in constant fear because their legal documents now forcibly identify them as transgender and every Palestinian who witnesses a genocide unfold before their eyes while the most powerful nation in the world signs the check.

When South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on the night of Dec. 3, 2024, the opposition party did not sit on the sidelines and complain they no longer had the power to resist; they fought against Yoon’s militarized forces, climbed over barricades and rallied to instantly suspend Yoon from power and impeach him.

When Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency attempted to gain access to the private financial data of millions of Americans, a group of Democratic representatives and senators organized two protests to stop the proceedings. In both instances — one at the U.S. Agency for International Development and the other at the Treasury Department’s headquarters — the protesters were told they weren’t allowed to enter, and so they simply stopped at that and ended their protests.

“We were just told by a spokesperson that the office is closed and that they are following the (executive order) and that’s it,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam said at the USAID protest.

Walking up to the door of the facility where Musk — an unelected official — is threatening to steal the financial data of millions and then turning away just because someone said the office is closed is utterly unacceptable.

The Democrats have a responsibility as the opposition party to actually oppose Trump. As Trump continues to push the boundaries of executive power to unprecedented levels, it is no longer acceptable to be the party that turns the other cheek.

Even if the Democrats are powerless to stop every advance Trump makes toward fascism, they had four years of power to set up concrete legal protections and a competent opponent to defeat Trump.

If Biden kept his promise to stay a one-term president and the Democrats held a legitimate primary to oppose Trump, the party could have gained a greater understanding of what their electorate was looking for in a candidate.

Instead, Biden insisted on continuing a campaign that was already drastically unpopular as a result of his clearly declining mental faculties, his hand in orchestrating the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and numerous other factors.

When his presidential ticket inevitably crashed and burned, the torch was handed to former Vice President Kamala Harris. A presidential candidate who was so unpopular — polling as low as 3% — in her own 2020 run that she dropped out of the primaries while there were still 15 other Democrats in the running.

This should have never been a reality the Democrats allowed themselves to fall into, yet it is where they found themselves. From this point on, rather than attempting to hold onto a popular message and move forward, the party sat themselves firmly on the fence and refused to hold onto anything substantial.

In fact, after nominating Tim Walz for vice president, Harris’ campaign saw such a large bump in polling that it overtook the Trump campaign and held that spot for nearly the rest of the campaign.

There was an obvious reason for this bump: Walz and his message of calling Republicans weird resonated with the Democratic base in a way nothing else had so far.

And what did the Democrats do to ride this wave? They made Walz stop his messaging and focused on rallying with Republicans like Liz Cheney in a bizarre attempt to win over the very few never-Trump Republicans instead of focusing on rallying a Democratic base eager for new messaging.

In the months following the election, many Harris loyalists have pointed fingers toward progressives who insisted Harris take a stand against the genocide in Gaza, advocate for policies like legalized marijuana and “Medicare For All” or side with protecting vulnerable minority groups like transgender Americans.

If these progressive groups were powerful enough to lose Harris the election, the Harris campaign made a severe mistake by not recognizing that standing behind popular progressive messaging would garner her support from groups who would be more than willing to stand behind her against Trump’s fascistic policies.

Instead, Harris and the rest of the Democrats sat idly on the fence and watched Trump march his way to ultimate power, forcing all of America’s underprivileged minorities into the most vulnerable position they’ve been in in decades.

Reach Will Engle at letters@collegian.com or on Twitter @WillEngle44.