Demolition Agenda: How Trump Tried to Dismantle American Government, and What Biden Needs to Do to Save It

by Thomas O. McGarity

The first comprehensive account of the Trump administration's efforts to destroy our government institutions, by the man Ralph Nader says "writes authoritatively and with revealing detail about important topics that few others cover"

Koch Industries spent $3.1 million in the first three months of the Trump administration, largely to ensure confirmation of Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA. By July 2018, more than sixteen federal inquiries were pending into Pruitt's mismanagement and corruption. But Pruitt was just the first in a long line of industry-friendly, incompetent, and destructive agency heads put in place by the Trump administration in its effort to dismantle the federal government's protective edifice.

Remember Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, who, before he faced eighteen separate federal inquiries and was fired, made a deal with Halliburton to build a brewery on land that Zinke owned in Montana? Or how about Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who rescinded requirements that high-hazard trains install special braking systems, weakened standards for storing natural gas, and lengthened the hours that truck drivers could be on the road without a break, even as she failed for two years to divest her interest in a road materials manufacturer? And then there were Rick Perry, Betsy DeVos, Sonny Perdue, Andrew Puzder . . . the list goes on.

In an original and compelling argument, Thomas McGarity shows how adding populists to the Republican's traditional base of free market ideologues and establishment Republicans allowed Trump to come dangerously close to achieving his goal of demolishing the programs that Congress put in place over the course of many decades to protect consumers, workers, communities, children, and the environment. Finally, McGarity offers a blueprint for rebuilding the protective edifice and restoring the power of the American government to offer all Americans better lives.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics

352 pages, Hardcover

Published May 17, 2022

About the author

Thomas O. McGarity is Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Professor in Administrative Law at the University of Texas School of Law and former attorney-advisor in the Office of General Counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency. He is author of Bending Science, The Preemption War, and Freedom to Harm, as well as articles in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and The American Prospect. He is a past president of the Center for Progressive Reform.

Reviews

[J Earl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Demolition Agenda by Thomas O McGarity lays out exactly how Trump's misadministration worked toward dismantling the government, from his and his cronies general ineptitude to the appointment of individuals opposed to the very agencies they were assigned to run.

As you'll be able to see on many sites, this book, filled with facts, will bring the kneejerk (and brain dead) one star reviews from people who didn't read (and likely wouldn't have understood the big words, some are more than two syllables) it but hate anything that lays their blind hatred and pure stupidity open so plainly. Ignore them, they are not worth worrying about until they actually engage in discussion and debate. There is nothing in this book they can refute, and admitting the truth means they don't want protection from bad food, poor infrastructure design and construction, unfair labor practices, equitable opportunity for all (the all is the part that stands in their bigoted way), healthcare for their fellow citizens, or predatory economic institutions. They simply support the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer, and they get to blame the groups they despise because hatred makes them feel (unjustifiably) superior.

For those who want to look at the many things that puppet Trump did quietly while we were all watching his childish social media tantrums, this book shows how he and his handlers have tried, and largely succeeded, in destroying what the populace has struggled to gain and establish over generations. All for the almighty dollar, which most of their supporters are not seeing either, but that is another story.

There are some suggestions for how to repair some of the damage and protect against another authoritarian attempt to overthrow the Constitution and the administrative backbone of the country. Anti-American right wingnuts won't care, they want to "return" to a time that never was but that, prior to strides made, we were headed toward. One where big money owns everyone and we all do subsistence labor so that they can take even more of the money our labor creates.

This book is a call to action. Ideally within the structues in place but, if necessary, through whatever means necessary. These one-star unable to read people can easily be neutralized. One way or another.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Hélène · Rating 5 out of 5]

50000 stars! Thank goodness for the writing of this great book. I read it like one would say a long prayer all the way to the very end. I pray that our younger generation starts reading soon. I pray that more of my own contemporaries open their eyes and appreciate how corporate greed is killing innocent people all over the planet. Only reproach is that the author did not cover at all about corporate Democrats. Yes the Republican Party is overtly pro corporations. But names should be named in both parties.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting premise and it went into details about certain things that we may not have thought were a big deal in the news at the time.

Seems a bit biased as not all the things that went wrong were entirely his fault? but definitely a must read.