When it Gets Quiet

Whether because the president leaves or the administration tones things down, things will get more dangerous when seem less chaotic.

April 11, 2026

The sound of bombs in Iran has eclipsed that of the whistles and bullets on American streets. But they have not gone silent, and if they do, that may be even worse.

In his confirmation hearings to run DHS, Markwayne Mullin expressed the aim of getting his agency out of the headlines. And in many ways, DHS and ICE have gone silent. Much of the agencies’ social media trolling has given way to a more normal, business-of-the-people style of presentation appropriate to a government agency. With Greg Bovino and his Himmleresque greatcoat sent off to retirement, the aggressive, militarized action of ICE agents has seemingly dissipated, to the point where the last month saw them awkwardly directing traffic in busy airports.

But it would be a mistake to think immigrants can breathe easy.

Citing the decision by HUD to prohibit mixed-status families, Jia Lynn Yang wrote in the New York Times yesterday about the quieter, potentially more effective tack the Administration is now taking to encourage “remigration”:

Immigration enforcement officials continue to deport nearly 1,000 people a day, many of them with no criminal record. But the Trump administration is also ramping up another strategy: to take apart immigrants’ lives, piece by piece, until they decide to leave the country altogether.

Yang points out that immiseration as a means of encouraging immigrants to “self-deport” (a term that was coined, as far as I can tell, by Mitt Romney) dates back more than a century. It has the benefit of efficiency, and I suppose of relative bloodlessness. A few acts of cruelty can go a long way if they look like policy. With terrible stories coming out of extant detention facilities, news reports [LINK] of fights over ICE plans to buy up warehouses and convert them to immigrant concentration camps may achieve their effect even if few ever open, as long as they incite an adequate level of fear.

As frightening as ICE’s invasions were, with a 120% increase in staffing, the prospect of masked men in unmarked vehicles fanning out across the nation to take people quietly is no less chilling. And a strategy that pushes people to leave by evicting them from their homes, denying their children schooling, turning them away from emergency rooms is positively heartbreaking.

It would be a mistake, too, to think that democracy can breathe easy.

Right now, the Trump Administration appears to be on the back foot. The only thing polling worse than Trump himself are his approach to the economy, immigration, and his war. While the fiasco in Iran distracted from the child rape scandal that threatens Trump and many others (until Melania Trump brought it to the fore again yesterday), there has already been an alarming rise in inflation, rising from an annualized rate of 2.4% in February to 3.3% in March, driven by oil costs. It will worsen. Prominent Republicans are defecting over Trump’s prosecution of the war. Democrats are sweeping special elections in places that went heavily for Trump, and the midterms are increasingly likely to hand the House and possibly the Senate to Democrats, with more aggressive oversight and investigations – hopefully – to follow.

But while the aggressive, blustery steamroller of the first year may be breaking down, we would do well to find the ensuing quiet to be too quiet.

I do not think that electoral shenanigans are likely to undermine a robust Democratic victory, given the diffuse nature of our system. But I would not bet on it. In Republican strongholds, local election officials may be able to game things or muddy the waters just enough to stymie a few contested elections. Losing candidates and the party as a whole may embrace Trump’s 2020 strategy, delegitimizing incoming Democrats and claiming a mandate to play dirty in thwarting their agenda. Republicans and Administration officials may go further to foment and exploit deepening disenchantment and disgust with our political system, rebounding behind a resurgent antidemocratic populism. Cheating to win elections is not the only way that ratfuckery at the polls can preserve the Trump agenda.

Donald Trump appears in many ways to be fading. His physical stamina is waning, and images of him asleep in meetings are now so common that they fail to be alarming. Speculation about his health rises whenever he disappears from view. His popularity has hit Mariana Trench levels. The possibility that he will be outed for sexually exploiting children is growing, and he seems rattled. It is possible that his wife’s speech denying her Epstein connections was an act of throwing him under the bus. And his unhinged style of expression has escalated rapidly from bombast to incitement to war crimes to crimes against humanity.

The President may die or become incapacitated by his advancing age and apparent ill health. He may be shamed or cajoled into resigning. Both before and after what promises to be a disastrous election, Republicans may move en masse to distance themselves from the man, leaving him exposed, prone to even more erratic behavior that leads to more urgent calls for his resignation.

That might be the most dangerous moment in all of this.

Donald Trump’s lurid, unhinged style in speech and deed commands our attention, and should he fall, it will be easy for others in his cabal to frame it, him, as the fundamental problem. They will fashion themselves as the adults in the room again, the ones behind the scenes who heroically tried to contain a madman and a despot. And it may work. Larger than life, in political death Trump will be a whale carcass that we still cannot look away from. But off to the side, the quiet auto-coup of Russell Vought and his Project 2025 can and assuredly will continue.

Under a President Vance (or maybe possibly perhaps someone else), you might see a cabinet shakeup that removes some of the Trumpiest leaders. Hegseth might be replaced with a sober-minded former general. Kash Patel may be sent back to being a podcaster who writes children’s books, replaced with an agency veteran with right-wing bona fides. Stephen Miller, well, he can just go.

Vought will stay, though he may get a new position.

Democrats in Congress, meanwhile, may see their victory as a decisive rout, and convince themselves that business can be of the As Usual variety. With the wind at their backs and the stench of Trump’s demise fading, they may fail to notice ongoing attempts to consolidate power the underhanded, Orbánist way favored by the Vought faction – a covert takeover of key institutions of democratic governance that was undermined by Trump’s overt and gaudy admiration for older, more violent autocracies.

This very un-Trumpian form of manipulative power grab has always been the real threat. They aren’t going to cancel elections, take possession of our ballots, or send troops to crush us in the streets. What will happen is rather a slow takeover and corruption of the boring institutions of governance until democracy becomes meaningless.

If it gets quiet, that is when we are in real danger.