When we look at the outpouring of events in the first hundred days of the administration, it is hard for progressives to see any impacts that even have a modicum of sense and justice. What we see is a slow rolling coup undertaken by Donald Trump with the endorsement of Republican Senators and members of Congress. These actions are violations of the Constitution and should be resisted by us all in every way we can. Let us look closely to see what exactly has been going on.
Legal and organizational analysts have identified several different aspects of justice. At one level there are distributive (the result of the encounter with the justice system), retributional (the balance between crime and punishment) , and restorative justice (an attempt to rebuild the relationship between the wronged and the person doing the wronging). Within each of these, three types of justice or injustice can occur: the outcome (the final state can be fair or unfair), the procedure used to reach that outcome (individuals can have a say in how the outcome was reached or not have a say), and the interactions of the individual with the justice system (the person can be treated with respect or they can be bullied and disdained).
Let us see how the last 100 days have played out.
Early Days
In the early days of the administration, Elon Musk invited federal employees to accept a buyout. While this is not a good way of downsizing if you want to have an effective strategically driven process, it is what was offered.
Was the outcome fair for the federal employees? Employees who took the offer were offered 34 weeks of severance pay. That seems like a reasonable deal for the average federal worker with 13.5 years of service and an age of 47.5 who under standard severance would receive 28 weeks pay. It would be a better deal for shorter tenure and young workers but a worse one for older, longer service workers.
Was procedural justice served in this case? It was: people had a choice whether or not to accept the offer; though perhaps the threat of future involuntary lasy-offs influenced their decisions .
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Was interactional justice served in this case? Yes: people in government were not being roundly abused at this stage.
A Bit Later
A few weeks into the administration, the DOGE gang started moving from department to department slashing and burning. How was justice Served?
Distributive Justice
Very unfair. People were not fired for cause (i.e. poor performance). However, they did receive the standard severance pay based on their tenure and age.
Procedural justice
There was none. People had no say in whether they were fired or not. It was a top down decision by the DOGE team; their own managers did not have any say in the matter and may well have been fired also.
Interactional Justice
This was terrible. The firing letter said that they were being fired for poor performance. This was untrue for many people who had recently received stellar performance ratings from their bosses. The disdain was even worse for those “probationary” employees who had been promoted within the past two years (and hence being on probation in the new position). Furthermore, the whole civil service has been disparaged by Mr. Musk who has said that their jobs are not real jobs, that they don’t produce anything, and essentially are a waste of space.
Retributional Justice
In his campaign Mr. Trump promised he will be our retribution and he has delivered with alarming efficiency. He has removed Secret Service protection from many who served him faithfully until they criticized him: e.g., Mike Pompeo, John Bolton. On the face of it this seems an unfair outcome, is clearly lacking in procedural justice, and is interactionally unjust.
Mr Trump has removed security privileges from many individuals including former President Biden. Here this is probably fair, as it is tit-for-tat for Biden doing the same for him. However it is procedurally unjust, and interactionally indefensible as Trump has called his predecessor “the worst President ever’ many times.
From his very first day, Mr Trump has ordered the resignation of government officials or for the Department of Justice to investigate them. Most of these are, on the face of it unfair, but one or two like targeting those who investigated Trump could be justified as tit-for-tat responses. Procedurally there were no negotiations, and the vituperation in Trump’s comments made them interactionally unjust.
The attacks on law firms, Universities, and other institutions are additional examples of retribution. They lack justice in all three domains: outcomes, procedure, and interaction.
Perhaps the worst examples of Trumpian injustice is his treatment of immigrants and of foreign students. Immigrants without any serious criminal record have been herded up and shipped to El Salvador in defiance of court orders – a serious breach of procedural justice. Students from abroad, practicing free speech –on topics that Trump decries – have been arrested and imprisoned. Again, the administration is fighting court orders about their treatment, a procedural violation. Judges have been arrested and threatened.
Restorative Justice
There is no evidence that this administration practices, or even understands, restorative justice. On April 30th., Mr. Trump explicitly rejected restorative justice when he announced that he could bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador but that he had no intention of doing so. I suppose Trump supporters would argue that pardoning the January 6th. insurgents was a form or restorative justice. It was not, it was a perversion of justice. It had no means of restoring the relationship between the victims and the perpetrators as were his other pardens of gang leaders and fraudsters. It was harsh retributional justice where the judicial system got a poke in the eye and the villains got out of jail, and worse, did not have to pay reparations.
What next?
The Trump administration unlike most of its predecessors in practicing injustice in outcomes, procedures, and interpersonal attacks. The country is in turmoil. We have not seen the like before.
People ask what we can do My answer, very conventionally, is that we should protest every appalling act undertaken by this administration. We should protest every violation of procedural justice. We should protest every act of interactional injustice. Do not let any of this become “normal.” March. Phone your representative politicians, if they are Republicans ask why they are enabling Trump; if they are Republicans, ask staffers why they are still working in the office of someone who is enabling Trump. Write to the media. Write a blog or maintain a social media account. Keep on doing so. Above all, do not give up.
