Out gay former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has issued a warning and advice about the “incredibly dangerous moment” the country finds itself in as the president continues “the process of taking on absolute power.”
“The head of our country’s government is in the early stages of consolidating total power,” Buttigieg wrote in a Bluesky post published yesterday afternoon. “We must of course reject this, but that is not enough. We have to respond by creating a different and better kind of American politics than we have seen before.”
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In the attached video, Buttigieg said, “We are seeing right before our eyes what it looks like when the head of the government of the country we live in doesn’t think he has to obey the courts or the law. It’s an incredibly important and incredibly dangerous moment for the country. It’s a test of whether we’re actually a freedom-loving people, and I think it leaves a lot of Americans feeling powerless.”
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His reference about the president not obeying the courts or the law likely refers to numerous instances in which the current presidential administration has frozen congressionally mandated budgets; the hostile takeover of government agencies; improper access of government data on private citizens; and the weaponization of government power to bully law firms, institutions, and individuals who oppose the president’s directives.
Most recently, the president has ignored a unanimous Supreme Court ruling directing him to return Kilmar Ábrego García, an immigrant who was wrongly kidnapped without any due process and imprisoned in an El Salvador prison known for its human rights violations. The administration has repeatedly claimed, without any evidence, that García is a terrorist gang member and said that it will not bring him back.
The president has said he wishes to do the same to U.S. citizens accused of serious crimes, though critics worry he may eventually kidnap American citizens who oppose his agenda. In fact, Republican politicians and administration officials have said that protestors who support Palestinians or Ábrego García are providing “material support to terrorism” and could be punished for doing so.
The entire ordeal has created a constitutional crisis in which the president ignores and defies the judicial branch of government, congressional Republicans do nothing to check his power, and the judiciary finds itself unable to enforce its rulings since the Department of Justice has been staffed with loyalists to the president.
Despite this situation, Buttigieg added, “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe that there are a lot of things we can do. Some of them seem old-fashioned, getting in touch with your member of Congress or joining a demonstration in the streets. Those are important, and we’re going to have to be creative about other means of making it known that this is a freedom loving country, that wherever you come out of — left, right or center — I’m not going to stand for the head of the government of this country, continuing the process of taking on absolute power.”
“Instead,” he continued, “we’re going to build something different and better, a vision where our politics and our economics respond to the needs of everyday people, one that leaves us more free, more prosperous than before, are very obviously less free, less prosperous than we were even a few months ago. But this doesn’t have to be a one-way trip.”
The head of our country’s government is in the early stages of consolidating total power. We must of course reject this, but that is not enough. We have to respond by creating a different and better kind of American politics than we have seen before.
— Pete Buttigieg (@petebuttigieg.bsky.social) April 17, 2025 at 1:21 PM
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