Trump’s administration is hostile to checks and balances and the rule of law. He has already pardoned the January 6 insurrectionists and signed various executive orders that are unconstitutional.

Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza is horrifying. Making the announcement while standing beside Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, is nauseating. It’s in direct violation of international law. Many world leaders condemned Trump’s remarks publicly, including UK Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese repeatedly avoided the opportunity to reject Trump’s plan, saying he would not be giving a “daily commentary” on remarks by the US President.

On one hand, that’s a sensible strategy. Albanese is trying to make sure Australia is exempt from Trump’s tariffs and avoiding stepping on any landmines in the lead-up to our federal election. And Donald Trump is nothing if not a firehose of chaos. He makes announcements and then backtracks, sometimes within the same sentence. There is no way leaders can respond to every last policy brain fart from him or his administration.

On the other hand, the US President was openly planning ethnic cleansing. It is beyond the pale, completely against international law and must be condemned in the strongest terms. That’s to say nothing of Trump’s plans to buy Greenland, seize the Panama Canal, or to force Ukraine to give up territory in a “peace” deal with Vladimir Putin. There may only be so much that other world leaders can do to limit the havoc Trump can wreak over the next four years, but a weak response will certainly amplify it. It should not be difficult to publicly condemn plans to commit a crime against humanity. Australia is an ally of the United States, not its flunkey.

What the Trump administration seeks as America descends into unabashed oligarchy, is compliance. While Trump rampages through international and domestic law like a bull through a china shop, he brooks no resistance. And the administration targets those who don’t comply.

This week, reporters from the Associated Press were blocked from attending Oval Office events because AP decided to continue to refer to the “Gulf of Mexico” in its reporting, while simply noting Trump had renamed it the Gulf of America. The Trump Administration retaliated by banning AP reporters from some White House press events. The naming convention is a trivial issue. Trump’s flunkeys are not targeting the press because they want to enforce the name change, but because they want to enforce compliance – from the media and everyone else. If you can force compliance on a barrage of small things now, it’s so much easier to normalise the bigger more hideous things down the track. The media has already played a huge role in normalising Trump’s pronouncements and unconstitutional executive orders.

Many Trump voters are now getting exactly what they voted for. But while they admire Trump for doing what he said he’d do, it’s clear that many of them didn’t think any of it would be done to them.

People who voted for Trump to end government waste didn’t think that would mean funding cuts to their local school. Hispanic groups who backed his immigration policies thought they would only apply to undocumented immigrants and are now outraged that he’s ending birthright citizenship and deporting legal migrants. Republicans from Congress and the Senate who cheered Donald Trump’s plans to cut government waste, are now finding out that US farmers are some of the biggest beneficiaries of USAID, currently being dismantled by unelected bureaucrat and billionaire Elon Musk. “I never thought leopards would eat MY face,” sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party, as the meme goes.

It’s a lot easier to destroy things than it is to build them. In 2016, Trump was surprised by his election, but this time Trump and his backers are a lot more organised with Project 2025 as a blueprint to radically reshape the United States in ways that may render it unrecognisable to Australians. Allies like Canada and Australia are finding out quickly that our “special relationships”, free trade agreements and other agreements with the United States mean precisely diddly-squat. Australia has a trade deficit with the United States and $350 billion-plus nuclear submarine deal and still Trump has slapped tariffs on us.

It’s clear our free trade agreement with the United States isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Is there any reason to think the AUKUS deal is any different? Trump signed the order to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Accord for a second time, putting global efforts to reduce emissions in peril, even as Los Angeles experienced deadly wildfires. Does that make Australia more secure? What about appointing an anti-vaxxer as the health secretary, or the removal of public health data from US government websites like Centre for Disease Control, because it contained banned words like “women”? Losing real-time data on infectious diseases is a threat to public health globally.

Any good relationship with an ally should make us safer and more secure. It’s imperative Australia rethinks its relationship with the United States.

Donald Trump’s administration makes Australia and the world a more dangerous place, where rules no longer apply.