While teaching his Introduction to International Relations class this semester, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Mark Copelovitch joked he often wonders “in those 75 minutes when I'm not on my phone, which international institution might we have withdrawn from?” Copelovitch’s new “whirlwind” of worries arrived, he said, with the onset of President Donald Trump's second administration.
During an hour-long event hosted by WUD Society and Politics at Memorial Union on Monday evening, Copelovitch presented to a packed room about the state of American democracy, as well as domestic and foreign policy. He shared his predictions for the first 100 days of Trump’s presidential term, including a budget crisis, tariff wars, research funding and the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Copelovitch teaches in the political science department and the La Folette School of Public Affairs, and is also the Director of European Studies and the Jean Monnet Chair, a post requiring specialization in European Studies. He typically researches international relations and politics of the global economy, particularly Transatlantic cooperation and cooperation within the European Union.
Mike Johnson, John Thune ‘violated their oath of office’ by allowing Trump to usurp congressional authority, Copelovitch says
Copelovitch echoed concerns from other political scientists about the Trump administration’s threat to American democracy. Copelovitch highlighted a quote from Elon Musk in a recent interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, where Musk claimed the will of the president is the will of the people.
Musk’s quote resembled a similar quote from Ernst Rudolf Huber, a legislative architect behind the Nazi regime, Copelovitch said. Copelovitch also commented on Trump’s firing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, breaking a precedent that has lasted since 1951, and Trump’s “clearing out large portions of the Justice Department.”
“We're in a situation right now where the constitution is not really operating the way it's supposed to be, and the norms are not operating the way they are supposed to be,” Copelovitch said.
Copelovitch raised concerns about the Republican majority in Congress, asserting they have done little to combat Trump’s usurpation of the legislative branch’s financial authority. In the past month, Trump, Musk and other members of the executive branch have cut government spending, laid off federal employees and refused to spend funds previously appropriated by Congress, all of which are within the scope of legislative authority rather than executive authority, as outlined in Article I of the U.S. Constitution.
“One of the things I think the founders of the U.S. Constitution could not possibly imagine is politicians that would let other politicians, in other areas of government, effectively steal their power and not do anything about it, but that's effectively what's happening right now,” Copelovitch. “You can certainly understand politically why [Senate Majority Leader John] Thune and [House Speaker Mike] Johnson may like those outcomes, but that is a violation of their oath of office, in that sense.”
Although Trump’s influence in American society seems omnipotent, Copelovitch said, his popularity has declined precipitously since the start of his presidency, indicating that Republicans are likely to perform poorly in the 2026 midterm elections.
“Maybe we have something that's kind of Schrodinger’s Trump: simultaneously we're in extraordinary times with a possible authoritarian leader, yet everything is operating the way it normally does in American politics,” Copelovitch said. “[Trump’s] polling is underwater more than any president since World War II after one month, and most of the things that he is doing policy-wise are wildly unpopular with the electorate.”
Budget cuts and layoffs ‘huge shock to the system’
Around a quarter of national GDP has historically gone toward funding governmental programs, but both Trump and Musk have stated their ambitions to drastically reduce government spending. Although their concept is popular in theory, it will be less so in practice, according to Copelovitch.
“If you start unplugging large pieces of 25% of the economy… people are worried they're not going to get their Social Security benefits, farmers are worried that the farm subsidies are not going to come through and the checks are not going to show up on time,” Copelovitch said.
Roughly a quarter of UW-Madison’s funding is federally based, making federal funding the university’s largest source of funding. Significant cuts to National Science Foundation (NSF) grants and National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding pose major problems for UW-Madison, as well as for other research-based universities across the country.
“The staff at the European Study Center are all paid on federal grants,” Copelovitch said. “If those grants go away, there's no money from the state or anybody else. If the University of Wisconsin-Madison suddenly doesn't have 25% of its budget, that's a big deal.”
Congress must also vote to raise the debt ceiling next month to avoid a government shutdown if they plan to implement Trump’s heavy tax cuts, which is estimated to be a $2 trillion loss for the federal government over the next 10 years. With a significant number of Republicans and Democrats alike in opposition to either or both of Trump’s proposed budget and tax cuts, Johnson will likely need to rely on Democratic votes if he hopes to raise the debt ceiling, said Copelovitch.
US international policy reversals are ‘stunning,’ ‘dangerous’
Some of Trump’s first actions as president included renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, threatening to make Canada the 51st state and trying to buy both Greenland and the Panama Canal.
“Nobody really thought that NATO countries were going to come together to deter the United States from taking their own territory,” Copelovitch said. “That's a dangerous thing given the state of the world right now.”
Trump’s administration also upset the balance of international relations overseas. This past week, U.S. representatives met with Russia to discuss the Russia-Ukraine war without Ukraine representatives present. Following the meeting, Trump referred to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” because Ukrainian elections had been postponed during the period of martial law, and blamed Zelenskyy for starting the war.
After that, the U.S. voted against a United Nations resolution aimed at “advancing a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine,” reversing the position they have held on the resolution since its introduction.
Trump’s actions, both domestic and international, have placed the balance of the political world into uncertainty, Copelovitch said.
“The whole reason treaties exist, international organizations exist, military alliances exist, trade agreements exist… is so you don't have government policies wildly fluctuating when you elect a new leader, and that’s what's happened in the U.S. in the first month of the Trump administration — lots of shaking things up, and saying we might not live up to long standing American commitments,” Copelovitch said, adding European allies were particularly vulnerable due to their dependence on iron clad U.S. commitments.
“If you pull the United States out from backstopping all of those things, the world looks like a much more uncertain place,” Copelovitch said. “Bad stuff happens in international relations, wars happen, when there's more uncertainty.”
