Even more dangerous is they have shown signs of boredom and disinterest in certain areas which would likely allow the unimpeded progression of oppression by those in the administration most motivated to do so. In 2017 there was also a less united front within the federal government as many ideas were considered fringe, but politics in the U.S. has been shoved very far to the right in the intervening years and the Republican party as a majority has embraced being extremists instead of the extremists being a tiny but loud faction.
This is due to the two party system creating a fitness system which necessitates that factions either overtake a party or leave it as otherwise they get no votes, and older party members dying out and leaving seats open to the newer extremists who get an outsized amount of power because the party as a whole needs to vote collectively for a majority decision and just a handful of people can halt that entirely.
EDIT: Moved "unimpeded" so that it clarified who I was talking about.
- it’s politically advantageous to never explicitly legislate which rights are taken away. This keeps the issue alive among your base. You never want to effectively enforce that.
- You make an in-group based on obedience to the spirit of a law; a spirit that’s risky to spell out in writing because you know it’s on the wrong side of history.
So, the status quo benefits one party; and is the best that the other party could hope to negotiate.