Are we in a Constitutional crisis right now? At this moment? Have we already crossed the red line signaling the potential end to our democracy? This question has been asked and answered multiple times in the past few months.
Inexplicably, there are those who continue to resist the urge to answer: “Yes.” They claim that, among other things, we must wait for the final judgements of the courts, allow them to adjudicate the lawsuits against Trump all the up to the Supreme Court, and wait and see what Trump does at that point — before making the call. Only if Trump refuses to obey at that point — has the crisis point been reached. For now, they urge caution, lest we overreact. According to them, we are currently only in danger of a crisis. One has yet to arrive.
If only that were true. The truth is that these “head-in-the-sand” political cowards have set an absurdly high bar — especially in reaction to someone as clearly and deliberately disparaging of the law and the Constitution as Trump.
When a President repeatedly does things that are plainly illegal and blatantly unconstitutional — and continues to defend these actions with phony justifications even after courts (including the Supreme Court) have almost universally ruled against him — and subsequently proceeds to issue further illegal executive actions on an almost daily basis, with an almost gleeful disdain — and then threatens prosecution against the very judges opposing his rulings — that is already more than sufficient to declare that we are in a crisis. The threat to our democracy is at our doorstep, with a battering ram.
As J. Michael Luttig lays it all out, in a stunning and frightening new article in The Atlantic, even if Trump ultimately loses in court, and even if he acknowledges those losses, it will be too late. That’s why we cannot not afford to minimize or ignore Trump’s actions — not for even another day:
“No court in the land will ever uphold any of these executive orders, and Trump knows that. He knows he need not win any of these cases in court to achieve what he wants. He will ruin the lives and livelihoods of lawyers and other American citizens and upend these institutions long before the courts render their final decisions on these orders. That’s his whole point.”
Trump has made it crystal clear: When it comes to a contest between the rule of law and the rule of Trump, the President is the unequivocal winner. He, and he alone, gets to decide what is or is not lawful. This is the very definition of a dictatorship.
“Donald Trump may wish he could dictate his unconscionable global tariffs; dispense with due process and deport whomever he pleases, citizen and not; and vanish away huge swaths of the federal government without check or rebuke. He may wish he did not have to contend with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the free press, or the Constitution’s birthright-citizenship guarantee. He may wish he could ignore the Constitution’s elections clauses and run America’s elections from the White House. And he may wish he could intimidate the nation’s lawyers and law firms from challenging his abuse of power and commandeer them to do his personal bidding.”
He may wish that. But we cannot grant him his wishes.
“After these first three tyrannical, lawless months of this presidency, surely Americans can understand now that Donald Trump is going to continue to decimate America for the next three-plus years. He will continue his assault on America, its democracy, and rule of law until the American people finally rise up and say, ‘No more.’ ”
As the Trump regime continues its relentless march toward autocracy…implementing all the key components of Project 2025, you need a scorecard (and a rather big one) to keep track of all the damage they are doing along the way.
As you try to assess just how dangerous the current situation is, bear in mind these words from a trio of political scientists who have studied how democracies come to an end:
“Authoritarianism is harder to recognize than it used to be. Most 21st-century autocrats are elected. Rather than violently suppress opposition like Castro or Pinochet, today’s autocrats convert public institutions into political weapons, using law enforcement, tax and regulatory agencies to punish opponents and bully the media and civil society onto the sidelines. We call this competitive authoritarianism — a system in which parties compete in elections but the systematic abuse of an incumbent’s power tilts the playing field against the opposition. It is how autocrats rule in contemporary Hungary, India, Serbia and Turkey and how Hugo Chávez ruled in Venezuela.” “America has {already} crossed the line into competitive authoritarianism.”
While it is impossible to prioritize the awfulness of all the things Trump is done, certainly one of the worst is the unconstitutional stripping away of the fundamental rights and freedoms of every citizen — and legal resident — in this country. And he does this without any Congressional objection or even oversight. Following along from the Viktor Orbán playbook, Trump is:
“…redefining the rule of law as rule by executive decree” and “eliminating checks and balances and separation of powers by taking over the legislature, the courts, the media, and civil society.”
Trump has been systematically doing this since Day 1 of his second term. Yet, two of the most egregious examples of his lawlessness and authoritarianism have become evident in only the last week or so:
Gutting the Civil Rights Act of 1964: As noted in The New York Times: “President Trump has ordered federal agencies to abandon the use of a longstanding legal tool used to root out discrimination against minorities, a move that could defang the nation’s bedrock civil rights law” In particular, “Mr. Trump directed the federal government to curtail the use of ‘disparate-impact liability,’ a core tenet used for decades to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by determining whether policies disproportionately disadvantage certain groups.” Slate further explained that prohibiting practices that have a disparate negative effect on certain minorities, regardless of the intent of the law, “is the sort of fundamentally fair, commonsense approach to rooting out systemic racism at which the Trump administration has taken aim through its Orwellian ‘Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy’ executive order.”
Suspending Habeas Corpus: As reported in Time magazine: “President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller told reporters that the Trump Administration is ‘looking at’ the option of suspending habeas corpus…” Why is this so critical? Because habeas corpus is the legal term for the procedure that guarantee’s due process and whereby “a federal court may review the legality of an individual’s incarceration.” And while Trump and his cronies may believe they can suspend it on a whim, they cannot. Only Congress can suspend the writ of habeas corpus! “This is a question of fundamental constraints on the tyrannical power of people to throw you in jail and throw away the keys.”
The clear and present danger is that, even though what Trump is trying to do is blatantly illegal, he can still get away with doing it — if no one stops him. If Congress doesn’t do its job and exert its Constitutional authority over the executive branch, if the Courts allow Trump to ignore their prohibitory rulings without consequence, and if the people do not act alarmed and assert their strong resistance to the dire threat hanging over their heads — then Trump will assuredly become this country’s first dictator.
There is no appeasement possible. There is no compromise you can offer. As Robert Reich put it: “It’s impossible to appease a tyrant like Trump because tyrants always see appeasement as a sign of weakness, and will demand more and more.”
Trump is already delivering on his threat to destroy democracy
You don’t need me to tell you that our current political environment is…horrendous. But, if you’re just following the day-to-day reporting of Trump’s latest outrageous assaults on democracy — you may not realize just how horrendous — and dangerous — the current situation is. For that, you need to step back from each day’s news-cycle and view the larger landscape — to survey the full scope of the damage done in just two weeks — and what it portends for the next four years.
During the 2024 campaign, it was commonplace to warn that a Trump victory could mean the end of democracy — and the emergence of an autocracy/oligarchy in its place.
Trump won anyway. One reason is because too many people did not taking the warnings seriously — dismissing them as partisan hyperbole.
So now, here we are — paying the price for their mistake. Our democracy is in fact disintegrating as I write this. It is happening via the avalanche of executive orders, memos, proclamations, nominations, firings and threats that emanate from the White House on an almost hourly basis. The changes are happening so fast that it is hard to keep up. Blink and you’ve probably missed something important. But that’s MAGA goal: Flood the zone with so much stuff so as to overwhelm the opposition. Even if many things get stopped, the damage will already have been done. And many things will not get stopped — despite our best efforts. Heck, it’s hard just to be aware of it all.
As the AP put it: “Just a little over a week into his second term, President Donald Trump took steps to maximize his power, sparking chaos and what critics contend is a constitutional crisis as he challenges the separation of powers that have defined American government for more than 200 years.”
Robert Reich offers a similar perspective on Trump’s move to consolidate his power, replacing democracy with oligarchy, “substituting loyalists for experts, using retribution to intimidate others, and purging the government’s independent inspectors general…”
Or, as Tom Cruise explained in Mission Impossible:
What follows is my attempt to lay out the full scope of Trump’s actions since his return to the White Houses — so you can grasp the big picture and the inherent danger. I can’t hope to be comprehensive. But I believe even this recitation of the most egregious lowlights should be sufficient.
Although you won’t see the term “Project 2025” mentioned in any White House statements, Project 2025 is the driving force behind many of Trump’s directives. The most striking example of this is the implementation of Schedule F. As I described in a prior post:
Schedule F would “reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as political appointees. The workers would thus lose their employment protections and could be terminated at the whim of the President….The workers would then be replaced by partisans whose main qualification is loyalty to Trump rather than any technical skill — and whose primary goal is to please Trump.”
We’re especially seeing this in the Justice Department, where the new “administration has reassigned about 20 senior career Justice Department attorneys” in a move to swiftly “shake up an arm of government that has long drawn his ire.”The Atlantic adds: “These are career people. They are not political…They have developed a real expertise…But this is not merely an attack on expertise. This maneuver has a further effect: to disable opposition.”
To prevent any legal oversight or prohibition of these changes, Trump has moved to purge at least a dozen inspectors general — individuals who serve as “an internal check on waste, fraud, and abuse at federal agencies.”
The coup-de-grace here is Trump’s offer to “buyout all federal workers,” which Axios described as “the latest step in the White House’s unprecedented move to push career federal workers out of their jobs, and replace them with loyalists — a return to a patronage system that federal law sought to banish more than a century ago.” In other words: This is Project 2025 in action. There is serious question as to whether this is constitutional — but Trump is moving forward anyway.
Of course, we continue to watch the clown parade of Trump cabinet nominees — as they appear before Congress for their confirmations. These include (I still have trouble even contemplating what this will mean) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Kash Patel for FBI Director. In essence, this is another Project 2025-inspired example of replacing qualified experts with partisan incompetent hacks — who, in some cases, are opposed to the goals of the agency for which they are nominated to head.
Some of what Trump has proposed almost certainly violates the U.S. Constitution and/or existing federal laws. The administration does not view this as a reason for restraint — but rather as a challenge to overcome. To them, it’s all worth a try — even if it is later declared illegal.
Such is the case with Trump’s attempt to eliminate birthright citizenship— a move that “would overturn more than a century of {legal} precedent” and is clearly in violation of the 14th Amendment. If this order stands, it would mean that children born in the U.S. of immigrant mothers (even those here legally in some cases) would not be U.S. citizens and would thus not be eligible for critical educational and health benefits. Needless to say, this is being challenged in court and is temporarily blocked.
Another likely illegal action is Trump’s proposed “freeze” on federal grant spending — an action that caused so much chaos and confusion that the White House was forced to pause the freeze within days of announcing it. If the pause had gone through — it would have brought numerous federal programs, from Medicaid to scientific research, to a complete halt. The stated intent of the pause (echoes of Project 2025) was to allow the Trump administration to evaluate whether the current policies of the recipients were aligned with Trump’s goals. If not, presumably funding would not be restored. Joyce Vance explains how this refusal to spend money authorized by Congress — because Trump disapproves of the program — is clearly in violation of the Impoundment Control Act. Vox warns that “the memo asserts a degree of presidential authority so sweeping that it would wreck one of the core principles of separation of powers.” The program may have been halted for the moment, but don’t breathe too easy. Expect the administration to take another swing at this soon.
And then there’s this: A White House memo directed “the Defense Department and Department of Homeland Security to prepare a 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantánamo Bay” to hold immigrants that Trump deems too untrustworthy to even send back to their countries of origin. With little oversight as to exactly who be at risk to be sent here, this sounds dangerously close to a politically-motivated concentration camp.
Seeking revenge and intimidation
As he promised during the campaign, Trump is exacting revenge on his perceived enemies — while simultaneously threatening retaliation against anyone who might challenge him in the future.
For starters, he removed the security details and/or clearances for people who have been critical of Trump in the past — people such as Mark Milley, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and Anthony Fauci. By making the removals so public, there is no doubt that their main purpose was to put the individuals’ safety at risk — and intimidate others from voicing any similar criticisms — rather than attain any legitimate administrative objective.
Trump’s bullying extends to foreign countries: He imposed a 25% tariff on Colombia for all exports to the U.S. simply because Colombia objected to how poorly the U.S. was treating immigrants being deported back to Colombia. As with the grant freeze, Trump was forced to backtrack on this — at least for the moment — after warnings that the fallout would be too damaging to the U.S.
And then there are Trump’s attacks on the media and corporations:
President Trump’s new head of the Federal Communications Commission recently ordered an investigation of NPR and PBS, “with an eye toward unraveling federal funding for all public broadcasting.” The claim is that sponsorship announcements amount to advertising — and should be prohibited lest they lose their government funding, which is the ultimate retaliatory goal.
More generally, Trump’s threats of retaliation have stoked fear amongst mainstream media and corporate leaders, leading to the “big capitulation” — a level of subservience never seen or even imagined before. Recent examples include (1) Google agreeing to go along with Trump’s bizarre demand to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and (2) Paramount/CBS likely settling with Trump over his suit against 60 Minutes for their interview with Kamala Harris — which Trump claimed had “deceptive editing.” If the settlement happens, it would be an “extraordinary concession by a major U.S. media company to a sitting president, especially in a case in which there is no evidence that the network got facts wrong or damaged the plaintiff’s reputation.”
As Dean Obeidallah concludes, Trump is “following a fascist playbook by targeting media outlets critical of him…and seeking to make himself a dictator for life.“
On an optimistic note (which is hard to find), there has been a mini-revolt of respected journalists — who have quit their jobs rather than continue to work for their cowardly bosses. These include Paul Krugman (from The New York Times), Jim Acosta (from CNN) and Jennifer Rubin (of The Washington Post). Rubin has since gone on to establish The Contrarian — an alternative news source that I highly recommend. Of course, the downside here is that it highlights just how compromised mainstream media has become.
Pardon?
Some things Trump has done are so egregious that they deserve their own category. This is one of them. In what I consider to be the most unpatriotic, unconscionable and unjust (yet legal) action a President has ever done: Trump cavalierly pardoned /or commuted every one convicted in relation to the January 6th insurrection. A blatant attempt at rewriting history, it also condones the violence that was committed, opens the door for these people to commit future violent acts and is a slap in the face to all those injured on that day and all those in the Justice Department who worked tirelessly to obtain the convictions. Just disgusting.
The fire hose
Are you finding the big picture still a bit hazy? If so, here’s a collection of headlines I gathered from just the past couple of days. It captures both the breadth and depth — as well as the terrifying pace — with which Trump is acting. Quoted without comment (as no comment is necessary):
Trump and his cronies are pushing the limits of what the executive branch has the power to do — shattering every imaginable norm — creating chaos and fear along the way. The goal is clear: To purge the executive branch of any opposition to Trump’s agenda; to fill emptied positions with Trump loyalists; to intimidate remaining foes into compliance; to silence critics in the media; to reverse decades of policies that protect the underprivileged; to destroy government agencies Trump views as contrary to his aims; and to consolidate power so that Trump can act as an unrestrained autocrat going forward. In other words, the end of democracy. And it’s working!
Where does this leave us? What can we do to counter this assault? One oft-stated strategy is to set our sights for the 2026 elections — working to make sure that we reverse the Congressional majorities and make clear how unpopular Trump has become. I hope we can do this.
But bear in mind, we are facing a political environment that is unlike anything we have seen in our lifetime — perhaps in the history of the country. Counting on Trump losing popularity is by no means a sure bet. But even if that happens — the problem with waiting for 2026 is that it’s entirely possible we will no longer have free and fair elections by then. Democracy may already be over. At a minimum, so many key positions in government will have been replaced by Trump sycophants, so many changes made to regulations, so many harmful acts carried out and so much power consolidated in the White House — that a midterm election will be unable to stem the tide.
Although it may sound like it at times, I didn’t mean this to be a declaration of despair and defeat. Rather, I wanted to present the big picture — in all its ugliness — so as to wake up and shake up those who may still be complacent about the threat we face. Those who are somehow still assuming that this will all be over in 4 years at most — and then things will return to normal — and all we have to do is wait out the storm. That won’t work. Not this time. The time to sound the alarm was yesterday. To prevent the worst from happening, we have to act — now, today, tomorrow, and every day for the next 4 years. Exactly what we need to do will vary with the circumstances. Right now, it may be as little as a phone call to your Congressperson — urging them to block a nomination or a piece of legislation. It might ultimately require actions aimed to disrupt the workings of the government itself. Hang on…because before things start to get better, they’re almost certain to get a lot worse.
Note: Several of the links in this post are behind paywalls.
=========
Update: February 2
Wow! In the 24 hours since I posted this blog, numerous articles have appeared (authored by people more informed than I am) that raise a similar level of alarm. A consensus is clearly emerging. Here is just a sampling:
The Anti-President: “I don’t want to be an alarmist—I try to avoid that—but as I’m writing this, it looks like we are in the middle of a five-alarm fire.“
January 6 Was Nothing Compared to What We’re Going Through Now: “Unchecked, we are on the path not just to autocracy, but to the worst form of malevolent, abusive dictatorship. It’s not hysteria. It’s not exaggeration. It’s not premature. Where we are is a place we have never been in this country and threat we face is one that is by no means certain that we can survive.“
Meanwhile, as to fighting back, Indivisible offers “How Senate Democrats Can Shut Down Trump’s Agenda with Procedural Hardball.” It’s a great place to start. It recognizes that “Dems are still playing by the old rules, trying to demonstrate that they’re reasonable in the face of an unreasonable MAGA party.” The problem, as they point out, is that we are way past this as a workable strategy. Now is the time to, as much as possible, “Shut it all down.” Say no to everything!
“Democracy is doing just fine, thank you. We’re headed for a peaceful transfer of power. The government is still functioning. There are no riots in the streets.
What about all that talk before the election about Trump being a threat to democracy? Turns out, it was exactly that: just talk. Sure Trump made some wild claims during the campaign. But that’s just Trump being Trump. Don’t take it seriously. Nothing to see here…move along.”
Sound familiar? I’m sure you’ve read or heard something along these lines — certainly from Trump supporters but even from some on the left who desperately want to believe that things aren’t as serious as they are.
Unfortunately, such statements are misguided at best — and a deliberate distortion at worst. To see just how distorted the rhetoric can get, here’s a quote from an obviously right-wing op-ed that recently appeared in The San Diego Union-Tribune. [I’m not going to cite the link to the article, or the author’s name, because I don’t want to provide undeserved publicity to such drivel].
“Democracy proved to be a terrible campaign concept in November. For ‘Save Democracy’ to work, there would have had to have been a real, obvious threat to democracy and, as much as Democrats tried to speak it into existence, voters did not believe that Trump was that threat. This is what Democrats are failing to see. Democracy is not at stake. And voters know that what Democrats want is not to preserve democracy for democracy’s sake, but as one of many means to justify their ends.”
So…what’s wrong with all of that? Just about everything. Here’s why…
Yes, it was a “free and fair election.” But that means very little about what is yet to come.
Was the election in November “free and fair”? For the most part, yes. But not because of efforts by Trump and the GOP. It was successful despite their efforts, We had to run a gauntlet of right-wing attempts at voter suppression and election manipulation to keep it fair. Thankfully, almost all the legal challenges against these anti-democratic actions were successful.
The other reason the election remains viewed as “free and fair,” ironically, is because Trump won. Had he lost, it is certain that Trump would have declared the election a fraud and proceeded down a road similar to what we saw in 2020 — which led to the January 6th insurrection. And his MAGA supporters would have followed him. So much for democracy being safe.
But in the end, as to whether or not Trump represented (and still represents) a threat to democracy, none of the above matters. The primary concern regarding democracy was never the election itself. The concern was always what would happen after the election — should Trump win and return to power. The concern was about Trump, once back in the White House, attempting to dismantle our democracy. And that is exactly where we now are.
There are already ominous signs about what is about to be unleashed. In Timothy Synder’s book On Tyranny, his first lesson in fighting tyranny is “Do not obey in advance.” Yet unforced capitulation is exactly what many corporate CEOs, government officials and (most especially) the supposed mainstream media are already doing — out of greed, a desire for power, and/or fear.
The post-election period, rather than dissipating fears about a looming autocracy, are confirming just how accurate those fears are.
Yes, Trump won. But that makes the threat to democracy that much more serious, not less so.
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: The number of people that voted for or against Trump has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not he remains a threat to democracy. The MAGA world wants you to believe this is not the case; but it is.
Such people (as evidenced by the op-ed I cited above) argue that Trump’s victory proves he is not a danger: “After all, if he was so dangerous, the voters would have recognized this and he would have lost.” That may have almost been true a couple of decades ago — when anyone with Trump’s baggage of scandals, lies and criminal behavior would have never even gotten the nomination. But it’s certainly not true anymore — mostly thanks to a silo consisting of right-wing social media, Fox News, and disinformation campaigns.
In any case, history tells us that even the most heinous dictators can garner enough support to win a democratic election — and then proceed to dismantle the freedoms and protections that permitted that election. It happened with the rise of Hitler in Germany [*] and the ascent of Putin in Russia, to cite two prominent examples from the last hundred years. Make no mistake: The path from a democratic election to autocratic rule is well trod — and we are already traveling down it.
Finally, even if you were inclined to accept the fallacious notion that voting totals correspond to the degree of threat that Trump represents, the election results mean that, for a huge swath of this country, the threat is very real. Trump’s margin over Harris, on a percentage basis, was extremely narrow — only 1.62 percent.
Yes, the claims about Trump and autocracy were a campaign issue. But that doesn’t make them any less true. Far from it.
Did the Democrats hope to that their warnings about Trump’s fascist plans would lead to his defeat? Absolutely. But that doesn’t make the warnings any less true. Trump has openly promised to lead this country down the road to autocracy — dismantling government institutions and using his office for personal gain and revenge — without regard for norms or legal constraints. This is exactly what autocrat-wannabes do. In an obvious bit of projection, Republicans may try to persuade the public that they are the victims rather than the perpetrators here. Don’t be fooled.
In the end, the “proof will be in the pudding.” A year from now, we’ll have a much clearer sense of where our democracy is heading. If my view is accurate, much of what I have been saying here will have moved from a warning to a reality. That doesn’t necessarily mean Trump’s supporters will have abandoned him. We know from history that dictators can maintain their popular support — at least for a while — even after they assume autocratic rule. The critical question will be — will it be too late to change course? Or will Trump have amassed so much power that — as with the dictators of the past — he can suspend our freedoms with impunity? Will 2024 turn out to be the last “free and fair” presidential election in this country? Stay tuned.
______________________
* Synder quotes this incredible passage from a German Jewish newspaper in the 1930’s: “We do not subscribe to the view that Mr. Hitler and his friends, now finally in possession of the power they have so long desired, will implement the proposals circulating in [Nazi newspapers]; they will not suddenly deprive German Jews of their constitutional rights, nor enclose them in ghettos, nor subject them to the jealous and murderous impulses of the mob. They cannot do this because a number of crucial factors hold powers in check… and they clearly do not want to go down that road.”
