Originally published on 3Streams, Medium.com,. February 28, 2025.
The speed and breadth of the Trump administration’s implementation of its radical agenda has been a shock, even to those of us who warned of the coming storm. It would not be going too far to say that President Trump is crafting a new political system, in which the rules of the game as we understood them no longer seem to apply. Yet, we continue to be told by pundits that our system is resilient and that American democracy will triumph.
Some argue this is so for economic reasons. Thomas Friedman suggests that Trump’s failed trade policies will weaken and undermine his presidency. Others, like Bret Stephens and Masha Gessen, believe we can withstand the worst because our system is deeply rooted. Stephens argues our democracy will survive because it is “anchored in history and habit” and therefore nowhere near as fragile as the newly minted democracies of Russia and Venezuela in the 1990s, or Weimar Germany in the 1920s. And Gessen holds onto the hope that our free press, independent judiciary, and wealthy civil society will enable us to prevent autocracy.
Unfortunately, I believe this confidence is misplaced — and worse — dangerous. All the signs point to the fact that America’s political system is on a crash course and that the safeguards that once were solid have melted into thin air.
There is little indication that America’s institutions can protect us any longer. Trump has steadily worked on centralizing power in the executive, reducing the legislature to a rubber stamp, and packing the Supreme Court with people who share the extremist MAGA vision for the future of this country. With the three branches of government under his control, state governments are limited in their ability to thwart his agenda. The one place that has been able to slow down Trump’s unceasing momentum is the judicial system. However, though the lower courts have been able to hold the administration’s unceasing march forward for a short time, once cases clear the Supreme Court even the judicial system will fail us.
Many Democrats and anti-MAGA Republicans have faith that control of Congress will turn-over during mid-term elections, limiting Trump’s power. On Facebook, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posts that “We cannot afford to give up. We cannot afford to resign from the fight” and Robert Reich tells us to keep the faith, reminding us that “Trump won the popular vote by only 1.5 points. By any historical measure, this was a squeaker.” But I do not believe that is so. Elections will be of little help because they will not be conducted as they have been.
In fact, the stage has already been set.
Since the Supreme Court eviscerated a central component of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, Republicans have successfully passed restrictive voter registration legislation in eleven states. This has enabled them to tweak close elections in their favor for a decade, by culling voting rolls. In the past, some of their efforts were stymied. But in the future successful resistance is highly unlikely. With the Republican legislature and the Supreme Court on their side, when Trump calls election officials and tells them he needs another 11,000 votes, he will get them.
So much for the mid-term elections.
That is not all. To keep the presidency, the MAGA administration will doubtless roll out the plan they hatched in 2020 but were unable to implement — to hand-pick electors for the electoral college, ensuring the lions-share of the electoral votes go to Trump. Indeed, Trump has already indicated that he is looking into what it would take for him to hold the presidency for three terms.
Nor will the military be able to protect us from the worst. Trump will assuredly not countenance a show-down like the one he faced in 2020, when General Milley refused to send in troops to suppress peaceful protests in the center of Washington D.C. At the time, Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to use the military and National Guard to suppress insurrection, rebellion, or civil disorder. But it has been reported that he repeatedly suggested doing so during the end of his tenure.
Trump has already signaled that he will deal harshly with anyone who might stand in his way of sending in troops. One of Defense Secretary Hegseth’s first actions was to initiate an investigation into General Milley and strip him of his security detail. This has had a chilling effect on the military. More broadly, Hegseth has reportedly focused most of his energies on plans for dealing with domestic dangers, rather than international ones. Combined, these should be taken as serious warnings that the Trump administration is very likely to use US forces on fellow citizens who protest against him.
Trump will also have two things that any authoritarian leader needs. First, Trump’s tech alliance, coupled with his persecution of the press, will enable him to achieve broad control over media. That is critical because, even in our complex media world, it would allow him to control much of the information people receive and limit the ability of citizens to rally together. Just think of Putin’s Russia where there are “few alternatives to state propaganda channels and heavy penalties for truth-telling in the public sphere.” After mass protests from 2011 to 2013, Putin passed “a spate of internet censorship laws” blocking Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. This ploy was so successful that Ukrainians reported that relatives living in Russia, inundated by fake Russian state news, refused to believe eye witness accounts of bombings — even from loved ones.
Second, with the aid of the ‘Tech-bro’s,’ Trump’s regime will be able to create the most comprehensive domestic spying system that has ever existed — possibly even surpassing the terrifying surveillance network of East Germany’s equivalent of the KGB, the Stasi. As the Stasi and KGB before, the administration would be able to use this information to sniff out anyone who opposes Trump’s agenda. Trump allowing Elon Musk and his team illegal access to sensitive personal Social Security information indicates that this is something eminently possible.
Arguably, the fact that Trump does not fully fit the fascist template has allowed many to dismiss the more severe prognostications of Trump’s authoritarianism as unwarranted. It is true, Trump is not technically a fascist. Unlike the fascists, the MAGA movement is more aligned with Christian Nationalism than the kind of political religion that characterized fascist regimes, based on the vitalism of the nation and the mysticism of heroes and martyrs.
But what Trump is, is not much better.
Trump fits in the mold of the modern-day National Authoritarian — as do Orban, Putin, and Modi — who are “more moderate than classical fascis[ts] in [their] political strategy, yet indulgent of the racism of [fascism’s] most extreme components.” In fact, given the Supreme Court’s closeness to Christian Nationalism, it would not surprise me if Trump worked with the Republican Congress to find a way to declare the United States a Christian Nation. Regardless, Trumpism certainly does not conform to Mussolini’s description of fascism:
Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity.
Daniel Treisman and Sergei Guriev refer to today’s new-fangled authoritarians as “Informational Autocrats” because they are “better adapted to a world of open borders, global media, and knowledge-based economies.” Where Hitler and Mussolini gained and sustained power by sending their thugs into the streets to beat up communists, round up ‘enemies of the state’, or torch homes and businesses, the informational autocrat uses “a repertoire of tools — propaganda, repression of protests, co-optation of the elite, and censorship of their messages” to convince the population that the dangers facing the nation are legion and therefore a strong man is needed to protect the national population. Even Trump’s method of territorial conquest has, thus far, been less bloody than the fascists. He is hoping to use economic intimidation and bullying tactics to force international concessions.
The new authoritarians also do not need to develop a totalitarian regime to rule by executive fiat. Instead, they are able to centralize power and circumvent republican democratic systems by appointing “a stratum of political loyalists to key positions in their administrations, who can circumvent institutional checks.” In this way, they effectively transform “the civil service into their own personal political machines.”
All in all, Trump’s brand of National Authoritarianism does not bode well for the country.
I realize that making such assertions will be taken by many as tantamount to giving up the ghost.
I am by no means suggesting resignation. This is NOT the time to stop fighting. Even if there is only a sliver of hope, it is critical to work to get out the vote.
There is a good chance I am wrong. A lot depends upon whether I am correct about the likely actions of the Supreme Court and the capacity of the administration to rig elections. And there are always the “unknown unknowns” that can turn a political situation on a dime in unimaginable ways.
Yet, if I am correct and our institutions cannot withstand the Trump onslaught, we will have to develop creative, out-of-the-ordinary forms of resistance, such as organizing general strikes. Relying on the popular vote or our traditional governmental systems of checks and balances will be a losing battle. Therefore, the sooner we recognize the gravity of the situation, the sooner we can rally our defenses.