American Autocracy Is Here

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

Donald Trump is an autocrat, there is no debating it. Already, he has stretched the bounds of his presidential powers well beyond the legal confines of the office he was elected to. Trump has made Congress functionally irrelevant, yanking several of its powers and responsibilities into his own hands. He has, with the stroke of a pen, attempted to remove constitutional amendments and shuttered entire federal agencies. He has gone further still, threatening universities, intimidating judges, and abducting Americans across the country who engage in free expression. He has ripped due process away from criminals and innocent individuals alike, sending them to El Salvadorian torture camps, and is now flouting several court orders which demand he and his administration rectify these unlawful acts. In this moment, Trump is also vigorously pursuing his political opponents, who he labels as his ‘enemies’, and anyone who stands in his way. With each passing day, Trump and his acolytes bulldoze their way through more of the norms and values that hold American democracy together. As he hoards power for himself, Trump, and his administration, are going after the entire foundations on which democracy is built. American autocracy is here, and it is just getting started.

It is always hard to say when a democracy fails. There are no clear signals, or defining lines that push a democracy into free fall where rights are stripped from citizens, and freedom is extinguished across civil society. So often it is the case that little by little, events add up, until one day democracy no longer exists as it once did. Today, with an autocrat in the White House, that line has most likely been long crossed already, and if it hasn’t, then America is on the cusp of free falling into one of the many forms of autocracy. From the very beginning, Donald Trump has concentrated powers in himself that no other president has sought. Almost immediately, he attempted to rip away Congress’s power to spend money on projects it had already passed, decreeing that all spending must align with his policy aims. Actions such as these, have left America and its politics at the whims of Trump and his desires alone. From tariffs, to educational, health, legal and foreign policy, decisions now sit in the exclusive domain of the president like never before. Able to conduct policy and politics exclusively on his own, without interference from the branches of government that once oversaw these realms, Trump is able to rewrite any part of American government he wishes. So far he has dismantled USAID, and has begun breaking apart the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Institute for Peace, the Department of Education, the National Institute for Health, the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump has also insidiously transformed the remit of other agencies and their missions, turning America’s environmental regulator into a champion of fossil fuels. As he has done this, Congress, the creator and guardian of these institutions, has stood idle as each institution has been bent out of shape or eradicated in its entirety.

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

At the same time Trump has expanded his presidential powers, he has also cut away at those who exercise checks on this power. Immediately, Trump fired dozens of Inspectors General, individuals who were tasked with finding corruption in the federal government. He has also fired all democratic commissioners at the FTC, the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the head of the Federal Elections Commission, Department of Justice prosecutors who worked on his criminal investigations, the lead US Archivist, the entire board of the Kennedy Centre, and countless others. Several of these terminations, including firing the Inspectors Generals, were outright illegal. His acolytes have also dismissed government lawyers who have respected court proceedings, and multiple military personnel. The list is extensive, and illustrates that Trump, and his autocratic nature, is determined to destroy the traditional checks on presidential power, and independent agencies that sit beyond the president's reach. By now, Trump has dissolved the power of countless independent agencies, agencies that once acted as limits on his power. This is most visible at the Justice Department, where Pam Bondi now serves almost exclusively as the president's own spokesperson, bending the institution, and law, to his will, effectively ending the ironclad independence the agency once had at its disposal. These guardrails, now eviscerated, were so important because they kept Trump’s autocratic impulses at bay during his first term. Now Trump and the office can break free from the bounds of the law.

Trump’s desires to bend and break America also extend well beyond the federal government. He is vigorously targeting civil society and the institutions within it. Trump has made it clear that anyone who crosses him and his administration will be targeted with any means available. Law firms have had their federal contracts threatened, unless they do the bidding of Trump and his administration - several have already caved. Elsewhere, Trump has targeted American universities, threatening to withdraw federal funds and cripple their work. So far, Trump has crushed Columbia, rewriting the university’s rules and policies in the image of the Trump administration, and is now seeking to bring Harvard into line. Trump has also begun rewriting the cultural landscape within America. He has very publicly dispatched the entire board of the Kennedy Arts Centre, and imposed his vision of America on the cultural venue. More sinisterly his administration has also pulled countless federal websites, and rewritten numerous passages on historical events. His administration has emptied libraries of books that occupy diverse perspectives of America’s unique and storied history. Trump is fast erasing the lived history of the nation and bending it into a new reality. This desire to kneecap civil society and its ability to operate independently and free of political influence, is a cornerstone of autocracy. Free thought, expression and dissent are all antithetical to the project of autocracy. 

More insidiously still, Trump is quietly using the agencies he has brought under his control, to muzzle institutions across civil society and get them to fall into line. At the FCC, the agency which oversees broadcasting, Trump is bringing multiple organisations to heel using the knowledge that he, and the chairman he installed, are ‘monitoring’ the content these organisations produce. This warning, combined with investigations, inquiries, and threats to revoke the broadcasting licences of specific broadcasters, merely for exercising editorial freedom, is chilling the speech that is essential in a democracy. As a result of these actions, CBS has already parted ways with the CEO of its news division and head of ‘60 Minutes’, ABC has told hosts to ‘tone down’ the politics, and Jeff Bezos has redefined the Washington Post. Each of these changes, small on their own, illustrate just how quickly autocracy can reach right into the heart of a democracy.

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

To date however, Trump’s most authoritarian impulse has been to begin open defiance of the courts. Right now the administration is openly ignoring, or dragging its feet on, several orders from a collection of courts, including one from the Supreme Court that requires it to facilitate the return of a man wrongly deported to an El Salvadorian torture camp. These actions, or more accurately non-actions, are designed to stretch the powers of the presidency to its very limits and prepare the ground for a constitutional crisis, a crisis which Trump may very well seek to exploit and expand his powers further. They also blow the ‘presumption of regularity’, in which courts and judges traditionally treat the government as trustworthy actor, wide open. Without this presumption holding, judges will soon be forced to ratchet up their demands on the administration, ensuring the courts and their judgements are respected. Right now, however, America is at the beginning of this battle between the courts and an autocratic president and his administration. With each move, Trump, and lackeys like Steven Miller, are daring judges and the courts they sit on, to be bolder and move further against the administration. With each calculated move, escalation and noncompliance the administration takes, such as refusing to allow the Associated Press to report at the White House, America and its democracy are pushed closer and closer to the early stages of autocratic free fall. To have even reached this point speaks to the truly authoritarian nature of Trump and the administration he runs. Courts have always been respected by presidents and their administrations alike, because the law is the basis on which much, if not all, of democracy sits. Without the common respect and balance between these two critical institutions, America and its democracy will walk further into a major constitutional crisis.

Autocracy has arrived in America. In just a few months, Trump has created a new kind of presidency, one that he wants to take further still. Trump has now mused about deporting American citizens to foreign countries and suspending habeas corpus, and he is shouting ever louder about impeaching the judges who rule against him. He has pulled billions of dollars of funding from Harvard, and has stated his intent to direct the IRS to investigate the institution (something that is illegal). He wants to make his control of the federal government total, reshape elections and further rewrite American history by running for a third (unconstitutional) term. He has intertwined his private and business interests with Americas, creating a system of bribery that violates every rule in the constitution - a feature that is present in countless authoritarian regimes. Across the states, democracy remains under attack like never before, Republicans took overturning a democratic election to unprecedented heights in North Carolina. In this moment, America could very well be a short walk from Trump and his administration invoking powers few presidents would have ever dreamed of using - including the insurrection act. It is a sobering thought, but in this moment of profound democratic backsliding, it is hardly beyond the realm of possibility, especially as Trump continues to ignore the limits that once confined presidents. In fact, it is increasingly likely. If something doesn’t change, democratic disarray and constitutional retrogression will soon be replaced by something altogether more sinister: a democratic free fall that America won’t be able to pull away from. American democracy, as you know it, is over.