Since Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, the American people have been standing at a crossroads: One road leads to the end of American democracy and its replacement with some form of authoritarianism — or what political theorist Sheldon Wolin described as “inverted totalitarianism” — while the other leads to continuing the American democratic experiment and doing the hard, necessary work to improve it.
For too long, the American people have delayed deciding which road to take. In the wake of recent events — including Trump's mobilizing the National Guard and Marines to put down protests in Los Angeles, commanding the National Guard to intervene in other cities, threatening protesters with the use of "very heavy force," admitting he had considered invoking the Insurrection Act, targeting blue parts of the country because they are full of “scum" — it's becoming clear that if Americans do not make their decision imminently, it will be made for them.
Now, these events are unfolding against the backdrop of military conflict in the Middle East.
Now these events are unfolding against the backdrop of military conflict in the Middle East. On Saturday, Trump ordered airstrikes against three of Iran's nuclear facilities and immediately declared them a "spectacular military success." Nicknamed "Operation Midnight Hammer", it remains unlikely the strikes dealt a death blow to Iran's nuclear program. (Some experts have cautioned the country might have moved its most vital nuclear components before the attacks.) But the operation means that the U.S. has intervened in Israel's war against Iran.
The Trump administration is claiming that Operation Midnight Hammer is not intended as the beginning of a larger, more sustained military operation against Iran. But on Sunday, Trump blatantly hinted at the prospect of regime change, posting on Truth Social that "It’s not politically correct to use the term, “Regime Change,” but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!" In the wake of Iran's retaliatory missile attack against a U.S. military base in Qatar yesterday, he turned more conciliatory, thanking Iran for giving the U.S. early notice of their counterstrikes and posting on Truth Social "IT'S TIME FOR PEACE." He followed this by announcing an Israel-Iran cease-fire agreement that would "go forever."
Authoritarian leaders have historically used international crises — be they real, manufactured or false altogether — as a way of expanding their domestic power. In an attempt to better navigate this dangerous time in American history, I recently spoke to several experts about Trump’s military parade, the “No Kings” protests and what may happen next in the country’s rapidly spiraling democracy crisis.
This is the second part of a three-part series.
Norman Ornstein is emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author of the bestseller One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported.
I am extremely uneasy. As soon as Stephen Miller used the word “insurrection,” I saw it as a deliberate prelude to Trump invoking the Insurrection Act, itself a prelude to declaring martial law.
We are in for a bad time ahead. Trump is destroying public safety, from food to transportation to health, and the world is more, not less, unstable and dangerous with him, Rubio, Hegseth, et al. in place.
The current culture of violence, reflected now by horrific assassinations of a beloved Minnesota legislator and her husband by a right-wing extremist with a hit list of 70, including legislators and abortion providers, is especially dangerous and unsettling.
Federico Finchelstein is a professor of history at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York. His new book is The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy.
My feeling is that Trump is increasing his tendency towards fascism. [We've seen] a further escalation of his conflation of politics and war via the classic fascist practice of the militarization of politics. We also saw an escalation in repression in California that was combined at the highest levels with the very open ideological glorification of violence towards the opposition. (Speaker of the House Mike Johnson expressed a desire for tarring and feathering Gov. Newsom).
Trump’s parade…was a basic example of the authoritarian cult of the leader. In the context of polarization and extreme demonization of others, [we have also seen] the “solo” political assassinations that happened in Michigan. We need to know more about the motivations of the alleged killer, but the responses by the MAGA people and the Trumpists are very concerning. In a normal country, Trump’s military parade would have been cancelled in light of the gravity of these events. The parade was a failure in terms of attendance, but it was successful in the way that Trump amplified the association between his persona and the state, in this case with that of the military. An important effect was the massive response in the form of the “No Kings” peaceful protests that clearly made the case that Trump is acting against the democratic values of this country.
I think we will see further escalation on all fascist fronts: violence and militarization, more demonization and repression, propaganda and attacks on independent journalism and the interference with the judiciary and other state institutions, and democracy. Hopefully, we will also see more peaceful resistance against these attempts to destroy American democracy.
Katherine Stewart is the author of the new book Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy.
Creating an emergency to justify an authoritarian overreaction is one of the most frequently telegraphed stunts in the authoritarian canon. Trump basically told us over and over again before the election, that he wanted to use the U.S. military against U.S. citizens, and that’s what he’s doing. He chose to send ICE into downtown L.A. precisely because he knew these actions would yield the optics of chaos that right-wing media requires.
This follows the authoritarian playbook. When would-be autocrats wish to establish a government that is not bound by law or reason, they declare an emergency to justify the suspension of laws that constrain them. Trump and his people have shown they’ll declare anything they don't like to be an emergency, including “wokeness,” “DEI,” et cetera. To them, the democratic values of equality and pluralism and justice are themselves the emergency.
During and after the demonstrations, right-wing media and politicians responded predictably to small-scale disturbances taking place on the fringes of overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations. Some declared that “Los Angeles is on fire.” “We are liberating the city from the socialists,” said Kristi Noem after police officers tackled and handcuffed U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, who attempted to ask some questions during [Noem's] news conference.
This, paired with Trump’s rather sad military parade and his comment that protesters will be met with force, is a huge tell. The president and members of his cabinet show no awareness of the Constitution they are supposed to defend, a Constitution that asserts the right to peaceful assembly.
The threat of political violence, however, is indeed a true emergency, as judges who rule against Trump, along with Democratic lawmakers, are barraged with threats and abuse.
The threat of political violence, however, is indeed a true emergency, as judges who rule against Trump, along with Democratic lawmakers, are barraged with threats and abuse. Though information will emerge in the coming days and weeks, we have some strong indicators about the waters prime suspect Vance Boelter was swimming in before the shootings of two Democratic lawmakers and their spouses. As a graduate of the Christ For The Nations Institute, he appears to have ties to the charismatic movement and the New Apostolic Reformation. Wired obtained video, presumably of Boelter, preaching near the Congo border in 2023: “God is going to raise up apostles and prophets in America, to correct His church.”
There is still much to learn about Boelter’s biography. But he appears to be less representative of the charismatic movement's top-level leadership than its followers and supporters, which is, in a way, the more frightening aspect of this story.
The link between dehumanizing rhetoric and political violence is too well-known to belabor. When you call people “demons” or “baby-killers,” someone somewhere will start to believe they should be treated accordingly. You might try to take refuge in the claim that that someone suffers from a psychiatric condition. But if you’ve got tens of thousands of followers, what are the chances that there won’t be unstable people among them?
It is worth remembering, too, that political violence is not the preserve of one sect of any religion or political party. But the ideological movement or movements that appear to have contributed to the conditions for this crime happen to be an integral part of the ruling administration and have created the permission structure for political violence. They aren’t just another segment of Trump’s base of voters; they aggressively supported his attempted coup and now have direct representation in the White House.
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Trump has denounced the assassinations in Minnesota. But can his administration understand that the criminal and the unstable will see some advantage in this kind of violence?
Consider that in the months preceding the event, DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] eviscerated the nation’s capabilities in domestic counterterrorism.
Consider also what happened to those who committed hundreds of violent crimes on Jan. 6. This president has made it abundantly clear that certain types of political violence might be just fine. If you’re on his team, there may be a pardon in it for you. He made the point clear well before Jan. 6 and its aftermath. Has there ever been another president who celebrates when his supporters attack media and protestors at his own rallies? Has there ever been another president who would have said to groups like the Proud Boys: “Stand back and stand by?”
And then there is this executive order establishing a task force on “Anti-Christian Bias” in which Trump cited as evidence of such bias that that the FBI had dared to raise the prospect that some anti-abortion extremists might pose a terror threat.
Many Republican lawmakers have condemned the attacks in Minnesota. But the right-wing disinformation operations that keep them in power have already started on the lying that can turn this violence to advantage for them. One of the sad realities of our time is that an electorally significant subset of the American population will believe this disgraceful narrative from here to eternity, no matter the evidence.
