Over the past seven months, Americans have witnessed Donald Trump’s unprecedented attacks against democratic institutions, the Constitution and the rule of law. This extremist regime is clearly executing an authoritarian or fascist agenda to remove all checks and balances on executive power with the intention of imposing a dictatorship personified in Trump’s cult of personality.
After Trump deployed the military to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., he’s threatened to target Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans and other minority-majority cities. The military occupation of U.S. cities, a clear violation of the constitution’s “Posse Comitatus Act,” comes as masked ICE agents acting as Trump’s personal secret police force, abduct and brutalize non-citizens and citizens alike without due process. All this while the extremist, fascist-friendly majority of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court rubberstamp Trump’s authoritarian rule.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Brett Edkins, managing director of policy and political affairs with Stand Up America, who discusses Trump’s success in dismantling checks and balances on his exercise of unrestrained executive power and the urgent need to enact new guardrails to defend against a future Trump-like dictatorship.
BRETT EDKINS: We are witnessing a sustained ongoing assault on the rule of law and on democracy itself. I think we have to call a spade a spade. This is what it looks like when democracy descends into authoritarianism. We’re not there yet. A lot of our institutions and our people are fighting back. But this is what it looks like when democracy and the rule of law are under threat. Donald Trump is guilty of so many unconstitutional and unlawful actions that it’s staggering. He refuses to spend money appropriated by Congress, which is Congress’s power. He has removed heads of independent agencies who are protected by law from summary firings. He’s fired civil servants without cause, including Jan. 6 prosecutors who put violent criminals who attacked the Capitol in jail. He’s dismantled federal agencies without any legal basis for doing so. And he’s called up the National Guard on very thin pretexts to terrorize U.S. citizens, stop and arrest citizens and lawful residents without due process.
He sent ICE agents with masks without badges or identification to raid businesses and communities across the country. He’s investigating political enemies. He’s threatening the broadcast licenses of institutions like ABC and NBC in violation of the First Amendment. He’s siphoning billions of dollars to his family businesses. Forbes estimates that Trump’s worth has more than doubled to more than $5 billion over just the past year. Qatar is sending him luxury jets, the Saudis, the Qatar, the Emirates — they’re investing in Trump businesses. India, Vietnam and Qatar are planning to build Trump golf courses all in a fairly desperate and transparent attempt to bribe Donald Trump and his administration.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court — three of the justices were appointed by him and the other three conservatives are aligned with him — are continually enabling this assault on our democracy and the rule of law. Rather than strike down the blatantly unconstitutional order to deprive Americans of birthright citizenship as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, the Supreme Court condemned the district judges for doing their job, didn’t condemn Trump went after their own judges and their own Article 3 branch of government who were stopping the assault on our rights.
The Supreme Court blessed Donald Trump’s use of ICE to stop people at random in L.A. for being Latino. The guidance to ICE is to stop people who speak Spanish, who look Latino, who are working in low-wage jobs and detain them. Now, that is a fairly clear violation of the Fourth Amendment and in an emergency ruling with barely any explanation, the Supreme Court said, “Go ahead.” So we have to be alarmed. We should be alarmed. It just doesn’t mean that we have to give up.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well said, Brett. I’d like you to comment on the urgency of strengthening the guardrails of democracy if the Republicans do lose power in ’26 or ’28, because it seems like this may be the last opportunity to protect democratic institutions from a president and a political party that seems hell bent on destroying democracy.
BRETT EDKINS: I agree with you. The next opportunity to pass a pro-democracy agenda has to be seized quickly. There was a chance early in the Biden administration to pass sweeping democracy reform and that effort passed the House — had every Democrat in the Senate for it, but it couldn’t get past the filibuster.
There was an opportunity in the early Biden administration to get rid of partisan gerrymandering. But if there is another opportunity to strengthen, reform our democracy and throw out the status quo that has not been working for people for decades, it has to be seized and it has to include Supreme Court reform. The Supreme Court has been bought and paid for by far-right interest groups, corporations, the Federalist Society, Donald Trump and his allies. They’re siding with him time and time again in an extremely political manner, usually through speedy emergency opinions that are barely opinions at all. It’s like a one-sentence thing.
The lower courts are surprisingly speaking out for the first time ever this week, you heard district court judges speaking off the record about how alarmed they are by the Supreme Court abandoning them and issuing decisions in an emergency docket way.
And that means we need real ethics reform, binding code of ethics in the Supreme Court. It means we need term limits. And, we may need to think about expanding the number of justices on the court to restore some semblance of balance because this court is more out of whack with where the American people are than any time in living memory. It also means not just ending partisan gerrymandering, but getting money out of politics.
It means reducing the powers of the presidency that Trump is exploiting day in and day out. Some of these loopholes that he’s finding in the National Guard and allowing the military to be used on our streets, endless national emergencies where he can bomb a Venezuelan boat or other places under an emergency power that Congress has no check on, that he can’t stop spending money that Congress appropriated because that is Congress’s power.
So it has to be comprehensive, and if we let that opportunity go by again, we could be right back here where we’re having the same kinds of conversations because some unscrupulous politicians of either political party are exploiting the legal loopholes to pursue an unlawful, unconstitutional agenda and getting barely any pushback from the courts and institutions that are meant to protect our rights.
For more information, visit Stand Up America at standupamerica.com.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Brett Edkins (28:47) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter to get updates to our “Hey AmeriKKKa, It’s Not Normal” compilation.
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