When Elizabeth Willing Powell asked Benjamin Franklin as shortly as the Constitutional Convention was concluded in Philadelphia in 1787 whether the United States was going to be a republic or a monarchy according to a fresh document, he reportedly replied, "Republic – if you could hold it."
There was nothing amazing about the question. Many Americans of the time did not want to return to the king's rule, but not the title and crown were truly about. The Monarchy was then synonymous with a despotic self-government whose whims could not contain.
I mention this communicative at the very beginning, due to the fact that present the maintenance of the republic goes beautiful poorly to the Americans. And this happens with the silent approval or active support of the Republican organization – and with the astonishing, even childly failure of democrats. It took a fewer weeks for the story of the strength and stableness of American institutions to start melting, and there seems to be no retreat from the way that the MEGA movement pushed the United States to.
Blitzkrieg v institutions and concentration of power
By calculations "New York Magazine" has lost any 30,000 people in the national administration until this text was created. In many cases these are late employed people who were inactive on probation.
Cuts are not limited to seemingly unnecessary parts of administration or those that the reactionary right considered the first to plow. 10,000 people lost their jobs in the State Department, which deals with diplomacy and global relations. employment in the Treasury Department, the interior safety Department and the Veterans Department was besides cut.
So far, mass layoffs have not affected the Pentagon, but defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced to cut his department's budget by 8% a year for the next 5 years, which is almost half. This would not be the first cut of defence spending, but the biggest cut since 1960 has been 15 percent in 5 years. As you can imagine, the first rumors about this have caused downfall of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics stock rates.
In the case of any government agencies, cleaning means in fact paralysis of their actions. It's like that in the wellness Department. The National wellness Institute under him lost 1,500 employees. 1,300 people, or 10% employed, lost their jobs in the Center for illness Control, the American equivalent of the wellness department. The head of the Food and Drug Safety Agency resigned, claiming that any effort at any action made no sense.
Fire, though painful, is not all. Elon-supervised Musk is accompanied by uncompromising concentration of power. As part of the diarrhea of the Trump regulations, he besides signed 1 that is an average usurpation of the competences of another institutions – specified as the 1 that suspended the payment of grants and loans granted by the national government.
In the U.S. system, only legislature can decide what money from the national budget is spent on. It is the alleged bag power, which is 1 of the most crucial elements of the U.S. 3 divisions of power and the "checks and balances" system, i.e. common control of the state institutions. The function of the executive authority is limited to paying the funds that legislature had previously approved. akin doubts apply to the regulation which suspends global aid, although here the president may have more to say due to the fact that he is constitutionally liable for abroad policy.
These cleanings and usurpations go through due to the fact that the MEGA squad installs its people in the highest positions according to the rule of “kadra are everything”. The criterion is loyalty – forced or true. For example, the best example of the erstwhile is defence secretary Pete Hegseth, whose only advantage is that he looks good on camera. Besides, he is simply a misogynist, alcoholic and violent individual with sexual assaults on his account, which he tried to hide – it is hard for a man to blackmail more easily.
An example of actual loyalty is FBI chief Kash Patel, a QAnon bullshitter, convinced that the FBI provoked invasion of Capitol On January 6, 2021, and then utilized to harass Trump. Despite their deficiency of competence, the disadvantages and disqualifying views of the Republican majority in the legislature humbled not only them both, but besides all another Trump denominations – from an anti-vaccinated anti-vaccinated with conflicts of interest RFK Junior as wellness Secretary After a Kremlin-speaking admirer of Assad Tulsi Gabbard as head of intelligence. There were besides no protests erstwhile Trump announced in the regulation that it was him and the lawyer General – not the courts or legislature – who decided what the law truly said.
Fear as a Control Tool
When the denominations first appeared, it was doubtful that most of them could be voted on. The candidates were so curiosity that it was suspected that by taking out those names, Trump was just checking how far he could go. In a akin way, there was reading of the Bunchoic announcements of commanding diarrhea. It was known that this time the organization fuses would not work as they did at the very beginning of Trump's first term, but fewer of the observers expected the Republicans in legislature to give their constitutional powers and responsibilities to the battle.
Here comes another component of developments, well known from authoritarian countries. In the text on the causes of Republican submission, Vanity Fair magazine wrotethat they are, I quote, "sucked out of fear" against physical force by Trump's most bitter supporters.
For the first time, this fear fell upon them on January 6, 2021, erstwhile the crowd responded to the call of the current president and entered the seat of legislature to halt approving the result of the election in which Joe Biden prevailed. erstwhile a fewer days later came to the vote on Trump's impeachment (2ndSome people, fearing for their lives and wellness and their families, decided to vote against.
After mass acquittals all convicted of participating in the attack On January 6, including the men liable for the physical attacks on the Washington police, fear has returned 4 years ago. This time, however, he was much stronger – Republican politicians were simply afraid that they would be pointed to by Trump with a finger and hit the blacklist that the most bitter MAGA fanatics would capture, excited by a sense of impunity. How much submission has entered Republican blood shows the number of members of legislature from this party, who for questions whether Russia attacked Ukraine and whether Vladimir Putin was a dictator, they said yes at least once: it was only 17 of 261 people!
Fear makes us want to defend what we have. It is an effective control tool due to the fact that it paralyzes and causes people to instinctively avoid confrontation. It doesn't just work on Republicans. any social activists private claimsthat large protests are a bad idea, due to the fact that Trump can usage them as an excuse to introduce a state of emergency. This would at least partially explain why, apart from Bernie Sanders, Jasmine Crocket and a fistful of others, even on this side of the political spectrum, there is simply a amazing silence.
A akin effect is caused by mass layoffs: chaos – caused by blitzkrieg on institutions, as well as the fact that in fact it is not known who most effectively manipulates Trump – and threats of subsequent cuts generate a common feeling of uncertainty. The dismissal of General Charles Q. Brown from the position of president of the Joint Staff College – and replacing him with John D. Caine, a man who does not meet the statutory requirements for this position, but is white and invests in cryptocurrency – clearly shows that anyone can go under the axe. Although national public sector workers are protesting, these protests are very small. People are afraid of retaliation and this fear is not unfounded.
In addition, the scale of exemptions is so large that conventional shelters for those affected by the customary replacement of staff after a change of power – think tank, lobbying companies or law firms – are incapable to absorb everyone. And even if they can store any of the people affected by the purgatory, they can themselves become the mark of hostile actions of the MEGA administration.
That's what's happening. A good example is Covington, representing Jack Smith, a peculiar prosecutor investigating Trump. erstwhile Trump found out that the company had begun to represent him, he took a safety certificate from her employees with 1 signature and ordered the administration to terminate any contracts with her. There are many indications that there were no contracts, but it was about creating fear and showing how far Trump was willing to go.
Instrumentation of law and ignoring of courts
Such methods of intimidation prove effective, due to the fact that people begin to realize that the law will not stand on the side of victims of abuse of power or those who will be victims of defence. In mid-February, Tom Homan, appointed by Trump as chief deportation action, He suggestedthat the Department of Justice is investigating the obstruction of law by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The messenger was to blame for organising information sessions for immigrants on their rights (which, in order to be clear, is entirely legal).
In turn, Washington national prosecutor Ed Martin Initiating proceedings against Chuck Schumer, Democratic leader in the Senate, due to alleged threats to DOGE employees. Same Martin He refused to press charges. Congressman Cory Mills of Florida due to Mills' physical assault on his girlfriend (not his wife), however, Mills happens to be a dedicated Trumpist.
Even more scandalous were the charges against Erik Adams, mayor of fresh York City suspected of corruption: national prosecutors dropped the charges after Adams promised to aid Trump implement the plan to deport immigrants.
Instrumentalization of the prosecutor's office is not the only example of destroying the regulation of law, which we know rather well from the Polish yard. Trump, Elon Musk and J.D. Vance were besides targeted when, in 2 separate decisions, national courts ordered the payment of grants and loans and the restoration of global aid payments. Trump called this first shameful decision, Vance suggested that "judges cannot control" the President's actions, and any time later Musk tweeted something about the tyranny of the judiciary. These statements should be read as preparing the ground under open disregard of court decisions (because incomplete implementation It's already happening.).
It is in this context that the president of the ultimate Court John Roberts' decision that Trump's administration does not gotta immediately resume transfers to global aid. The ultimate Court is the most powerful institution in the American system, but its strength is based only on that politicians voluntarily admit judges' decisions. An open disregard of the ultimate Court's decisions would so not only be an affront, but from a systemic point of view primarily a cry that the king is naked—and showing that the law can be ignored without any consequences.
Thus, there is simply a likelihood that the ultimate Court will make decisions beneficial to Trump – or avoid making any decisions, which is 1 thing – only to keep the appearance of the regulation of law. Then, however, we will be dealing with a de facto systemic change in which the President's powers would go far beyond what the letter and spirit of the American Constitution foresees.
The intellectual foundation for these activities is lined up in Leadership Mandate The explanation of a uniform execution, according to which the chief can only be one. It is based on 1 conviction in Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution, according to which the president holds executive power in the US. If so, lovers of this explanation say, then all administrative institutions – which by definition are parts of the executive authority – are straight subject to the president and must follow his instructions. This besides applies to independent control institutions appointed by Congress, legally protected against interference by the President.
In an utmost version of this theory, the MAG may order subordinates to ignore the laws or judgments of courts, including the ultimate Court. This would, of course, be a violation of the balance of the authorities enshrined in the first and 3rd Articles of the Constitution, but that is the point.
It is worth remembering that in order to change the American system, you do not gotta delete or add even words in the constitution. It is adequate for the ultimate Court to change its explanation by reinterpreting the sense of constitutional records, and that is what can be the intent of ordered diarrhea.
There's no turning back?
There is simply a advanced probability that all these changes are fundamentally a one-way way to authoritarianism. There's a anticipation the MEGA won't want to quit power. Trump's tried it erstwhile before. It didn't work just due to the fact that any of the people in his own organization She didn't want to be part of it..
This time the situation is different, that supporters of lies about Trump's triumph in 2020 occupy positions of power, regulation in state institutions and in the Republican Party. In 2021, Vice president Mike Pence risked much more than just a good relation with Trump erstwhile he refused to admit the consequence of the election, although as the equivalent of our legislature marshal he could have done so. It's hard to imagine entrepreneur J.D. Vance He was expected to do the same. In fact, he may not even gotta do so due to the fact that it may turn out that the elections in 2028 will be unwinnable for Democrats: voters have a short memory, and pro-MAGA oligarchs control any of the conventional media and social media. Democrats may not have adequate channels to scope voters.
However, even if the current squad recognized its failure in 2026 or 2028, Democrats would take over institutions completely devastated and stripped of money. Their restoration would not only require much more time than It's taken their demolition., but besides – and above all – large resources. These, in turn, will not be, given the ideas for further taxation cuts for the wealthiest while simultaneously raising the deficit.
Besides, these taxes won't be collected by anyone, due to the fact that the American fiscal has already been broken. Obtaining funds to rebuild the state would require pulling them out to those who would lose the most in rebuilding the state. This in turn would only be possible if the Democrats decided to be as ruthless as the Republicans are now.
And if so, 1 thing is worth remembering. Modern American reactionaries at least in 1 respect are akin to slave owners from the mid-19th century. The Southerners believed that slavery and its protection were the foundation of the American Constitution, and modern reactionaries were convinced that their privileges were the essence of Americanness. (He who doubts whether it is, let him look at statement by Jeff Bezos about censorship in the “Washington Post”).
In the 19th century, specified an attitude led to confederate secession before Abraham Lincoln was even sworn in by them. Since the privileges of the rich are the essence of Americanness, their defence is more crucial than the unity of the country, even the “holding of the republic”. After all, elections, but power must be on our side.
