Jan.05

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2025 in Review, Part I: The Democracy Demolition Derby

Donald Trump's second term is probably the most significant presidential term since, at very least, Lyndon Johnson's term. And maybe even since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first term. And not in a good way. Democracy took a real beating. In the best case, it will take years to recover, and only then if the price of eggs goes up. Pray or hope for a major chicken flu epidemic requiring chicken farmers to cull their flocks. If eggs get more expensive, the American people will come to their senses and "throw the bums out." The rising cost of health care could also play a role. If inflation says low, by contrast, maybe democracy will survive, maybe not.

Let's take a look at the many ways Democracy, and government as the founders had intended it, took a big hit in 2025. It is partly about the formal rules (e.g., violations of the separation of powers), but it is also Trump's views and actions concerning "liberal society" and the rule of law, for which he has only contempt. We have tried to group his major actions in a few broad categories, but the boundaries are fairly vague. Some other articles on this theme are those by Kim Wehle and CREW.

Nullifying Checks and Balances

The founders very intentionally created the system to set power against power to prevent any one branch from dominating the others. In particular, they were worried about the president becoming a king. Donald Trump would just love to be a king and is doing what he can to keep the other branches down and out:

• Executive Power: Trump does not recognize any checks on his executive power. If the Supreme Court made an unambiguous ruling on some minor thing he did—for example, on birthright citizenship—he might acknowledge it. Otherwise, he will let no one and nothing stand in his way to become all-powerful. He wants this largely to monetize the presidency for himself. It isn't that he has some clear ideological framework. Authoritarians often don't. It is power for the sake of power (and money, and ego).
  
  
• Usurping Congress' Power: To Trump, Congress is just a nuisance to be ignored. Power of the purse? No way. He and OMB Director Russell Vought wrote a Big Beautiful Bill and ordered Congress to rubber stamp it, which it obediently did. Trump has also illegally impounded funds for projects he doesn't like. After Richard Nixon did this, Congress passed a law making it impoundment specifically illegal. So what?
  
  There is more. The Constitution gives Congress the power to levy tariffs. Trump could care less. "Tariff" is his favorite word and he levies tariffs on a whim, often changing them within a week, without even consulting Congress. The power to declare war? Quaint idea. He doesn't like Iran, and so ordered it to be bombed, without Congress' first declaring war or otherwise authorizing the use of force. He didn't especially like Nicolás Maduro, so he attacked Venezuela and captured him. These are acts of war and Trump just ignored Congress and did them. He also believes in government by executive orders rather than by having Congress pass laws. It is so much simpler that way. So far he has signed 225 XOs.
  
  
• Sidelining the Senate: Besides ruling by XO instead of legislation, Trump often bypasses the Senate's clear power to advise and consent. He asked Elon Musk to exercise executive power and dismantle the government. That power made Musk an officer of the United States, which requires Senate confirmation. Trump didn't even try to get approval. He has repeatedly violated federal law by appointing people to acting positions for longer than the law allows without Senate confirmation—Alina Habba in New Jersey, Lindsey Halligan in Virginia, and Sigal Chattah in Nevada come to mind. All three were illegally appointed to be a U.S. attorney after the clock on interim appointments ran out.
  
  
• Firing Federal Officials with Fixed Terms: Federal law establishes fixed terms for some officials to make them span presidencies and thus not be political. Trump has thumbed his nose at those laws. He fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs halfway into his 4-year term. He was about to fire FBI Director Christopher Wray (his own appointee!), but Wray beat him to it and resigned on Jan. 20, 2025.
  
  
• Capturing Independent Agencies: Congress created independent agencies to keep them out of politics and let experts in the various fields make decisions about their work based on what is best for the country. Trump hates anything or anyone independent of himself. He fired an FTC commissioner he doesn't like (Rebecca Slaughter) as well as commissioners at the NLRB (Gwynne Wilcox) and the MSPB (Cathy Harris). He fired two at the EEOC (Charlotte Burrows and Joceyln Samuels). There are many more. Federal law prohibits the president from firing members of agency boards without good cause. For Trump, being appointed by a Democratic president is good enough cause. He ordered the FEC to submit regulations to him in advance for approval. He ordered the SEC to take its marching orders from Vought at the OMB. He gutted the CFPB by installing his own toadies there, slashing its budget, and laying off staff. The crown jewel here is the Fed, which he is also trying to take over, starting with trying to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook.
  
  
• Firing the Inspectors General: After Watergate, Congress created the post of inspector general in most federal departments to root out fraud, waste, abuse and corruption. They were the first DOGEys! Trump didn't like the idea of independent federal officials sniffing around when his appointees were corrupt or misbehaved, so he has fired 17 IGs so far. This is almost certainly illegal.
  

Abuse of Power

Here we have things that Trump has done to push his legitimate power to the breaking point and beyond. Yes, he has the authority to declare emergencies to get special new powers, but the intent of Congress was that the president could declare an emergency only when there actually was an emergency:

• Declaring Emergencies: There are numerous laws, some dating back over 200 years, that give the president special powers in an emergency. Remember that in 1789, if the U.S. were invaded, Congress could not be called into session the next morning at 9 a.m. to deal with it. It would take some members days or weeks to get to D.C. Then, as now, there was no Internet voting. More recently, travel times have decreased, but the power and speed with which bad guys can do bad things have increased. For these reasons, over the centuries, Congress has granted the president special powers to deal with emergencies. Trump has used one emergency law after another to get special powers. For example, he has claimed the U.S. has been "invaded" by undocumented immigrants. Usually "invaded" means an organized foreign army has shown up, uninvited. Trump has pushed the emergency powers far, far beyond what Congress intended to grant the president.
  
  
• Creating a Secret Police Force: The president controls ICE, but the intention was to have ICE officers close to the border looking for people who just snuck over, so as to try and catch them. It was not intended for ICE officers to show up en masse at a meat-packing plant in Omaha, 900 miles from the border, and arrest people who have been in the country working quietly for years, if not decades. Furthermore, ICE officers have taken to wearing masks, so they can't be identified and potentially be held accountable later if their actions are deemed illegal. Trump is effectively using ICE as a personal secret police. Every authoritarian wants his own personal secret police force. It is one of the perks of the job.
  
  
• Blackmailing Corporations: It is nearly impossible for a large corporation nowadays to operate without interacting with the government from time to time. This can involve regulatory issues, government contracts, permission for a merger, etc. Trump has seized on these points of contact to blackmail companies. CBS' 60 Minutes interviewed Kamala Harris after the election. Trump didn't like what she had to say about him. Initially, he just fumed. But when CBS' parent company, Paramount, wanted to merge with Skydance, Trump saw his chance and made Paramount pay him $16 million to allow the deal to go through. This was essentially extortion. And now, he does it all the time. He made Intel sell the government 10% of its stock in return for him not blocking a Biden-era law that granted Intel $8.5 billion to help fund a chip factory in America. Having the government own the means of production has not been a Republican talking point in the past. It came from Karl Marx, not Adam Smith. Trump made NVIDIA agree to give 25% of its revenue on certain chips to get permission to sell them to China. This definitely wasn't NVIDIA's idea.
  
  
• Extorting Potential Opponents: Trump has used his powers to threaten all potential power centers that might oppose him. He has demanded that big law firms do free work for him, or risk him yanking their security clearances, killing their federal contracts, and banning them from entering federal courtrooms, none of which is legal. Many firms have agreed, although that hasn't always worked out well for the firms (partners have left, etc.). But many have decided that it is better to surrender than fight, even though they have large teams of top lawyers who could probably win the cases in court.
  
  Trump has also sued or threatened to sue media companies whose coverage displeases him, including ABC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the BBC, with varying results. Sometimes they pay up, sometimes not. He has also barred reporters from outlets he doesn't like and has cut funding where possible (PBS). At the very least, it makes all media companies think twice about publishing anything critical of him. Just last month, CBS News, now owned by Trump friends the Ellison family, and run by the Trump-friendly Bari Weiss, killed a segment about the CECOT prison in Guatemala even after CBS' own lawyers cleared it for broadcast.
  
  Trump has also gone after universities, threatening them in many ways. For example, he has blocked payments for cancer and other research already in progress under a signed federal contract unless the universities agreed to basically let him run the school. He has threatened to take away their tax-exempt status. He has blocked visas for foreign students who have been admitted to top universities (and who usually pay full freight, which is important to the schools' bottom lines). All they have to do to stop this is let him decide what is taught, by whom, who may study there, and what policies the university has. In other words, he wants to run the universities as he sees fit. Some have capitulated, but not all.
  
  
• Pardoning Acolytes: There is one sentence in the Constitution granting the president to pardon offenses against the United States. Previous presidents have used it when people have been wrongly convicted of crimes. It has occasionally been abused, but Trump has taken this to an entirely new level, pardoning 1,500 people who help stage an attempted coup, as well as cronies like Rudy Giuliani who helped plan the coup. There is a long list of people Trump has pardoned even though they definitely committed crimes. The underlying thread here is that if someone commits a crime but supports Trump, a pardon will be forthcoming. This effectively weaponizes the pardon power. He can ask someone to commit a crime for him and then pardon the person for doing it. This was not the intention.
  
  
• Occupying American Cities: Trump has federalized the National Guard and ordered it to occupy American cities, the way a foreign conquering power would do. Among the cities targeted have been Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis, and Portland, all heavily Democratic cities. In virtually all cases, this was against the express wishes of the governor and mayor. It is a show of force intended to intimidate the citizens, especially those citizens who happen to be of a color he dislikes. This almost certainly violates the Posse Comitatus Act. In some cases, Trump has removed the troops, but the point is made: He can send them back whenever he wants to. Some people suspect this was a dry run for occupying Democratic cities on Election Day to scare off the voters. This could backfire though, if Democrats, who are used to voting absentee, do it en masse but Republicans don't and end up afraid to vote on Election Day as usual.
  
  
• Purging the Military: Chairman Mao once said: "All power comes from the muzzle of a gun." Trump is in agreement with the Chairman. He wants a military that is loyal to him and not to the Constitution. Suppose he does something so blatantly illegal that the generals might decide to intervene. He wants to make sure that doesn't happen by making sure they are his generals. So he is purging the top ranks of officers who might refuse to obey an illegal order, and replacing them with flunkies loyal to him. All autocrats do that. But if personal loyalty to Trump is the man criterion for holding a top position (rather than military and leadership experience), that weakens the military. Having a former Fox News host as secretary of defense doesn't exactly help.
  
  
• Breaking Federalism: Unlike many other countries, the U.S. does not have a unified national government that runs the country as it sees fit. It is a union of 50 states, each with their own powers. In fact, the Constitution explicitly enumerates the powers of the federal government and reserves all other power to the states and the people, as stated in the Tenth Amendment. This is called federalism. Trump wants to break it and make the states subservient to his will. He is doing this by refusing to make payments to the states, despite his having a legal obligation to do so, unless they agree to do things he wants them to do. This strikes at the very heart of the Constitution, the relationship of the federal government to the states.
  
  
• Buying Votes: No, he is not buying individual votes, but the effect is similar. Trump's (possibly illegal) tariffs have caused great problems for many large and small businesses. He has decided to buy off one group—farmers, who vote strongly Republican—by giving them free money ($12 billion). The tariffs have affected other businesses, like auto companies, but they are clustered around Detroit, which is a blue city, so they don't get a bailout like the farmers do. Giving government money to your supporters and not to your opponents is not exactly what James Madison & Co. had in mind when drafting the Constitution.
  
  
• Destroying the White House: All presidents redecorate the White House to suit their own tastes. But Trump's destroying one-third of the White House to create a gilded palace to hold his balls goes way beyond that. It may also be illegal because he did not follow the normal procedures for changing a historic federal building. At the very least it is a metaphor for what he is doing to the entire government and country.

Destroying the Justice System

In a democracy, the system of justice needs to be fair and, well, just. You remember the nice lady with the blindfold and scales? She is not a blind tomato vendor at an outdoor market somewhere. If people think the system of justice is rigged against them, then there can be no democracy. Trump has gone to great lengths to make sure the system of justice is rigged for himself and his cronies:

• Using the DoJ as His Personal Law Firm: Trump seems to view the Department of Justice as his personal law firm and "Attorney General" Pam Bondi (who is primarily taking cues from Stephen Miller) as his personal lawyer. When Trump says "jump," the only acceptable response is "how high, sir?" This is not the way it is supposed to be. The DoJ is expected to operate at arms length from the Oval Office (well, if you have long arms, since the DoJ is in the Robert F. Kennedy building about a mile down Pennsylvania Ave.). Joe Biden was not conspiring with his AG, Merrick Garland, every day, the way Trump is with Bondi. The amount of collusion here is so massive that even Richard Nixon must be rolling in his grave.
  
  
• Prosecuting the Innocent: One of the many ways the DoJ has been corrupted is that Trump uses it to go after his political opponents and other people he doesn't like. One of the highest profile cases was the indictment of Letitia James (for allegedly claiming a second house to be a personal residence rather than a rental property—which it never was) because Trump was furious with her getting a judge to fine him $450 million for bank fraud. Interestingly enough, Trump did the same thing himself with two Florida properties he claimed as primary residences. Another victim was James Comey, for supposed lying to Congress. Oddly enough, the indictment doesn't mention the false statement—because there was none. In other cases, a mere "investigation" can upend the "suspect's" life and cause him or her to spend a lot of money on lawyers. Some other people being hounded for not being on Team Trump include John Bolton, John Brennan, Lisa Cook, David Huerta, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Miles Taylor and many others.
  
  
• Protecting the Guilty: One of the other ways the DoJ has been subverted is its habit of letting Trump's allies off the hook. For example, border "czar" Tom Homan was caught red-handed taking a $50,000 bribe from federal agents posing as businessmen who wanted a government contract. Not only did the DoJ drop the case, but Homan got a high-profile job in the administration, and may even have been able to keep the money. Former New York City Mayor Eric Adams was offered a sweetheart deal if he cooperated with Trump on immigration. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), a Trump supporter, got his campaign finance charges dropped. Notorious sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted but then moved to a Club Fed facility in Texas after having a chat with Deputy AG Todd Blanche.
  
  
• Ignoring Due Process: Trump has deported over half a million people so far. This includes some American citizens, who may not be deported. Almost none of them have had the due process that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees them. In many cases, they were swept off the streets or at a business, put on a plane, and shipped out of the country. They should have been brought before a judge and allowed to make their argument why they should not be deported. Then the judge should have ruled on their case. In nearly all cases, this did not happen.
  
  
• Defying the Courts Trump or his underlings have been taken to court many times. Often they have lost, in which case they generally appealed. In some cases they slow-walked the judge's orders, and in other cases they simply defied the courts and waited to see if anything would happen. One judge in particular, James Boasberg, ordered a plane full of deportees to turn back in midflight and the administration just ignored him. He started the process for holding the administration in contempt, but the D.C. Court of Appeals paused the process. Sometimes Trump claims to be complying but actually isn't. So far, he hasn't openly defied the Supreme Court, but he also hasn't ruled out doing so in the future.
  
  
• Disbanding the Guardrails: The system has some guardrails in place to detect and stop misuse of the DoJ. Trump has found them and is dismantling them, one by one. Trump fired David Huitema, the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, despite his 5-year term that began Nov. 14, 2024. That office roots out ethical violations in the Executive Branch. Trump also killed the DoJ's anti-kleptocracy team, after it had ensnared some of his cronies. While Trump didn't fully close the DoJ's Public Integrity Section, he reduced its attorney count to 15% of what it was. He also fired Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel, which protects government whistleblowers. And Trump slashed the DoJ's Civil Rights Division, too. The list goes on and on. At least one-third (107) of the DoJ's top leaders were fired, or resigned last year. It could take generations to rebuild the department.
  

Corruption

The core of corruption is using government power for someone's personal gain. Trump has done corrupt things time and again, for his benefit, and for the benefit of friends and allies. In fact, it often appears that the main reason he ran for president in 2024 was to monetize it. Here are a few of the more egregious cases of corruption:

• Taking Emoluments: The Constitution is very explicit about this. The president is to get a salary from the Treasury as specified by Congress and that's it. He is not allowed to accept $400 million airplanes from foreign governments, not even if the quid pro quo is not explicit and is merely currying favor for future use. Trump has issued a memecoin, $TRUMP, and anyone wishing to get in his good graces can buy lots of it and he will hopefully take note. In May, he held a dinner for the biggest holders of the $TRUMP coin, who together had purchased $148 million worth of the near-worthless cryptocurrency. The whole thing is an open-ended bribery scheme to buy favors to be cashed in later as needed.
  
  
• Taking Money for Explicit Favors: The $TRUMP coin game is generally just to get in Trump's good graces. But he also is open to explicit cash-for-favors transactions. As one example, Paul Walczak was a nursing home executive who pleaded guilty to tax crimes. He took $7 million of employees' payroll tax money and spent it on an extravagant lifestyle instead of sending it to the IRS. He also failed to give the government $3.5 million in FICA taxes he deducted from his employee's paychecks. Just after Trump was inaugurated, Walczak applied for a pardon. Nothing happened, even though hundreds of other people were pardoned. Then his mother, Elizabeth Fago, a Republican fundraiser, was invited to Mar-a-Lago for a $1 million-per-plate rubber-chicken dinner. She happily bought a ticket and got a chance to speak to Trump. Three weeks later her son got a full pardon from an 18-month sentence and fine of $4.4 million. Similarly, a South Florida woman gave $2.5 million to MAGA Inc. Shortly thereafter, her father got a sweetheart deal from the DoJ to settle charges that he bribed Puerto Rico's then-governor.
  
  
• Rejuvenating the spoils system: The spoils system, pioneered by Trump's favorite president, Andrew Jackson, died a quiet death but is being brought back to life by Trump. He uses the power of government to reward his friends, cronies, allies, and people who pay him tribute in one form or another. And he barely tries to hide it. When explaining why he went into Venezuela last week, Trump tried a few explanations but eventually settled on "they stole our oil and I am just taking it back." Of course, the oil never belonged to the U.S. since it was in the ground in Venezuela, but the most probable real reason for kidnapping Nicolás Maduro is that the big U.S. oil companies contributed big-time to his campaign last year and this is the payback.
  
  The oil industry is just one that bought "favors" from Trump. The New York Times published a study last month showing that 346 donors gave Trump's slush fund more than half a billion dollars in return for many favors, including have cases dropped, getting favorable regulatory decisions, pardons, and more. The newspaper included his composite photo of some of them:
  
  The list of who gave money, and what they got, is long. Peter Thiel's firm Palantir gave $10 million to the ballroom project and $5 million to America250. It got hundreds of millions in federal contracts, in part to help ICE deport people. Coincidences do happen, of course. Parsons Corporation gave $2.5 million to the ballroom project and is now a contender to get some of the trillions for Trump's Golden Dome anti-missile system, which is unlikely to work if it is ever needed. A couple that donated $1 million for Trump's inauguration and $500,000 to MAGA Inc. got their son a nice job: ambassador to Finland. The list goes on and on.
  
  
• Weaponizing the Courts: A favorite technique Trump loves dearly is suing big companies for hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, based on some bogus cause of action, and then letting them settle for a mere tens of millions. This is one of his favorites because when he sues them personally, he can make them pay them pay him directly (or sometimes to his presidential library), instead of sending the money to one of his super PACs. For example, Disney settled with him for $15 million and Paramount settled for $16 million.
  
  
• Suing the Government: This one really takes the cake. Trump is in the process of suing the federal government for $230 million because it investigated him years ago and that upset him. As president, he could order the government to settle the claim by simply paying it, or maybe negotiating with himself for a slightly lower amount.

Transparency

Transparency is a hallmark of Democracy, so the people know what government officials are up to. Transparency is not Trump's strong suit:

• Hiding Information: Trump didn't like some numbers he was getting about the economy, so he shot the messenger, so to speak. He decided that Erika McEntarfer, then commissioner of the well-respected Bureau of Labor Statistics, was responsible, so he took to his low-information social media site and fired her. That sent a shockwave though the media and financial world. U.S. government statistics were the gold standard and all of a sudden the assumption was that henceforth they would be corrupted to make Trump look good. It is hard for the Fed and companies to make plans if the input data is fake. Democracy requires a situation in which people can trust the government to not lie to them.
  
  Also on the subject of hiding information, in June, the National Climate Assessments were mysteriously removed from government websites, even though federal law requires a study to be done every 4 years and published. No explanation was ever given for the disappearance.
  
  Also on the information front, the Department of Energy has announced that the way it will deal with the backlog of FOIA requests is to throw out all the old ones (pre Oct. 1, 2024) out and anyone who still wants the information requested has to request it again. Providing information to the public is clearly not a priority with this administration.

Despite all this, around 40% of the country still approves of Trump. For any other president, even 10% of the this would have been fatal, with calls from both sides of the aisle for impeachment. Here are the comparisons of their approval rates after 1 year in office:

Can anything be done to prevent another strongman who disdains democracy in the future? Laws can be passed (as happened after Watergate), but if the president corrupts the DoJ, they won't be enforced. What about constitutional amendments? The Constitution is not self-enforcing. If the only remedy is impeachment and conviction, that is never going to work if the president's party controls at least one chamber of Congress.

The only thing we can think of offhand is a law or amendment stating that no one is above the law, including the president, vice president, members of Congress, judges, and justices, and that any of them can be prosecuted for their crimes up to 10 years after they leave office. That might give a president some pause, knowing a future president of the other party could put him or her on trial for crimes committed while president. This might require a future Supreme Court to change its mind on presidential immunity. To encourage that, a future Democratic president could simply arrest the Republican justices and give them a free two-week, all-expenses-paid vacation at lovely Guantanamo Bay just to make it clear to them why presidential immunity is a bad idea. (V)