FLASH
Shkruar nga Jonathan Freedland
Across the US, without words or acrobatics, the president is building a police state and eroding democracy...
In the global economy, one titan stands above all others. Donald Trump can command the world's attention with a snap of his fingers. When he stages a spectacular, made-for-television moment, say, that Oval Office showdown with Volodymyr Zelensky, the entire planet stands up and watches.
But this dominance has a strange side effect. When Trump does something horrific and eye-catching, nations tremble and markets move. But when he does something horrific but obvious, it barely goes unnoticed. As long as there are no eye-popping videos, no catchphrases, no gimmicks or stunts, it can all pass as if it never happened. Especially now that our senses are dulled by overstimulation. These days it takes increasingly shocking behavior from the US president to provoke a reaction; we are getting used to it. Yet the danger he poses is as acute as ever.
Consider the events of the past week, few of them as grim as those that dominate global news bulletins, yet each one represents another step toward the erosion of democracy within and by the most powerful country in the world.
On Wednesday, Trump threatened to impose 50% tariffs, he has returned to that dead horse on Brazil, if judicial authorities there do not drop the criminal prosecution of the country's former president, Trump-like Jair Bolsonaro, accused of trying to overturn his defeat in the 2022 elections and of leading a coup against the man who defeated him, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
As briefly as he could, Lula explained, via social media, that Brazil is a sovereign country and that an independent judiciary cannot "accept interference or instructions from anyone. No one is above the law."
This is becoming a habit for Trump. He made the same move in defense of Benjamin Netanyahu last month, suggesting that Israel could lose billions of dollars in U.S. military aid if the prime minister continues to be tried on corruption charges. In both cases, Trump was clear about the connection between the accused and himself, calling the efforts to hold them accountable a “witch hunt.” “This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a political opponent,” he wrote, of Bolsonaro’s legal troubles, adding “something I know a lot about!”
It’s easy to underestimate Trump’s transparent attempt to create an international syndicate of populist autocrats, but he is not motivated solely by fraternal solidarity. He also wants to dismantle a long-standing norm across the democratic world that insists that even those at the top are subject to the law. That norm is a constraint on him, a check on his power.
If he can discredit it, so that a new convention can emerge, one that accepts that leaders can act with impunity, that helps his driving project in the US: amassing more and more power for himself and weakening or eliminating any rival sources of authority that might act as a check.
He is being silently aided in this endeavor by those American institutions that should consider themselves equal branches of government: Congress and the Supreme Court. And their constitutional duty is to counter an overly powerful executive. Republicans in Congress have now passed a mega-bill that they know will leave future generations of Americans drowning in debt and deprive millions of people of basic health care coverage. Yet they set aside their own judgment and bowed to the man who would be king.
Less discussed was the extraordinary expansion of the bill for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Its budget has increased by a reported 308%, with an additional $45 billion to be spent on detention and $29.9 billion on “enforcement and deportation.” It will soon have the capacity to detain nearly 120,000 people at any given time. And, remember, recent figures show that about half of all those detained by ICE have no criminal record.
It's no wonder conservative critics are sounding the alarm, too. The anti-Trump Republicans at Bulwark warn that within months, the "national savage team" that is Ice will have twice as many agents as the FBI and its vast prison system, emerging as "the primary instrument of domestic state power."
In this light, Trump has realized that corrupting the FBI is a difficult task, although worth trying, so he is replacing it with a shadowy force fashioned in his image. As Bulwark puts it: "the American police state is here."
Those most directly threatened can share clips of masked ICE agents snatching suspected immigrants off the streets and violently abusing them, as reports circulate of horrific conditions at ICE facilities, with people held in “prison-like facilities,” more than 100 crammed into a small room, denied showers or the opportunity to change clothes, sometimes given only one meal a day and forced to sleep on concrete benches or the floor. But this is hardly a matter of national attention. Because it is not accompanied by a neon-lit Trump performance, it is simply happening out of the public eye.
The same can be said for a series of recent Supreme Court decisions. They may not have the immediate and sweeping impact of past decisions, but they accelerate Trump's same tendency to move away from democracy and toward autocracy.
On Tuesday, the justices gave Trump the green light to fire federal workers en masse and dismantle all government agencies without congressional approval. The Supreme Court had previously ruled that Trump was allowed to remove Democrats from the leadership of government bodies that are supposed to be under politically balanced oversight.
Even more helpful for Trump, last month judges limited the power of lower courts to block the executive branch, thus lending a helping hand to one of the president's most scandalous executive orders: the removal of the principle that anyone born in the US is automatically a US citizen, a right so fundamental that it is enshrined in the constitution.
The Supreme Court is lifting restrictions on Trump and giving him even more power. It's no wonder that when one of the dissenting minorities on the court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was asked Thursday what kept her up at night, she replied: "the state of our democracy."
Meanwhile, Trump is succeeding in his goal of intimidating the press, extracting significant money from major news organizations in exchange for dropping (usually weak) lawsuits against them, a move that is having the desired but also deterrent effect.
All of this adds up to the ongoing erosion of American democracy and democratic norms, the reach of which once extended far beyond US shores. Even if it is happening quietly, by Trump’s standards, without the usual noise and fury, it is still happening. The work of opposing it begins with noticing. /Adapted from The Guardian Pamphlet/
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