Canadian political scientist warns in op ed of Trumpist threat to American democracy and possible effect on northern neighbor But all in all, my bet is that the Founding Fathers would be proud of the way the system they designed stood up to and thwarted King Trump. The guardrails held: Congress was not disbanded and its powers were not weakened, the states retained substantial power and authority over their own citizens, the courts displayed their independence and ability to stand up to the presidency, the press remained free and critical and the bureaucracy held to the rule of law, not the whim of man. Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple reasons that we can't rely only on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on.

10 Ways Trump Is Becoming a Dictator, Election Edition

The Trump card game was once very popular; it was played in households worldwide. These days when you say the Trump card game, most people will think of Top Trumps. In the spring of 2020 Trump, anxious to get past COVID in time for his re-election campaign, was pushing hard for states to open up early. Democratic governors ignored Trump’s demands to open up. In some states, Republican governors tried acting like mini-Trumps, in others they gave him lip service but did not open up completely, and in Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine politely disagreed and kept the state closed. Trump, seeing that the governors were not scared of him, then threatened to withold medical equipment based on states’ decisions about opening up. He came up against the 10 th Amendment which prevents the president from conditioning federal aid on the basis of governors acquiescing to a president’s demands. Trump couldn’t use the cudgel he thought he had. Kruse: What would you say to those in this country who say, “No, the Republicans aren’t the autocrats. It’s the Democrats who are the autocrats. It’s Joe Biden. It’s other Democrats with power who are making us wear masks or take vaccines we don’t want to take. They’re the ones who are behaving more in autocratic ways, not the Republicans.”So even now the dictatorship survived in that nearly ghostly manner, in the person of that man, whoever he was, who’d come to stare from the balcony at Sister Felisa, delivering a silent message, intimidating her into retracting her testimony. Ruth Ben-Ghiat: When somebody like Trump comes on the scene and holds office, it’s really like an earthquake or a volcano, and it shakes up the whole system by gathering in this big tent all the extremists, all the far-right people, and giving them legitimation. The GOP was already going away from a democratic political culture, but he accelerated it and normalized extremism and normalized lawlessness. And so the GOP over these years has truly, in my estimation, become an authoritarian far-right party. And the other big story is that his agenda and his methods are being continued at the state level. Some of these things were on the agenda way before he came in, like getting rid of abortion rights and stuff like that. But these states are really laboratories of autocracy now, like Florida, Texas. The free press is still free and fairly healthy. Its financial and structural problems have to do with their adaptation to the internet age, all of which predated Trump.

Donald Trump Isn’t Even Trying to Hide His Authoritarian Donald Trump Isn’t Even Trying to Hide His Authoritarian

Democratic regression and political polarization are not unique to the US. Having more guns than people is. So are militias, usually formed of lower- and middle-class white Americans harboring anti-government sentiments. The threat posed by these anti-government extremists — though not necessarily terrorists — was thrown into relief when at least 13 members of Michigan’s Wolverine Militia were arrested for planning to kidnap, “judge,” and potentially execute for treason the state’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer. The big question will be what will happen in the coming months so that he can retain that power because he’s very toxic. There’s always this worry that maybe the investigations will bring more things out, so it’s not a done deal that he will get the nomination. But he’s been remarkably successful in ways that don’t surprise me at all. Because that’s how authoritarians are. They’re personality cults, even if they rule in a democracy like [Italy’s former prime minister Silvio] Berlusconi did. Berlusconi’s personality cult did not deflate until he was convicted, which he eventually was. That’s what it takes. It takes prosecution and conviction to deflate their personality cults. Although my position has not changed on Trump — less fascist than kleptocrat, more egoist than radical-right ideologue — that does little to mitigate the danger.

In Guatemala, after peace negotiations put an end to its three-decade long internal war, with a blanket amnesty for human rights crime, the victors—the army, the rich, the establishment political parties—called for forgiveness. It’s time to heal. Our long nightmare has ended. Forget the past and forgive. But the Catholic Church’s preeminent human rights leader, Bishop Juan Gerardi, knew that really there can’t be forgiveness without some accountability, without justice. Standing up for that principle cost him his life. He was bludgeoned to death in his parish house garage days after presiding over the release of a Catholic Church-sponsored human rights report that exposed military officers to possible war crimes trials. In Guatemala, despite some victories, despite its at times laughable democratic facade, the only haphazardly disguised iron grip of dictatorship survives. A “scholar of violent conflict” for more than four decades, Homer-Dixon said Canada must take heed of the “unfolding crisis”. The game is best played with four or five people, but it can be played with just three. Deal out all the cards till everyone has an equal amount. Players should then look at their cards and decide what their unique trump suit will be. I would not say the traditional idea of fascism fits Donald Trump in 2020 any more than it did before he took office. When historians and political scientists do a full accounting of his actions and statements as president, I do not think fascism will figure prominently in their analyses. The prototypical fascist leaders — Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, [Austrian Chancellor] Engelbert Dollfuss — not only pursued right-wing policies, they also built-up mass-mobilizing parties and paramilitary organizations with the goal of sweeping aside alternative movements and establishing single-party dictatorship. I would tend to describe Trump’s brand of politics differently, and I would place him in different company. The most significant component of her testimony, however, related to the events of January 6 itself. Hutchinson reported that in advance of his speech at the Ellipse, Trump was enraged that the Secret Service had set up magnetometers and was seizing weapons from Trump supporters who wanted to join the rally.

Donald Trump uses expletive to attack ex-ally Benjamin - BBC Donald Trump uses expletive to attack ex-ally Benjamin - BBC

In July 2017 Congress passed a Russian sanctions bill that included in it a unique provision limiting Trump’s ability to lift sanctions unilaterally. The bill was opposed by the White House but passed the House 419 to 3 and the Senate 98 to 2—meaning it was veto proof. The constraint on presidential action was a major step thwarting Trump’s romance with Putin. Kruse: Is Ron DeSantis the non-Donald Trump politician doing this in the most stark, arguably most effective way, or are there others that you are paying attention to? But there is still no state management of the economy here (as there was to a degree in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy). Trump is content to aid business by reducing government protections of the environment and of workers … and his economic policy is mainly just to let businessmen do what they want, So I still think terms like “oligarchy” and “plutocracy” work for Trump, with the added thought that he is close to crossing the line with his toleration of violence. Matthew Feldman, director, Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right Still, through targeted harassment and dismissal, he’ll be able to thin the ranks of his movement’s opponents within the state, the bureaucrats, officials and technocrats who oversee the non-partisan functioning of core institutions and abide by the rule of law. But most experts did not even go that far, and some expressed concern that describing Trump as a fascist undermines the term and leads to a misanalysis of our current political situation. “If Trump was a fascist and we were in a situation akin to Germany in 1932 or Italy in 1921, certain kinds of actions would be justified,” Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard College, says. “But we are not and they are not.”In her classic book about the Argentine military dictatorship of the 1970s and 80s, and its disappearances of “subversives” and secret prisons, Lexicon of Terror, Marguerite Feitlowitz wrote, “The regime’s depravity reached its outer limit with pregnant detainees.” The Trump regime’s depravity reached its outer limit with what it did to the children of those detained migrants. In Georgia the courageous Republican Secretary of Brad Raffensperger, a stalwart Republican and Trump supporter, certified election results in spite of personal calls and threats from the president. In Michigan, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Republican House Speaker Lee Chatfield did not give in to Trump’s attempts to get them to diverge from the process of choosing electors.