In an article published Sunday, The Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief, David Smith, warned that President Donald Trump’s recent actions represent a serious unraveling of American democracy.
He wrote that over the past 200 days of Trump’s second term, the president, who once joked he’d be a “dictator only on day one," has dramatically accelerated efforts to centralize power. These include pardoning January 6 rioters, attacking judicial independence, purging and politicizing federal institutions, encouraging gerrymandering, suppressing dissent, and targeting media and cultural institutions.
"The assault on the Constitution is wider and deeper than in Trump’s first term, when he arrived in the Oval Office like a trainee pilot sitting in the cockpit of a Boeing 747, overwhelmed by its array of dials and controls. Now he and his allies – notably his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller – know precisely which levers to pull and how little air resistance they are likely to meet," Smith wrote.
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Smith detailed how Trump has dismissed the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner following unfavorable jobs data, accusing her of “rigging” numbers, and engineered a settlement with Columbia University that critics viewed as capitulation.
His administration reportedly funneled $170 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, making it the largest domestic police force in the country, and even reshaped public museum exhibits to omit references to his impeachments. These moves, Smith argued, mark a clear slide toward authoritarianism rather than a “refuge” experience of democracy.
"Terms such as 'fascist', 'authoritarian' and 'dictatorship' were once dismissed as the refuge of those suffering 'Trump derangement syndrome'. Not any more. There is now a growing consensus that the pillars of US democracy are being demolished one by one."
Experts Smith cited describe the trajectory in stark terms. One warns of a “deepening Constitutional crisis,” while another, Larry Jacobs of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, says the nation is “on a glide path towards the dissolution of the cornerstones of American democracy."
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