.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One as he departs for a state visit to Britain, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., September 16, 2025. REUTERS Kevin Lamarque
Legal analyst James D. Zirin says the British legal community are finding cautious comfort in the stretching cracks across the Trump administration.
For the last 11 months, British society watched in horror as a brutish American regime tore at one of the planet’s premier democracies.
“The Brits I spoke with were most concerned about the drift toward autocracy in America, especially the targeting of political opponents, political gerrymandering, and the weakening of our constitutional system of checks and balances,” said Zirin. “… In just 10 months, in a manner reminiscent of the Argentine junta of the 1970s, [Trump] has sent masked ICE agents in unmarked vans to seize presumed undocumented immigrants and deport them without due process to horrific prisons in El Salvador or to failed African states where they cannot speak the language. With a green light from the Supreme Court, many of these deportees were targeted based on skin color or their accents. He has unlawfully deployed the National Guard to U.S. cities. There are also the extrajudicial killings in international waters.”
The British were horrified by Trump’s 28-point peace plan, which gives the United States compensation for any peace guarantees it provides and a share in the profits generated by infrastructure projects in Ukraine funded by frozen Russian assets.
British lawyers, said Zirin, were “bewildered” by the Supreme Court’s shadow docket, “where summary orders that are said to be interim become law without explanation, opinion, or even revealing which justices voted for the final decision.”
And in a Europe that has replaced a British prime minister four times in eight years and a French prime minister five times in the past two, people are shocked by how easily an American autocrat can gather and keep power. In Europe, the ministers are unquestionably the servants, and people connected to Jeffrey Epstein are ousted by the royal family. They are not kept in the White House to scream tweets and drive policy.
But now Zirin said Europe is noticing Trump slipping in the polls, stunned by fissures within his MAGA ranks and shaken by Democratic gains in the recent election. Trump is suddenly pivoting, changing his position on releasing the Epstein files. After labeling Zohran Mamdani a “communist,” Zirin said Trump now tries to align with Americans who voted for the New York mayor-elect, and he publicly supported Mamdani earlier this month.
“[T]here is some cause for optimism,” said Zirin. “Looking at the signs of recent events, we see what was once unimaginable just a few months ago. Trump may be losing his hold on the Republican Party.”
One of the most telling signs was the recent announcement by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, (G-Ga.) that she is resigning her House seat rather than allowing herself to be treated by Trump like “a battered wife hoping it all goes away and gets better.”
Inflation is battering Trump’s record, and ruining the party that gives him complete fealty.
“The latest poll numbers show that Trump’s approval is below water. Only 33 percent of U.S. adults approve of how he is managing the government, down from 43 percent in March,” said Zirin.
“As John Lewis, the great civil rights leader and Congressman, famously said, ‘Democracy is not a state. It is an act.’ Trump is blinking; hope may be on its way,” Zirin said.
See the Washington Monthly report at this link.