'Survival-minded' ex-national security officials warn 'guardrails are collapsing' under Trump

Despite the Democrats' sweeping electoral victories, President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans "are far from surrendering," and, according to a former national security official, they are moving at warp speed toward authoritarianism, writes Salon's Chauncey DeVega.

Former state prosecutor and senior adviser to the undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence & Analysis, Steve Cash is now the executive director of The Steady State, a pro-democracy organization of more than 360 former senior U.S. government officials.

Cash tells DeVega that these officials "are deeply worried about the weakening condition of American democracy — and the findings of the organization’s new report that the U.S. now shares most of the traits of foreign countries that have fallen to autocratic regimes."

"A backlash is already gathering," Cash says, noting that "Trump and his inner circle understand that their actions may bring criminal liability in any future rule-of-law administration — even a Republican one."

Steve Bannon, Cash notes, said "they know what's at stake," which "makes Trump more dangerous, not less."

Cash notes that Vice President JD Vance's assertion that the administration doesn't need to comply with judicial orders and Trump calling to abolish the filibuster and his increasing use of federal forces point to a dark descent into authoritarianism.

"What we are witnessing is not a descent into chaos, but a controlled assertion of hierarchy," Cash says. "The window to autocracy remains open, but the election showed that we can see through it, and that clarity is the first step toward closing it."

Cash says the U.S. faces an existential threat, "more serious than anything that we have seen in our lifetimes, more serious than anything our parents or grandparents saw here in the United States."

And while Cash advises people to "hold fast," he also says private conversations in his circle of national and international security remain "Somber. Candid. Bleak."

"The consensus is that the guardrails are collapsing. People speak in the language of contingency planning — what do we do 'if' and 'when' — not 'could' this happen," he says.

"The tone is less theoretical now; it’s survival-minded, institutional triage. These kinds of discussions always existed. But they were always hypothetical, distant and the kind of thing discussed over beers after work. But this is now real and happening around us right now," Cash adds.

When asked why the political media and establishment ignored the warnings that this would happen, Cash explains that "the threat did not fit their mental model of America. They assumed our institutions were self-correcting, that 'it can’t happen here.' Many still see Trump as a glitch in the system rather than evidence that the system itself is under attack. Denial is a form of comfort — and comfort is addictive."

In the Steady State's new report "Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline," Cash and his colleagues reached a dire diagnosis for America.

"The United States now exhibits all the indicators of late-stage democratic erosion," he says. "We are no longer describing 'risk.' Instead, we are documenting active decline."

"In short, our finding is that the American people are well along the path to living in an authoritarian country," he adds.

In response to Trump's threats to use the Insurrection Act to deploy troops, Cash says, "What was once hypothetical is now an operational plan. We’ve seen the dry runs" in Oregon, California, Illinois and Washington DC.

When asked how the American media would be covering this if it was happening elsewhere, Cash says, "They’d call it what it is: an autocratic consolidation."

Trump, Cash says, is "very dangerous," and the narrative that he is a laughable buffoon is misguided.

"Trump and his circle aren’t amateurs; they’re practitioners of power. The 'buffoon' story comforts those who can’t face the professional competence behind the chaos," he says.

Americans are entering what Cash calls "the normalization phase of authoritarianism," saying that authoritarianism "feeds on fatigue."

"We have to keep the record straight and the lights on. We need to make alliances, including with people and organizations that, in normal times, we would be adversaries on policy issues. It will be a long haul," he warns.

"Trump is moving faster than most dictators have; we have fallen far in the months since the inauguration. But there are predictable way-posts. The midterm elections will be a key signal of whether we accelerate or reverse the trends," he adds.