Has the US already had its last democratic election?

By Carne Ross and reposted with permission

In 1937, Karl Popper fled from Austria because of the Nazi threat. He spent the war years in New Zealand where he pondered how democracy might be defended against fascism. The result was his seminal work, The Open Society and its Enemies, first published in 1947. In the Open Society, Popper identified the three components of the ‘open’ society necessary to sustain democracy: fair elections, independent courts and a free press.

We’re not in 1937 Austria. But Popper provides us with a framework with which to understand what’s going on in Trump’s America - and what may lie ahead. Let’s go through these three components or ‘pillars’ one by one to see where Trump’s rule might end up. This is an exercise in hypotheticals which I hope will never come to pass. But, in every case, I have projected outcomes which are far from merely imaginary - there is already hard evidence of their possibility, perhaps even likelihood.

Starting with free and fair elections. With mid-terms due in two years’ time, some hope that resistance will manifest itself in the Democrats overturning the Republican majority in both houses and that Congress would then restrain the Administration.

We can assume that all the techniques of election manipulation already in use will continue and be intensified - misinformation propagated by social media, public bullying of critics, false accusations against opposition figures etc.., turbo-charged by the narrative-dominating power of an incumbent government. But Trump doesn’t like losing and he likes holding onto power. If he thinks he might lose Congress, at least two additional strategies are available. He might:

• Declare the elections invalid. He has of course already done this with the Presidential election of 2020 (and continues to claim its invalidity, as does every MAGA supporter and all Republicans), so there’s every possibility he might do so again, based on manufactured yet plausible (at least to some) evidence, just like 2020.
  

• Postpone or cancel elections on the grounds of national emergency, perhaps citing illegal immigration, crime, fentanyl, or foreign threat (China or Iran might be candidates) or a mix of all of the above (a drug and crime crisis, fuelled by terrorist foreigners and immigrants). Or something else entirely - ISIS perhaps.

It seems at least possible that the ground is being prepared for the declaration of a national emergency of some kind. In the last few days, the administration invoked a centuries-old wartime law, last used in world war two, to deport illegal immigrants, in this case alleged Venezuelan and Salvadorean ‘gang members’. The Alien Enemies Act was notoriously last used during the war to intern Japanese-American civilians. Bizarrely, the government claimed the Venezuelans were engaged in ‘irregular warfare’ against the US. As soon as he was inaugurated, Trump declared a national emergency on the southern border, thus justifying the deployment of the army.

It is not much of a stretch to imagine that Trump might extend that emergency to the whole country and declare martial law or emergency powers where the rule of law (Popper’s second pillar) is suspended and the authorities given unfettered power to use the military for civil enforcement, detention without trial etc.. The US government imposed something pretty close to martial law after 9/11 in the Patriot Act, allowing for instance the indefinite detention without trial of anyone suspected of terrorism. So there is some precedent. Today, the government presented no evidence of the guilt of those Venezuelan gang members who will now be imprisoned for at least a year (the term is renewable) in El Salvador’s inhuman ‘mega jail’, the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot). El Salvador’s authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has already said he is expecting more prisoners from the US. There won’t be much outcry in the US over the illegal deportation of alleged Latin American gang members, but take this case as an example of the sorts of techniques the government may deploy for others.

As part of this declaration of national emergency, federal law would be suspended to be replaced by untrammelled executive power. There have been multiple events in the last few weeks that point to this possibility. To take some examples:

• The firing of the two most senior legal officers, called Judges Advocate General (JAGs), in the Department of Defense. The new Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth (the one tattooed with far right Christian iconography) openly said that he didn’t want lawyers who might put up ‘road blocks’ to the Commander-in-Chief (the President). In other words, Hegseth is announcing that the administration is expecting to do things with the military that independent lawyers would deem illegal.

• The government ignored the ruling of a federal judge preventing the deportation of those Venezuelan gang members. The administration then claimed that the judge’s decision was itself unlawful.

• Trump’s pardon for 1500 violent rioters who mounted an insurrection against the government on January 6th, 2021, an act which led to the deaths of six policemen. Some of those pardoned were convicted of assaulting police officers; others of planning the violence. A clear case of Trump interfering in the rule of law to protect his political supporters. Meanwhile, a Green Card holder, Mahmoud Khalil, who criticised Israel in demonstrations at Columbia University, has been detained and threatened with deportation, without legal grounds.

• The Department of Justice has fired those involved in prosecuting the Jan 6th rioters and sought a list of the FBI agents involved in that investigation, thus paving the way for their prosecution. Some of those fired found their addresses published online and, as a result, received death threats and threats against their families.

  
  

Anthony Romero of the ACLU believes that the worst of Trump’s actions can be blocked or at least attenuated by the courts. He’s a lot more expert in the law than I am, but I think it’s already clear that in the case of Trump’s major strategic policies - such as deportation, persecution of political opponents etc - the courts will not be enough (and Romero admits this risk). Some hope that the Trump-stacked Supreme Court may stand up to Trump. This is the very same court that before the election issued the appalling decision granting immunity to any President for actions undertaken in the conduct of his office1. Even if the Supreme Court does try to stop Trump’s illegality, he may well simply ignore it. Why believe this? Because he has already said so, in a post he pinned to the top of his feed on Truth Social and which was then posted on the White House X feed: "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law." Vance has repeatedly said that the executive should not be restrained by the courts.

Popper’s third pillar of democracy is a free press. Here, the evidence is again under our noses. Social media is where a growing number - in fact, the majority - get their news. No one needs to be told what has happened to social media in terms of the propagation of disinformation and wholesale political manipulation. As for what the MAGA crowd call ‘legacy’ media - ie TV and newspapers - the grovelling Jeff Bezos has limited the freedom of the Washington Post to comment on the administration’s conduct, in a clear case of craven political submission to the new dispensation by one of the nation’s most important newspapers. Outlets deemed critical of Trump have been denied access to the Pentagon, Airforce One and other sources of news about the government. In other words, coverage of the government is being limited to the politically sympathetic; we can expect more measures to the same end. The verbal intimidation and threats to the free press and individual journalists by Trump himself have a long history. It won’t be long before there are multiple, aggressive and costly lawsuits against the non-MAGA media. This threat is probably already discouraging press outlets from publishing stories they fear might provoke prosecution. Self-censorship is thus already the result. Overall, the impact of these measures is effectively censorship and the slow erosion of free and fearless media. Trump doesn’t have to censor the press directly. It is arguably already happening.

More generally, there is a mounting atmosphere of repression by intimidation and threats. Any politician who criticises Trump can expect vicious online abuse led by Musk and other cheerleaders of neo-fascism as well as direct threats of physical violence from Trump’s followers. The same applies to officials who might want to blow the whistle on what’s going on (though much of it is happening in plain sight). The Secret Service protection for Anthony Fauci, under sustained right-wing threat for his role in COVID-19, has been removed. The protection for former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, has also been taken away, doubtless because he is now a Trump critic, exposing him to the danger of assassination by foreign agents. The threat of violence may be enough to silence critics; actual violence should also be expected. This won’t necessarily need to be perpetrated by the administration itself, but may be carried out by informal proxies - the Proud Boys, Oathkeepers etc, who can expect impunity for any crimes they may commit if helpful to the Trump regime. But the imprisonment and threatened deportation of Khalil already speaks of an administration willing to exploit ‘official’ policy tools, such as immigration law, to repress dissent, even if illegally. We can expect worse. In a state of emergency, anyone who criticises the authorities may be detained. The justifications offered may depend on the nature of the emergency - assisting foreign threats, terrorists, drug-traffickers etc.. Ultimately, there may not need to be any justifications.

In these ways, all three elements of Popper’s open society, the triumvirate that holds up democracy, are under sustained - and effective - assault. And this is after only two months of Trump’s presidency. There are other signals of what may come: Trump’s well-known admiration for other authoritarians, whether Putin, Erdogan or even Kim Jong-Un, whose ‘control’ over North Korea’s benighted population Trump has openly envied; his acquiescence in if not direct support for blatantly illegal activities by others, for instance Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank and perhaps, soon, Gaza. Soon, with little doubt, he will soon endorse Putin’s illegal seizure by force of Ukrainian territory as part of his proposed ‘peace plan’. There are more examples.

In these ways, Trump may ensure that he or his successors (the ghastly J.D. Vance most likely) stay in power untrammelled by the ‘checks and balances’ of America’s fragile constitution, more or less indefinitely. In other words, a fascist dictatorship. Given the poisonous role of money and other forms of interference (including foreign), America’s elections were already far from truly ‘free and fair’. But if Trump does his worst, it may have had its last.

It is not doom mongering to consider this possible future; it is all too plausible, merely on the evidence of what Trump and his cohorts have already done and said. In any case, as the saying goes, we should prepare for the worst while hoping for the best.

I will turn to what might be done about this looming nightmare in a future post. I will also examine the consequences for the rest of the world (watch out, Taiwan).

1. The Supreme Court decision granting immunity to the president for actions in the conduct of his office is Trump v. United States (2024). The Court ruled that presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for acts conducted within their core constitutional authority as president. This includes powers such as commanding the military, issuing pardons, and overseeing foreign relations. Additionally, the Court granted presumptive immunity for all other official acts, meaning that these acts are protected unless the government can demonstrate that prosecution would not interfere with the executive branch's functions.

Read the original Carne Ross post and subscribe to his substack here.