The first Trump administration ended with a brazen assault on our democracy that culminated in the unthinkable: a violent attack on the US Capitol. The culpability for this attack, as the bipartisan House select committee found, lay solely on Donald Trump. In spite of this, the American people again voted to entrust him with the most powerful office in the world. 

Now, the second Trump administration has broken with all precedent and repeatedly and flagrantly violated our democratic laws and norms. It unconstitutionally and illegally fired thousands of government employees and froze trillions of dollars in federal spending while the Republican-controlled Congress stood by and did nothing. It is politicizing and weaponizing vast tracts of the federal government in the pursuit of retribution against perceived political enemies. It granted clemency to over 1,500 convicted criminals, many of them right wing militia members, who violently attacked the US Capital on 6 January 2021. It continues to illegally and unconstitutionally deport US persons, some legal citizens, without legal due process granted to all Americans, citizen or non.

Abroad, it has threatened to annex sovereign countries and territories (Canada and Greenland). It has threatened to abandon democratic Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression and upended our transatlantic collective security partnerships.

In sum, Trump, the larger MAGA movement and its supporters in Congress are responsible in the following extremist actions which we hold to be inimical to our democratic way of life:

• Using the power of the presidency to undermine public confidence in the integrity of the US election system by voicing inaccurate claims that its is ‘rigged’.

• Engaging in an unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election; and, when this failed, mounting a violent attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 in an attempt to disrupt the certification of a free and fair election. 

• Using the false pretext of a national security emergencies to enact executive orders which subvert the constitutional balance of power.

• Politicizing the U.S. military and deploying it on open-ended deployments domestically.

• Assaulting civil society by threatening the free press, academia and businesses that do not conform with the administrations agenda.

The above violations are a massive abuse of power totally unprecedented in American history. They are clear evidence of eroding democratic norms and rising authoritarianism in America. The sheer volume and brazen nature by which the administration has carried out these violations indicates that it now believes that it is beyond reproach, above the law and unbound by the checks and balances enshrined by the Constitution. As such we deem this administration and the larger MAGA movement a clear and present threat to our democracy.

See AVDD’s Substack page at: avddeomocracy.substack.com for additional updates, writing, podcasts and interviews.