Congressional Republicans Are All Accomplices In America’s Rapid Slide Into Autocracy

They Betrayed The Constitution For A Small Piece Of Grubby Power

Trump is going to meet with Putin on Friday in Anchorage to try to give in to Russian demands for Ukrainian territory. I’m sure Trump will be ready to declare it a gigantic success, even though Ukraine and the Europeans have already rejected the entire premise, which reminds everyone Neville Chamberlain’s surrender of Czechoslovakia in Munich in the lead-up to World War II. Usually Putin has been almost effortlessly able to wrap Trump around his little finger. Suppose he does and offers Trump “peace in our time” and the lovely Hotel Baltschug directly across the river from the Kremlin in a swap for… let’s say some old Russian trading posts and settlements at Kodiak (Pavlovsk), Sitka (Novo Arkhangelsk) and Kenai (Nikolaevsk)… who could stop him?

This meeting isn’t just another reckless diplomatic blunder. It’s a symptom of a deeper crisis threatening the fabric of our democracy. Like Chamberlain’s disastrous appeasement of Hitler in 1938, Trump’s willingness to entertain ceding Ukrainian territory signals more than poor judgment; it reveals a profound incompatibility between his relentless drive for dominance and the principles of liberal self-government. He’s not merely a bad actor in politics; he embodies a corrosive force that doesn’t understand democracy because he cannot abide any system where he doesn’t hold total control. This isn’t just a clash of policies or personalities, but a fundamental battle between autocratic will and constitutional democracy. Trump’s repeated declarations of emergency, his blatant disregard for established norms, and his eagerness to dismantle democratic checks and balances expose the fragile state of our republic…where the traditional safeguards against tyranny are being tested and, increasingly, found wanting.

Prudent conservatives, explained Andrew Sullivan Saturday, see “the feral glint in Trump’s eyes… [as he] behaves like a wild boar crashing through a field of well-tended crops… Trump is conservatism’s actual nemesis: a wild boar— psychologically incapable of understanding anything but dominance and revenge, with no knowledge of history, crashing obliviously and malevolently through the ruined landscape of our constitutional democracy.” And Sullivan, a lifelong conservative himself see it as a “very Greek tragedy— conservatives killing the Constitution they love because they hate the left more— is made more poignant by Trump’s utter cluelessness: he doesn’t even intend to end the American experiment in self-government and individual freedom. He isn’t that sophisticated. He is ending it simply because he knows no other way of being a human being. He cannot tolerate any system where he does not have total control. Character counts, as conservatives once [long, long ago in another galaxy] insisted, and a man with Trump’s psyche, when combined with his demagogic genius, is quite simply incompatible with liberal democratic society. Unfit.”

And that is just the beginning of the end. Did we really know that “in the face-off between this man’s will-to-power and liberal democracy, liberal democracy would just … fold. Looking back at the resilience of the Constitution, the reaction of the other branches of government, the behavior of civil society, and the response of the public over the last decade… The tyrant’s first textbook tactic, of course, is declaring an emergency to justify the seizure of arbitrary power. Trump has now done so over 30 times in various executive orders and directives in his first seven months. Previous presidents have moved the dial of executive power, as a polarized, deadlocked Congress has surrendered more and more authority… [but] Trump has ‘elevated it to another level.’ And unlike, say, Putin, who capitalized on (and may well have orchestrated) an actual emergency— a terror attack— to make his first big move, Trump just declares non-existent ones real on Twitter— and presto!— they are real. He knows he doesn’t even have to bother to justify them. He rightly assumes that Americans have less resistance to bald-faced autocratic lies in 2025 than Russians did in 1999.”

Trump’s mouthpiece justifies it this way: “President Trump is rightfully enlisting his emergency powers to quickly rectify four years of failure and fix the many catastrophes he inherited from Joe Biden— wide open borders, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, radical climate regulations, historic inflation, and economic and national security threats posed by trade deficits.”

Unpack that for a second. A failed previous presidency, wars fought by other countries in other countries, subsidies for green energy, 2.7 percent inflation, and a trade deficit not much different than in the past few decades: if this amounts to a “national emergency,” then an emergency is a permanent condition, and the president can rule by fiat from here on out. And so here we are: with the Congress a sad rubber-stamp to the mad king, and with the lower-court checks on him stayed by SCOTUS, which is taking its own sweet time to adjudicate.

Meanwhile, America is one-man rule. Resist and he’ll ruin you. He’ll destroy your law firm’s business; he’ll stop that corporate merger you want; he’ll put a tariff on your company; he’ll launch a DOJ investigation into you; he’ll get you fired for doing your job in government faithfully; he’ll sue you if you print something true about him; and if you’re a federal judge and rule against him, he’ll sic an online mob, and maybe a real mob, onto you. He has done all these things this year— and openly celebrated them.

… Trump has less than zero constitutional or legal authority to do any of this. Tariffs are constitutionally the Senate’s prerogative, and are applied for reasons to do with trade and industry. For a president unilaterally to use them as a club to coerce other countries on unrelated policies— on a whim unrelated to any Congressional mandate— is an impeachable offense. And yet what were only a few years ago obviously impeachable offenses are now simply known as the Trump administration.

And, as we all know, congressional Republicans aren’t just sitting on the sidelines twiddling their thumbs and trading in stock options; they’re actively gaslighting the public and enabling this slow-motion coup. Take Bryan Steil of southeast Wisconsin, a guy who smiles for the cameras but spends his time shilling for every Trump power grab like a dutiful foot soldier. Steil pretends to care about the Constitution, but when it comes to defending it against blatant abuses— like Trump’s illegal tariffs or sham emergencies— he’s nowhere to be found. It’s all about party loyalty over principle, and Steil’s all in.

Then, not that far away in southeast Iowa, there’s Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who paints herself as a small-government conservative but eagerly backs Trump’s empire of chaos and corruption. She’s never been one to ignore the erosion of our democratic norms and, in fact, she cheers it on, voting to undermine election security and turning a blind eye as the administration weaponizes federal agencies against political opponents. Miller-Meeks and Steil are embodiments of the failure of leadership that marks today’s Republican Party and every day Congress is in session they’re betraying their oaths and the American people. If this is what “conservative governance” looks like in 2025, then the phrase has lost all meaning. It’s time to call out these clowns for what they are: cowards who trade our democracy for party power, willing to let Trump destroy the system they claim to defend.

“Tyrants also need to delegitimize the rule of law, because it may occasionally rule against them, which is, of course, intolerable,” wrote Sullivan. “So every judicial ruling against Trump is instantly deemed corrupt and political; and every ruling for him is pure justice. He has also used the full weight of the Justice Department to target his personal enemies, impugn honest judges, harass dissenters, and now to accuse a previous president of treason. At the same time, he has pardoned violent rioters, insurrectionists, and corrupt pols on the take. For the sole reasons that they’re on his side. He did so with his usual judicial care and moderation: ‘Fuck it. Release ‘em all.’”

The next move of a tyrant is to address the discrepancies between his constant lies and the reality on the ground. Trump believes that the economy is booming, inflation is dropping, and growth is surging everywhere. If the data disprove that, the data must be wrong. Trump’s very public firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is a clear signal: there will be no reality outside Trump’s reality in this elected monarchy. The Federal Reserve will be next. The legitimacy of all the numbers on which a free society depends to make rational decisions will be dismantled— just as it was under Erdogan and Xi. L’état, c’est lui.

Alongside all this is an assault on the autonomy of universities, the targeting of law firms that may represent those targeted by Trump, the end of free speech protections for non-citizens, and the appearance on our streets of armed, masked, anonymous men and women, with powers to seize anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant, and detain them, often for long stretches, even if they turn out to be citizens, or engaged in perfectly legal activity.

This feels like a police state because only in police states do governments deploy masked anonymous armed men— now with no age limits!— patrolling the streets with the power to arrest and detain. And yet many Americans shrug. Just as they shrug at the construction of vast detention camps in the US— all proof that expediting deportations is not the real goal; the goal is the presence of an ominous gulag to deter would-be illegals, and, as a bonus, to hold over citizens as well. This is classic state terror: the amassing a huge punitive powers answerable only to one man, who is by definition never wrong. It was precisely against this kind of power Americans once staged a revolution. Now they want the king back— as long as he’s their king; their Red Caesar.

This is why it’s worth recalling Ben Franklin’s pinpointing of the essence of tyranny: arbitrary power. There is no sane or reasoned argument for suddenly throwing a wrench into the entire wind power sector, for example; there is just Trump. There is no underlying principle behind the various dizzying tariff rates— just Trump. There is no rationale for gutting American scientific research or taking $500 million away from mRNA vaccine research; it’s just a way for Trump to hurt lefties on campus. The sudden seemingly random assaults on longtime allies— threatening Denmark over Greenland, sticking Switzerland with a sudden 39 percent tariff, telling Canada they should become a 51st State— are the essence of arbitrary, absolute power, based on nothing but one man’s thrill at bullying those weaker than himself, and having them prostrate before him.

…Trump’s theft of Congress’ tariff and taxation powers is so outlandishly unconstitutional, such a massive return to 1773, that SCOTUS may have no option but to strike down Trump’s core economic policy. Then there’s the faint chance that the House may turn Dem next year. That’s why the sudden redistricting push in Texas is underway— which will, of course, further delegitimize the Congress as a democratic institution, deepening cynicism, which in turn further empowers tyranny.

The question, it seems to me, is how Trump might respond to a real SCOTUS setback, or to a House he doesn’t totally control. And the answer to that we already know: he will assault the court’s legitimacy, threaten the Justices with mob violence, refuse to end the tariffs, and— of course!— claim the 2026 elections are rigged. The same, I think, applies to his term limits. He will attempt to defy them along the lines of his beloved thug-tyrant, Bukele. And if that open assault on a clear Constitutional amendment doesn’t fly, which may be a stretch even for MAGA vandals, it still won’t be over.

If a Democrat wins in 2028, Trump will call the election rigged and illegitimate, and will re-stage 2020 on behalf of a successor— with the full weight of the federal government behind him. If a Republican wins, Trump will remain POTUS the way Putin stayed president after making Medvedev “president” in 2008. Trump is an instinctual tyrant, and once those characters have tasted raw, arbitrary power, as he has, they can never let go. He must either have a family member succeed him or a puppet. Don Jr or JD—  Trump’s Medvedev.

So where’s Congress? John Thune, MAGA Mike, the Republicans who are part of the majority in both Houses? These are the people entrusted by the Constitution to check a runaway president… But, instead they have chosen to become lapdogs for his autocratic ambitions. They watch Trump shred norms, weaponize government agencies, and rip apart the very data that guides policy— and they do nothing. Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota, David Valadao, Derrick Van Orden, Ryan Mackenzie, Eli Crane… they’re all complicit in this slow-motion coup. They trade their oaths for headlines and party favors, standing silent or cheerleading as Trump tears down democracy brick by brick.

So what, for example, do the folks in the Hudson Valley think about all this? Lawler’s progressive opponent, Mike Sacks, has been talking with lots of voters in Westchester and Rockland counties and he told us: “The people here in NY-17 are tired of Mike Lawler’s lies and self-interested deceptions. He promised not to cut Medicaid and then, when he inevitably fell in line with Daddy Trump and voted for the Big Ugly Bill, he tried to sell it by changing the subject as if we’re stupid. And when he’s confronted with the inconvenient facts of his own record, Lawler shoots the messenger. When Joe Scarborough presented Lawler with our districts’ hospitals’ fears that they’ll have to cut services thanks to Lawler’s vote to slash nearly $1 Trillion from Medicaid, Lawler’s response was that the hospitals were ‘parroting talking points.’ And while he refuses to accept responsibility for the harm he’s caused his constituents, his conspicuous silence over Trump and the Roberts Court’s attacking our Republic’s rights and freedoms only serves to aid the billionaire-bought regime’s dismantling of our democracy.”

And in Arizona's most likely district to flip, progressive former state Rep. Eric Descheenie is taking on MAGA extremist Eli Crane. “The rural communities which make up Arizona’s second district see it. We know a thing or two about the principles of planting, growing, and harvesting crops, and that the principles of democracy and quality governance are no different. It takes thoughtful planning, honest days’ work, time and patience, and due diligence to get it done right. And we can spot a cheater quicker than a coyote up to no good. We know what cheaters are left with in the end, absolutely nothing! And Trump and Eli Crane’s antics will leave our households left with the bill. Make no mistake, the activities of Trump and his blind followers in Congress, like Eli Crane, are on track to cripple our democracy and usher in the early stages of fascism, and that, quite frankly, is something we won’t let come to pass. Not like that!”  

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These lawmakers are literally emboldening tyranny. When Trump purged the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics to erase inconvenient truths, they cheered on the destruction of the institutions that help hold power accountable. He’s turning federal agencies into tools of political vengeance, and congressional Republicans are shrugging it off, distracted by tribal loyalty or fearful of the MAGA base. When armed, masked men patrol our streets with near-dictatorial powers, these “public servants” either look away or offer weak rationalizations.

Congressional Republicans have become the architects of our national undoing, collaborating in the creation of a police state where arbitrary rule is the law of the land. They wave the flag while gutting the very democracy it represents. Their silence and complicity are the last nails in the coffin of the republic they swore to defend.