Trump's Attack on the Republic
It continues - as do efforts to fight back.
I was planning to write more about the Republican megabill currently moving (or not) through the House, but the biggest Congress story on Tuesday was the administration charging a Member of the House from New Jersey, LaMonica McIver, with what certainly appears to be an entirely bogus crime stemming from a congressional effort to oversee federal detention.
The good news I suppose out of this is that it has every possibility of backfiring. We’ll see, but there’s an excellent chance the prosecution will fall apart. No one likes being charged with a crime, but McIver is likely to be able to make plenty of political hay out of the episode, and she seems unlikely to be intimidated from further attempts to do her job. We’re in candidate decision season; my guess is that if the case collapses relatively quickly it’s more likely that Democrats and other supporters of democracy on the fence will be inspired to run for office than intimidated from doing so.
That said: This is exactly the kind of political prosecution that Donald Trump has been promising ever since his 2016 campaign, and with the arrest of a judge in Milwaukee it’s yet another part of his assault on the Constitution. Trump doesn’t believe in the rule of law. As far as anyone can tell, he thinks that all such prosecutions have always been partisan, and that the independent Department of Justice has always been a fraud. But he is wrong. A certain amount of separation between Justice and the presidency has always been the case. That’s why everyone in 1973 was shocked when it turned out that Richard Nixon had violated DoJ independence; why that obstruction of justice was sufficient to convince almost everyone that Nixon had to go; and why Gerald Ford and subsequent presidents institutionalized an even stronger wall between prosecutorial decisions and the White House.1
Trump, who knows nothing – still – of the US government, appears to have mistaken that separation for a plot against him, assuming that the people who wouldn’t carry out his vendettas must have been his partisan (or personal, or both) enemies. I don’t think he’s capable of understanding the principle of prosecutorial independence. For that matter, I don’t think he’s capable of understanding the concept of professional standards.
Other Trump allies are not so naive, presumably. He’s an enemy of democracy because he doesn’t understand that it’s real. They are enemies of democracy because, most likely, they understand that they can’t get the personal power and the policy outcomes they want through the Constitutional system as it emerged into a stronger republic through such landmarks as the Fourteenth Amendment, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Among many others. And so “lock ‘em up” Trumpy politics became their means of attempting to seize power from that republic.2
Just to be clear: The United States has hardly been on a smooth, continuous road to a perfect democracy until Trump disrupted it. Democracy is complicated and multi-faceted, and sometimes democracy has been strengthened in one way even while being weakened in other ways. If there’s an arc to history, it doubles back constantly, sometimes running in both directions at once, and any idea that it bends towards justice is an aspirational statement, not an observation.3
What’s more, democracy is complicated. Does it demand (as I believe is the case) some strong degree of reproductive freedom? Does it require some amount of economic equality? If so, how much? (I suspect it doesn’t, but I could be wrong). Seemingly important republican principles can collide, and reconciling them can be difficult. Figuring out exactly how the rule of law applies to elected officials, especially those overseeing the administration of justice, yields no easy answers – that’s why there have been several different attempts to set up a working independent counsel system since Nixon appointed (and then fired) one to look into Watergate. All of them unsatisfactory.
But sometimes it’s not so complicated.
Of course a president openly filling his pockets with direct (albeit thinly veiled) payoffs from people with business before the government is an attack on the republic. Of course the president pardoning political allies for crimes is an attack on the republic. Of course disappearing people off the streets and sending them to foreign prison camps is an attack on the republic. Of course violating basic constitutional rules about spending government money; defying court orders; denying habeas rights; intimidating media outlets and universities and law firms; and on and on are all attacks on the republic.
Of course arresting judges and Members of Congress because they are opponents of the president’s policies is an attack on the republic.
As I’ve said before: Don’t think of it in terms of “crisis.” It’s a sustained, multi-pronged assault on the Constitution and the rule of law. Just the fact of that attack weakens the republic, even if it is ultimately repelled everywhere. (After all, if even one potential candidate chooses not to run for fear of being thrown in jail or facing violence, the republic is weakened. Just as it was weakened every time that happened in the past). More likely, even if democracy survives, it will suffer many serious injuries, and who knows whether it will then slowly begin to heal or just deteriorate further.
For now? People are fighting back, and we’re finding new heroes of the republic every week. Including, now, LaMonica McIver.
[Corrected location of the arrested judge]
Perfect separation? No. But it was real, even when it wasn’t perfect.
Using “republic” here as a synonym for “democracy,” as Robert Dahl recommended for general usage.
As an aspirational statement it’s great, and such things are needed just as much as empirical studies. Just recognize them for what they are.
If we Democrats truly cared about Trump's attack on the Republic they would laser-like focus on efforts to win elections rather than rallying their base with events like this. And when in positions of power at the state and federal level they would put good government first rather than attacking democracy in their own seemingly acceptable manner (covering up Biden's decline or not removing Bill Clinton from office). Do you consider the super-majority controlled MA legislature changing the rules on interim Senate seats because John Kerry was running for President to be an attack on democracy (gov was Romney who would have appointed a Republican)? I do. Came back to bite them when Ted Kennedy died in office and Scott Brown prevented a filibuster-proof Senate.