This is How Democracy Ends
Connecting dots: Four stories in today's papers tell one grim tale.
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Story #1
THIS IS HOW American democracy might end.
President Trump’s assault on the cornerstone of democratic rule — an election system that people trust — began with his baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He will finish the job with these words, if they come to fruition: “We should take over the voting, the voting, in at least 15 places,” Trump said Monday. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
He said the quiet part of authoritarianism out loud: Trump wants to seize power explicitly granted to states in the U.S. Constitution.
Under the Constitution, the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding elections are determined by each state, not the federal government. Republicans traditionally argued in favor of states’ rights and against a powerful federal government. But now the MAGA-controlled party cares more about “owning the libs” and gathering power.
“Trump’s demand comes less than a week after the FBI executed a search warrant at a warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, which is at the heart of right-wing conspiracy theories about the 2020 election,” The Washington Post explains. “The unusual warrant authorized agents to seize all physical ballots from the 2020 election, voting machine tabulator tapes, images produced during the ballot count and voter rolls from that year. Days before the search, Trump claimed in a speech at the Davos World Economic Forum that the 2020 election was rigged.”
Take him literally and seriously.
Story #2
THIS IS HOW freedom of speech might end: The Homeland Security Department is exploiting its little-known power to issue subpoenas without judicial oversight and investigating people who protest Trump’s immigration policies.
“Though the U.S. government had been accused under previous administrations of overstepping laws and guidelines that restrict the subpoenas’ use,” The Washington Post reports, “privacy and civil rights groups say that, under President Donald Trump, Homeland Security has weaponized the tool to strangle free speech.
For many Americans, the anonymous ICE officer, masked and armed, represents Homeland Security’s most intimidating instrument, but the agency often targets people in a far more secretive way.
Homeland Security is not required to share how many administrative subpoenas it issues each year, but tech experts and former agency staff estimate it’s well into the thousands, if not tens of thousands. Because the legal demands are not subject to independent review, they can take just minutes to write up and, former staff say, officials throughout the agency, even in mid-level roles, have been given the authority to approve them.
In March, Homeland Security issued two administrative subpoenas to Columbia University for information on a student it sought to deport after she took part in pro-Palestinian protests. In July, the agency demanded broad employment records from Harvard University with what the school’s attorneys described as “unprecedented administrative subpoenas.” In September, Homeland Security used one to try to identify Instagram users who posted about ICE raids in Los Angeles. Last month, the agency used another to demand detailed personal information about some 7,000 workers in a Minnesota health system whose staff had protested Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s intrusion into one of its hospitals.
This blockbuster story opens with the case of a suburban Philly man hounded by the Trump administration for an innocuous email sent to a federal prosecutor defending an Afghan immigrant. Chilling shit.
Story #3
THIS IS HOW “Democracy Dies by Database.” In a profoundly scary New York Times column, Tressie McMillan Cottom describes how the Department of Homeland Security is poised to be able to track your current and future actions — and to label you a domestic terrorist for protesting the government.
“Imagine what our country would look like if a federal agency compiled everything it could find about you on the open market, and then paired it with your most sensitive personal data and the full weight of the federal surveillance apparatus,” Cottom writes for The New York Times. “The result would be a system that could not only track you but pretty accurately predict your choices, behaviors and vulnerabilities. The agency might decline to tell you how the database would be used, or, worse, deny that such a database exists at all. In these times, we ought to assume the worst-case scenario: that every technological layer added to our democratic institutions has the potential to be hostile to civil liberties.”
Already, there are signs that this future may come to pass.
In a citizen video from Maine that has been widely shared online, an ICE agent told a legal observer that he was taking a picture of her license plate to add her to a “nice little database” that will label her a “domestic terrorist.” (A spoke person for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, later told CNN that “there is no database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by D.H.S.”) In any case, the Department of Homeland Security has issued broad internal guidance for ICE agents in Minneapolis to collect “images, license plates, identifications and general information on hotels, agitators, protesters.” And then on Friday, The Times reported that ICE was exploring ways to integrate advertising technologies and the data associated with them into its operations, specifically asking potential vendors the extent to which data could be collected on “people, businesses, devices, locations, transactions, public records.” There’s no word on ICE having a special decoder ring that tracks only the criminals.
Story #4
THIS IS HOW freedom of arts and expression might end: Trump wants to close the Kennedy Center for two years, demolish it, and rebuild it in his image.
“I’m not ripping it down. I’ll be using the steel,” Trump told reporters Monday, when asked whether he would demolish the building. “So we’re using the structure, we’re using some of the marble and some of the marble comes down, but when it’s open, it’ll be brand new and really beautiful.” Translation: I’m demolishing it.
This is how he destroyed the East Room after promising not to touch it — without oversight and after blowing past cultural and legal norms; it’s how he redecorated the White House in whorish golds; it’s how he plans to build a massive arch on the Potomac River as a monument to his presidencies: By seizing power no president has ever dare to claim.
Yes, I know the Kennedy Center in Washington is just one venue and a few handfuls of shows that most Americans had no intention of seeing. But it’s also more than that: It’s one man slapping his name on a cultural institution and then remaking it, dictating what we can and cannot consider as art. If he gets away with this, all future presidents can seize the precedent and dictate American culture.
THIS FREE NEWSLETTER contains four stories pulled from today’s “Morning Read-In,” a daily pre-dawn feature for paid subscribers. The MRI also included stories on:
The Clintons bowing to Congress on the Epstein scandal.
Trump bowing to Putin on Ukraine.
Objectivity bowing out of journalism.
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This is a must-read. Crushing.