{"id":52801,"date":"2025-11-09T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/?p=52801"},"modified":"2025-11-08T11:30:37","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T14:30:37","slug":"trump-and-his-nine-months-of-anti-democratic-demolition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/trump-and-his-nine-months-of-anti-democratic-demolition\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and his nine months of anti-democratic demolition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Donald Trump has begun the total demolition of the East Wing of the White House. He promised not to do so, but did it anyway. His idea is to make room for the construction of a ballroom of monarchical style and proportions. We are certainly far from Benito Mussolini\u2019s attempts to rebuild Rome or Napoleon III\u2019s remodeling of Paris, yet it is not common for elected U.S. leaders to destroy a significant part of the \u201cpeople\u2019s house.\u201d This dismantling of a section of the White House is perhaps the most fitting symbol of Trumpism in power \u2014 that is, a blend of post-fascist spectacle aesthetics and the use of unauthorized, illegal actions to destroy democratic institutions from within.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donald Trump has been president for only nine months, but a combination of erratic behavior and deeply ideological actions is transforming the U.S. government into an autocratic regime<\/a>. This is quite new in modern U.S. history. Trumpism is, and always has been, a political cult of the leader \u2014 one that embodies a mixture of lies, ignorance, and violent extremism. It is a form of far-right populism that borders on fascism.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Trump and the Republican Party are reshaping the American political system in their own image, manipulating the U.S. Constitution to the breaking point. Are we moving from a period of democratic erosion to one of controlled demolition?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since last January, the U.S. democratic system has been under attack by Trump, supported by a Republican-led Congress and legitimized \u2014 albeit gradually \u2014 by a Republican-dominated Supreme Court. More specifically, Trump is destroying democracy through three interrelated mechanisms: first, the centralization of the federal government; second, the subversion of the rule of law; and third, the consolidation of autocratic legalism. These three processes are deliberate, not accidental, and their intended outcome is the transformation of the United States from a constitutional democracy into an electoral autocracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trumpism upholds the \u201cunitary executive theory,\u201d which maintains that the President of the United States is the sole authority over the executive branch. According to Trump, presidential authority is plenary \u2014 an absolute and exclusive dominion over the entire federal government. This includes all federal employees, as well as the regulation-making and internal procedures of every department and agency. Beginning in January (under the direction of his then-confidant, tech oligarch Elon Musk), Trump initiated a massive restructuring and reform of the federal government by firing around 15% of all civilian federal employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s attack on the rule of law consists in the extensive use of executive discretionary power over immigration, national security, and foreign policy to restrict civil rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under Trump\u2019s administration, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) became the most heavily funded security agency in U.S. history. It expanded its detention capacity to over 200,000 migrants \u2014 with a budget nearly double that of the entire federal prison system \u2014 and a recruitment drive that will double the size of the FBI. Since late January, ICE has terrorized thousands through raids on schools, universities, workplaces, and homes; its agents have abducted migrants, residents, and U.S. citizens while masked, in plain clothes, heavily armed, and without judicial warrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All foreigners in the United States are potential targets for deportation whenever the executive deems them risks to national security, harmful to U.S. foreign policy, or simply of \u201cimmoral character.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both the centralization of the federal government and the subversion of the rule of law are essential to the success of the third mechanism: the consolidation of a legal autocracy. Trump\u2019s instrumentalization and politicization of law and legal procedure undermine the checks and balances of the U.S. constitutional order, paving the way for its transformation into an authoritarian regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through the use, abuse, and neglect of the law, Trump can persecute those he considers internal enemies of the nation \u2014 and personal enemies. Trump has blamed the \u201cradical left\u201d for America\u2019s national and cultural decay, for opposing and attempting to erase the Christian and traditional values that supposedly defined America\u2019s greatness. For Trump and the Republican Party, the \u201cradical left\u201d is cultivated and legitimized by progressive media, universities indoctrinating \u201ccultural Marxism,\u201d and liberal elites in Democrat-run cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump allowed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve the merger between Paramount and Skydance Media after the former agreed to settle a lawsuit in Trump\u2019s favor and cancel a late-night comedy show critical of him. The Trump administration has suspended and withdrawn federal funds from numerous universities to pressure them into abandoning DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) policies, changing their curricula, and even expelling students and faculty with progressive or \u201cun-American\u201d views, according to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first nine months of his second term, Trump has deployed National Guard troops in Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Memphis, Portland, and Chicago to assist ICE and other federal agencies in immigration raids and other policing operations, as well as to protect them from protesters. Addressing senior military officials, Trump stated that the U.S. armed forces must be ready to fight the \u201cinternal enemy\u201d and described American cities as \u201ctraining grounds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Considering that the administration has issued a new strategy to counter organized political violence \u2014 defining the internal enemy as \u201cantifascist, anticapitalist, anti-American, and an advocate of extremism in migration, race, and gender matters; and hostile toward those who uphold traditional American stances on family, religion, and morality\u201d \u2014 Trump could well declare a national emergency and deploy troops to suppress protests against ICE or even against himself, such as the recent No Kings Protest<\/em>, one of the largest demonstrations in U.S. history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As history has shown with previous extremist and authoritarian movements, both fascist and populist, many of these supporters will eventually realize they have believed in false promises and lies. The question is: when?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The history of the 20th century \u2014 and the events following January 2025 \u2014 offer aspiring fascists a clear path toward authoritarianism and the establishment of an essentially anti-democratic regime. The demolition of democracy is not necessarily an isolated event, but rather an agonizing process that can accelerate in its final stages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Machine translation proofread by Jana\u00edna da Silva.<\/sup><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In just nine months, Trump has launched an unprecedented offensive combining centralization of power, attacks on the rule of law, and political use of the law to push the U.S. toward autocracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":52816,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16805,16855],"tags":[15635],"gps":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-52801","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-donald-trump-en","8":"category-autoritarismo-en","9":"tag-debates"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52801"},{"taxonomy":"gps","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gps?post=52801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}