Although the United States Constitution has been in place since 1789, passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act ended Jim Crow and brought us into a new era, as noted by Jamelle Bouie in a column (anticipating the Roberts Court’s killing off the VRA).
This was an American republic built on multiracial pluralism. A nation of natives and of immigrants from around the world. Of political parties that strove to represent a diverse cross-section of society. Of a Black president and a future “majority-minority” nation. There was an ugly side — it’s no coincidence that state retrenchment from public goods and services followed the crumbling of racial barriers. But for all its harsh notes and discord, this was the closest the country ever came to the “composite nation” of Frederick Douglass’s aspirations: a United States that served as home to all who might seek the shelter of the Declaration of Independence and its “principles of justice, liberty and perfect humanity equality.”
It’s this America that Donald Trump and his movement hope to condemn to the ash heap of history. It’s this America that they’re fighting to destroy with their attacks on immigration, civil rights laws, higher education and the very notion of a pluralistic society of equals.
Destruction of this America is the Trump/MAGA/Project 2025 agenda, embraced by a Republican Party in control of all three branches of the federal government.
An authoritarian regime
Daniel Ziblatt (coauthor of How Democracies Die) has observed
There is no question that American democracy faces its most severe test in my lifetime. The scale, scope and speed of the onslaught within the first year (of Trump’s second term in office) is like nothing I have seen among the similar recent cases of democratic backsliding that I have researched — Hungary, Turkey, Poland or India. The degree of lawlessness of America’s current democratic decay is particularly striking.
Ziblatt has affirmed a critical role of civil society, which has
the civic resources to confront this challenge. America’s vast civic infrastructure includes labor unions, religious organizations, business, universities, the nonprofit sector, not to mention an opposition party that is better organized and more well financed than opposition parties in other 21st-century cases of democratic backsliding.
Yet I worry. The question is not whether these groups exist but rather whether civic leaders will develop the courage to work collaboratively and effectively to reverse America’s authoritarian turn.
We have every reason to worry. The failure of civic leaders has been astonishing, not the least leadership of the Democratic Party.
The opposition party
On January 22, Josh Marshall wrote:
Right now Republicans control Washington. They’re going to push through their nominees. They can pass a lot of laws. The only sensible and dignified course of action is to accept that Republicans are in charge and to focus in on making their unpopular actions as painful as possible. Every Republican member of the House owns all the pardons. Susan Collins owns all the pardons.
Not complicated. It’s sitting right there. There’s no need for one big strategy. Everyone should be doing everything, always on the attack. We live in an era of a thousand cuts. The job of the opposition is quite literally to oppose. Get to it.
Yes. The job of the opposition is quite literally to oppose. And without any power in Congress, that means to accept that Republicans are in charge and to focus in on making their unpopular actions as painful as possible.
Democrats’ belated recognition
Yet, seven months later, it is clear that the opposition party, living now in a fundamentally different regime than before, has been slow to recognize the new reality. Democrats cling to procedures, norms, rules that signal legitimacy, as Julia Azari suggests.
Since January 2025, American politics has shifted decisively away from being based on legitimacy, and is instead now mostly a game of power. In other words, the Trumpist GOP – which controls the federal government and much at the subnational level – uses whatever power is available to them, without much concern about legitimacy. Typically, in a democracy, uses of power would be limited by what can be justified in terms of democratic values, accepted practices, and norms like reciprocity. This viewpoint about how politicians treat power in a democracy builds on some of what Levitsky and Ziblatt argue about forbearance and mutual toleration. In the pieces I’ve written on democratic values, I’ve emphasized the importance of recognizing legitimate opposition – similar to Adam Przeworski’s definition of democracy as a system in which “parties lose elections.” We’re all saying different versions of the same thing.
Democratic rhetoric plays an important role in a politics that is based on legitimacy. Politicians justify their actions in terms of shared values and practices – not by vilifying their opponents, or, by the righteousness of their cause.
Much of this has gone by the wayside as the Trump administration asserts its right to – for example – reinterpret the 14th amendment by fiat, undermine due process, and ask states to redistrict to gain more Republican seats.
And that’s hardly the complete list of transgressions. This context, for Azari, explains why governors (J.B. Pritzker, Gavin Newsom) are better positioned to step up to the challenge than members of Congress. Governors wield power independently of the federal government. And they are freer from the constraints of representatives and senators.
Josh Marshall has noted that the states are “a sovereign authority that is separate from the hierarchy of federal power even as its law is inferior to federal law.“
As the courts now interpret the law, the president is an absolute monarch within the federal government. He can fire anyone at will. He can set aside statutes under the guise of enforcement that is “aligned” with administration “vision” and policy. No one anywhere in government that is plausibly part of the executive branch can enter into a contest or struggle with the president. If they do, he simply fires them, sends them to the ersatz constitutional cornfield as the boy Anthony did in that famous dystopic Twilight Zone episode.
But the president can’t fire governors or mayors or secretaries of state or anyone else in a state government.
Historically unpopular president
The basic task for the opposition remains constant: to make MAGA’s unpopular actions as painful as possible. Whether from the vantage point of a member of the House or the Senate — with limited formal power, or a governor or state attorney general — who can command the levers of power.
Trump won the 2024 election, but he and the bitter disorder he has brought us are highly unpopular. There are millions of Americans who won’t get fooled again.
The task is to blame Trump and his enablers for the ugly, dispiriting reality he has created. To pin Trump’s rampages, from the cruelty and greed of the Big Beautiful Bill to the hateful militarization of immigration policy, on the Republicans who have enabled him and his agenda.
We no longer live in the democratic America of 2024. MAGA is an antidemocratic movement. We have fewer freedoms, shrinking rule of law, and less security than before. The American regime in 2025 is competitive authoritarianism.
The Democratic Party supports democracy, in contrast to MAGA Republicans. It is the role of the opposition to oppose. Every day. As persistently and strategically as possible. With an eye toward winning elections in 2026 and 2028.