Partridge is correct, of course, and it's hard to tell if Ferguson was writing what he really thought or was just being disingenuous. He is very sharp when he's really critical. But I increasingly get the feeling that all the writing about the imminent danger - my own included - is in effect fiddling while the country's constitutional safeguards are going up in smoke. I am much less critical of ordinary Germans in the 1930s than I used to be; even though, as we must hasten to add, Trump; isn't Hitler. It will be surprising if the 2026 elections are genuinely free and fair.
It won't matter much if the midterm elections are fair or not if Congress continues to be subservient to the executive branch. Congress must retake those responsibilities granted by the Constitution that it has somehow devolved to the executive branch over the last half century. So far I have seen few Representatives and Senators, Democrats or Republicans, who take their constitutional responsibilities seriously enough to jeopardize their chances for reelection. We, as voters, still have the right to petition our elected officials for redress of grievances. We need not wait until 2026 to make our voices heard.
Unfortunately there is no legal way of changing any part of the government till November 2026. The US gov't doesn't operate according to public opinion. And if the Voting Rights Act is overturned then there may be little hope left.
“Roosevelt’s New Deal faced Supreme Court resistance and adapted its approach accordingly. When the Court struck down key legislation, Roosevelt changed tactics rather than ignore the ruling.”
I have a lot of problems with your hand-waiving at the many excesses that paved the way for trump 2.0, but your characterization Roosevelt threatening to pack the courts if they didn’t ignore the constitution and rule in his favor is too hilarious not to highlight.
Fair challenge. Roosevelt's court-packing threat was attempted institutional manipulation, not merely adapting to judicial constraint.
But the distinction that matters for Ferguson's framework holds: Roosevelt's threat failed because it was visible and subject to democratic debate. Congress rejected it. The system held through precisely the kind of institutional resistance Ferguson relies on to measure democratic health.
Trump's approach differs fundamentally by systematically capturing institutions from within – Justice Department purges, regulatory shakedowns, normalised emergency powers – achieving authoritarian control without triggering the visible confrontation that stopped Roosevelt.
Ferguson's framework would catch Roosevelt-style threats. It misses how modern authoritarian capture actually works.
I appreciate your response, but Congress only rejected the plan because the court caved first (“The switch in time that saved nine”). And all of those things Trump is doing is also happening in plane view, subject to democratic debate and scathing observations by every mainstream publication.
An excellent analysis and rebuttal to Ferguson's viewpoint. I learned a lot and I thank you. Knowing how critical the 2026 elections are, I too, wonder about their integrity.
What I still don't understand is how the democrats missed the fascism during Biden's term.
Covid panic, lockdowns, school closures. What do you call it when there is a state of emergency for years, even when it is clear that this lab created virus was not much worse than a bad flu? Be honest, for most people it wasn't. I know that because I am unjabbed and I got it twice and I have dozen of unjabbed friends of all ages and they all got it- and all survived. I also read research. Would we even be arguing about this if covid had been the deadly plague that they claimed and used to justify the lockdowns, school closures and mandates?
Biden mandated the covid vaccine, a brand new mrna lipid nanoparticle concoction. Pregnant women were required to get this vaccine or lose their jobs! It had never been tested. Later we found out that the vaccine was also never studied to see if it prevented transmission. ( it didn't). So why mandate it?
I could go on and on, and also about censorship and deplatforming critics of school closures, lockdowns and vaccine mandates. The democrats refuse to even talk about this. YSo sorry, Cry me a river about fascism, about lawfare ( you did it too), about censorship ( you did it). I just dont believe or trust you.
If only COVID was an innocent as a flu. So many would still be here. If you deride the idea that mask mandates were for the common good, what sort of tyranny consists in asking public to cover their face? A cartoon one? And so goes the idiotic argument to make Biden the Devil and Trump Jesus.
Good piece, totally agree. I feel the like we are in the beginning of a longer process that very could lead to full-on fascism and tyranny. Trump is testing the country to see what we will put up with.
Perhaps if Democrats and Progressives hadn't screamed corruption and that the sky is falling from 2016 through 2024, and if they had taken seriously Biden's corrupt overseas operations, and if they acknowledged their role in Democratic lawfare we could be more moved by the present arguments.
It's hard to keep a level head amid the tsunami of shit, but I'm somewhere between Partridge and Ferguson on this important question of how bad it is.
Much of Partridge's analysis concerns Trump's consolidation of executive power. I'm not inclined to go to Defcon 1 over that as such. He is the chief executive, after all. It's bad -- he's a terrible chief executive -- but at least plausibly constitutional and generally falls under the category of norm-busting. Partridge worries about presidential authority over all three branches, but exercising authority over one's own branch isn't that.
The graver concern is the extent to which Trump acts illegally or unconstitutionally and gets away with it. The birthright citizenship executive order is obscenely unconstitutional, but it's not having real-world effects. Its procedural posture, as lawyers say, is byzantine at this point, confusing even to lawyers, but the bottom line is that its effect is stayed for now, and it almost certainly will be rejected by the Supreme Court when it hears the matter in the upcoming term.
Ferguson is already anticipating that such action will conclusively disprove the presence of authoritarianism. it's enough for him that the Supreme Court goes against Trump even once. That's ridiculous. Such logic would allow a Putin type to float a dummy executive action and have it struck down by his judicial lackeys in a show or mere "form," as Partridge has it, of judicial independence, much as dictatorships rig a fake opposition in bogus elections.
If the Supreme Court capitulates to Trump on all but that, we really should worry. It would signal that the Court is so afraid that Trump will simply defy it or have a Trumpist Congress pack it that it must do as it's told to retain its place in the constitutional order and hope for a better day. The Court has so far strenuously avoided direct confrontation. In so doing, it has avoided making bad law for the ages. This posture won't hold for much longer. It may try, concocting narrow grounds on which to uphold Trump's actions, but this will increasingly look corrupt and pathetic. They are not actually lackeys, thank goodness. They have life tenure and take their jobs seriously. That's my read anyway. I've come to think that upcoming decisions over tariffs and the Alien Enemies Act will be important tests of that impression.
James Madison said, “A democratic republic requires a well-informed electorate.” If true, and I believe it is, the democracy is already gone.
AKA: “I give up”. Said like a happy slave.
Partridge is correct, of course, and it's hard to tell if Ferguson was writing what he really thought or was just being disingenuous. He is very sharp when he's really critical. But I increasingly get the feeling that all the writing about the imminent danger - my own included - is in effect fiddling while the country's constitutional safeguards are going up in smoke. I am much less critical of ordinary Germans in the 1930s than I used to be; even though, as we must hasten to add, Trump; isn't Hitler. It will be surprising if the 2026 elections are genuinely free and fair.
It won't matter much if the midterm elections are fair or not if Congress continues to be subservient to the executive branch. Congress must retake those responsibilities granted by the Constitution that it has somehow devolved to the executive branch over the last half century. So far I have seen few Representatives and Senators, Democrats or Republicans, who take their constitutional responsibilities seriously enough to jeopardize their chances for reelection. We, as voters, still have the right to petition our elected officials for redress of grievances. We need not wait until 2026 to make our voices heard.
Unfortunately there is no legal way of changing any part of the government till November 2026. The US gov't doesn't operate according to public opinion. And if the Voting Rights Act is overturned then there may be little hope left.
“Roosevelt’s New Deal faced Supreme Court resistance and adapted its approach accordingly. When the Court struck down key legislation, Roosevelt changed tactics rather than ignore the ruling.”
I have a lot of problems with your hand-waiving at the many excesses that paved the way for trump 2.0, but your characterization Roosevelt threatening to pack the courts if they didn’t ignore the constitution and rule in his favor is too hilarious not to highlight.
Fair challenge. Roosevelt's court-packing threat was attempted institutional manipulation, not merely adapting to judicial constraint.
But the distinction that matters for Ferguson's framework holds: Roosevelt's threat failed because it was visible and subject to democratic debate. Congress rejected it. The system held through precisely the kind of institutional resistance Ferguson relies on to measure democratic health.
Trump's approach differs fundamentally by systematically capturing institutions from within – Justice Department purges, regulatory shakedowns, normalised emergency powers – achieving authoritarian control without triggering the visible confrontation that stopped Roosevelt.
Ferguson's framework would catch Roosevelt-style threats. It misses how modern authoritarian capture actually works.
I appreciate your response, but Congress only rejected the plan because the court caved first (“The switch in time that saved nine”). And all of those things Trump is doing is also happening in plane view, subject to democratic debate and scathing observations by every mainstream publication.
An excellent analysis and rebuttal to Ferguson's viewpoint. I learned a lot and I thank you. Knowing how critical the 2026 elections are, I too, wonder about their integrity.
What I still don't understand is how the democrats missed the fascism during Biden's term.
Covid panic, lockdowns, school closures. What do you call it when there is a state of emergency for years, even when it is clear that this lab created virus was not much worse than a bad flu? Be honest, for most people it wasn't. I know that because I am unjabbed and I got it twice and I have dozen of unjabbed friends of all ages and they all got it- and all survived. I also read research. Would we even be arguing about this if covid had been the deadly plague that they claimed and used to justify the lockdowns, school closures and mandates?
Biden mandated the covid vaccine, a brand new mrna lipid nanoparticle concoction. Pregnant women were required to get this vaccine or lose their jobs! It had never been tested. Later we found out that the vaccine was also never studied to see if it prevented transmission. ( it didn't). So why mandate it?
I could go on and on, and also about censorship and deplatforming critics of school closures, lockdowns and vaccine mandates. The democrats refuse to even talk about this. YSo sorry, Cry me a river about fascism, about lawfare ( you did it too), about censorship ( you did it). I just dont believe or trust you.
If only COVID was an innocent as a flu. So many would still be here. If you deride the idea that mask mandates were for the common good, what sort of tyranny consists in asking public to cover their face? A cartoon one? And so goes the idiotic argument to make Biden the Devil and Trump Jesus.
Good piece, totally agree. I feel the like we are in the beginning of a longer process that very could lead to full-on fascism and tyranny. Trump is testing the country to see what we will put up with.
Perhaps if Democrats and Progressives hadn't screamed corruption and that the sky is falling from 2016 through 2024, and if they had taken seriously Biden's corrupt overseas operations, and if they acknowledged their role in Democratic lawfare we could be more moved by the present arguments.
It's hard to keep a level head amid the tsunami of shit, but I'm somewhere between Partridge and Ferguson on this important question of how bad it is.
Much of Partridge's analysis concerns Trump's consolidation of executive power. I'm not inclined to go to Defcon 1 over that as such. He is the chief executive, after all. It's bad -- he's a terrible chief executive -- but at least plausibly constitutional and generally falls under the category of norm-busting. Partridge worries about presidential authority over all three branches, but exercising authority over one's own branch isn't that.
The graver concern is the extent to which Trump acts illegally or unconstitutionally and gets away with it. The birthright citizenship executive order is obscenely unconstitutional, but it's not having real-world effects. Its procedural posture, as lawyers say, is byzantine at this point, confusing even to lawyers, but the bottom line is that its effect is stayed for now, and it almost certainly will be rejected by the Supreme Court when it hears the matter in the upcoming term.
Ferguson is already anticipating that such action will conclusively disprove the presence of authoritarianism. it's enough for him that the Supreme Court goes against Trump even once. That's ridiculous. Such logic would allow a Putin type to float a dummy executive action and have it struck down by his judicial lackeys in a show or mere "form," as Partridge has it, of judicial independence, much as dictatorships rig a fake opposition in bogus elections.
If the Supreme Court capitulates to Trump on all but that, we really should worry. It would signal that the Court is so afraid that Trump will simply defy it or have a Trumpist Congress pack it that it must do as it's told to retain its place in the constitutional order and hope for a better day. The Court has so far strenuously avoided direct confrontation. In so doing, it has avoided making bad law for the ages. This posture won't hold for much longer. It may try, concocting narrow grounds on which to uphold Trump's actions, but this will increasingly look corrupt and pathetic. They are not actually lackeys, thank goodness. They have life tenure and take their jobs seriously. That's my read anyway. I've come to think that upcoming decisions over tariffs and the Alien Enemies Act will be important tests of that impression.