USA Today
Trump ‘dictator’ comments raise questions about democracy. Here are 5 guardrails – if they hold
Riley Beggin and Angele Latham – January 5, 2024
As he seeks a second term in office, former President Donald Trump has indicated he plans to dramatically expand the power of the presidency and upturn democratic precedents.
He has said he may use the Justice Department to go after political adversaries, said he would use military force to stop demonstrations and migration at the southern border, and would likely flood federal government with loyalists more willing to support controversial policies. At one point, Trump declared he would be a dictator for “one day” if reelected in 2024.
Multiple American presidents of both parties have tested the bounds of executive power. But these pledges – and Trump’s unwillingness to acknowledge the valid results of the 2020 election, including saying the “termination” of the Constitution would be appropriate to overturn it − have experts in authoritarianism particularly on edge for what a second term would bring.
The United States government was built to withstand attempts to concentrate power in the hands of a single leader by vesting authority in Congress and the courts to check the president. There are also several agencies that operate independently of the president and decades of precedent that can create additional guardrails for democracy.
Experts who spoke with USA TODAY had varied opinions on the strength of those guardrails to stand up to potential abuses of power. Some said a widespread abandonment of democratic principles is unlikely; others suggested Trump has already proven they can be worn down.
In either case, they said, the strength of American democracy depends on how willing people are within the system to defend it in the face of retaliation.
“There is a possibility that the Constitution’s limits are exposed,” said Daniel Kiel, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Memphis. The Constitution sets rules to protect democracy, but it works only if people follow them, he said.
“If we don’t have voluntary adherence to the rules of the game, then it reveals that the Constitution on its own isn’t enough.”
Here’s more on five key guardrails at play in curbing potential abuses of executive power.
The courts
The judicial system, a co-equal branch of government, is a major arbiter of whether policies spearheaded by Congress or the president are legal.
“One of the guardrails against presidential dictatorship is the expectation that the other institutions will push back,” said Joel Goldstein, a law professor and constitutional expert at St. Louis University School of Law. “The Constitution requires every member of Congress, every member of the court, to take an oath to support the Constitution. And the premise behind that is that if you have a president who steps out of his or her lane, exceeds his or her power, as preventions to dictatorship the other institutions will push back.”
Trump has had a particularly significant influence on the court system: He appointed more than 200 federal judges in four years in office, only about 30% fewer than Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who each served two terms.
A relatively high proportion of those were in the higher ranks. For instance, he appointed 54 judges to the nation’s 13 powerful appeals courts (compared with 55 appointed by Obama and 62 by Bush). He also appointed three U.S. Supreme Court justices, more than any president since Ronald Reagan. That created the conservative supermajority now serving on the nation’s highest court.
But that doesn’t mean the justices would allow a significant power grab. In fact, the Supreme Court has ruled against Trump in more cases than any president in modern history.
Trump and the Supreme Court would likely be on the same page about some disputes, said Philip Gorski, a political sociologist at Yale University, such as his plan to purge the civil service.
But “the real acid test would be around elections and presidential immunity,” he said.
The high court has already made one key decision in Trump’s favor: In late December, it declined special counsel Jack Smith’s request to take up Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution in the federal election interference case. The move is a boon for Trump in that it may delay the start of his March 4 trial, which is schedule a day before 16 states hold primary elections.
Congress
“One of the most important checks on executive power – the most obvious and the most powerful – is Congress,” said Sheri Berman, a political science professor at Barnard College.
Congress was built to be a co-equal branch of government with the president. But as the United States became a larger global player and the number of federal agencies expanded, presidents gained much more power to shape policy without the help of Congress.
Goldstein said that apart from a citizen’s initial vote, the role of Congress to uphold an equal separation of powers is one of the most vital to prevent extreme presidential overreach.
The legislative branch has the power to rein in a president. They are the only branch with constitutional power to tax and spend, can pass laws limiting executive branch regulatory powers (especially with a president set on slashing regulation), and remain able to impeach, convict and remove a president from office – but only with enough support in the House and Senate.
But “one of the things that I think has made Trump so dangerous is that the Republican Party has pretty much fallen in behind him,” Berman said. Trump remains extraordinarily popular among the GOP base – and he doesn’t hesitate to go after members of his own party who publicly defy him – which can make it challenging for a Republican-controlled Congress to be a significant check on his power, she said.
The ‘power ministries’
Trump has claimed he is being targeted for political reasons by Smith, the nonpartisan special prosecutor, and pledged to use the Justice Department to “go after” President Joe Biden and other political adversaries if elected.
He also has said he would send the National Guard into cities with high crime rates “until law and order is restored” and to the southern border “to stop the invasion” of record numbers of migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. Trump and his top military leaders clashed over Trump’s suggestion of using military might to quell protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis in summer 2020.
“The real threat is if he is able to purge and co-opt the power ministries: law enforcement, defense, intelligence,” said Yale’s Gorski. “Failing that, he can’t really go beyond being a norm-defying president.”
There are multiple reasons to believe those “power ministries” would stand firm, he said. The militaries of successful strongmen are often drawn from the region or ethnic group that has strong ties to the leader. “The fact that we have a really cross-class, multiracial, inclusive military is certainly a buttress,” he said.
Gorski and Berman said the defense communities are staffed with people who are largely nonpartisan, professional and committed to defending the Constitution.
“Because of the strong ethos within each of those agencies or branches of the government – I would still expect considerable pushback,” Gorski said.
Elections
Multiple experts noted there is an often-overlooked guardrail to protect democracy that can prevent concerns of overreach from the very beginning: voting.
“The first act of rejection of these anti-democratic proposals should be at the ballot,” said Frederico Finchelstein, a history professor at the New School for Social Research in New York.
“If that is not effective, the situation will be very problematic because then you will have a person who is supported by votes” to deliver on anti-democratic promises – a voter mandate that could bolster arguments for more authoritarian policies, he said.
Goldstein expressed a similar sentiment.
“A democratic government is the antithesis of a dictatorship – and so the first guardrail against presidential dictatorship is not to elect somebody who has tendencies toward authoritarianism or dictatorial tendencies,” he said.
Though the right to vote is the first step in checking presidential power, Kiel warns that should Trump be duly elected in 2024, that electoral support might embolden him to push the limits of his presidential power.
“There was already a second reelection effort (by Trump) that failed, and so the voters have limited his power by voting him out of office,” Kiel said. Trump has been impeached twice − and acquitted twice in the Senate − and lost election once, he added: “If he were to be returned to office … I do think it’s a unique scenario in that one might feel more emboldened to test those limits of presidential power because those limits have proven already inadequate.”
The press
A primary guardrail of democracy, multiple experts noted, is also often the loudest one in the room: the press.
“The freedom of the press, the freedom of speech − our system depends upon a belief that the press and dissidents can speak against the government,” Goldstein said. “And that you as a citizen are not being unpatriotic by criticizing the government − it’s our patriotic duty to criticize the government when it acts improperly.”
But the attitude of a presidential administration toward the press can drastically affect the public’s trust in America’s oldest institution.
Trump has been a vocal critic, repeatedly claiming the press is intentionally peddling false information about him and his former administration. Kash Patel, a close ally who is likely to have a national security role in a second Trump administration, said that a new administration would “go out and find the conspirators” in the media.
Patel’s statements reflect a growing gap among Americans regarding the trustworthiness and efficacy of reputable news organizations to provide that constitutional guardrail.
In 2020, the Pew Research Center found that the gap between Americans who view a number of notable news sources as “trustworthy” versus “untrustworthy” has widened significantly since 2014 – and almost entirely along political lines.
Indeed, another study found that the number of citizens who believed that news organizations’ criticism of elected leaders “(kept) them from doing things they shouldn’t” split dramatically after the first year of Trump’s presidency.
In January 2016, 75% of respondents believed news organizations protected from governmental overreach, and the gap between Republican-leaning respondents and Democrat-leaning respondents spanned 3 points. One year into Trump’s term, that gap widened to 47 points.
Looking forward
These five factors each have a role to play in protecting democracy in the United States, the experts who spoke with USA TODAY said. But their success hinges on the people inside each institution acting in the country’s best interest.
“Ultimately, any guardrail on presidential authoritarianism or dictatorship depends upon government officials and citizens valuing constitutional principle above short-term partisan advantage,” said Goldstein, of St. Louis University.
When people are more interested in “protecting their own team” than following the Constitution, he said, “then the system can unwind.”
