Actually, a very good argument can be made that midnight came and went months ago, when Republicans in Congress demonstrated their willingness to support Donald Trump no matter how far across every possible line he stepped. Paired with the Republican-controlled Senate’s approval of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the idea that American institutions were going to stand up to the hurricane for another two years already seemed highly doubtful. But it took the full, public arrival of Attorney General William Barr to make it clear: There is no law but Trump’s law.
In two days of hearings before the House and Senate, Barr did not shy away from the truth. He does not believe that either he or the Department of Justice need to have any concern about what’s good for the nation. He doesn’t believe that he, or the FBI, need to be concerned about the actual interpretation of the law. He is there to see that what Trump wants to happen, happens.
In his brief stint as attorney general, Barr has already suppressed the release of the Mueller report, not just from the public, but from Congress. He’s instigated an investigation of the former leadership of the DOJ and the FBI at Trump’s order, even though the Inspector General is already engaged in a review of the steps that initiated the special counsel investigation. He has declared his singular authority as the arbiter of not just what gets revealed to the public, but what is made available to congressional committees that have the authority, under law, to act in oversight of his office.
As Barr was making it clear that the attorney general of the United States actually bears no allegiance to the United States, he was joined on Capitol Hill by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Mnuchin, having stepped into the middle of a legal request between the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and the IRS, made it clear that Donald Trump’s tax forms will not be produced.
The other thing that both Mnuchin and Barr made clear in appearances before the House was their utter disdain for that body. Whether it was Mnuchin telling Maxine Waters to use her “gravel” or Barr sneering at Democrats concerned about his joining a complaint about the Affordable Care Act, they both left no doubt at all that the Trump White House is done even pretending that Congress has any remaining authority.
Republicans, who have been happy to hand more and more control to Trump, didn’t make any effort to apply the brakes over the last week. In fact, Republicans in both the House and Senate only cheered on Barr’s efforts to withhold information, making the case for him that, should the full unredacted report from the special counsel investigation be given to Congress, that untrustworthy lot would only let it slip to the public. So … better to keep it hidden to begin with.
Having already given in to Trump’s unprecedented use of the National Emergency Act to override the policy they had just voted to approve, Republicans have stated categorically that they are in the same position as Barr: What they think is right, or best for the nation, does not matter at all. It’s only what Trump thinks that counts.
Trump is acting without constraint. He is undaunted with his portrayal in the press, unconcerned about any action of Congress, and without opposition on a single point within his party. It doesn’t matter that his statements are almost always incorrect and often laughable—because those statements bear the authority to make them reality. He is supported in his efforts by a state media of professional propagandists, a Republican Party that sees him as god emperor, and by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who could not wait to shed those artifacts of democracy and law.
There is no power, no threat, no institution in Trump’s way.
As Masha Gessen predicted on the day of his election, the press has been neutered, Congress made complacent, and the courts rendered powerless.
It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed. The capture of institutions in Turkey has been carried out even faster, by a man once celebrated as the democrat to lead Turkey into the EU. Poland has in less than a year undone half of a quarter century’s accomplishments in building a constitutional democracy.
Barr has not just surrendered the FBI and DOJ, he has engaged them in a fight against the interests of Americans, against the rule of law, and against the institutions themselves. It does not matter whether or not Robert Mueller is an honest man. It does not matter if the federal attorneys in the SDNY take their role seriously, because Barr takes his role seriously—and his role is as Donald Trump’s new “fixer.” Jefferson Sessions was a racist, cruel, officious, and homophobic gnome. But Barr is an active participant in dismantling the remains of American institutions and the creation of an unconstrained, all-powerful, untouchable executive.
The question has recently resurfaced in political discussions about the difference between “a republic” and “a democracy.” The answer is simple enough: a republic is nothing but a form of representative democracy. But more importantly in regards to the United States, that question is no longer important.
Because the United States is neither. It is an autocracy; one in which the trappings of democracy seem every day more like nostalgia.
It’s an autocracy in which there is casual discussion of using the military to construct and man internment camps. One where the idea that a free press is “the enemy of the people” is repeated daily. One where if Trump determines that he will never hand over his tax returns, he won’t. An autocracy where if Trump genuinely determines that he wants to see one of his opponents behind bars, they will be behind bars.
In his testimony before Congress, Donald Trump’s old fixer, Michael Cohen, warned that "Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power." This should not be taken as an outlandish statement. A year from now, even the thought that there will be open elections may be considered a strange idea.
And people will wonder just when that happened.
Note: Previous installments were called “Fascism watch” but it’s been pointed out quite rightly that, not only is fascism a loaded term whose definition mostly comes courtesy of fascists, it’s not the principal concern here. The issue is, and has been, the ways in which Trump has eroded the traditions and institutions necessary to maintain American democracy, many of whose tenets are not hard-coded into law.
Also, astute followers may note that in the previous installment I actually turned the clock back, even though Trump had just declared a national emergency, because I foolishly though Congress or the courts would swiftly make mincemeat of that declaration. More shame on me.