The popular protest sign “They’re eating the checks, they’re eating the balances” exactly captures the destruction Donald Trump has wrought in his first six months in office as he follows the Project 2025 roadmap to change every aspect of American government and American life. No American institution has escaped Trump’s wrath: the U.S. Constitution’s three branches of government, the media (including Rupert Murdoch), higher education, large law firms, free trade, the corporate sector, and even the very definition of who is an American, not to mention windmills, EVs, and showerheads. Trump uses extortion like a mafia Don to back these changes while his MAGA foot soldiers threaten violence. However imperfect, our American form of democracy has functioned for nearly 250 years not only because of the rule of law but also because of all the informal rules and traditions that allow our two-party system to govern. Regime change is not merely a change in players. It is a change in the very structure and norms of government and its relationship to the governed. We are witnessing regime change.
Much ink has been spilled on the White House’s invocation of “unitary executive theory,” its appeal to 18th century emergency powers to legitimize assaults on immigration, DEI, elite law firms, universities, and most especially the federal government itself. But it is important not to miss the forest for the trees. When one branch of government moves aggressively and successfully to subordinate all others to its will, basic principles of checks and balances and separation of powers are not only trampled, they are abandoned, lost. Donald Trump and his team are building new political norms, new political habits, new rules of the game. The most important one is, Trump is Supreme Ruler and anything he says goes. It is difficult to overstate how radical President Trump’s claims for his executive power really are. They effectively eradicate the intricate machinery of our constitutional system, our republican form of democracy. The outward institutional forms remain, but the political substance of our form of government is disintegrating right before our eyes.
There is no point more critical in America’s founding texts than the Framer’s fear and caution against concentrated, monopolized state power. As James Madison declared in Federalist 48, power is “of an encroaching nature” and to maintain the separation of powers the separate branches of government need to have “a constitutional control” over one another. That means each branch has significant independent power, not just the executive. Trump won’t tolerate this. Ergo, there goes the old regime.
Regime change can only happen when politicians allow it. Squeezed between Trump’s threats to “primary” them and Maga’s threats to harm them and their families, virtually all congressional Republicans have prioritized saving their seats rather than preserving our constitutional principles. That’s why elections are still important. With the off-year election rapidly approaching and Trump’s poll numbers plunging, Democrats are already envisioning a “Blue Wave.” But the challenge to Democrats cannot be overstated. First, they must stop Trump’s reckless rampage. Given the senate’s sixty-vote standard to pass a bill and a two-third majority in both houses needed to override a presidential veto, a Blue Wave isn’t enough. The Dems need a tsunami to get that super majority to stop Trump and the larger MAGA movement he feeds. At the same time, they must also rebuild the institutions of our procedural democracy. After all, despite its many limitations, a bourgeois democracy is better than a fascist autocracy. It’s a long way to November 2026 and much can change, but even a Blue Tsunami may not be enough to stop what may be irreversible changes in the form and substance of the republic.
The post Regime Change 2025 first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin.