Evening Roundup: "The immediate clear and present danger to the fabric of our democracy, the headlong rush to a police state, cannot be ignored."
February 11: Featuring Norm Ornstein, Brian O’Neill, William A. Galston & Elaine C. Kamarck, Tom Malinowski, Jen Rubin in conversation with Renatto Mariotti, and Carron J. Phillips
Donald Trump and Elon Musk are not tiptoeing toward autocracy
We cannot afford to wait any longer. The immediate clear and present danger to the fabric of our democracy, the headlong rush to a police state, cannot be ignored. And unprecedented times demand unprecedented approaches by Democrats in Congress, minority status or not. Last week, I advocated for Senate Democrats to use …
Tulsi Gabbard’s expected confirmation signals decline in Senate’s intelligence oversight
By Brian O’Neill
Senate’s intelligence overseers have replaced scrutiny with spectacle.
The Democratic Party has to change if it wants to win
By William A. Galston and Elaine C. Kamarck
Waiting for Trump to fail is not a strategy. A platform for working people is.
Democratic leaders need to draw the line
As we speak, Elon Musk and his pet president are attempting to dismantle the government of the United States and sell it for scrap. If they succeed, Americans will suffer, and our enemies will rejoice. Our constitutional system, which gives Congress the power to decide what the government will spend, will be fatally u…
Jen Rubin and Renato Mariotti discuss Eric Adams and Kash Patel
Jen Rubin and Renato Mariotti discuss Eric Adams’s recently dropped charges and the administration’s stance on corruption. The interview wraps up with a brief discussion on Kash Patel’s potential new role as FBI director.
Fair or unfair: Patrick Mahomes might be a MAGA QB
By Carron J. Phillips
We don't know where No. 15 stands politically, but we know what it's starting to look like.
Here is an article by Andrew Coyne, a respected Globe and Mail (Canada) columnist. He was a Senior Editor at Macleans Magazine, and previously worked at Canada's National Post. The article should be circulated as much as possible where it may do some good.
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“Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies.
The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.
There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do – to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world – is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero.
The first six months will be a time of maximum peril. NATO must from this moment be considered effectively obsolete, without the American security guarantee that has always been its bedrock. We may see new incursions by Russia into Europe – the poor Ukrainians are probably done for, but now it is the Baltics and the Poles who must worry – before the Europeans have time to organize an alternative. China may also accelerate its Taiwanese ambitions.
At home, Mr. Trump will be moving swiftly to consolidate his power. Some of this will be institutional – the replacement of tens of thousands of career civil servants with Trumpian loyalists. But some of it will be … atmospheric.
At some point someone – a company whose chief executive has displeased him, a media critic who has gotten under his skin – will find themselves the subject of unwanted attention from the Trump administration. It might not be so crude as a police arrest. It might just be a little regulatory matter, a tax audit, something like that. They will seek the protection of the courts, and find it is not there.
The judges are also Trump loyalists, perhaps, or too scared to confront him. Or they might issue a ruling, and find it has no effect – that the administration has called the basic bluff of liberal democracy: the idea that, in the crunch, people in power agree to be bound by the law, and by its instruments the courts, the same as everyone else. Then everyone will take their cue. Executives will line up to court him. Media organizations, the large ones anyway, will find reasons to be cheerful.
Of course, in reality things will start to fall apart fairly quickly. The huge across-the-board tariffs he imposes will tank the world economy. The massive deficits, fuelled by his ill-judged tax policies – he won’t replace the income tax, as he promised, but will fill it with holes – and monetized, at his direction, by the Federal Reserve, will ignite a new round of inflation.
Most of all, the insane project of deporting 12 million undocumented immigrants – finding them, rounding them up and detaining them in hundreds of internment camps around the country, probably for years, before doing so – will consume his administration. But by then it will be too late.
We should not count upon the majority of Americans coming to their senses in any event. They were not able to see Mr. Trump for what he was before: why should that change? Would they not, rather, be further coarsened by the experience of seeing their neighbours dragged off by the police, or the military, further steeled to the necessity of doing “tough things” to “restore order?”
Some won’t, of course. But they will find in time that the democratic levers they might once have pulled to demand change are no longer attached to anything. There are still elections, but the rules have been altered: there are certain obstacles, certain disadvantages if you are not with the party of power. It will seem easier at first to try to change things from within. Then it will be easier not to change things.
All of this will wash over Canada in various ways – some predictable, like the flood of refugees seeking escape from the camps; some less so, like the coarsening of our own politics, the debasement of morals and norms by politicians who have discovered there is no political price to be paid for it. And who will have the backing of their patron in Washington.
All my life I have been an admirer of the United States and its people. But I am frightened of it now, and I am even more frightened of them.”
Written by Andrew Coyne.
In case you missed it, the American Bar Association released a statement on the Crisis. Considering that they avoid getting involved in politics as a matter of course, you know that it's BAD and they are serious.
https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2025/02/aba-supports-the-rule-of-law/
𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘥𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘭𝘢𝘸 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘰𝘳 𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘰𝘳𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘯 𝘰𝘳 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘦𝘴. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘳𝘶𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘭𝘢𝘸 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘦𝘴. 𝘞𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘧𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘴𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘵. 𝘞𝘦 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘱 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘦𝘴 𝘸𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘳. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘉𝘈 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘥𝘰 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘶𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘭𝘢𝘸.
𝘞𝘦 𝘶𝘳𝘨𝘦 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘫𝘰𝘪𝘯 𝘶𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘨𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵, 𝘢 𝘨𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦, 𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘸. 𝘐𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘸𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘸𝘺𝘦𝘳𝘴. 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘺 𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸𝘴, 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘺. 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘯𝘰 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴.