Armed Vigilantes “Protect” Peaceful Demonstrators

In mostly white small towns and rural areas across the country, in places that have never seen marches or demonstrations, small groups gather to protest of the police murder of George Floyd and to support the work of Black Lives Matter.  It is a source of hope for a better American future.

But there’s another, much darker presence on those streets, too.  Armed militia — assault weapons in their hands — line the protest routes and stand on rooftops like snipers.  They are “protecting their communities,” they say, as if the 400 demonstrators marching in Omak, Washington, a city of fewer than 5,000 people, were going to pillage, burn and loot the place.

Reports the Washington Post: 

“Honestly, it was terrifying,” said [the organizer of the march]. “They claimed they were there to protect the city from outsiders, but it felt more like preparation to kill.”

Social media before the march included a post characterizing the upcoming gathering as “free target practice.”

In Bethel, Ohio, a town of 2,800, over 700 counter-protestors — some carrying rifles while others brought only bats and clubs — confronted a group of about 80 peaceful demonstrators, one of whom was attacked.

Said Emma Ronai-Durning of the Rural Organizing Project, a nonprofit organization based in Cottage Grove, Oregon:

Of the more than 60 actions that have unfolded in rural Oregon, virtually all of them have encountered backlash from armed groups, whether in the form of intimidation on social media or actual boots on the ground.

Really?!  Armed vigilantes intimidating peaceful protestors: We haven’t seen such wide-spread armed, political intimidation since the 1950s and -60s Civil Rights in the South.  The threat behind the intimidation is real: one protester was shot and critically wounded by armed civilians in Albuquerque. 

When asked what the authorities should do, a police spokesperson said: “There’s a right to peacefully assemble, and there’s a right to bear arms.  If I trample on one of those rights, then I trample on all of them.” 

I don’t think this is what the framers of the Second Amendment had in mind.

We must not normalize these appalling assaults on our freedom of speech.  Democracy is lost one small step at a time.  Let’s at least notice the losses and ring the alarm.**

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** The avenues for (unspectacular) action are many:

•       try to gently open lines of communication with friends and acquaintances not to convince them but only to inform them 
•       join the crowds in the streets
•       hold a seminar in your church
•       support Black Lives Matter financially and with your feet
•       contribute money and time to congressional candidates in close races even if they aren’t your favorites
•       join the Brady Campaign against gun violence
•       join Eric Holder’s attempt to dismantle gerrymandering
•       write letters-to-the-editor and opinion pieces for your local paper

Preparation for Autocracy

Just after the November 2016 presidential election, CBS veteran reporter Leslie Stahl interviewed President-elect Donald Trump.  In the interview, as he had consistently during his campaign, Trump began to attack the press.  Stahl asked him why he kept up his attacks even though he’d won the election.  Trump said he meant to discredit the press and demean the reporters so that “when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”  Few seemed to recognize the dark truth of his statement.

Since his election, the President has worked assiduously to discredit reliable sources of truth and accountability — not only the press but also sources within his own close circle, his own watchdogs, official government reports, other politicians, science and so on — and to promote himself as the only credible interpreter of reality.  Observers have usually interpreted his efforts as attempts to protect himself from public criticism and to present himself in the best light.  This is accurate, but it misses the far more important, long-term impact on our democracy: Trump is teaching us to accept the lies of the leader. 

To survive, autocrats must blanket their actions and harmful impact with lies.  Their supporters must be willing to accept the word of the autocrat, even against all evidence.  In this light, many of Trump’s even minor misrepresentations turn more menacing, part of a web of deception.

• In the past months, President Trump has fired five Inspectors General (IGs), government officials who have the authority to investigate wrong-doing in the government, including the presidency.  Although these IGs have been doing their jobs appropriately, the President has made no secret of the fact that these firings have been in retaliation for their truth-telling.  President Trump has not given any explanation for firing them except: 

 It is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as Inspectors General … That is no longer the case with regard to [these Inspectors General].

In other words, when the President no longer believes that an IG is serving his best interest, he fires them, which not only removes another source of truth but also chills other IGs’ willingness to exercise their authority to root out governmental malfeasance and corruption.

• Since its beginning, the President’s descriptions of the coronavirus pandemic and his role in responding to it have swung widely.  For the first two months, he insisted — against all evidence — that there was no problem: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China,” he said in January.  Two months later, he said, “No, I’m not concerned at all [about the virus]. No, I’m not. No, we’ve done a great job.”  Two weeks later, he revised history: “This is a pandemic … I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”  

Like the firings of the IGs, this is the behavior we have come to expect from this President. The mere quantities of his lies have prevented adequate response.  These lies, however, have then been frequently accepted as truth by Fox news commentators, other press supportive of Trump, and that 40% of the voting population who are his followers.  In other words, Trump distorts political reality so that (given his dismissal of mainstream news sources) a large portion of the population has, effectively, no access to accurate news, only his version.

• In what might seem an unrelated issue, Trump announced he was taking the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine and began indirectly promoting it as prevention of COVID-19.  His own medical experts disagreed with his recommendation, but Trump doubled down, essentially denying the objective evidence and presenting himself — rather than the scientists — as the source of medical truth.  While this might be seen as just another expression of the President’s ignorance or grandiosity, it is also another example of his denial of fact-based reality and setting himself up as the arbiter of truth.  The medication may, in fact, be dangerous to people with COVID-19.  Although the President no longer touts the drug, his purpose was not so much to promote it as to distort perceptions of reality.

• The Mueller report described ten instances of Trump’s illegal obstruction of justice for which anyone but a president could have been imprisoned.  For technical legal reasons, Mueller declined to recommend prosecution of the President.  But the report’s descriptions of the events make quite clear that the episodes of obstruction did, in fact, take place.  Nevertheless, absent prosecution, the President and his allies have asserted that he had been “completely EXONERATED” by the report, despite his own Attorney General’s acknowledgement that the report did NOT exonerate him.  His claim, however, is important not only for his projection of innocence, but also — and perhaps more importantly —his attempt to assert his “truth” against all others.  It is a denial that an objective Department of Justice investigation provides more access to the truth than his uncorroborated assertion does.  The President has been successful: Mueller’s report has been completely discredited among his supporters; even his detractors have largely given it up as an issue.   

• Trump has been asserting that the economy will start to turn positive after June (clinging tenaciously to a report of a 2.5% increase in jobs in May) and that “next year is going to be incredible.”  The Administration, however, has decided not to release its usual mid-year, updated projections on economic trends such as unemployment, inflation and economic growth, which would almost certainly contradict the President’s beliefs.  Trump must be right and his own economists wrong.

• Just this past week, the President sent federal law enforcement into the Washington streets, declaring that the rioters must be controlled.  In fact, however, there had been little violence from the protesters themselves, and it is not at all clear how much of the destruction was from protesters and how much from vandals, looters and petty criminals.  The Post’s Robert McCartney writes: “It seems clear that those crimes were committed by a small number of opportunists motivated by ideology, greed or both.”  Again, the President proclaimed his own truth and called out the National Guard and law enforcement from multiple other agencies to quell the “riots.”  The President had peaceful demonstrators violently cleared from Lafayette Park across the street from the White House in order that he could walk across the park for a photo-op.  DC officials deny that they needed help and accused Trump of politicizing the need for “law and order.”

None of this is fresh news.  Each (and 20,000 others) of these individual transgressions is serious enough, and many columns of news have been devoted to each one.  But it is the cumulative impact that is even more important.  Trump repeatedly creates false narratives of public events that have reflected badly upon him.  He attacks journalists with baseless accusations.  He denies the conclusions of his own experts.  He is creating a culture in which — for a large swath of people — he alone creates the truth.

Autocrats do not live for long in the sunshine.  Trump’s actions are serious preparation for autocracy when enough of the population must accept his lies. Because his life-long assumption that only he knows the truth, he may not be consciously aware of the deeper meaning of his lies. Trump’s consciousness — however fascinating it may be to attempt to understand it — is not the issue.  Regardless of what he thinks he is doing, he is, in fact, preparing the country for something new and dangerous in our politics.  It is hard to overestimate the importance to our democracy of his defeat in November. 

The President Pushes US Further Toward Autocracy

In response to the peaceful demonstration in Washington earlier this week, the Administration unleashed federal forces,** complete with riot gear, rubber bullets and gas. Across from the White House, they waded into the protesters, pushing them out of Lafayette Park — the iconic location of thousands of peaceful groups over the years — where the demonstrators had gathered in constitutionally protected protest against the Minneapolis killing of George Floyd a week earlier.

Attorney General William Barr had called out the law enforcement in order to make way for President Trump and his entourage to walk from the White House across the park to St. John’s Episcopal Church for a photo opportunity. Trump gathered a few administration officials around him, held up a Bible as a prop without comment and returned to the White House.

So, following the murder of a black man by white police, the President has responded to the demonstrators not by condemnation of the homicide but by violent force against them. What is clear is that the President has no conception of the history of violent racism within the country nor any plan to deal with it except through overwhelming violence … against those protesting the racism. What is also clear is that the President is willing to use the full range of physical, even military, force against domestic unrest.

President Trump has demanded that the governors use more force to “dominate” the streets, called for massive police presence, promised the use of “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons,” and threatened to use US military force.

But the events this week are different, action rather than threat.

Time reports:

Multiple cargo planes, carrying active duty soldiers and supplies from North Carolina and New York, have flown into a military airfield. Members of the National Guard have rumbled around the capital region in armored vehicles to predetermined positions. And twin-engine UH-60 Black Hawk and UH-72 Lakota helicopters on Monday swept just above the tree-line over the capital’s streets, blasting an awestruck crowd of protestors below with a downwash of air, debris and fuel exhaust.

This is a new, extraordinary escalation of the President’s attack on democracy since long before his election.

Yes, the President has the legal right to do what he has done. But he is violating the constitutional rights of citizens and the most basic norms of our American democracy.

General James Mattis, Trump’s former Secretary of Defense who has until now felt it “inappropriate” for a former Cabinet member to criticize a sitting president offered a broadside worth reading in full:

The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values — our values as people and our values as a nation.” He goes on, “We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.” …

“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago,” he writes, “I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

The President’s actions have brought us significantly closer to autocracy.

Greg Miller of the Washington Post writes

The scenes have been disturbingly familiar to CIA analysts accustomed to monitoring scenes of societal unraveling abroad — the massing of protesters, the ensuing crackdowns and the awkwardly staged displays of strength by a leader determined to project authority.,,,

“I’ve seen this kind of violence,” said Gail Helt, a former CIA analyst responsible for tracking developments in China and Southeast Asia. “This is what autocrats do. This is what happens in countries before a collapse. It really does unnerve me.”

Helt … said the images of unrest in U.S. cities, combined with President Trump’s incendiary statements, echo clashes she covered over a dozen years at the CIA tracking developments in China, Malaysia and elsewhere.

In his march toward autocracy, the President has crossed too many “red lines” for the metaphor to be adequate. This is a mark of the autocracy to which Trump has already brought us.

I’ll close with the words of General Michael Hayden, Director of the CIA under President Obama, who said after the debacle in Lafayette Park:

If Trump serves one term, it’s very, very bad, but I think we can stand it, and we can come back sooner or later. Two terms, we’re done. America will not be the same. Period.

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** The Justice Department said that mounted U.S. Park Police along with other law enforcement from National Guard units (from several other states); FBI; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Drug Enforcement Administration; U.S. Marshals and Bureau of Prisons had all been involved.

All the President's Men

President Trump has always tried to protect himself politically by downplaying, suppressing or even denying bad news.  He has discredited the Mueller Report, banned Executive Branch officials from testifying before Congress, and fired federal employees (including three Inspectors General within the past six weeks) in retaliation for telling the truth.  These actions have been harmful enough to the country.  His early trivializing and denial of the danger of the pandemic, however, delayed the US response and undoubtedly led to the deaths of thousands of Americans.  Recently, the President has upped the ante by beginning to silence his medical experts and deny objective data in order to “open the economy.”  From the Washington Post’s Toluse Olorunnipa:

[Trump’s] administration has sidelined or replaced officials not seen as loyal, rebuffed congressional requests for testimony, dismissed jarring statistics and models, praised states for reopening without meeting White House guidelines and, briefly, pushed to disband a task force created to combat the virus and communicate about the public health crisis.

It would be hard to overemphasize the significance of his changed behavior.  The President is not only dismissing the importance of the highest-level health advice, not only intentionally withholding information that is crucial to the country’s life and death decisions, not only punishing those who tell the truth, but he is also perverting the undeniably accurate information by lying about it.

A primary concern has been his denial that large-scale testing for the virus is essential.  “Testing isn’t necessary,” said the President, despite the consensus among experts that wide-scale testing is absolutely essential before an area should be opened up.  Trump’s response to his critics has been that “In a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad.”  

The Administration has also attempted to sideline the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) by replacing its regular press conferences with almost-nightly broadcasts dominated by President Trump.  These have also in turn been interrupted after the President’s remarks about treatment with bleach.  CDC repeatedly requested restarting its own press conferences but has not been allowed to do so.

The CDC released and then called back extensive guidelines to replace much more general advice released earlier.  The stricter guidelines call, for instance, for massive testing that is not now available.  It also suggests a decline in cases over a two-week period before relaxing social distancing measures.  These guidelines were only released after media reporting of their existence.  Of the thirty-five states that are now opening with Trumps encouragement, none “currently meets the safety criteria for reopening.”  The President and his supporters point to the gradual decline of the number of COVID cases in the United States, but that decline disappears when you exclude New York City, one of the earliest hotspots. 

The President’s advice is being followed by many governors in opening their states.  Also from the Post:

In Arizona, where Gov.  Doug Ducey (R) is pushing businesses to reopen, the state health department abruptly halted the work of a team of experts who predicted the outbreak’s peak was still about two weeks away.  The department reversed the decision amid an outcry after it became public.  …

Governors in Georgia, Texas, Iowa and elsewhere have been praised by Trump as they ignored recommendations from doctors and health officials in their states to begin phased re-openings.  States such as Florida have limited or redacted public information about their Coronavirus deaths.

Trump’s about-face on states’ shelter-in-place rules (he had previously supported them) is designed, he says now, to bring the economy back to normal, presumably before the autumn presidential election.  If the opinions of health experts, who predict large numbers of future cases and deaths as a result of opening too early, is correct,** then the President’s political agenda will likely kill thousands of Americans.  This is a desperate move and unlikely to increase his popularity. 

To be clear: Trade-offs between economics and health are inevitable.  While pandemics certainly suppress the economy, treatment protocols that may delay economic opening, surprisingly, do not.  At some point, however, we must open the economy: Economic collapse will lead to deaths, too.  Whenever we relax shutdown restrictions, people will continue to contract the disease and die.  Health vs economics is an overly simplistic choice.  The question is the trade-off.  When do we begin to open our economy?  When do we open the restaurants?  When do we stop social distancing?  When do we stop wearing masks?

Making those decisions will be complicated and painful.  Groups of technocrats — medical experts, economists, even psychologists — must consider all the realities and give their best advice.  Ultimately, yes, the politicians, representatives of the citizens’ will, must consider that advice and make the final decisions. 

The President, however, is making his own uninformed decisions, ignoring both the medical professionals and the best economists.  Certainly, the President does have the responsibility to balance the health impacts of both opening the economy and keeping restrictions in place and then acting on his best judgment.  But he must not be allowed to make that judgment if he intentionally remains ignorant of the expert medical and economic advice.  Ignoring, even shutting down, sources of accurate health information, will put more people in mortal danger. 

Politics come after the technocratic expertise and must not ignore the information that experts provide. 

To make matters worse, the President is attempting to subvert and deny the objective evidence (for instance, the importance of broad testing), which leaves the people even more uninformed and unable to evaluate Trump’s recommendations.  This makes the decisions completely political, almost certainly part of his re-election campaign, ignoring the human cost.   More people will die. 

Trump is attempting to convince the country that it is safe to open broadly.  Given the near-unanimous expert opinion that the President is wrong, his advice is, for practical purposes, no different from a lie.

President Trump continues to subvert the truth to protect his political future.  This is the stuff of demagogues.  Once again, democracy is on the line.
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**A recent study suggests that one factor in the spread of COVID-19 is summer heat and humidity, which may slow but certainly not halt it.

Diplomats Don't Lie

Several days ago, Marja and I watched the movie Thirteen Days about the Cuban missile crisis in the fall of 1962.  United States intelligence discovers that the Soviet Union has placed medium- to long-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, able to strike anyplace in the United States.  In the middle of the movie, there is a scene in the United Nations General Assembly.  The Soviet ambassador makes a long speech attacking the US for bringing the world to the brink of war with its false claims about the missiles.  US Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, turns to him and asks bluntly, “Do you, ambassador, deny that the Soviet Union … is placing missiles in Cuba.  Yes or no?”

The Soviet ambassador equivocates, “You’ll get all the answers to your questions as this session proceeds,” he says.  Many in the General Assembly laugh, recognizing that the Soviet ambassador is not answering the question.

Why doesn’t the Soviet ambassador just lie and deny that the missiles are there? 

Because international diplomats must be able to trust that other diplomats don’t lie.  They may evade, they may equivocate, they may refuse to tell the truth, or they may use very particular language that seems it says one thing but can be interpreted to mean another.  But they don’t lie.

Later in the movie, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy talks with the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko just hours before the US is about to attack Soviet ships carrying missiles to Cuba, which could easily precipitate a nuclear war.  It is essential that Gromyko and Kennedy be able to trust the other implicitly.  Both make important concessions to the other.  They ask each other concise, definitive questions: If the Soviet Union removes the missiles, will the United States guarantee to remove its own missiles from Turkey in six months?  Gromyko asks, “By what authority is this guarantee given?”  “By the highest authority” Bobby Kennedy replies, not even specifying naming President Kennedy, presumably to maintain deniability.  But the President will only guarantee the removal if the promise is not revealed publicly.  He will give to Gromyko no concrete evidence of the promises, no proof that the United States will in fact remove the missiles in Turkey.  Gromyko must be able to trust Kennedy based only on a verbal promise.  Essentially, the fate of the world depends upon two diplomats knowing that the other is trustworthy.

If we faced such a crisis today, could a foreign government trust that President Trump would keep his word?  I need only pose the question and the answer becomes obvious.  President Trump has lost all credibility.  Democracy itself depends absolutely upon a leader’s credibility.

Marja and I have also been re-watching the PBS series on the Roosevelts.  A recent episode showed Franklin D Roosevelt during the Great Depression.  Remarkable in the documentary is the importance of FDR’s “fireside chats” and other pronouncements to the country.  He doesn’t shy away from the difficulties the country will face nor the sacrifices the people must make.  But he assures the American people that we are strong enough to make it through.  And the people trust him.  He gives them the courage to make the sacrifices that will be needed. 

Can anyone believe that our current president could be so trusted?

I have written in other posts about trust (here, here, here, here and elsewhere).  But it’s always felt a bit vague, the examples squishy. Here—in the example of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Roosevelt’s inspiring fireside chats — we see trust in action. We see its centrality in a democracy.  A fundamental ground of democracy is truth.  Without trust in our leaders to tell the truth, our democracy will not survive.

Sidelining the Referees

Among the most important steps in shunting a democracy toward autocratic rule is to sideline the referees.  In our democracy, the rules in the often-contentious relationships between the president, Congress, and the courts are sometimes murky and not fully defined.  As in a soccer game, political struggle requires referees: the media, the press, and popular opinion are obvious examples.  We often forget, however, that some of our democracy’s referees are parts of the executive branch of government, formally under the president's authority: the intelligence agencies, law enforcement, tax officials, and regulatory departments also meant to enforce the rules. 

One consistent feature of government under Donald Trump has been the sidelining of these referees.  For instance, Trump routinely makes aggressive, unprecedented efforts to limit, even compromise, the intelligence community, for example, his denial of the unanimous assessment that Russia had compromised the 2016 elections. 

What have been less well understood are the President’s attempts at personal takeover of governmental agencies.  These certainly do belong to the executive branch (and are therefore under the president), but they have historically been powerful, independent forces as referees.  

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is a prime example.  Jack Goldsmith of the independent Lawfare blog writes, “Every presidency since Watergate has embraced policies for preserving DOJ and FBI independence from the President in certain law enforcement and intelligence matters."   There should not even be the appearance that the president is trying to influence a DOJ investigation. 

One of Donald Trump’s first actions, for example, was to attack his Attorney General Jeff Sessions for not taking control of the Russia investigation, from which Sessions had properly recused himself because of a conflict of interest.  Trump eventually nominated William Barr who was confirmed in the Senate.  He was a lawyer who had served in different capacities in which he had acted on the basis of “the rule of law, public safety and the fair application of legal rules to all."   Since his confirmation, however, Barr has not been an independent voice.  For instance, he responded to Trump’s attacks on the Russia investigation by launching his own investigation of the investigation. 

The President has dismissed four chiefs of staff and many others.  National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price have had the shortest-service tenures in the history of their respective offices." 

Many of Trump’s appointees — even Cabinet members — have not been submitted to the Senate for confirmation.  For example, the secretaries for Homeland Security, Defense, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services are all “temporary."   When asked about this executive branch turmoil, Trump replied:

We have acting people.  The reason they are acting is because I’m seeing how I like them, and I’m liking a lot of them very, very much.  There are people who have done a bad job, and I let them go.  If you call that turmoil, I don’t call that turmoil.  I say that is being smart.  That’s what we do.

The President has unilateral power to hire and fire his cabinet without congressional interference.  The President has subsequently surrounded himself with “yes-men."   Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly defended the unfounded conspiracy theories about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.  Ambassador Gordon Sondland, a Republican donor, placed himself in legal jeopardy with his testimony supporting President Trump in the House impeachment inquiry.  Attorney General Barr misinterpreted the Mueller report in Trump’s favor.  And so on.

In curtailing the independent voices within his cabinet, Trump has not only insulated himself from dissenting voices but also decimated one set of referees who might constrain him.  His first three appointees as Chief of Staff were widely noted as the “adults in the room."   But these men resigned or were fired.  Finally, he chose Mark Meadows, a former Congressman “who is considered one of Trump’s staunchest congressional allies,” unlikely to stand up to the President.

This sidelining of mature and independent voices is certainly not of the same magnitude as Trump’s “fake news” attacks on the press or his nearly daily conversations with the fawning far-right Fox News commentators.  But his silencing of independent referees within his own administration is on a similar scale.  One set of the primary referees in the struggle for good government is disappearing.  It’s one more dangerous step on the march toward autocracy that we  must continually monitor.

Pandemic and Autocracy

During this coronavirus pandemic, as in many past world crises, state leaders are using the emergency to deepen the centralized power of governments around the globe.  Populations can be eager for someone to “take charge” and deal with the crisis.  In the process, however, constitutional, judicial, and congressional restraints can be weakened and citizens may not notice the danger until it is too late..

Historically, there are strong US precedents for presidential assumption of near-autocratic power that raised little or no objection, for instance,

• Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War;
• Roosevelt’s interning of Japanese during World War II;
• GW Bush’s rounding up Muslims willy-nilly after 9/11.

Around the world in the current crisis, the same response has been widespread.

• Hungary’s Viktor Orbán pushed his parliament to give him indefinite dictatorial powers.  
• Benjamin Netanyahu authorized his country’s internal security agency to track citizens using a secret trove of cellphone data developed for counter-terrorism. 
• In Jordan, an emergency “defense law” has given wide latitude to Prime Minister Omar Razzaz to “deal firmly” with anyone who spreads “rumors, fabrications and false news that sows panic.” 
• Malawi’s Peter Mutharika has postponed elections
• and so on. 

To be sure, some centralization of power is necessary to respond in emergencies.  The president’s activation of the National Guard is appropriate after hurricanes.  Emergency appropriation of funds not yet approved by Congress may be necessary after other natural disasters.  But emergency assumptions of power can too often become indefinite in length or even permanent.

President Trump is using the Covid-19 pandemic to continue his National Emergency powers originally implemented to build the border wall without congressional oversight.  And he recently began refusing entry on the Mexican border to all immigrants, regardless of their refugee status or their right to enter the United States.  Thus, habeas corpus (the right to appear in court a judge before trial) has been essentially suspended on the border for the duration of this pandemic.

Donald Trump is impatient with the democratic principles that regulate the power of his office, and he has praised autocrats around the world.  Recently when asked what authority he had to re-open the country during that pandemic, he said that he had “ultimate authority.”  Later, he clarified, “When somebody is the president … the authority is total and that’s the way it’s got to be.”  Speaking of the power of governors and other local officials during the pandemic, he said that they “can’t do anything without the approval of the president of the United States.”

His statements created a firestorm, which was reassuring.  Even some important Republicans pointed out that what Trump was saying was in clear violation of the Constitution.  The President quickly backpedaled.  While not admitting error, he announced that it was “up to the states” to decide when and how to modify the lockdowns in their own states.

Once again, democracy held up.  For that we can be grateful.  But the pandemic is not over.  It’s important to notice once again how the President understands his role in our democracy. 

Democracy itself requires that we remain vigilant to the President’s use of power during this crisis.