The Democracy Index

Apr. 11, 2025

Each week of this new Trump administration is a fresh onslaught against democracy, full of new measures damaging lives, institutions, public services, and civic life. It is a constant deluge that leaves people feeling overwhelmed and barely able to keep up.

It’s important to remember that this is deliberate. One of the most revealing statements about the Trump movement came from one of its founding champions, Steve Bannon, when he spoke about how they must intentionally “flood the zone.” At the time, he was talking about disorienting the media with an endless barrage so that they couldn’t report effectively on the administration. That is something Trump continues to do effectively. Individual people feel the impact of this approach too, aware that something is terribly wrong but sucked into one outrage, then the next, like being pulled under again and again by waves in heavy surf. It’s hard to keep track of everything, let alone reckon with each incident, when you’re just trying to stay afloat.

Nearly three weeks ago, the Trump Administration perpetrated a staggering breach of national security protocol through Signalgate. But it’s been almost forgotten. That story has been pushed off the news pages by a succession of newer scandals, most notably, Trump’s tariff policy. The tariffs represent the core characteristics of this Administration: (1) giving Trump personal power over government, (2) incompetence, and (3) corruption. On Wednesday, Trump announced an abrupt about-face, which left his advisers and surrogates scrambling; meanwhile, lawmakers and experts are already concerned about the appearance that Trump’s announcement potentially manipulated the markets and the possibility of insider trading. Whatever brief recovery the markets made in the immediate aftermath of the ostensible reversal began to unravel, as markets collapsed again on Thursday.

This reveals the dangers of government at the whim of one person. It’s undemocratic, or perhaps more accurately, anti-democratic. That’s the big picture that emerges if we take a step back from the churn of all the reporting we are being hit with every day about what Trump is doing. The White House is on a mission to dismantle the legal rules and accepted norms that stand between Trump and autocracy.

Where things start and where they end up are two entirely different places. The administration dehumanizes people who come to this country without legal immigration status, and at times does so without bothering to distinguish if they are legal or undocumented. Trump promised his base during the campaign that he would deport dangerous criminals, even though the reality is that, in order to meet quotas, ICE is turning to students and dads like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was in the car with his nonverbal, autistic son, when he was arrested and then deported even though a standing immigration judge’s order forbade it.

Abrego Garcia was removed from the United States without legal process. He had no opportunity to be heard by a judge before he was deported. Judge Xinis ruled that the government’s conduct was “wholly lawless.” In a normal administration, that ruling would have led to prompt action to rectify the mistake. Here, the government merely shrugged its shoulders and told the courts it can’t do anything about it — and that it won’t try to. That position is both stunningly callous and demonstrative of the frightening new reality that anyone could be taken off the streets and deported, without access to the courts, and with an indifferent government that maintains it could do nothing to return them once the deportation to a foreign prison is accomplished.

Thursday night, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the extreme position, ruling that Abrego Garcia is entitled to due process and ordering the government to “facilitate” his release. But unanimity seems to have come at the cost of a weak position that appears to give the government the opportunity to hide behind the fact that he is now under the control of a foreign government, incapable of, or at least delaying his release with a second round of appeals over the limits of their obligation. The three liberal justices noted that a fast-acting government could do the same to any of us, citizen or not.

Today it is Abrego Garcia. Tomorrow it could be any of us. And as you hear of other news where someone or some group is singled out for attack, understand it in this same way. Where it begins and where it may end are two entirely different matters. Trump’s attacks provide grist to stoke resentments and fury, while his White House dismantles the institutions and services we all rely on under that cover.

Take the loss of protection for personal information that the government holds. Taxpayer information used to be rigorously protected. Even Federal prosecutors working on tax cases were required to keep it under lock and key. This week, political appointees at the Treasury Department tried to give immigration authorities access to information that could help with deportations over the protests of IRS leadership, even though federal law tightly controls taxpayers’ personal information and protects it from disclosure, including to other government agencies. The IRS commissioner promptly announced her resignation, following other IRS officials out the door, drawing some attention to the outrage. While some people might accept this as necessary to Trump’s immigration policies, where it stops isn’t where it ends: On Thursday, the New York Times reported that DOGE is attempting to delete the Social Security information of hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants living in the United States.

Then, there was the White House’s new Executive Order on Wednesday concerning, of all things, “Maintaining Acceptable Water Pressure in Showerheads.” While that may sound like an Onion headline, the Order included the following clause: “Notice and comment is unnecessary because I am ordering the repeal.” Innocuous language to the casual reader, but it set off alarm bells for people who practice administrative law. When an executive branch agency promulgates a new regulation, a law called the Administrative Procedure Act requires that it go through a notice and comment process, which allows the public and experts to express opinions about the rules before they can go into effect. The Administration now maintains that as long as the president is “ordering” something, those rules no longer apply. You don’t have to have much of an imagination to see where that could end.

This week brought more of Trump’s l'état c'est moi efforts to crown himself as king. The Supreme Court’s pushback Thursday night may prove meaningful, but it remains to be seen how serious the Court is about imposing meaningful restraints on this administration, even as lower courts and other institutions do their level best to hold the line. Key resistance is coming from engaged citizens who are fighting to protect our democracy. Trump demonized the idea of staying “woke” throughout his campaign and right into his second term. It’s time for us to reclaim it and fight back against his efforts to decimate democracy by overwhelming us. We do that with our work here, together, to understand not only what he is doing, but what it means.