The Democracy Index
*An Introduction and an Invitation*
If you feel like you’re trudging through some heavy, impenetrable muck as you take in the news about Donald Trump’s first three weeks back in office, you are not alone.
Virtually everything he has done was anticipated, especially by those who studied the Project 2025 roadmap. Despite that, the speed and ferocity with which the apparent co-presidents, Trump and Musk, are operating has been surprising. Navigating and forging change within the federal bureaucracy ordinarily takes time for new administrations, even those with experience. It’s often characterized as trying to turn a battleship.
But when you combine the world’s richest man with a team of DOGE kids who do not seem to appreciate the real-life consequences or ethics of what they are doing, then toss in a willingness to ignore the law and security procedures for both classified and personal information, you get what we now have.
The velocity of the deluge coming through the fire hose will knock you out. That’s intentional; it’s a feature, not a bug, as we used to say. The goal, in Steve Bannon’s words, is to “flood the zone with sh*t,” so much so that no one can pay attention to any one thing. That’s their intent, and knowing that helps.
That is why I’m even more certain today than when I first envisioned it in November that we need The Democracy Index. Every week, we’ll try to brush aside the bright shiny objects (like Trump’s claim that DEI caused a horrific plane crash in the nation’s Capital) and wade through the rest of the news to help you hone in on some of the most critical developments that threaten our democracy. We want to help people avoid feeling overwhelmed by the onslaught of rhetoric and actions that characterized our experience during Trump 1.0. We’ll identify the trends that can help us understand what’s happening to our democracy during Trump 2.0. Most importantly, we will figure out what we, as citizens, can do about it.
OVERWHELMED is the word for the first three weeks. We’re all overwhelmed. And if that’s how you’ve been feeling, you’re not alone. It’s how Trump wants you to feel—it’s by design. Together, we’re going to resist that.
So, how will we get at the important issues? The Democracy Index team is composed of really smart people, looking at developments, assessing them from different perspectives, and deciding what’s most important. Then, in weekly Democracy Index posts (from here on out), we’ll propose where we—and you—need to focus our attention.
The important trend we can see coming off of these early days is Trump’s effort to reshape the power of the presidency in a way the Founding Fathers would find unrecognizable.
Leaving England, the Founding Fathers were well aware of the risk of having a president who aspired to be a dictator. They created a system of checks and balances that gives the president broad powers, while using the two other branches of the Congress and the Judiciary to limit the president’s ability—to achieve tyranny.
Today, Trump is trying to outrun the modern, post-Watergate understanding of how the three branches of government stand in relation to one another. He seeks to accumulate as much power into the Executive Branch as he can, without any apparent concern for what is lawful and what isn’t. He seems to be executing his plans and leaving it up to the courts to decide whether he is violating the Constitution or other laws, running fast and hard on all fronts to see what he can get away with. That’s what he’s doing with:
Permitting DOGE to access Treasury’s and HHS’s payment systems and data; and,
Unilaterally eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and USAID.
So far, the GOP-led Congress has been watching from the sidelines, happy to let him walk away with their Constitutionally mandated powers, like the power of the purse, not to mention the authority to decide whether federal agencies should exist at all.
That’s what we’re paying attention to right now. The Democracy Index is growing our team of amazing people who will be tracking, distilling and analyzing events to share with you every week. These folks are smart, engaged, fun, and deeply committed to keeping the Republic.
We are deriving some encouragement from the litigation currently proceeding in the federal courts. Lawyers and judges are stepping in to preserve the status quo until litigation over the merits of substantive claims can be fully briefed. This will be by plaintiffs trying to prove that the Trump administration is exceeding its lawful executive authority. These early victories are coming on procedural motions for temporary restraining orders, which are not substantive wins, but are good signs, nonetheless, that the courts intend to give these claims a fair hearing. That’s important because with the GOP Congress firmly on the sidelines, the judiciary seems to be the only institution that will check Trump’s excesses. If the courts refuse to exercise that check, he will be emboldened to go further. Holding the line in court matters. The rule of law, despite its much-rumored demise, is not yet dead.
One major caution coming out of these early weeks is that we are on alert for a point where a court issues an order and Trump’s administration refuses to comply with it. This weekend, Vice President J.D. Vance and Senator Tom Cotton laid the groundwork for doing just that.
The question will be, what happens then?
There was some early indication this might be at work in the case over the OMB spending freeze memo. Even though a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reverse that freeze on congressionally allocated spending for a variety of programs, it appears that hasn’t happened, at least not completely. The plaintiffs in that case have asked the Judge to enforce the order in that case.
Presidents don’t ordinarily ignore court orders. That’s a hallmark of the balance of power between the three branches of government and a key part of the rule of law that forms the essential architecture for our democracy. Because of the possibility that Trump will push through that norm, there is reason for us to be deeply concerned about the state of our democracy. But being concerned doesn’t mean we should give up. I’m not going to, and I hope you won’t either.
The Democracy Index’s goal is to be your antidote to being overwhelmed as Trump tries to flood the zone at an even greater velocity than he did during his first four years in office. We’re drinking from the firehose like you are, so bear with us as we build the airplane while we’re flying it. We’re working on design and graphics while we streamline our analysis process and look forward to sharing all of that with you in the coming weeks, starting this Friday.
Until then, remember that staying informed and having a community are powerful acts in support of democracy. That’s what we’re all going to do together.
Thank you for the Democracy Index and giving us this thoughtful post about it. We desperately need a tool to keep focused on what matters most right now, and the DI is that tool.
Thank you, just what we need.