The autocrat has no clothes

Trump’s one strategy may have already failed; plus, big day tomorrow

Trump had one strategy. “Shock and awe.”

It’s the “why” behind all the rampant lawlessness. Why the administration is deporting legal immigrants without due process or in retaliation for speech. It’s why Elon Musk seeks to destroy entire agencies and rip away Congress’s power of the purse. Why the president is repeatedly testing defiance, not just of laws passed by Congress, but also orders from the courts. Why Trump is so brazenly targeting universities and scientific research. Why he is threatening law firms out of representing disfavored clients.

The shocking unconstitutionality, the un-American-ness of it all — that’s the point. He aims to shock and appall. The way it makes you feel crazy? That’s what he’s going for. Trump wants you to think everything you thought you knew was wrong and the only reality that matters anymore is the one he creates. And so, there is no hope opposing him. Obey in advance.

Think of it as “the emperor’s new clothes,” but purposeful. If Trump convinces everyone he is already an autocrat, if we all believe he is invincible, then that is what he becomes. That’s why Congress and law firms and media and universities have seemingly felt compelled to capitulate.

But, just as in the fable, if the illusion of invulnerability falters, if he over-extends, then suddenly he’s in big trouble. The opposition that was scared off comes back even more energetically. As ever more people show they can cross him politically without being destroyed — that just encourages others to get in on the game. Every act of courage makes the next one more likely.

I think this is happening. (More on why in a second.)

Usually, consolidating an autocratic regime takes time and care

First, though, a quick primer on autocratic consolidation.

As Amanda Carpenter writes in The Entrenchment Agenda, Trump has pursued every aspect of the playbook written by autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Yet… he’s not necessarily going about it in the same way. Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, one of the foremost scholars of competitive authoritarian regimes, turned heads when he told The New York Times:

Honest to god, I’ve never seen anything like it… We look at these comparative cases in the 21st century, like Hungary and Poland and Turkey. And in a lot of respects, this is worse… These first two months have been much more aggressively authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of democratic backsliding.

It’s true.

Trump is on an entirely different timeline than his autocratic peers. Orbán and Erdoğan also weaponized the state against their enemies, but they did so incrementally and procedurally, amassing power before wielding it. Just as they punished dissent they also rewarded cooperation, especially from economic elites. Carrots and sticks. Over time, they built sophisticated machinery for electoral maneuvering, propaganda, and repression — all with a degree of plausible deniability. Only in retrospect was it all obvious.

Under Trump’s shock-and-awe strategy, the backsliding is happening as fast as he can sign executive orders. No plausible deniability, no carrots, all sticks.

I’m not necessarily saying it won’t work — obviously it could. He might simply be consolidating faster than Putin or Orbán. Or maybe the ruin that Trump is leaving behind will create the opening for a much more durable authoritarianism to take hold in the wreckage. But it’s all much more of a gamble.

Trump has overreached. Big time.

Which brings us back to this week. Much of Trump’s support, especially from economic elites, stems from a perception that he’s a business- and growth-friendly leader.

And so, throughout Trump’s attacks on the legal and constitutional underpinnings that hold up our society — the economy included — he’s always been protected by an illusion that everything he’s doing is in service of growth and lower prices.

But this week? Reality broke through. The autocrat quite literally took away cheap clothes (and so much else).

Yes, Trump’s tariffs are the largest peacetime tax hike in American history. Yes, they were enacted entirely outside of the legislative process and with shocking sloppiness (maybe by ChatGPT). Yes, Russia was tellingly excluded. Yes, this is all a huge abuse of emergency powers. Yes, tariffs are a massive vector for corruption and grift and weaponization. Yes, the pain and suffering the tariffs cause, in the U.S. and abroad, will be almost unfathomable. Yes, this is all, as Zack Beauchamp writes, the direct product of a total breakdown of our constitutional order.

Still, all those things can get lost in the illusion of power. But you know what absolutely gets through?

Trump just blew a $5 trillion — that’s trillion with a “t” — hole in the stock market. For context, the entire annual federal budget, all of it, is about $6.75 trillion.

And would you look at that? His approval is collapsing, especially on the economy. We’re even seeing the first flickers of congressional Republicans pushing back, with senators like Chuck Grassley and Rand Paul teaming up with Democrats to try to rescind some of Trump’s tariff power grabs (those moves are likely dead for now in the House as most Republicans play powerless).

Trump’s illusion of power is faltering on all fronts

It’s also not just tariffs. Trump’s shock and awe strategy seems to be failing all around him. The fallout from his national security team’s chaotic incompetence continued, as we learned that Mike Waltz set up at least 20 Signal group chats (!!) for different crises. Cory Booker’s record-breaking speech in the Senate was maybe the most galvanizing moment so far for Trump’s opposition.

And maybe most importantly, Wisconsin happened.

When it comes to elected officials, I suspect one of the most effective shock-and-awe tactics has been the wealthiest man in the world’s willingness to drop millions to elect Trump’s allies and punish his critics.

Wisconsin law states that it is illegal to:

“Offer… anything of value… to, or for, any elector, or to or for any other person, in order to induce any elector to: 1. Go to or refrain from going to the polls.”

And yet, if you were watching the Wisconsin Supreme Court race this week, here’s the message Elon Musk apparently wanted you to hear:

In other words, regardless of whether Musk was actually breaking the law (I offer no judgement either way), that’s seemingly the impression he wants to give: That he can and will buy elections — and that no one in law or politics can stop him. Shock and awe.

Needless to say, this attempt backfired spectacularly. Musk’s candidate lost by double-digits.

Finally, most importantly: Everyday Americans seem to be waking up.

If ever there was a moment for people to stand up — to peacefully take to the streets together and demonstrate as clearly as possible that Trump is not all-powerful, that this is still a democracy — this is the time.

Or rather, tomorrow is: handsoff2025.com

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Constituent services with more than one congressperson?

With DOGE cuts and a series of vague executive orders, thousands of Americans are contacting members of Congress to express frustration and try to figure out how all of this will affect them. But, as political scientist Steven L. Taylor argued in an op-ed in Alabama this week, the way we design our elections makes it possible for members to avoid difficult questions from their constituents.

As a fan of proportional representation, this makes me wonder how it would be different if each of us had not one, but several representatives, all representing different parties and interests.

Two of the smartest thinkers in Washington on constituent services and electoral systems — POPVOX Foundation’s Anne Meeker and New America’s Lee Drutman, respectively — teamed up to answer that question in a new paper: How would constituent services in American multi-member districts work?

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What else we’re tracking:

• Shocking breaking news in North Carolina: The Republican-controlled Court of Appeals ruled that 65,000 voters should be disenfranchised, putting the court's blessing on a zombie lawsuit attempting to overturn a state Supreme Court race from last year. (Backstory on the case here).

• Here’s a helpful tracker, put together by law students, of their assessments of law firms either standing up or capitulating to Trump. While five have worked out deals, 113 have stood up. Hundreds more have signed an amicus brief in support of one of the targeted firms.

• This week, Protect Democracy and the Horizons Project launched a new toolkit series for how religious communities can counter authoritarianism. Read more: The Faithful Fight.

• The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg has an excellent piece on how the Trump administration is using the pretext of fighting anti-semitism as a smokescreen: Trump’s Jewish Cover Story.

• In case you missed it, over 1,500 DOJ alumni (and counting) are organizing to speak out against Trump’s attempted targeting of law firms and opposing counsel: A letter from America’s former lawyers.

• Protect Democracy, along with the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the ACLU, are suing Robert F Kennedy Jr. and the NIH for illegally terminating research grants. (If you are an NIH funding recipient whose grant was cancelled, report it here.)

• A must-read piece for universities and law firms by Berkeley Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky: “A united stand would mean less reason to fear retribution.” Go Bears.

What you can do to help:

Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen Americans — from doctors to librarians — start to stand up and peacefully make their voices heard in opposition to the federal government’s aggression, generating what John Lewis (and more recently, Senator Cory Booker) would call “good trouble.” It’s working; tomorrow is expected to be the largest protest day of Trump’s second term so far, with peaceful marches planned by many dozens of groups across the country. Chances are, there’s one near you:

Every act of courage makes the next one more likely.

handsoff2025.com