{"id":14651,"date":"2025-08-04T17:12:34","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T17:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14651"},"modified":"2025-08-05T16:21:04","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T16:21:04","slug":"killing-democracy-and-not-bothering-to-hide-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14651","title":{"rendered":"Killing Democracy\u2014And Not Bothering to Hide It"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The assault is happening in plain sight, from the Epstein case to Texas reapportionment to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by William Kristol<\/strong><\/em>, THEBULWARK<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the last few days, it seems as if we\u2019ve reached a new stage in the attempted authoritarian takeover of American democracy. It\u2019s not just that the multi-faceted assault on the truth, on the rule of law, on a free society has picked up steam\u2014though it has. It\u2019s that the assault, from our own government, now proceeds so openly and unashamedly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once, if there were bad economic statistics, the president and his supporters tried to spin them. Now the president and his supporters simply deny them. And those who produced them are punished. And so President Trump fires, with no pretense of real cause or justification, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a career civil servant who has supervised a host of other career civil servants in producing these statistics, as they have for decades. And he brazenly lies in accusing her and a host of other civil servants of \u201crigging\u201d their findings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is part of a broader pattern of the transformation of government information into pure propaganda. Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard\u2014using the resources of the federal agencies they direct\u2014have taken the lead in this. But they are only the tip of the Trump spear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once, if a president or his subordinates wanted to cover up a problem, even a crime, they made labored efforts at obfuscation and concealment. Coverups were, as the term implies, pursued under the cover of darkness. That\u2019s why the Washington Post<\/em>, with the experience of Watergate in mind, came up at the beginning of Trump\u2019s first term with the slogan \u201cDemocracy Dies in Darkness.\u201d But that slogan applies to a different era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now Ghislaine Maxwell, one of two organizers of a massive and horrendous child sex trafficking ring of which Donald Trump appears to have had considerable contemporaneous knowledge, meets with the deputy attorney general of the United States\u2014who had previously been Trump\u2019s private lawyer\u2014and the White House openly embraces it. A week later, contrary to the normal rules for a prisoner convicted of her crimes, Maxwell is transferred to a minimum security \u201cClub Fed\u201d facility. This was presumably as a down payment on not spilling the beans about Trump, and perhaps as an interim step on the way to a pardon. This<\/em> coverup is happening in broad daylight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once, state legislators redistricted congressional seats every ten years, after the constitutionally mandated census. These reapportionments were often accompanied by gerrymandering. But, with a notable<\/a> exception, the partisan power grabs were at least adjacent to a regular and lawful process. They were at least somewhat constrained by calendars and custom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now the governor of Texas has decided, at the public urging of the president of the United States, to have his state legislature carry out a gerrymander mid-decade, so as to try to preserve a Republican majority in the House of Representatives for the final two years of Trump\u2019s term. And it seems other red states will follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no pretense here other than a grab for power. It is the unconstrained use of the instrumentalities of government, state and federal, to hold on to control of the House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New York Times <\/em>quotes<\/a> \u201cone person close to the president\u201d as summing up the approach of the Trump White House as \u201cmaximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.\u201d It\u2019s important to add that it\u2019s not just maximum warfare by one party against the other. It\u2019s warfare by the government of the United States against the justice system, against the presentation of true facts, against free and fair elections. It\u2019s maximum warfare against the norms and institutions of a liberal democracy and republican self-government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was one hundred and eleven years ago\u2014at the beginning of August 1914\u2014that a long-established and seemingly solid international order came crashing down. Now at the beginning of August 2025, it seems as if the authoritarian assault on the long-established and seemingly solid institutions of American democracy has reached a critical point. The nations of Europe had the excuse that they did not know and could not see that they were careening into an abyss. We have no such excuse. Today, in the United States of America, liberal democracy is being killed not in darkness but in broad daylight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note: This post originally appeared as “Democracy Dies in Daylight” in BULWARK Morning Shots<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The assault is happening in plain sight, from the Epstein case to Texas reapportionment to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. by William Kristol, THEBULWARK In the last few days, it seems as if we’ve reached […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14668,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-slider"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14653,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14651\/revisions\/14653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}