Eric Ham: With Trump’s latest power grab, America slides closer towards autocracy

CTV News U.S. Political Analyst Eric Ham says tariffs are already having an impact on markets and tourism in America.

Eric Ham is based in Washington, D.C. and is a political analyst for CTV News. He’s a bestselling author and former congressional staffer in the U.S. Congress and writes for CTVNews.ca.

Texas has become the latest battleground in President Trump’s efforts to weaken the pillars upholding U.S. democratic institutions and American democracy itself. The mastermind behind the Jan. 6 insurrection is now orchestrating another dastardly contrivance that, if successful, could be the final kill shot that sends the shining city on a hill to its final resting place.

Trump, with the backing of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Republican-controlled legislature are plotting to gerrymander the legislative map — eliminating districts currently held and controlled by Democratic lawmakers in the Lone Star State and replace them with Republican-friendly congressional districts.

This plan, if successful, will give the state GOP a supermajority in the lead-up to next year’s congressional midterm elections. The political strategy will undoubtedly undermine the people’s voice and has even led to a domino effect before taking hold.

Blue states have responded and just like Texas, they too are blasting through the sanctity of the vote in an effort to stay one step ahead in a race for electoral supremacy. The new salvo is just the latest in a series of frontal assaults on basic freedoms that have included the elimination of due process; a systemic neutering of checks and balances; and flouting the law. Combined, this witches brew of criminality and chicanery is ultimately choking off the constitutional framework upholding democracy, leaving autocracy in its wake.

Trump, during a phone interview with CNBC recently, doubled down on his autocratic plan, saying, “we (the GOP) are entitled to five more seats.” The defiant tone further underscores his long-held ambition of cementing his grip on all levers of power in the lead-up to next year’s congressional election and possibly the 2028 presidential election.

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This latest power grab falls in line with the cavalcade of machinations carried out by the White House to maim a system of checks and balances that have been in place to hold authoritarian impulses in check.

The convicted felon’s fortuitous effort to stack the Supreme Court has been a dividend that has reaped immense benefit for the burgeoning strongman. Recent decisions to de-fang the lower courts on birthright citizenship — a tenet of the constitution dating back centuries — and diminished congressional authority in favour of an all-powerful executive branch all constitute a corrosive strain now infecting the basic hallmarks of democracy.

These multi-faceted attacks are now morphing a once open and free society into a nation gripped by fear and chaos. Moreover, when the newly imagined star chamber, formerly the Supreme Court, is not capsizing centuries of legal jurisprudence to aid its benefactor (Trump), the White House merely eschews lower court rulings. Brazenly signifying its affinity with lawlessness as opposed to a dogmatic adherence to the rule of law.

Yet, finally after nearly a decade of assuaging Trump’s moral decay or simply cowering and trembling before his presence, Democrats are now fighting fire with fire. Texas Democrats have fled the state and are being aided and abetted in their pushback by fellow democrat, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Heir to the Hyatt hotel chain, the billionaire pol is housing more than 50 state lawmakers in St. Charles, Illinois at no expense to the elected officials.

Democrats adopting similar tactics

With a deep-pocketed benefactor on their side and an unwillingness to honour Texas warrants seeking to apprehend and extradite the protesting lawmakers, Republicans’ inflammatory threats, so far, are falling on deaf ears.

Raising the stakes, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul are now signalling they, too, will lead efforts to gerrymander congressional districts in their respective states, eliminating Republican-held congressional districts; adopting unlawful and anti-democratic antics and tactics to thwart both the will and voices of the electorate. All in an effort to keep up with the partisan gamesmanship Trump has parlayed to absolute power and authority.

Irrespective of who wins, ultimately, the constitution — and the people themselves — lose. Characterized as a ‘living and breathing’ document, the U.S. Constitution is now under assault like never before.

In confronting Trump’s thirst for power, the opposition, too, has taken to using those same autocratic maneuvers and attempting to subvert democracy. Rigging votes, silencing voices, and ignoring the law, Democrats are now the antagonist they once hoped to defeat.

The slippery slope has now given way to a cascading avalanche as three of the republic’s most populous states openly and defiantly provoke a constitutional crisis with all viable safeguards paralyzed or eunuchized. No doubt, Trump’s rampant and cavalier diminishing of the key pillars of democracy — attempting to overturn elections, circumventing laws, and abstaining from checks and balances — pushed a weak and enfeebled Democratic Party to mirror the wannabe autocrat.

Now, both sides, in a fight for political supremacy, are contemporaneously engaged in a two-front war on the very ‘living and breathing’ document that has undergirded freedom for more than two centuries.

In their seminal book, How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that democracies don’t typically collapse through sudden coups, but rather through a slow, often unnoticed, weakening of unwritten rules and mutual forbearance that underpin a healthy democracy.

Undermining institutions, partisan polarization, rejection of democratic rules, denial of political opponents’ legitimacy, and tolerance of violence are all key tenets that have come into play, elevating Trump’s rise to power.

Starkly and ironically, Democrats have concluded that for them to find their way out of the political wilderness, they, like Trump, must forgo the rule of the law, ideas, and support of the majority at the ballot box.

To destroy the enemy, Democrats seem to think they must become the enemy. Unfortunately, that will neither guarantee victory nor even level the playing field. Sadly, that only leads to mutually assured destruction; not just for both parties, but alas, and sadly, for democracy itself.

More from Eric Ham:

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