We’re approaching our 250th birthday as the world’s longest-running democracy. That didn’t happen by accident. Generations before us understood what Dwight Eisenhower warned: “a democracy, once lost, is lost forever.” It takes discipline to protect dissent, uphold checks and balances, and listen to uncomfortable truths. Donald Trump, by contrast, thrives on chaos and attacks anyone who challenges him. That is not democratic leadership. It’s authoritarian behavior.
We’ve already seen what happens when courts are pressured, judges are fired, and agencies are hollowed out. Trump’s administration has targeted women, immigrants, and LGBTQ Americans, stripping away rights for political gain. Historian Timothy Snyder reminds us that democracies die in darkness, not all at once, but in slow, deliberate steps. Rights disappear one group at a time, until no one is left to defend them.
There’s a dangerous precedent here. The fall of the Weimar Republic wasn’t sudden; it was a legal unraveling of rights by elected officials who thought they were in control. As legal scholar Cass Sunstein says, creeping authoritarianism often hides behind everyday politics. But we see it clearly now. And if we don’t act, history will remember our silence.
Congress must step up. It must reinstate checks on executive power, restore due process and individual rights, and protect freedom of the press, voting access, and bodily autonomy. Democracy is not self-sustaining; it survives because people defend it. Let’s be those people. Let’s protect this country before there’s nothing left to save.
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