Thread by @Yascha_Mounk

Trump’s past attempts to expand his powers have, at times, felt like a drill.

His intention to abrogate vast powers to himself under an utterly transparent pretext is the real deal.

Here's why—and what to do.

[Thread]

slate.com/news-and-polit…

Americans often like to imagine their system of checks-and-balances is a secure bulwark against the threat of autocracy. But in fact, no set of political institutions is, in and of itself, enough to constrain a popular and power-hungry president intent on destroying the republic.

The problem of the state of emergency is a big reason why.

One one hand, presidents may have a real need for expanded powers in a genuine emergency. On the other hand, they can obviously use such powers to turn themselves into dictators, as many strongmen have in the past.

So why has no President ever used emergency legislation to take absolute power?

The usual answer goes: the Constitution! That’s probably wrong. The difference between Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution and the emergency powers of US Presidents is a matter of degree, not kind.

Instead, America has historically contained the potential damage of emergency powers in two more informal ways:

1) They rarely elected Presidents with authoritarian ambitions.

2) When Presidents developed such ambitions, their allies turned on them.

Scarily, both of these safeguards now seem to be failing:

1) Trump has consistently attacked the very idea of legitimate political competition.

2) Congressional Republicans have, again and again, enabled Trump’s attempts to expand his power.

In the past weeks, @senatemajdr has discouraged Trump from declaring a state of emergency, clearly recognizing that it would be an outrageous attack on Congress. Today, he said that he’d support the national emergency.

This kind of spinelessness is how autocrats take power.

Salami tactics are the most powerful trick in the populist’s toolkit. What’s striking about the state of emergency is that Trump isn’t even using them. This is about as overt an attack on the constitution as political scientists could have dreamed up.
slate.com/news-and-polit…

If Republicans like @MittRomney and @BenSasse won’t stand up to Trump’s power grab now, they never will.

And if we won't take to the streets to oppose his autocratic tendencies at this juncture, it is clear that we wouldn’t do so until it was far too late.

This doesn’t means that Trump will win. Thankfully, he keeps shooting himself in the foot. If there was a populist Olympics, he would not make medal rank.

That’s a relief in the short-term. In the long-term, it’s reason to be that much more worried about our institutions.

Please share the article! Please ask your Congressman or Senator to oppose the national emergency! And please come out to oppose Trump’s power grab at a protest near you!

[End.]

slate.com/news-and-polit…