We’re at a tipping point for American democracy: If authoritarian extremists gain positions of power in our elections, they can make it harder to vote, stop vote counts, or even refuse to certify the results of elections if they don’t like the outcome. But hope is not lost.
Check out this video from RepresentUs an organization that brings together conservatives, progressives, and everyone in between to pass powerful state and local laws that fix our broken elections and stop political bribery.
A pro-Trump mob enters the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. Congress held a joint session today to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump.
We have never lived through a better era to be a criminal, provided your political fealty is directed toward the right person. If you are an executive facing fraud charges or a perpetrator of violent offenses, the standard calculations of the penal code may no longer apply as long as you support Donald Trump. If you’re Team Trump, the machinery of the state will actively dismantle itself to protect you. If not, good luck to you.
The Trump regime’s message is now unmistakable: rules do not apply to MAGA. Consider the recent saga of the U.S. Army pilots who took two AH-64 Apache attack helicopters on an unauthorized detour to perform a low-altitude flyby of washed-up rocker and MAGA ally Kid Rock’s Nashville home. As a former military helicopter pilot and aircraft commander, let me be clear: this is exactly the kind of stunt we are taught never to do. If I had pulled something like that, there would have been legitimate grounds to take my wings away. Instead, when the Army suspended the crew pending a standard safety and regulatory review, as is the proper procedure, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth intervened personally, bypassing standard military discipline to announce on X: “Thank you @KidRock. @USArmy pilots suspension LIFTED. No punishment. No investigation. Carry on, patriots.” Their rule breaking was catalogued as patriotic.
Trump has consistently used the power of his office to protect his ideological allies. By issuing pardons to those who attacked the Capitol and attempting to institute a multi-billion-dollar weaponization slush fund to pay out reparations to insurrectionists and other political loyalists, Trump’s dog whistle sounds like an invitation to commit future crimes in his name. The presidential pardon power, historically preserved as a tool for mercy and the correction of systemic judicial errors, has been converted into a personalized tool of patronage.
Trump hardly seems to care who he pardons as long as he believes them to be an ally. For instance, when asked why he pardoned Changpeng Zhao, a man convicted for money-laundering violations that helped terrorists and other criminals, Trump replied: “I don’t know. He was recommended...” In fact, Zhao helped Trump launch his own stablecoin. This cavalier approach to forgiving his favorite criminals is feckless and reckless. One pardoned January 6th rioter has already gone on to molest two children whom he then attempted to silence with promised hush money that “he [hoped] to get from [the] slush fund.” Another was given a job at the Pentagon.
While this regime systematically insulates its allies, it is concurrently manufacturing new categories of criminality to target perceived enemies. Under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), veiled as countering domestic terrorism, Trump has weaponized federal law enforcement infrastructure with overbroad powers to go after civil society groups, nonprofits, donors, activists, and even “leftist influencers.” With Trump in charge, the wealthy and well-connected are routinely let off the hook while actual victims of the system find no such reprieve; now, those resisting Trump are all the more likely to become victims, too. As true criminal justice reform is frozen out, ordinary defendants will face the full, unyielding weight of the legal meat grinder.
Competence and adherence to the law have been replaced by compliance. President Kennedy’s famous Inaugural quote could be rewritten: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for Donald Trump personally. Cabinet meetings have famously assumed a cult-like quality, where members rotate kissing up to Trump in such excess that the New York Times found that at least one in every six sentences offered him flattering praise. As MS NOW wrote, “Somewhere, Kim Jong-un could be heard saying, ‘Jeez, I think you guys are overdoing it a bit.’” Whether in North Korea or in the United States, replacing experts with sycophants at the highest levels of leadership leads to terrible consequences.
Trump is gifting appointments to his unqualified cronies at the expense of our national security. Secretary Lutnick (who engaged in intimate business deals with Epstein years after Epstein’s first conviction, planned family vacations to his private island, and lied about it) has connections to the stablecoin Tether, the primary vehicle Russian oligarchs use to move sanctioned Iranian oil to China. Secretary Hegseth breached security protocol in his second month on the job and is committing war crimes around the globe.
Now, take William J. Pulte, a real estate heir with a history of using his position at a federal mortgage agency to make criminal fraud referrals against Trump’s political adversaries. The man has zero national security, military, or traditional intelligence experience, yet Trump named him Acting Director of National Intelligence, where he will oversee a network of 18 agencies, including the CIA and the NSA. Even Republicans revolted over the choice, forcing Trump to quickly nominate a permanent replacement, but Pulte holds the role until Trump’s new pick, Jay Clayton, is confirmed by the Senate. Clayton, naturally, has appeared on CNBC several times to argue on Trump’s behalf, even defending the slush fund. I’m a veteran Navy pilot who used to get regular intel briefings; I understand the necessity of experience in this role. The idea that either of these bootlicking hacks will serve as the principal adviser on intelligence issues—for any amount of time—is insulting and incredibly irresponsible.
This dangerous loyaltocracy may have culminated in the nomination of Todd Blanche to serve as Attorney General. Blanche, who served as Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyer, has openly stated that the president has a right and duty to direct the DOJ to target specific individuals, shattering the post-Watergate norm of an independent, impartial justice department. He also recently said at a press conference, “I love working for President Trump. It's the greatest honor of a lifetime…[If he] asks me to go do something else, I will say thank you very much - I love you, sir.” Public declarations of love to the President may get you a Cabinet position these days, but if the nation’s top law enforcement official is operating under a mandate of total personal fealty, “equal justice under law” has become a dead letter.
Trump’s favor is the new golden ticket. Praise the administration and even lawbreaking may be overlooked with a “carry on, patriot,” a pardon, a promotion, or an appointment to high office. If you criticize Trump, however, your First Amendment-protected speech could be labeled domestic terrorism, and the federal government may be instructed to prosecute you. These are high stakes. When the law becomes an asymmetric weapon, it ceases to be law at all—and our democracy starts looking a lot more like an autocracy. So, call your reps, demand accountability, and don’t stop advocating for justice. But also, make sure you’re writing everything down. One day, there will be legal proceedings on these matters. Be ready to testify.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.
Beyond the brazen venality and disdain for the other branches of government, Trump’s attempted sham IRS lawsuit settlement and $1.776 billion slush fund raise the prospect of a new and frightening danger. That is the use of funds from the government to support and incentivize the same people who attacked our government on January 6 to do it again, as new elections loom, only now as well-funded, better- armed, paramilitary-like mobs.
Fortunately, one district court has temporarily enjoined the establishment of the settlement slush fund, and another is demanding explanations from the administration. The Acting Attorney General says the President is abandoning the slush fund, but as of this writing, nothing is in place to confirm its formal abandonment or to ensure that something like it will not resurface. No matter what happens, the fact that a President and his enablers have created this danger would, in more ordinary times, be grounds for impeachment. It should be an alarm bell for continual vigilance.
The Lawsuit Was a Pretext
Trump was suing and controlling the defense of a suit about something that occurred while Trump himself oversaw the government and for which the government would have no liability in the first place (a leak of Trump data by a private contractor, not the IRS) Trump waited to file the suit until he was back in office, with a DOJ and IRS he controlled. But by then the statute of limitations had expired.
Instead of moving to dismiss, Trump’s DOJ, led by an acting Attorney General who was recently Trump’s personal criminal lawyer, never made an appearance or filed any papers in the case. Then, shortly before it was ordered to file briefs justifying the case's existence, the DOJ dropped it. No “settlement” was presented to the court for approval.
The Settlement Fund Would Have Been a Sham
The administration pretends the settlement would be covered by a pre-existing Judgment Fund established by Congressional legislation. It needs this cover because the President has no independent power to appropriate funds from the treasury; that is a power reserved exclusively to Congress. (The Treasury Department’s general counsel resigned shortly after the settlement was announced.)
The Judgment Fund does not provide that cover. At most, it might allow compensation for people other than Trump harmed by the act at issue in the lawsuit Trump dropped—a leak of Trump’s data. But the slush fund did not even purport to be related to the data leak. It was to compensate people for unspecified, unrelated acts of government law-enforcement “weaponization.”
And then there is the Constitution. The terms of the Fourteenth Amendment to the same Constitution Trump relied on to pardon the intended fund beneficiaries who stormed our Capitol forbade the Government from compensating insurrectionists.
The “1776” Settlement Fund Was Set Up as A Slush Fund
There would be no Congressional or judicial oversight of this proposed giveaway of nearly $ 1.8 billion in taxpayer dollars. There was no requirement for public disclosure of how or to whom the funds would be disbursed. Implementation was entrusted to five people to be selected by Trump’s DOJ, all of whom the President could fire at will. All kinds of Trump cronies or MAGA supporters—even Trump enterprises-- might conceivably be beneficiaries. To get votes to approve the slush fund, the Acting Attorney General even presented a document to Republican Senators showing that several of them could have expected to be among its beneficiaries.
We Have Every Reason to Be Scared
A slush fund like this could be misused in many ways, but there is no mistaking its ultimate aim and objective. 1776 was used for a reason: it sounds patriotic, but it is a code word for the January 6 insurrectionists. A principal goal of this fund was always to find a convenient way to give generous rewards to the “victims” of the government’s defense of the Capitol on January 6— “victims” who are, in reality, the people who attacked it.
We should be very fearful of where the goal may lead. Every day, we hear the administration’s lies about election integrity. We see the tireless full-court press for voter suppression legislation. We have had foretastes already of the deployment of the National Guard, ICE, and even the postal service to turn away voters and undermine states’ electoral processes.
Controlling sources of compensation, whether through the slush fund settlement or some other means, gives Trump a new tool from the autocrat’s playbook: rewards for the insurrectionists and encouragement for them to do it again. This time, they would be primed in advance and would have other administration-appointed allies. This time, compensation from the slush fund would allow them to be well-resourced and well-armed. This time, they might succeed.
We may think that the courts, Congress, and public outcry from the rest of us have prevented this scenario from happening. But even if the slush fund is abandoned, the proposal has only whetted the insurrectionists’ appetite for generous compensation, as some already have; the lawsuit-settlement maneuvers leave no doubt about the President’s appetite to facilitate it. We are right to take heart in temporary victories. But we should be appalled that kowtowing to unitary executive power has allowed us to even approach the point where any of this could conceivably occur.
James B. Kobak, Jr., has been a lawyer in New York for over fifty years. He is a former President of the New York County Lawyers Association and currently chairs the National Center for Access to Justice. He prepared this article as a volunteer with Lawyers Defending American Democracy.
U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on June 11, 2026 in Washington, DC.
The Republic is at a crossroads — a moment the framers warned would come. A president has been exposed, the guardrails have weakened, and the people must decide whether they will keep the Republic or allow it to drift toward deception, concentrated power, and a leader who has always valued his image more than the nation he swore to serve.
For years, Americans were told a story about this president — a story of strength, success, and unmatched deal‑making. But the truth, now visible in plain sight, reveals something very different: a leader driven by ego, insecurity, and self‑preservation. The loudness, the bravado, and the constant self‑promotion were never signs of strength; they were a shield for poor judgment and a lifetime of failures hidden behind lawyers, loyalists, and a carefully manufactured brand.
Americans knew about his bankruptcies, lawsuits, and failed ventures. They knew the stories — some read them, others heard them, and many were told a version of him that was never real. For decades, his failures were hidden, excused, or repackaged as victories. He has never been the powerhouse he claimed to be; he has simply been protected by those who benefited from the myth. Now the illusion has collapsed, and the consequences are national — and global. Allies question America’s reliability. Adversaries exploit the instability. The world sees the weakness behind the performance.
Donald Trump perfected the dynamic of performance over competence. Producers of The Apprentice have described how they built a fake boardroom on a vacant floor of Trump Tower because his real offices were cramped and dated. They constructed a gleaming set to portray a man of power and decisiveness, even though behind the scenes, he struggled to make decisions and often had to be told whom to hire or fire. From childhood on, he learned that projecting confidence mattered more than competence, because his father funded the image even when the results failed — a pattern reinforced throughout his business ventures. He has always projected certainty, but those closest to him describe a leader who depends on constant praise and unwavering loyalty because performance has always mattered more than preparation. His leadership has been personality‑driven, relying on rallies, conflict, and the projection of strength, even as the gap between image and reality widened. The show was not documenting a leader; it was manufacturing the illusion of strength.
Retiring lawmakers — finally free from political retaliation — now admit what millions long suspected: the image was always an act, and the country is paying the price for believing it. This is what it means to have a president exposed — not by opponents, but by his own record, his own appointees, and the consequences of his own decisions.
The president’s weaknesses are no longer hidden. They shape policy, distort institutions, and endanger the nation. He has used the presidency as a personal brand‑extension project — a stage for ego, retaliation, and self‑glorification. He has treated the federal government as a tool for personal benefit, enriching himself and his family through federal contracts and foreign patronage — the same image‑over‑competence pattern learned from his father. He is still branding, but Americans want something very different: accountability, transparency, and legislation that improves conditions in their lives — not another round of self‑promotion. He has spent taxpayer dollars on vanity projects while Americans struggle with housing, healthcare, and rising costs. A president may live on a brand. A nation cannot.
The man behind the Trump Power Curtain has been exposed — at home and around the world — for the performer he is. He has also concentrated power while Congress remained largely silent. He fired Inspectors General who were investigating him, pressured agencies to serve his personal interests, undermined checks and balances, elevated loyalists over qualified public servants, and used executive authority to bypass congressional oversight. These are not partisan claims — they are constitutional concerns. The framers designed checks and balances to prevent any president from placing personal ambition above the Republic. But guardrails only work when leaders respect them. Congress is the only branch with the power to restrain a president who rejects limits. Former officials now describe a leader who gravitates toward authoritarian power and fears accountability.
His weaknesses are visible at home and abroad — in policy failures, government corruption, mismanagement of public funds, economic instability, and rising social, ethnic, and religious tensions. The Iran war was promoted as a display of strength, but it has instead exposed how unprepared and isolated he is, with even foreign audiences responding not with fear, but with disbelief. The self‑proclaimed deal maker is now making excuses — blaming advisers, allies, and even military leaders for the Iran debacle, a pattern that exposes not strength but avoidance, deflection, and a refusal to take responsibility.
A family member of mine, a Medicare recipient who earned her coverage through decades of FICA contributions, recently learned that her prescription had changed — not because her doctor recommended it, but because the type she had been using became too expensive. She thought this issue had been resolved for seniors. So did I. But like millions of Americans, she discovered that even with Medicare, stability is not guaranteed. Across the country, families are rationing medications, delaying care, and watching costs rise while wages stay flat. These are not abstract debates — they are kitchen‑table crises.
The consequences of this presidency are felt in homes, workplaces, and communities across the country. Immigrants with citizenship voted for him, only to watch their undocumented friends and family members targeted. Public figures lent their names to policies that harmed the very communities they came from. Extremist groups attached themselves to the movement, contributing to the intimidation and violence that culminated on January 6. Millions of ordinary supporters — including people of color — did not hear the coded rally messages or foresee the consequences. Many supported him out of hope, frustration, or belief in the image they were sold — not because they wanted harm. But the movement they embraced has weakened democratic norms, endangered vulnerable communities, and placed the Republic at risk.
That is why the path forward requires more than outrage — it requires action. The Republic cannot be repaired by branding, bravado, or performance. It can only be repaired by citizens who stay alert and educate themselves, who separate truth from projection, and who vote for new leaders in Congress who will restore checks and balances, limit spending without oversight, and end the practice of bypassing the legislative branch; who demand accountability and transparency; who support institutions that check executive power; who reject projections of leadership built on personality and ego rather than skill, preparation, and service; and who insist on leaders capable of governing, not performing. These are not partisan acts. They are patriotic ones.
A president exposed leaves a Republic with a choice. Some supporters will remain loyal no matter what, which is why Americans who want to keep the Republic must outnumber them at the ballot box.
The future of the Republic will not be determined by the president. It will be determined by Americans — by citizens, voters, and patriots who choose truth over illusion, courage over comfort, and the Constitution over the cult of personality. At this crossroads, the power remains in the hands of the people — unless they choose to give it away. In the end, the Republic has never depended on the strength of one man. It has always depended on the strength of its people — the only force powerful enough to keep it.
Carolyn Goode is a retired educational leader and national advocate for ethical leadership and civic renewal. She writes about democracy, constitutional responsibility, and the role of citizens in strengthening public life.
Now in their ninth year, the Democracy Awards are the Congressional Management Foundation’s (CMF) flagship program recognizing excellence in non-legislative achievement on Capitol Hill. Founded in 1977, CMF is the premier bipartisan 501(c)(3) foundation dedicated to strengthening the First Branch by providing Members of Congress and their staff with hands-on, actionable support and essential resources that help them govern effectively, better serve constituents, and strengthen the institution. Across seven categories, these bipartisan awards honor Members of Congress and their staff for outstanding public service and contributions to strengthening the First Branch.
Each year, following an open self-nomination season, one Democratic office and one Republican office are recognized in each award category, along with four recipients of the Chief of Staff of the Year award. Applications for the 2026 season opened in late January, and throughout the spring, CMF conducted 47 interviews across 45 congressional offices from a pool of 154 applications. Winners were selected by an independent panel in May and will be honored at both a Winner’s luncheon in June and a formal ceremony in Washington, D.C. in July. Through this process, the Democracy Awards shine a light on the exceptional work taking place on Capitol Hill that too often goes unnoticed.
Award categories include:
Best of Constituent Service
Best of Constituent Experience in D.C.
Best of Constituent Correspondence & Engagement
Best of Innovation & Modernization
Best of Bipartisan Collaboration
Excellence in Congressional Management
Chief of Staff of the Year
Participation in the Democracy Awards reflects a belief that Congress can and should be a place of public service, operational excellence, innovation, and institutional stewardship.
The Democracy Awards program grew from CMF’s longstanding commitment to recognizing excellence across Capitol Hill. Before the Democracy Awards, there were the CMF Golden Mouse Awards, honoring congressional offices whose websites and social media presence went above and beyond to further transparency, accountability, and constituent service.
Over time, it became clear Congress needed a new kind of recognition, one that celebrated not only how offices communicate, but how they operate internally, serve constituents, manage teams, and strengthen the institution itself.
With that vision in mind, the Democracy Awards were launched in 2018 with the guidance of congressional staff, scholars, and former Members of Congress.
Last year's winners include:
Best of Constituent Service
Best Constituent Experience in D.C.
Best of Constituent Correspondence & Outreach
Best of Innovation & Modernization
Best of Bipartisan Engagement & Collaboration
Excellence in Congressional Management
“Too many times we hear the negative stories about Congress and Capitol Hill. And that's why CMF created the Democracy Awards, so that we shine light on all the good that’s happening,” said Jen Daulby, CEO of CMF, at the 2026 Democracy Awards Nominees Reception.
The 2026 Democracy Award winners will be announced this July.
David Nevins is the publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
