In this episode of the Village SquareCast, Dr. Danielle Allen, Harvard Professor, classicist, and political scientist, discusses this critical moment in the future of building a multiracial democracy and ways to guide us to the other side of our current crisis of faith in democracy. This program is part of the Created Equal and Breathing Free podcast series presented in partnership with Florida Humanities.
Nobody asked for soldiers on their streets. Yet President Trump sent 2,000 National Guard troops into Washington, D.C.—and now he’s threatening the same in Chicago and New York. The problem isn’t whether crime is up or down (it’s down). The problem is that governors didn’t request it, mayors didn’t sign off, and residents certainly didn’t take to the streets begging for troops. Yet here we are, watching as the president becomes “mayor-in-chief,” turning American cities into props for his reality-TV spectacle of power, complete with all the theatrics that blur politics with entertainment.
D.C. has always been uniquely vulnerable because of the Home Rule Act. The president can activate its National Guard without consulting the mayor. That’s troubling enough, but now Trump is floating deployments in Illinois and New York—states where he has no such authority. The principle at stake isn’t whether troops can reduce crime; it’s whether the federal government can unilaterally occupy a city whose leaders and citizens told it to stay away.
This federal overreach only sharpens the next point: the hypocrisy is so brazen it’s as if Republicans have stopped even trying to conceal it. These are the same politicians who shriek about “tyranny” whenever a Democrat signs an executive order. Think of the recent hair-on-fire theatrics over Obama’s DACA order, or the anguished howls when Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Accord. Yet when their president decides to send troops into cities during peacetime—something no modern Democrat has ever dared—they fall silent. The self-proclaimed guardians of local control and small government morph into cheerleaders for the biggest federal power grab in decades. Apparently, “limited government” only applies when a Democrat is in office.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t “help.” It’s overreach dressed up as public safety. Troops on the streets erode the principle of local self-rule, turning cities into backdrops for presidential theater. Once normalized, the presence of soldiers in everyday civic life stops feeling extraordinary. Today it’s D.C., tomorrow it’s Chicago, and after that—why not anywhere a president decides the optics are good?
History tells us how badly this ends and why normalizing troop deployments today only increases the risk of repeating those same mistakes. Kent State. Portland. Deployments that inflamed tensions rather than restored calm, leaving communities more fractured than before. And it isn’t just Trump who benefits. Future presidents—Democrat or Republican—will inherit these precedents. By staying silent now, GOP lawmakers are essentially handing unchecked executive power on a silver platter to the executive branch for whoever comes next.
And this isn’t just an American story. Putin deployed Russia’s National Guard to crush protests and reframe dissent as a security crisis. Erdoğan turned Turkey’s public squares into showcases of force during Gezi Park. Duterte blurred the line between policing and military occupation in the Philippines’ so-called “War on Drugs.” The playbook is clear: when leaders use troops as stage props, democracy is what gets trampled.
Faith communities and labor unions have already shown how broad coalitions can resist federal overreach. During the Trump administration’s travel ban, churches, synagogues, and mosques joined hands with airport workers and unions to demand change—proof that civil society has the reach and moral authority to fight back when government power goes too far.
If Congress won’t defend its role, civil society has to. That means:
Recent history shows this is possible. In Portland during the 2020 federal deployments, community organizations and legal advocates worked together to document abuses, challenge them in court, and sustain public opposition. Civil society must be prepared to do the same again.
Once we accept soldiers in the streets as normal, democracy itself becomes abnormal. Local governments fade into irrelevance, federalism shrinks to a slogan, and residents lose any say in how their communities are policed. That’s not “law and order.” That’s command and control—the stuff of Russia and Hungary.
So let’s not mince words: deploying troops into cities that never asked for them is an occupation, not assistance. And if GOP politicians won’t say it because they’re too busy polishing their conservative credentials by attacking wokeness on college campuses, civil society must. If it fails, the precedent of unilateral militarization will harden, leaving future presidents free to bypass communities entirely and putting the foundations of American democracy at even greater risk. Our answer has to be clear: Our streets are not your stage. Our safety, our voice, our choice. If Trump wants a show, he can stage another parade—not occupy our cities.
Robert Cropf is a professor of political science at Saint Louis University.
The Oval Office is set for a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store at the White House on April 24, 2025 in Washington, DC.
I commend news agency columnists who publish research-based and value-added (versus “my opinion”) op-eds on a daily or frequent basis. Submitting an occasional essay allows me time to ponder contemporary issues and explore the latest hot topic.
Since Aug. 6, Perplexity and Google have helped me examine over 30 documents to determine the best and worst U.S. presidential cabinets. Based upon academic studies and expert analysis, here are the results.
While determining cabinet strengths and weaknesses can be debatable, broad research-based consensus, historical investigation, and political science scholarship supports a generally accepted conclusion to judging the quality of a presidential cabinet. Some key components include: expertise, competence, experience, operational effectiveness, ethical standards, scandals, internal White House diversity, and the ability for cabinet members to challenge the president without repercussions.
Several other dimensions to assess cabinet performance across U.S. presidencies include: turnover rates, public opinion and approval ratings, vacancy rates, delays in appointments, effectiveness of cabinet members’ actions, and the ability to maintain stability and implement policy.
Five different and independent research studies summarized that U.S. presidential cabinets can be compared, contrasted, and evaluated based upon three factors: 1) stable, low-turnover, and well-staffed cabinets are generally seen as higher performing, 2) high-turnover and high-vacancy cabinets are associated with decreased effectiveness, and 3) appointment of experts and diverse talent correlates with improved policy outcomes and cabinet success.
The following presidential cabinets are widely regarded as among the best in U.S. history:
1. Abraham Lincoln’s (Rep., 1861-1865) cabinet—known as the Team of Rivals—with people like William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Edwin Stanton, challenged yet complemented Lincoln, helping with the Union’s victory and abolition of slavery.
2. George Washington’s (no political party, 1789-1797) cabinet included Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph, which Lindsay Chervinsky and other historians point to as a foundational model for effective executive leadership.
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (Dem., 1933-1945) cabinet included Frances Perkins (first female cabinet secretary) and Henry Morgenthau Jr., who helped shape and implement the New Deal policies and guide America through World War II.
Historical surveys cite the following presidential cabinets among the worst in U.S. history, predominantly due to issues of incompetence, corruption, and scandal:
1. Warren G. Harding’s (Rep., 1921-1923) cabinet is widely regarded as the worst of the worst due to the infamous Teapot Dome scandal, widespread corruption among cabinet members, and for exemplifying poor cabinet selection due to cronyism and misconduct.
2. Ulysses S. Grant’s (Rep., 1869-1877) cabinet was plagued by corruption, the Whiskey Ring scandal, the Crédit Mobilier affair, and unethical governance.
3. Donald J. Trump’s (Rep., 2017-2021 and 2025-2029) cabinets have been widely criticized for their lack of qualifications, record-setting high turnover rates, appointments based on loyalty over capability, conflicts of interest, stark public dissatisfaction, and poorly vetted appointees, but approved by Republican Senators.
Research is replete that turnover rates of presidential appointments are an indicator of presidential performance and a concrete indicator of stability. High cabinet turnover has significant negative consequences for governance and leadership effectiveness, such as loss of institutional memory, loss of expertise, lack of cohesion, and stalled initiatives.
Frequent cabinet turnover has serious consequences. It disrupts policy formation, diminishes efficiency, harms morale, undermines public trust, and weakens agency autonomy and long-term strategic capabilities.
During Trump’s first presidency, a record turnover occurred with 20 of his 24 cabinet picks either quitting or being “de-hired” by Trump. Furthermore, 92 percent of the 65 people who were on Trump’s 2017-2021 “A Team” left their appointed office.
During the first 200 days of Trump’s 2.0 administration, he’s already had turnover in seven key positions, notably Cameron Hamilton, Carla Hayden, Elon Musk, Shira Perlmutter, Vivek Ramaswamy, Drew Snyder, and Mike Waltz. Trump also had to withdraw five cabinet nominations from Senate consideration (U.S. News & World Report).
From a cabinet member’s perspective, Trump’s two attempts at being president are near the bottom of 47 presidencies. Rigorous historical research would suggest this does not bode well that the 2025-2029 time period will be successful.
With all of the chaos, uncertainty, dictatorial behavior, flip-flopping, and 192 executive orders, 47 memoranda, and 79 proclamations brought to the table by Mr. Trump since Jan. 20 and controversial cabinet member actions, the proverb “hope springs eternal” has to be Americans’ guide to find optimism. A second proverb—“you reap what you sow”—is before Mr. Trump and the GOP Senators who approved the cabinet nominations.
Let’s face reality. A cabinet that ranks historically low with respect to competence, ethical standards, experience, and other competency criteria makes the U.S. vulnerable to a multitude of operational inefficiencies, policy blunders, ethical mishaps, scandals, conflicts of interest, conspiracies, and foreign intervention. Americans are in a situation where only time will tell the outcome.
creative image of Chantal
In 1972, I taught at a Boston prep school where one of my students, Chantal, had been sent from Haiti by her privileged family to complete her secondary education. She was poised, serious, and ambitious. But what I remember most was her fear — and her warning.
"You Americans don't know how lucky you are," she would say, speaking in hushed tones about people who disappeared without warning under Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier's brutal regime. She'd describe how neighbors would simply vanish. Not political activists, just ordinary people who'd said the wrong thing to the wrong person.
"The smart ones learn to be quiet," she'd say, "but quiet people can't save a country." Even the privileged, she explained, were not immune when danger lived in silence.
Fifty years later, watching American democracy strain under unprecedented pressures, I finally understand what Chantal knew instinctively: that constitutional protections mean nothing without the institutional will to enforce them, and that authoritarianism rarely announces itself with jackboots. It arrives quietly, through normalized corruption and rewritten rules.
The Supreme Court's July 2024 ruling in Trump v. United States granted presidents broad immunity from prosecution for official acts, a dramatic expansion of executive power. Combined with the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which the ACLU describes as authored by "140 former Trump staffers" as "a roadmap for how to replace the rule of law with right-wing ideals," and research showing the US is on track to lose its democracy status within six months, we're witnessing a fundamental challenge to American democratic institutions.
This moment feels unprecedented to many Americans. But Chantal would recognize it immediately, and so should we if we remember our own history correctly.
The Gilded Age We Never Fully Left Behind
Americans often invoke the Gilded Age as a period of entrepreneurial greatness, but we rarely reckon with its systematic brutality. From 1870 to 1900, government wasn't captured by wealthy interests — it was designed by them, for them. Railroad barons wrote transportation policy. Steel magnates controlled labor law. Political machines brokered democracy behind closed doors while children lost limbs in unregulated factories.
The parallels to today are instructive. According to inequality researchers, the top 0.01% of families now control 10% of the country's wealth, surpassing even Gilded Age levels. More concerning is institutional capture—contemporary movements systematically placing allies throughout the federal judiciary, election systems, and regulatory agencies.
The difference is scale and sophistication. Where Gilded Age corruption was often transactional---direct bribes, patronage jobs---today's influence operates through legal structures: dark money networks, regulatory capture, and constitutional interpretation that
This is what Chantal recognized instinctively. The real danger isn't dramatic coups, but the quiet rewriting of rules. In the 1970s, Haiti's Duvaliers maintained a constitutional facade while ruling through fear and patronage, illustrating how formal protections can be meaningless without genuine institutional safeguards.
Unlike the original Gilded Age's limited voting rights, today's crisis unfolds within the context of universal suffrage. This makes the current moment both more concerning and more hopeful—democratic tools are accessible to far more people than robber barons ever faced.
But there's a crucial lesson from that earlier era: what feels permanent can change rapidly when enough people refuse to accept it as usual.
When Silence Broke
The Progressive Era didn't begin with Theodore Roosevelt's "Square Deal" or with landmark legislation. It started with journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens who refused to accept that inequality was natural or that corruption was inevitable. Ida Tarbell exposed Standard Oil's monopolistic practices through rigorous investigation. Jane Addams created models for how government could serve public welfare rather than private interests.
These reformers understood something crucial: democracy isn't a system you inherit. It's something you build, continuously, through institutions that distribute power rather than concentrate it. Their innovations laid the foundation for 20th-century American governance, including antitrust law, workplace safety regulations, public health systems, and civil service reforms.
What We're Building Now
Today's democratic innovations are emerging at the state and local level, where federal gridlock has created space for experimentation. From ranked-choice voting to participatory budgeting to proportional representation, communities are testing reforms that distribute power more broadly and create incentives for coalition-building rather than polarization.
More significantly, a new generation of reformers is tackling structural problems the Progressive Era left unfinished, developing frameworks for constitutional democracy and building movements that don't rely on traditional party structures.
Chantal would have understood the fragility of these experiments. In Haiti, she'd seen how quickly democratic innovations could be dismantled when power was concentrated in the wrong hands. "It's not enough to build good things," she might have said, "you have to build them strong enough to survive the people who want to tear them down."
But unlike the Progressive Era's reforms, which ultimately required federal legislation and presidential leadership, today's innovations face a more challenging landscape. The Supreme Court's current composition appears hostile to voting rights and campaign finance reform. Congressional gridlock makes it nearly impossible to pass major legislation. And the information environment makes building consensus around shared facts increasingly difficult.
The Work of Democracy
Chantal understood that democracy isn't passive; it's something you do continuously. Progressive Era reformers created new forms of democratic accountability for industrial capitalism; however, we now need innovations designed to address today's challenges, including global capital flows, digital systems, and political polarization.
What Chantal Would Say Now
I think Chantal would recognize both the danger and the opportunity in this moment. She understood that authoritarianism succeeds not only through dramatic coups but through the gradual normalization of corrupt practices, and that it can be stopped by people who refuse to accept that normalization.
I wonder what Chantal would make of Americans who dismiss concerns about democratic backsliding as "alarmist." She'd recognize that dismissal. It's precisely what privileged Haitians told themselves right up until the moment their privilege couldn't protect them anymore.
She also understood that privilege provides no protection when institutional guardrails collapse. In Haiti, wealth and status held little value when the rule of law was absent. In America, constitutional rights mean nothing without institutions willing and able to enforce them.
But Chantal also knew something else: that people who understand the fragility of democracy can become its most effective defenders. She didn't flee Haiti because she was powerless. She was sent away precisely because her family understood how quickly any remaining freedoms could vanish entirely.
That's the choice facing Americans now. We can assume our democracy is self-sustaining, or follow the example of Progressive Era reformers and people like Chantal, who understood that democracy is something you build, not inherit.
The work begins with refusing normalized corruption. Support the Fair Representation Act, proportional representation, ranked-choice voting, and participatory budgeting. Contact your representatives about the Freedom to Vote Act. Join organizations like FairVote, RepresentUs, or the Participatory Budgeting Project. The innovations essential to preserving democracy are happening now. The question is whether we'll scale them fast enough.
You Americans, Chantal might say today, still don't know how lucky you have been, but you might be starting to learn.
Edward Saltzberg is the Executive Director of the Security and Sustainability Forum and writes The Stability Brief.
The administration’s deployment of the military in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., on a limited basis tests using the military to overthrow a loss in the midterm elections. A big loss will stymie Project 2025, and impeachment may perhaps loom.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the president have said L.A. is “prelude to what is planned across the country,” according to U.C. Berkeley law professor Erwin Chemerinsky. Chemerinsky reports that on June 8, “Trump said, ‘Well, we’re gonna have troops everywhere.’” The Secretary of Homeland Security recently announced that in L.A., “Federal authorities were not going away but planned to stay and increase operations to ‘liberate’ the city from its ‘socialist’ leadership.”
Additional Democratic-controlled cities appear to be targeted.
The president claims that protestors “hate” America. He inveighs against an “enemy within,” including accusing former President Barack Obama of treason. The president roused soldiers at Fort Bragg against his political opposition. MAGA hats were sold on the base. In renaming bases, he seeks to honor Confederate generals who rebelled against the Constitution. The president attacks and demeans the judiciary.
Congress has ceded its power to check the president. The Speaker of the House has declared that California’s governor should be tarred and feathered, a process that can cover a person with hot tar.
Here’s how the election might be undermined.
The president’s executive order on elections, among other provisions, bars counting absentee and mail-in votes that arrive after election day, greatly increases proof of citizenship requirements, and limits permissible voting systems. At least two courts have so far invalidated a number of the requirements, including that absentee and mail-in ballots not be counted after election day. The president now threatens another executive order that would bar mail-in voting altogether.
Confusion, delay, and disorder can arise with the legal status of his executive orders, having them potentially tied up in court or subject to conflicting or unclear court rulings. The president’s call for an atypical reapportionment in Texas can trigger reapportionments in red and blue states that may be tied up in court, adding to the disorder. The Justice Department’s threats of criminal charges against election workers add to the disruption.
Claiming a failed election, red state legislatures or the president, purportedly exercising emergency powers, throw out some or all of the opposition’s votes for U.S. representatives and senators. This way, they install a large Republican majority. The Supreme Court rules these actions unconstitutional. The president and his supporters defy the Court’s orders. As massive protests erupt, the administration completes the overthrow with in-place and additional military under the Insurrection Act, potentially supplementing it with a Brown Shirt-like army of newly recruited 18 to 25-year-old purported ICE agents. Some 15 to 18 million people, who were seemingly willing to support a coup if the president had lost the 2024 election, stood by.
James G. Blaine, the Speaker of the House of Representatives between 1869-1875, observed that by 1869, “Those who anxiously and intelligently studied the political situation in the South could see how unequal the contest would be and how soon the men who organized the rebellion would again wield the political power of their States—wield it lawfully if they could, but unlawfully if they must; peaceably…but violently if violence in their judgment became necessary.” The like-minded progeny of these people and that of other like-minded people now control the national government. They are relentless. They view their opposition as spineless cowards.
In 1875, General of the Army William Tecumseh Sherman wrote to his senator brother, “Outside help sooner or later must cease, for our army is ridiculously small, in case of actual collision. It is only the Memory of the War Power that operates on the Rebel Element now. They have the votes, the will, and will in the End prevail.”
Today, our army is not “ridiculously small.” Its oath is to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. If the administration issues unconstitutional orders to the military, generals, judges, and the American people must be decisive and relentless in defending the nation’s Constitution. As Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg, we must “highly resolve…that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Daniel O. Jamison is a retired attorney.
