racial / gender minorities .
• Members of the House and Senate are so terrified of oligarchs funding primary challenges against them that it ’ s been over 40 years since any major legislation has passed fulfilling the wishes of the majority of Americans . ( And now , many say they are worried about physical violence against themselves and their families if they fight Trump .)
• And our White House is today occupied by a billionaire who believes himself to be a king .
Trump ’ s attack on our democracy is an old story , played out repeatedly in various countries by every generation during the past two centuries . It follows an absolutely predictable pattern : You could call it a playbook .
In a democracy , there are four main elements involved in governance : Legislative , Executive , Judicial , and the Press ( the Fourth Estate ).
While Democrats over the past 50 years or so have focused their efforts on winning elections ( Legislative and Executive ), the billionaires who own the GOP have directed their attention to using massive amounts of cash to seize control of the unelected branches ( Judiciary and Press ), a job that can be done with money but doesn ’ t always require winning elections .
This is a pattern that ’ s been duplicated in multiple nations that have lost their democracies . Trump and Musk are simply following their instruction manual .
When Viktor Orbán took over Hungary in 2010 , he first set out to seize control of the judiciary and the media . He lowered the retirement age for judges , immediately forcing out 57 justices who he replaced with loyalists ( an echo of Mitch McConnell ’ s stealing two Supreme Court seats for Trump ).
Then , following the strategy announced last week by Trump and FCC Chair Carr , he sued multiple independent media outlets and attacked the funding of Hungary ’ s public broadcasting system , shifting control over both into the hands of friendly oligarchs .
With dissenting voices silenced in the media and judges willing to overlook his blatant violations of Hungarian election laws ( purging voters , gerrymandering , challenging the votes in oppositionfriendly districts ), Orbán was able to win every election since .
Vladimir Putin followed a similar script a few years earlier ; once he had control of the judiciary and Russia ’ s media , he was able to stomp all over that country ’ s new and fragile democratic institutions and intimidate the Russian parliament ( the Duma ).
In Venezuela , Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro followed a nearly identical script . As did Aleksandar Vučić in Serbia and Robert Viko in Slovakia .
And now Trump is trying the same , the GOP having seized control of the Supreme Court and much of the nation ’ s systems of elections .
He ’ s launched massive lawsuits against most of America ’ s major legacy media , and his new FCC head has begun investigations of NPR and PBS for accepting “ commercials .” Major media outlets are aggressively whitewashing his campaign against American democracy , while NPR and PBS could be brought to heel by Carr ’ s efforts .
Once these steps are complete and Trump , Musk , and their billionaire and theocratic allies are done gutting our government and cowing our media , it ’ s likely there will be no turning back .
Which is why Vladimir Putin is so confident that Trump will destroy our traditional alliances and align America with Russia , once he ’ s fully consolidated his power . He told Russian media over the weekend that it wouldn ’ t be long before Trump was as powerful as himself :
“ And all of them , you will see — it will happen quickly , soon — they will all stand at the feet of the master and will wag their tails a little . Everything will fall into place .”
However , there are two countries of note — and possible examples for America — that tried to go down this path but had it interrupted , throwing them back into democracy : Poland and South Korea . In Poland , Andrzej Duda ’ s Law and Justice Party failed to destroy the independent media , even though they ’ d succeeded in seizing the judiciary and rigged election rules to their favor . Because roughly 70 % of Poland ’ s media stayed in independent hands , his party lost power in the 2023 elections and Poland is now returning to democracy . Similarly , in South Korea their President Yoon Suk Yeol tried to declare a state of emergency and outlaw his opposition Democratic Party . He ’ d failed , however , to first seize control of South Korea ’ s independent media , so people showed up in the streets demanding his arrest ; he sits in prison today .
This all highlights the importance of independent media , from old-line publications like The New Republic to new but blossoming upstarts like Substack , along with all of us fighting hard to protect the neutrality of NPR and PBS .
The American Revolution was an allhands-on-deck affair , bringing together conservatives like Alexander Hamilton , liberals like Thomas Paine , military guys like George Washington , and intellectuals like Jefferson and Adams .
The Lincoln Project and other never-Trump movements show the commitment of true conservatives to democracy . Increasingly , liberals , military and law enforcement people , and intellectuals across the spectrum are joining the effort to salvage and then revive our republic . We are this generation ’ s Minute Men .
We ’ ve done this before ; we can do it again : It ’ s going to take a hell of a fight , though , given that we ’ re up against the richest men on the planet . But as long as we have an independent media and a fierce dedication to freedom , it ’ s not too late .
32 The Trial Lawyer