THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION PUSHES ITS PLAN TO CREATE AN AUTOCRACY
Fearing defeat in November 2026, Trump is quickening his pace
The continued occupation of Minneapolis by armed force, the refusal to significantly reform ICE, and the numerous plans to deprive millions of Americans of their voting rights next November are ripping the cover off the Administration’s intent to establish an autocratic America. This path is being papered with lie after lie, bolstered by continued violations of the Constitution, and disregard for the 4th Amendment and human rights, especially justice and equality for all our people.
We are witnessing the next critical phase in that plan. We know what Trump intends. It is now crystal clear that only the American people, not our co-opted institutions, can save our country.
In campaigning in 2024, Trump told a friendly audience in West Palm Beach “. . . get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore.”
Here is what is happening to accelerate this lawless plan.
FIRST, the chaos in Minneapolis demonstrated again Trump’s methodology to cast all those who oppose him as threats to the country.
He used the cover of a military-equivalent occupation of the city ostensibly to carry out American law correctly, but he put no constraints on the violence his ICE assault teams could employ. ICE forces, armed with weapons used in urban warfare, wearing masks, acting on their own authority violently arrested people. They murdered two Americans in cold blood and shamelessly held a child hostage to compel his father to surrender. They blamed local police for not helping their illegal activities. ICE’s repression and brutality now is fixed in Americans’ minds. The aim: to intimidate. The Minnesotans, to their credit, refused and demanded ICE transparency (truth) and accountability (legal responsibility for their acts).
Transparency and Accountability are the solution to this repulsive behavior. Transparency is simple - provide the American people with truthful verifiable factual explanations. Accountability is having those officers not following the law investigated and judged for their behavior. Neither of these requirements has been met. In fact, they have been deliberately avoided. Lies and unverified claims are all Americans hear from federal authorities.
With truth and accountability, significant reforms are achievable. A secret, violent quasi-military force acting beyond the law will neither earn nor deserve public support and acceptance.
SECOND, DHS is not reporting truthfully on the percentage of criminals in the deported population. On October 27, 2025 DHS reported that more than two million people were deported (527,000) or self-deported (1.6 million) in 2025. The report states that 70% of the ICE arrests were “criminal illegal aliens charged with or convicted of a crime in the U.S.” This general, unsupported statement reinforces the message - a lie - that immigrants are a greater threat to America than American citizens and that the majority of deportees are criminals. Over decades, reports have shown that the rate of immigrant crime is less than that of U.S. born citizens.
A chart recently prepared by the Cato Institute covering a six week period in 2025, (October 1 to November 15) is a complete rebuttal of the DHS report. In that period, only 5 percent of individuals booked into ICE detention had a violent criminal conviction and 73 percent had no conviction. Moreover, for the first 6 month period in 2025, those with no convictions who were pending charges were 26 percent of the total, and those with no conviction or charge were 47 percent. Nearly two-thirds of those being deported had no criminal record.
By contrast, according to the report, under President Biden’s policies, only one in 10 arrests were individuals without any criminal conviction or charge. The obvious conclusion is that large numbers of U.S. residents without convictions are being deported. Doing so is preventing thousands of people from defending themselves at trial. This is to pretend that the deportation campaign is to lower crime while the real purpose is to remove people the Administration doesn’t want in the United States.
A large number of these people are people of color, allowed by a Supreme Court decision that is openly discriminatory. This is clear evidence that Trump, with enthusiastic support from Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, is issuing DHS reports that are propaganda. This impression that people of color are a major source of crime in the U.S. plays on American fears and is based on racism. The underlying argument from Trump is that more law and order is required, and that use of para-military, military and coercive law enforcement is absolutely necessary to accomplish those ends.
This also is further conditioning of the American public to accept the need for aggressive military intervention to maintain order and stability in the United States. Trump’s visa and travel freeze on 75 countries around the world, allegedly for economic or security reasons reflects his racial views and those of his extremist supporters. The visa freeze decision is the subject of a suit in NY that points out that the law has never prevented immigration on the grounds that one day the immigrant may need or receive non-cash public benefits or private charitable support. Under cover of assertions of fraud or crime, Trump is closing off immigration to the U.S. from people of color. We’ve been discriminatory before in our history. Trump is dragging us back to that injustice again because he wants a white America. Nothing reveals his racism more than the sleazy video he posted February 5 attacking the Obamas, a posting for which he said he would not apologize. He has a “history of sharing racist rhetoric” confirmed Reuters.
THIRD, Trump has in play a number of programs aimed at restricting the right to vote in the upcoming mid-term elections. He has two already in progress: (1) micro-gerrymandering of congressional districts to increase seats held by Republicans and (2) demanding from states detailed information on voters. The Brennan Center for Justice in a report updated February 6 summarizes the DOJ voting records campaign. Please click on the Brennan Center website to keep up with further developments.
Since May, the Justice Department has demanded that nearly every state and Washington, DC, hand over election-related records and data. The DOJ has sued Washington, DC, and 24 states for refusing to provide their statewide voter registration lists with driver’s license and Social Security numbers. 11 states have acquiesced. The DOJ has stated that it is sharing its data with DHS. Fulton County Georgia is suing to recover the voting materials seized by the FBI in a raid last week. (Note: I have drawn extensively from the Brennen Center for Justice report. For the sake of convenience I have not put quotation marks multiple times on the material but credit the Brennan Center entirely for this information except for the DOJ admission about sharing data with DHS and the material on the FBI raid in Fulton County, Georgia).
These attacks on the Constitution’s Election Clause are an open, deliberate nationwide effort to interfere with future elections and force states to adopt standards suitable to Trump’s wishes. Should control of elections by the Federal Government come about, autocracy will have made a giant step forward. Trump’s call to “nationalize” federal elections has caused blowback from Republicans as well as Democrats. Despite the obvious violation of the Constitution’s Election clause, Trump called on February 2 for GOP controlled states to adopt his agenda.
AUTOCRACY
Autocracy is not a subject familiar to many Americans. In my Foreign Service career overseas, I was witness to an autocracy coming into existence. The process is rather straightforward. It is a matter of attacking one opponent at a time until the weight of authority is so great that other opponents can be crushed or incorporated as seems useful. The most powerful weapon against autocracy is freedom of the press. Autocrats first destroy the free press. The usual method the government uses is to sue the media for alleged infractions and demand huge payments that intimidate, repress or destroy media outlets. Next comes the police - law enforcement. With control over this institution by mass firings and new leadership, what was or wasn’t the object of criminal investigation is the leader’s choice. Third comes the judiciary - judges are appointed or removed to shape a compliant judicial system. Fourth is the parliament or congress - ensuring that participation in the national assembly is under the election control of the leader, ending the legislature’s role as a public voice and converting it to the leader’s instrument of national control.
Then comes the military, purged of any “disloyal” officers, and with their careers subject to their own popularity with the leader, in addition to multiple points of control by the leader to different segments of the military corps, the military becomes an instrument, not a source of different views. Finally, the constitution is rewritten to ensure longevity for the leader. Using his extensive powers, often charismatic, the leader shapes the public mood to support or oppose the issues he picks. Elections sometimes are not prohibited in autocratic systems but used as the instrument of mass public control. Once in place, the autocratic leader often seeks lifetime tenure, always representing“the will of the people.”
Autocracy doesn’t strike in the middle of the night. It strikes in broad daylight appearing as a friend, someone who is needed right now to put things in the correct order for a bright future. By the time the leader has predominant power, the people have been groomed to give him as much authority as he wants. People who rise to oppose him find themselves under indictment for alleged crimes committed well in the past, on trial if needed for those infractions, and then disappeared from the public stage. The business community adjusts to the new power structure and supports it for wealth and influence. With all the institutions of the state on the side of the autocrat, the only solution longterm is revolution or some lesser but mass reversal of public support to expel the leader. More often than not this final process is violent.
We Americans still have it within our power to turn back to the democracy that we lived for, worked for, and died for over 250 years. Abraham Lincoln saw this, and he spoke about it. In January 1838, still a young lawyer, this is what he said,
“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”
That challenge has never been as close to us as in this moment. No one else will save our democracy - we are the only answer.