Newsweek: What a Trump Dictatorship Might Look Like
Newsweek
What a Trump Dictatorship Might Look Like | Opinion
Published Jun 07, 2024 at 5:27 AM EDT
Retired Judge and Author
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What if the United States was ruled by a strongman? It’s a fair question these days. Serious voices suggest a second term for former President Donald Trump might be a dictatorship.
A dictatorship would likely expedite some things Trump’s supporters presumably want, like the removal of illegal aliens. But it could easily produce things most of us presumably don’t want—like constantly proving our citizenship when in public, restrictions on free speech and press, suspension of elections based on false fraud claims, along with tax audits and economic ruin for enemies of the authoritarian state.
First, let’s see how it might work with illegal immigration. Many Americans think this is the country’s biggest problem. Some are ready for extreme action. So, freed from fussy legalities, how might Trump fulfil his vow to evict 11 million illegal immigrants?
It would be a big job. Expelling them would be like uprooting every resident from Maine, Delaware, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and six other states with small populations. But illegal immigrants aren’t all living together. You’d have to catch them, and, without the rule of law, it could get ugly.
Proving your citizenship would be vital. Only 40 percent of Americans have passports. “Nearly 15 million adult U.S. citizens don’t even have a driver’s license and 73 million Americans are under the age of 18 and mostly ineligible for a license. So, unless we all start carrying mandatory citizenship papers everywhere, millions of citizens—especially people of color—might get swept up in the manhunt.
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Chasing down 11 million people would require a lot of manpower. Trump continues to point to the National Guard as a resource. This assumes these part-time soldiers have nothing else to do. But we might also wonder how many Americans would enjoy trucks full of soldiers sweeping through the streets, questioning residents in long checkpoint lines, demanding IDs from pedestrians, and raiding homes and places of business without warrants. Life in America might start to look like Fort Worth meets Fallujah.
It would be impossible to give a fair hearing to millions of illegals and any citizens caught up by mistake. But then again, in a dictatorship, they would have no right to hearings or even humane incarceration, so they would go—the good, the bad, and some American citizens, too. But where? No country wants 11 million refugees dumped on their doorstep or even a portion of them. So likely, instead of fixing your roof, these people would languish in camps at taxpayer expense. And what about the American citizens who help them or even employ them? How could Trump stop the migrant flow without arresting them too?
If this is all okay with you, we aren’t done yet. What happens when a president with limitless power decides that criticizing the government is a crime? Incredibly, it has been done legally by acts of Congress in 1798 and 1918. So, what’s to stop Trump from doing the same and more? Some Americans might even enjoy seeing anti-Trump media outlets closed or handed over to the president’s supporters. And while he’s at it, Trump might hand a few other industries to friends—in the name of consumer protection, of course —while siccing the FBI on lesser offenders. Indeed, Trump already supports the FBI idea. Ultimately, those who fall out of favor with a presidential dictator could be quietly carried off—including discarded advisors.
Is the elimination of presidential elections inconceivable? For a president who has labored to baselessly undermine American confidence in elections it’s not hard to imagine Trump saying that certain elections must be postponed until fraud is rooted out of them. And we can imagine him taking his time about it too.
Our only backstop is the rule of law. But so far, the Supreme Court hasn’t recognized the danger. It might have prevented the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol if it promptly took up and repudiated Trump’s bogus election fraud claims rather than leaving them to the lower courts. The court ducked Trump’s disqualification under the Constitution by dumping the whole provision into the lap of Congress. In its most recent ruling, its conservatives showed no inclination to restrain anti-democratic gerrymandering.
If the court fails us now on the question of whether the president is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution, it may endanger our freedom. According to Trump’s lawyers in his pending Supreme Court case, presidents are free from any legal consequencesif they reject the rule of law—including impeachment. If the Court even partially agrees, the justices may turn more than just a flag upside down—it may turn our democracy on its head.
Thomas G. Moukawsher is a former Connecticut complex litigation judge and a former co-chair of the American Bar Association Committee on Employee Benefits. He is the author of the new book, The Common Flaw: Needless Complexity in the Courts and 50 Ways to Reduce It.
