A Republic, if we can keep it: Trump’s second term is testing America’s democracy

One year into a new, more aggressive White House administration, the United States finds itself navigating a reality that once occupied the fringes of political discourse: a president openly declaring his actions bound only by his own morality, a military unleashed on sovereign nations without congressional consent, and federal agents engaged in fatal, violent confrontations with American citizens on U.S. soil.

At the center of this profound shift stands President Donald Trump, who was returned to power a year ago and presides over an administration that has systematically dismantled norms and tested constitutional guardrails with a velocity that has paralyzed effective political opposition.

The Democratic Party, particularly its diminished contingent in the United States Senate, has responded with a mixture of outrage and impotence.

Their toolbox—rhetorical condemnation, symbolic impeachment efforts against subordinates, and stalled legislative maneuvers—has proven wholly inadequate against an executive branch that views traditional constraints as obstacles to be overridden

The result is a growing national crisis of accountability, where actions once deemed unthinkable are executed, litigated, and absorbed into a new, unsettling status quo.

A Catalog of Conduct: From Caracas to Minneapolis
The administration’s record, detailed in court rulings, agency statements, and on-the-ground reporting, forms a mosaic of challenges to legal and democratic order.

“Somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right,” said Martin Luther King, Jr. one day before he died. “And so just as I say we aren’t going to let any dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.”

Not since 1968 has the nation witnessed anything like the assault on protesters that Trump is threatening with his ICE Gestapo and DOJ witch hunts targeting political adversaries.