Since taking office in January, US President Donald Trump has put the rule of law to the test on several levels. How endangered is American democracy?
Three months have passed since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House. Three months in which the US is not only fundamentally changing domestically, but the foundations of democracy are also being shaken.
The renowned Washington-based Brookings Institution identified "dangerous cracks in the pillars of American democracy." Attacks on these pillars of democracy are occurring at several levels. Here are some examples:
The dispute with universities
"Harvard is useless, it teaches hatred and stupidity and should no longer receive funding." This post by Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform is the latest escalation in the dispute between the US government and the country's elite universities. The dispute was sparked by allegations that Harvard and other private universities in the US had not taken strong enough action against pro-Palestinian protests against the Gaza war, thus endangering Jewish students.
But the dispute has long since escalated - it is now about the overall political orientation of elite universities, which the Trump administration perceives as (far) left-wing. In order for them to continue to receive federal funding, the political views of students and faculty must be examined and admissions data for all students must be made available to the government.
Harvard University President Alan Garber has rejected these claims and demands. He sees freedom of research and teaching at risk. Garber stated that the university was not prepared to give up its independence or constitutionally guaranteed rights. "No government - regardless of which party is in power - should dictate what private universities can teach, who they can admit and employ, and what fields of study and research they can pursue."
Double game with justice
The rule of law and respect for court orders is one of the cornerstones of Western democracies - but this is precisely what is increasingly at risk in the US. First, the Trump administration has already ignored several court rulings and carried out deportations of migrants in violation of court orders.
The case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported to the notorious CECOT maximum-security prison in El Salvador, has become particularly well-known. The Supreme Court had ordered the US government to expedite Garcia's return to the US. Nothing has been done so far, federal judge Paula Xinis criticized in a hearing. Meanwhile, judges like James Boasberg, who oppose the Trump administration and block its planned deportations, are publicly reviled as "crazy left-wing radicals." Trump is threatening them with impeachment proceedings and would much rather replace these lawyers with judges more favorable to him.
At the same time, he is using the Justice Department to crack down on his critics. In his first weeks in office, he fired or transferred dozens of employees involved in the investigations against him. In February, he ordered the firing of all remaining federal prosecutors from the Biden era and gave senior government positions to several of his lawyers. One is now deputy attorney general.
Trump also pardoned almost all 1,600 people convicted of the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021. Pam Bondi, a party supporter and absolutely loyal to him, was appointed to the Justice Department.
The first restrictions on freedom of the press
Reporting critical of him has long been a thorn in Donald Trump's side. "They are corrupt and they are illegal," the US president said of major US broadcasters like CNN and MSNBC in a speech at the Justice Department in mid-March. Trump accused them of reporting negatively about him "97.6 percent of the time" and of being "the political wing of the Democratic Party." During the election campaign, he had threatened to revoke the licenses of undesirable broadcasters.
Trump has completely cut off funding for the American international media outlets Voice of America and Radio Liberty – they are facing closure. The Trump administration also revoked the AP news agency’s accreditation for the White House press room because it refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as “America’s Gulf,” as Trump had requested. Once again, a court ruled this inadmissible – and once again, the US government ignored it; AP journalists must continue to stay out.
Transformation of the state apparatus
When Trump declared in his State of the Union address that the "days of unelected bureaucrats in power" were over, he drew mocking laughter from Democrats. After all, it is Elon Musk, the presidential advisor who has never been democratically legitimized, who, starting in January, will have to make American administrations and authorities more efficient and stop unnecessary spending, at Trump's request. "They don't go to agencies and departments that do things they like. They go to public institutions that they don't agree with," criticized Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, in February.
Massive cuts were made to tax, environmental and health authorities, the Pentagon and other ministries. Diversity and social inclusion programs perceived as "left-wing waste of tax money" were banned, environmental regulations were reduced and social and health spending was drastically reduced. The development agency USAID and other agencies were disbanded - contrary to opinions that the US Congress should be consulted first.
DOGE is also suspected of using artificial intelligence to spy on government officials. At least one federal agency is said to have monitored internal communications in this way - allegedly with the aim of filtering out and firing employees who made disloyal comments to Trump. Critics of this approach also speak of a "political purge" of the state apparatus./ DW (A2 Televizion)
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