EDITORIAL: They were right—be afraid

We listened to the worries and heard the warnings. Our democracy is threatened, they said. The attempts to overturn elections and add restrictions to suppress voting are harbingers of the theft of our precious freedoms, they warned. Those of us who paid attention were concerned, yet in our comfortable Midwest communities nearly 1,000 miles away from the nation’s capital and epicenter of political chicanery, it was easy to think that the fears of democracy’s demise were overwrought. After all, our system of government was intact, with three branches still there to check and balance one another, and the Constitution in place to provide ironclad protection of our rights.

That was exposed as naive complacency last week by an act of autocracy by the elected president of the United States that was so blatant it would embarrass a tin-pot dictator of a degenerate nation.

At the direction of President Donald Trump, the Justice Department is creating a fund of $1.8 billion of taxpayer money to be given to people selected by Trump as rewards for their loyalty.

The details of this slush fund created by executive fiat are revolting enough—many of the recipients of the gifts of taxpayer money will be convicted criminals—but its most alarming aspect is its unmistakable signal that in the Trump administration there are no bounds and no respect for the norms and Constitutional limits of democratic government. The meaning is clear: The fundamental structure of the republic that is essential to keeping the power of government in the hands of the people, including the foundation of fair elections, is not safe.

The establishment of the fund to reward Trump loyalists was accomplished by sleight of hand. It started with President Trump filing a personal lawsuit against an agency of the government he leads, the Internal Revenue Service, for $10 billion in compensation for the release of one of his tax returns by an IRS employee in his first term. The lawsuit was frivolous, but it served its purpose. In a negotiation prior to the suit going to a court hearing, the president’s team, led by his former personal lawyer who is now the acting attorney general, engineered a “settlement” that resulted in the lawsuit being dropped in exchange for that $1.8 million fund. 

Set up with the stated purpose of compensating those who have “suffered weaponization and lawfare,” the fund would distribute payments to people chosen by a committee appointed by Trump.

Trump cronies who were involved with the attempt to overturn the 2020 election and in a number of cases were convicted of lawbreaking associated with that effort are reportedly already lining up with claims for seven-figure payouts of the money provided by U.S. taxpayers.

In an even more audacious affront to citizens who believe in the American democratic values

that are the bedrock of legitimate patriotism, money in the fund is expected to be paid out to people who were in the mob that took over the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in an attempt to keep Trump in office as president after losing the election.

According to records posted by Trump’s own Department of Justice, 1,583 members of the mob were charged with federal crimes, including such felonies as assaulting police officers with deadly weapons; 1,009 pleaded guilty and another 260 were found guilty by juries in trials. The U.S. Government Accountability Office reports that the assault on the Capitol cost taxpayers $2.7 billion.

The ongoing attempt by Trump allies to rewrite the history of that awful event glossed over as a patriotic exercise will not impress historians. The story of that insurrection will reside in history as one of the darkest days in the 250 years of the American republic. Trump’s “full, complete and unconditional” pardon of the insurrectionists in 2025 will be a footnote.

To add an official stamp of corruption to the slush fund settlement, a provision that guarantees Trump, his sons and his businesses protection from IRS audits forever is included.

Trump’s second term has featured a rolling display of dramatic and divisive political moments, but his outrageous fund gambit transcends politics. Surely, Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, independents, even faithful MAGA adherents will agree that a line that separates democratic principles from crass political opportunism has been crossed.

Republicans in the U.S. Senate made that clear on May 21 when they rebelled, angrily confronting the attorney general over the fund and in protest refusing to act on legislation demanded by the president.

Even in the unlikely outcome that the rebellion by members of Congress somehow prevents the fund from carrying out its purpose of rewarding those anointed by Trump, its message will remain clear:

No, the American democracy is not safe.