Will American Democracy Survive a Second Trump Administration?

Photo: Saul Loeb Agence France-Presse The Capitol in Washington

Stephanie Marin

Published at 0h00

• United States

This text is a response to questions sent by our readers to the American Election Mail team. To subscribe, click here.

QUESTIONS

Have American institutions protected democracy relatively well from Donald Trump's attacks during his first term? ? And above all, what is the current state of health of this supposed bulwark for a second Trumpist term 2024-2028? ? — Yves Blais

Will the countervailing powers hold up as Donald Trump takes back the reins of power? ? — Roland Alix

Assuming that Project 2025 is a newly elected President Trump’s bedside book, what is the possibility that he will take inspiration from it and try to foment a coup to hold on to power beyond 2028? ? — Louis Jolicoeur

American institutions held firm during Republican President Donald Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2021, but they have suffered some losses, according to experts in American politics consulted by Le Devoir.

While they are still standing, some things have changed significantly since Donald Trump first sat in the Oval Office, Pierre Martin, professor of political science at the Université de Montréal and researcher at the CERIUM.

According to him, the system of checks and balances (checks and balances), which allows each of the three branches of the American government — the legislative, the executive and the judiciary — to prevent certain actions of the others, has been unbalanced. This is notably the consequence of a judgment rendered on July 1st by the Supreme Court of the United States, which granted a certain form of immunity to the American president: the latter is now protected from criminal prosecution for his official acts, explains the professor. By strengthening the president's power, this judgment has also “reduced the ability of the courts to control” some of his actions.

Professor Martin has also noted a “sort of trivialization” of the process of impeaching a president during the Trump years. This posture has demonstrated that there is no real control over this matter that can be exercised on the executive by the House of Representatives and the Senate if the president also controls them.

According to researcher Julien Tourreille, member of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair’s Observatory on the United States, some of Trump’s failures demonstrate, on the other hand, that institutions have been able to fulfill their role as a bulwark.

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He backs up his view with examples, including this one: When Trump came to power in 2017, even though Republicans controlled both houses, he failed to pass his infrastructure bill or fund his “wall” between the United States and Mexico. And when he passed an executive order to ban travelers from Muslim countries, various courts swiftly blocked it. “There was a real push and pull,” and President Trump didn’t get everything he wanted to do, he says.

Professor Martin also notes that democratic norms—the unwritten rules that make democracies work—have taken a hit under Donald Trump. He cites the norms of peaceful transfer of power and acceptance of election results, as well as the one that dictates not inciting violence against political opponents.

“And that is already very badly damaged, and it is not going to improve.”

Will the institutions resist? ?

Are institutions now threatened by a Donald Trump reinvigorated by his second victory? ? He has already shown his colors, and some of his promises have a taste of authoritarianism: he speaks of remodeling the executive to extend the power of the president and even of firing civil servants who are not “loyal” to him.

This is also the main quality of those he has chosen as advisers, Mr. Tourreille indicates, “but they will not be able to significantly flout the rules of American democracy.” Checks and balances exist, and Mr. Trump will have to deal with the American Congress; at the time of writing, the color of the House of Representatives was not yet known, and a Democratic majority could put a spanner in the works. Obviously, if both houses were to be controlled by the Republicans, he would then have a freer hand.

The checks and balances of the courts remain, notes the researcher. If the Supreme Court is favorable to Trump—it now has a Republican majority and Trump has appointed three of its nine justices—”the lower courts will continue to do their work.” The newly appointed president has, however, also swelled their benches with his own appointments from 2017 to 2021, with more than 200 judges.

He points out that states can also exercise a kind of “vertical counterweight”: they have powers and the central government cannot decide everything for them. For example, when Donald Trump wanted to expel immigrants en masse, some declared themselves “sanctuary states” to protect those in an irregular situation.

Professor Martin points out that Donald Trump, during his first term, surrounded himself with experienced people who were committed to constitutional checks. They were called “the adults in the room,” he recalls, and they tempered his ardor. He will not hire such people this time, he predicts.

This text is part of our Perspectives section.

The businessman-turned-president has also announced his intention—whether he will follow through on it remains to be seen—to use the justice system as a weapon to prosecute many of his political opponents or even send them to prison. And he doesn’t even need to prosecute them, Martin notes: he just has to investigate them, “and that’s going to make their lives miserable.” “And that’s clearly anti-democratic behavior.”

Mr. Tourreille, however, is not convinced that Donald Trump has a real anti-democratic political agenda. He raises the possibility that it is rather a political strategy aimed at destabilizing the Democrats: while they criticize Trump for his attacks on democracy, he responds to the people that the “elites are disconnected” from real issues, such as the cost of living.

And some power also remains in the hands of the Americans: they can always correct the course during the midterm elections, in two years.

A coup d’état very unlikely

The 2025 Project is a political reform program concocted by an influential ultraconservative think tank. It preaches the politicization of the civil service and the expansion of presidential powers. It does not contain any direct reference to a coup, at least not in the traditional sense.

Both experts call a coup by Trump to cling to power beyond the end of his term in 2028 “improbable.” The U.S. Constitution imposes a two-term limit on a president. To grant Trump a third would require amending it, a process so arduous that few would dare to undertake it, Tourreille says.

Of course, he could have so-called constitutional arguments fabricated that could be upheld by a Supreme Court that favors him. But Professor Martin doesn’t believe that.

Trump will have four years, however, to put his pawns in place at key points in the FBI and at the head of the military, of which he is commander in chief. Even so, Mr. Tourreille does not believe that the military could end up in the pay of the president and help him stay in office. “That seems extremely unlikely to me.” The military’s role is to protect the Constitution. And “it would lose significant credibility by playing the armed wing of an aspiring dictator.”