Opinion by Thom Hartmann
April 28, 2025
It didn’t happen in some shadowy back alley or under the cover of night.
It happened in broad daylight — in the heart of an American courthouse.
Federal agents, acting without even the decency of a signed warrant, stormed
into Judge Hannah Dugan’s courtroom on Friday morning and dragged her
away like a common criminal. No warning. No legal process. No respect
for the law she had spent a lifetime upholding.
But
they made sure the cameras were there, so America could see what they
were doing. Because this was not about justice. This was about terror.
This was a warning shot aimed directly at the beating heart of America’s judiciary:“Fall in line — or you’re next.”
In
that moment, the world’s oldest democracy lurched closer to the edge of
authoritarian rule. In that moment, America became a little less free —
and a lot more like the nightmare Vladimir Putin always hoped we’d
become.
The FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan last Friday without even having a legal arrest warrant; this is as outrageous and police-state illegal as an administration can get.
And
Pam Bondi’s performance Friday — after her federal agents swarm-raided
this county judge — wasn’t staged for the general public.
The real audience was a very small, select group: America’s judges.
Their message is very simple: “P--- us off, judges, and you could end up in prison, too.”
Nothing
and nobody else will be able to stop him, short of a military coup (and
he’s already decapitated the senior leadership of the military) or
unending demonstrations in the streets (demonstrators who may soon face
live ammunition).
That
is called dictatorship. Real dictatorship. Vladimir Putin-style
dictatorship where you are punished for the smallest deviation from
orthodoxy and can find yourself in prison or sued into bankruptcy if you
dare speak out in public.
It
appears more and more every day that Putin is Trump’s mentor, if not
his handler. Trump is doing everything he can, with help from a South
African billionaire, to destroy the historic American infrastructure
(which has been an example for the world for 250 years) and turn us into
the newest member of the dictators club, joining Russia, China, Saudi
Arabia, Belarus, Hungary, North Korea, and the rest of the fascist and
authoritarian world.
To get there, now that they’ve pacified every single Republican member of Congress (most recently, Don Bacon criticized Trump’s schizophrenic tariffs; a day later he started talking about retiring), they only have to seize control of the Judiciary, and then nothing except We The People will stand in their way.
Nothing. Will. Stand. In. Trump’s. Way. Except We The People. And he knows it.
Look at the striking parallels between Putin’s strategies and Trump’s actions:
From
installing Trump’s loyalists in the military and the federal police
agencies of the Department of Justice and FBI, to his open threats
against freedom of the press, to the GOP’s efforts to rig elections and
purge voters, Trump’s subversion of US democracy looks eerily familiar.
He’s taking pages directly from the autocrat’s handbook.
Trump
has openly quoted and praised autocrats like Putin and Hungarian
strongman Viktor Orbán, who has presented his leadership in speeches to
the GOP and CPAC as a model of an “illiberal” state.
Trump’s
not hiding his admiration for dictators; he’s flaunting it. And now
he’s putting the final stages of their script into action.
Trump’s movement toward authoritarianism follows “a known playbook. It’s unfolded in many other countries,” as journalist Anne Applebaum notes.
“These are democratically elected leaders who characterize themselves
or describe themselves as deserving of no opposition. So I am the true
Hungarian, or I am the only real American.”
In
a mere matter of weeks into his presidency, Applebaum says, Trump and
his allies “have managed to push America into that space somewhere
between (no longer) democracy and full-scale autocracy.”
The speed is shocking, but it shouldn’t be surprising. It only took Hitler 53 days
to completely end democracy in Germany. Others, like Lukashenko, Orbán,
Putin, Mussolini, Duterte, El-Sisi, and Erdoğan took longer (none
longer than two years), but you could argue that Trump has been working
at this project for 9 years now.
Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, who studies how democracies slip into authoritarianism, warns
that we’re heading toward what experts call “competitive
authoritarianism”: regimes that “constitutionally continue to be
democracies” with regular elections and legal opposition, but where
“systematic abuse of power tilts the playing field against the
opposition.”
Make
no mistake about what’s happening: Trump and his allies are
methodically working through a four-step process to establish complete
autocratic control, which will turn America into a one-man dictatorship.
1. Terrorize Congress:
Trump’s already largely succeeded here. Republican lawmakers now march
in lockstep with his agenda, afraid to oppose him even when their
consciences scream otherwise. The V-Dem Institute already warns that Trump’s actions are “extremely worrying” for American democracy.
2. Terrorize the Media: Trump has, as The Washington Post writes,
“relentlessly attacked the free press, another pillar that allows
democracies to stand above authoritarian regimes,” as political
scientists have noted. “He has echoed the worst dictators in history,
calling journalists the ‘enemy of the people.’” With help from Elon Musk
and other billionaires, he’s creating a media and social media
environment where truth itself is under assault. And last week his
administration threatened to arrest journalists and charge them with treason, an offense for which they could be executed.
3. Terrorize Judges and Lawyers:
What we witnessed Friday with the raid on a county judge and the arrest
of a retired judge earlier in the week is just the beginning. The final
step in this process will be intimidating the Supreme Court, and if
Trump’s minions can first terrorize the entire federal judiciary, it will be much easier to terrorize members of the Court itself, just like Putin and Orbán have done. This follows dangerous cracks in democracy’s pillars that experts have been warning about.
4. Terrorize Citizens:
Once the above institutions are captured and there’s no more
Constitutional opposition to Trump, the final phase begins: crushing
individual dissent through fear, persecution, and potentially violence.
This is the playbook Malcolm Nance
detailed in his work analyzing Putin’s strategies to undermine American
democracy and has already started against immigrants and student visa
holders. If history tells us anything, American citizens will be next.
Most of this is already in place; time is running out fast.
Trump
and his fellow fascists know their time is running out because
elections are coming in a handful of months and their popularity is
already crashing. They are at maximum power right now, and it is already
beginning to decline.
This
is another reason why they are pushing so hard to frighten judges, so
they can implement the final destruction of any Constitutionally-based
opposition to Trump’s one-man rule.
If
Trump can consolidate authoritarian rule as quickly as some other
historical dictators did, the complete (albeit hopefully temporary) end
of American democracy could happen very rapidly, possibly even in the
next few weeks or months. The window for action is closing fast.
But there’s still hope, because we’re still We The People.
As long as our protest movement continues to grow and demand a stop to
the damage Trump and Musk are doing to our democratic republic, we may
be able to slow or even stop this anti-American cabal and reclaim our
republic.
Our
protesting in the streets and reaching out to legislators may encourage
resistance within the media and courts, and might even inspire a
handful of Republicans to stand against this wannabe dictator.
When
democratic institutions fail, the last line of defense has always been
citizens willing to take to the streets. Ukraine provides the most
powerful recent example of how a determined populace can rescue
democracy from Russian-inspired authoritarianism.
During Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests
in 2014, over half a million people joined demonstrations in Kyiv to
defend democracy against creeping authoritarianism. Those protests
ultimately ended Viktor Yanukovych’s Russia-backed puppet regime (and
kicked out its Russian-funded American advisor, Paul Manafort, who later
became Trump’s 2016 campaign manager) and became known as the Revolution of Dignity.
Ukrainians stood firm in the streets despite violence and intimidation, and their courage changed history.
Ukraine’s later Orange Revolution similarly empowered ordinary citizens to engage in mass protests,
with
some lasting continously more than two weeks. This peaceful revolution
successfully defended Ukraine’s democratic aspirations against Russian
influence and showed the world that people power can overcome autocratic
manipulation.
Putin
fears democracy, particularly at his doorstep like in Ukraine and the
Baltic states. He knows that democracy is contagious, and any spread
near Russia, he believes, poses an existential threat to his autocratic rule.
That’s why he invaded Ukraine, and that’s why he spent millions on
social media trolls to support Trump’s election and his assault on our
democratic institutions.
As Ukrainian historian Hanna Perekhoda warns,
“If we let Russian authoritarians win, it will mean that the
authoritarian forces also in our countries, in the U.S., for example,
will grow stronger.”
If
this assault on the Courts (and the implied intimidation of all judges
including those on the Supreme Court) succeeds, and the media continues
to bow down, the only thing left will be us in the streets.
The time for half-measures, “very strong letters,”
and polite political disagreement has passed. We are watching in
real-time as our 250-year experiment in democracy is being dismantled by
a would-be dictator taking his cues from — or, at least, modeling his
presidency on — Vladimir Putin.
This
is not hyperbole. This is not partisan exaggeration. This is the stark
reality facing our nation today. Fascism and dictatorship are at our
doorstep.
Just last week, it was reported that Trump has now deported three American citizens, including a child taking cancer therapy.
Not
content to just pull student visas and ask them to leave the country,
Trump’s goons have been imprisoning students for writing OpEd articles
for weeks. And now they’re show-arresting judges.
The
arrest of Judge Dugan is not an isolated incident; it’s part a broader
strategy to intimidate the judiciary and consolidate power.
When
judges are arrested for upholding the principles of due process, the
very foundation of democracy is at risk. This moment demands vigilance
and action from all who value the rule of law.
The preservation of our democratic institutions depends on our collective response to such unprecedented challenges.
Buckle up, America. Democracy itself is on the line, and if the courts fall, we’ll be its last defenders.
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