Going bonkers: MAGA claims our republic is not a democracy anyway

 Going bonkers: MAGA claims our republic is not a democracy anyway so his power grabs are OK?Poli sci 101: we are both a republic and a democracy, called a representative democracy. It is still based upon the vote of the people. It is not either/ or. Trump supports neither. He thinks and acts like an autocrat, thinking he can do whatever he wants, including ignoring or controlling the other two branches of government and attempting to overturn or control ballot results he does not like. 

Benjamin Franklin defined the new Constitutional form of government as a Republic..with a warning, "If we can keep it." I just ran across a fb posting by a MAGA loyalist that claimed a republic is not a democracy. Sorry, Ben, we are both a republic and a democracy: We are a representative democracy. My guess this"we are a republic; we are not a democracy" was a bonkers attempt to rationalize a power grab by a president as being ok, approved by the Constitution. It is not okay.  The subversion of our form of a republic/representative democracy is underway in the Trump regime, as administration officials attempt to turn a republic de facto into an autocracy in front of our half-open eyes. That is open defiance of the definition of "democracy" itself as rule by the people, which means, either through their elected representatives or directly by popular vote. . In fact, the standard definition of a republic is it is a form of representative democracy. In theory,  a republic is still responsive to the people who elect their representatives. We have a representative democracy. That is poli sci 101.  What Trump is trying to do is have America be neither a republic nor a democracy. He is trying to be an autocrat...rule by one, himself, treating his executive orders as laws to be obeyed,  ignoring or controlling Congress and the lower judiciary, while subverting the election processes.     He played a major role in the attempted coup on January 6 to overturn the 2020 election. And now he ordered state GOPs to gerrymander states to get more Congressional seats for his party in 2026 and to diminish minority racial representation.

Getting in the poli sci weeds:

In America, it is both: a republic and a democracy per this learned discussion.“Democracy” vs. “Republic”: Is There A Difference? | Dictionary.com " For all practical purposes, it’s both. In everyday speech and writing, you can safely refer to the US as a democracy or a republic. If you want or need to be more precise in referring to the system of the US, you can accurately call it a representative democracy. And should you need to be exacting? The US can be called a federal presidential constitutional republic or a constitutional federal representative democracy." James Madison tried to define a republic as being different than a democracy (which he defined as mob rule), but in Federalist 39 he said that the republic still had to get its authority from broad masses, not a knot of elites  . Another of many other sources: We are a blend of both a republic and a democracy: Was the United States Founded as a Republic or a Democracy? - Colonial Williamsburg

 If there was anything our founders feared, and the reason for the revolution, was to keep America free of a tyrannical king...or any other tyrannical ruler. Madison feared a resurgence of a king-like ruler and was instrumental in shaping  a constitution to guard against that: dividing power among three branches with checks on each other. There was an anti-emoluments clause to head off bribery.. To add more balance, the Bill of Rights was added as a compromise to protect citizen rights.  A case can be made that  Trump can be seen as a wannabe tyrant, uprooting even those fundamental barriers to give himself the power of a tyrant/King. That case follows:

 The Trump regime pretends it is still a democracy when it is doing what it can to subvert it. and to remove the democratic elements or even ignore the support of the broad masses because it has such power. Nevermind the representatives elected by voters are forced to represent the interests of the wannabe dictator and not the interests of their constituents who elected them. Nevermind the Trump regime uses its DOJ as an instrument for him to rule by fear and favor. Never mind the independent judiciary rulings Trump does not like are placed on ice as Trump awaits appeals from "his" 6-3 Supreme Court. 

Trump's own chief of staff, Susie Wiles, was quoted as saying that Trump believes" he can do whatever he wants" in an interview published by Vanity Fair.  Of all the quotations in that interview, that one was the one that was the most frightening. We voters should not be shocked that a person occupying the Oval Office with that kind of megalomaniacal attitude fancies himself a dictator and acts like an autocrat by abusing his power. He is getting away with it so far. MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: List of particulars: How Trump has consolidated his dictatorial powers in eleven months

. A unitary government, the purpose and the blueprint for enactment by Project 2025,  is for a president to act like the legislature and judiciary, as well as the administrator,all rolled into one big hammer..  Unitary executive, the term used by proponents of Projet 2025, is just a fancy word for autocracy/dictatorship. It is  just like what CPAC  admores about Hungary and this conservative action pac promoted it by even holding their meetings there.. The form of the three branches might still exist in name and form, but the control of them actually lies in the hands of a president who ignores the rule of law, abuses power, instills fear with threats against anyone who fails to comply, and appoints sycophants in place of nonpartisan technocrats to keep the administration disciplined. The author of Project 2025, Russell Vought, is now in charge of federal employees, forcing resignation or firing those not loyal to Trump. Trump has already become the de facto dictator who issues clearly unconstitutional executive orders that he expects to be treated like a law passed by a democratic process, which they are not. 

The rule of law is being replaced by the rule of Trump. He appeals lower court rulings he does not like to "his" 6-3 Supreme Court ad nauseam and ad infinitum. He has virtually neutered the power of lower courts, as "his" Supreme Court overturns lower court rulings on a regular basis, often using a shadow docket that issues rulings without any hearings or public airing of the issues. What Trump has threatened to do to the First Amendment is a whole other subject, but his attempt to sue and force broadcast media to bow to his demands under the threat of losing their licenses at the hands of a compliant head of the FCC is the most recent example of attacks on press freedom this fall. Due process and minority rights are attacked daily in immigration and anti DEI measures and gerrymandering he himself orders.

Supreme Court Shadow Docket Tracker — Challenges to Trump Administration Actions | Brennan Center for Justice

The Supreme Court uses its "

shadow docket" for emergency rulings, often with little explanation, impacting major issues. 

Key Examples & Issues per an AI search::

• Immigration: Allowing the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans in Noem v. National TPS Alliance.
• Religious Freedom: Blocking New York's COVID-19 capacity limits for religious services in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo.
• Environmental Policy: Reinstating a Trump-era rule limiting state authority over river contamination in Louisiana v. American Rivers.
• Death Penalty: Halting lower court injunctions to allow executions, such as in Purkey v. Ohio.
• Executive Actions: Enabling the Trump administration to enforce its policies, like passport rules in Trump v. Orr and workforce reduction plans.
• State Laws: Allowing Alabama's racially gerrymandered congressional map to stand temporarily. 

What the Shadow Docket Is:

• It refers to emergency applications and summary orders decided quickly, often without full briefing or oral arguments.
• Decisions are usually unsigned and lack detailed reasoning, but have immediate real-world effects. 

Why It Matters:

• The Court has used it at an increasing rate, bypassing its normal, transparent process.
• It allows the Court to make significant policy shifts (e.g., on abortion, environmental rules, immigration) without granting full review. 

• Supreme Court Shadow Docket Tracker — Challenges to Trump Administration Actions | Brennan Center for Justice

  Oct 20, 2025 — The Supreme Court's shadow docket is a procedure for hearing emergency applications. Shadow docket cases typically inv...

  

  Brennan Center for Justice

  

List of particulars: How Trump has consolidated his dictatorial powers in eleven months

List or particulars: How Trump has consolidated his dictatorial, king-like powers in eleven months. In the Declaration of Independence, the colonists listed their objection to the king acting like a tyrant. Here is my list. This has been a firehose of many different steps he has taken to destroy the fundamental foundations of our Constitutional democracy...so much so, those of us supporting democracy are so involved in the outrage du jour, we lose track of the total picture and get caught up in the news story of the day.  Update 1/20/2026: Update 1 20 2026: A comprehensive report of how Trump and conservative GOP leaders are turning America into a unitary form of governement. (Unitary form: all power to the executive with eliminating checks and balances of the legislature and judiciary...( That in my view is a polite description of an autocracy) Trump Tests Presidential Power: Venezuela Operation, Iran Bombing and More - The New York Times 

Trump is in the process of building his own paramilitary force. He is invoking wartime powers to deport people without due process, even suggesting that American citizens may be sent to foreign prisons. He has deployed National Guard troops to cities over the objections of local officials. That one is still being contested in the Courts, though lower courts have generally ruled against the Trump position. Trump has signaled that he is open to invoking the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that allows the president to deploy the military in the United States. And he has claimed, without legal justification, that he has the right to order the military to summarily kill people suspected of smuggling drugs on boats off the coast of South America.  This one is the hot one on the burner now.

The  firing of the JAGs is just one element of a broader purge of the military, which started at the beginning of Trump’s second term in February, five former defense secretaries, including James Mattis,

In fact, we were warned that this and other purges would happen in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. 2025 was a blueprint for two purposes: rule by white Christian nationalists and enable it by making the president a virtual dictator by replacing executive branch civil servants with political appointees pledged to the cause.  So far, 2025 is on track. The telltale phrase was the destruction of DEI throughout, and the proponents were devotees of a unitary form of government with all power in the executive branch. The chief author of 2025 was Russell Vought, whom Trump appointed as Director of Management and Budget ( and personnel) with the power to carry out the purges. The 2025 plan was to do away with supervisory civil service positions and make the positions political. That was not done, and instead, positions and whole agencies were eliminated in addition to purges. All during 2025, the Heritage Foundation was vetting for ideological purity the potential appointees to replace civil servants. All has not gone as planned since the incompetence of replacements has resulted in amateurish mistakes that have backfired on the administration itself. https://thehill.com/opinion/5059017-trump-cabinet-nominees-unqualified

Trump views himself as the final arbiter of the legality of anything he does. An executive order he signed in February says, “The President and the Attorney General’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties. No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law.” For greater detail, go to MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: How Trump is destroying the rule of law, replacing it with the rule of Trump

Trump is suggesting that the Federal Communications Commission should revoke the licenses of television broadcasters that give him too much “bad publicity” and is suing major newspapers and networks.  The 6-3Trump Supreme Court is expected to rule that all independent agencies will no longer be independent and will be comprised of the partisans of the president.  That will affect the FCC, as well as the FDA and FTC.

Trump has pressured the Department of Justice to target, indict, and destroy those he considers to be his political enemiesTrump has pressured the Department of Justice to target, indict, and destroy those he considers to be his political enemies. Ask Letitia James and Jim Comey how those attempts have bit the dust.  Nonetheless, even the act of charging it regardless of the outcome in courts is a painful hammer. To say this is an abuse of power is an understatement.

Trump has usurped the Congressional powers to levy across-the-board non-security-related tariffs. The Supreme Court has heard the arguments, but there is no hurry to decide. Cosco has filed a heavyweight lawsuit on this matter, but in the meantime, the tariffs continue.  This is an abuse of power that has repercussions on consumer affordability and even the ability of some to stay in business.  This one may not set well with the conservative members of the Supreme Court who are, in their ideological hearts, free traders.

Trump has violated the civil rights of migrants with warrantless detentions and racial profiling. Colorado has gotten a lower Federal court decision to stop the ICE practice...but no doubt the 6-3 Supreme Court may weigh in. Federal judge restricts how ICE can arrest people in Colorado, calling past conduct ‘unlawful’ - The Journal

What is MAGA? Whatever you call it, it is not conservative, but something else.

 Reaching back into a college course way before MAGA even existed,  this political science major has always been confused about how political movements are tagged by the media.  Here is my case for calling MAGA radical reactionaries, but they are definitely not conservatives.

Political scientists did and will write books and more books with the rise of Trump and MAGA, and tag this as a conservative movement. Recently, its more radical nature was branded "right-wing" by some liberal journalists. Radical and reactionary are brands that are not in current usage, but join them together, and they are quite descriptive of the movement.  My observation is that MAGA is an extremely revolutionary and dramatic change from the way the majority governed in the past. It uproots the very nature of the purpose of the Constitution which was to protect us from dictators and tyrannical kings, setting up a balance between three equal power centers with a degree of control over each other, while keeping an all-powerful federal government from trampling on the rights of individuals who might dissent.   

That is not the nature of MAGA, which is a radical change from the kind of governance my father and those like him supported. Back in my olden days growing up in Oklahoma, I considered someone conservative to be someone who did not want change without serious thought and debate. They usually opposed change that was any more than tweaks, keeping to the past very cautiously and reluctantly dealing with and updating present needs and conditions. That was my father. Liberals, even liberals plus called "progressives", were not terms often used, but are now in common usage. They have become more or less "whatever is ok" if it is needed and works, with less conformity to the past and a willingness to make more fundamental changes using government to suit the times. The radicals, if we called them that in political science jargon,  were those who wanted to upend the old order in favor of some different political or religious beliefs and install entirely new methods and systems.

My father hated "extremists", the term he used to describe radicals, who were going off on tangents, such as the Christian evangelicals rising in power in Tulsa on the one issue of "choice" while feathering their pastoral nests. My parents were pro-choice, and viewed with disgust hate mongers like the Klan, and, socialists and communists. Some who wanted to turn back the clock to days in the past and reject moderate change or the status quo were called "reactionaries" by political scientists in the spectrum of political ideologies. Dad was a district telephone company executive with a major corporation. They would never have considered themselves intellectuals, but they were, and well-educated ones, too. My parents may have voted for FDR and the New Deal through two terms, but then, when they thought FDR had gone too far, they reverted to traditional Republican voters in the next two elections, even in the midst of World War II.  My parents passed away in the mid-1980s, but if my father were alive today, I am pretty sure he would never have voted for Donald Trump whom he would have called an extremist. My guess, they would have become independents who quietly voted for Biden.  Trump was everything my conservative father disdained.

 The MAGA movement itself contains those who want their own agenda to be implemented, whether it is to roll back the gains of the civil and women's rights movement that began in the 1960s and/or to boost the priorities of the white nationalist evangelical Christianity with their anti-DEI edicts. This form of evangelical Christianity is dominating old-time mainstream protestant Christianity, and Pope Leo, who still keeps the Beatitudes and the Golden Rule in the forefront.  This support of the evangelical branch of Christianity is a movement in itself,  a reaction to modern social norms and a desire to return to the days of the 1950s.

 Compromising with anything to the governmental and ideological left of MAGA's radical vision is a dirty word for MAGA, and they are bent on shoving their priorities and beliefs down the throats of those who do not agree and using government power to execute a plan to do so in Project 2025, which is playing out in domestic politics and governance before our very eyes.  This is about as radical as we have seen, at least in my memory.

Use of violence and force, militarization, federalization in defiance of state's rights, de facto destruction of the checks against a strong man leader, will get their MAGA agenda done, this Trump regime thinks.  This is not conservatism: it is a radical change in the way we have been governed,  and one with the support of an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the voters who remain personally loyal to Donald Trump and his actions and goals, no matter how he behaves.  It is not a gradual, carefully considered change, a tweaking of values and methods, but rather rapid and fundamental changes that create a future of conflicts, as this very large minority butts heads with a slowly awakening majority. The MAGA takeover is not a gradual work in progress, but a nine-month blitzkrieg so far. It is carrying out the agenda of some powerfully placed ideologues. It is a reversion to the 1950s pre-civil rights days and some would say to the pre-depression days of the early 1930s, no social security, Medicare, Medicaid, or any other government provision of social services to those struggling in a modern society and economy. Government must be pared back to the size and objectives of the 1920's say the most radical of the radicals. 

 Stephen Mlller and  Russell Vought are the most powerful influencers surrounding Trump. Neither is elected, but Miller is a deputy chief of staff, and Vought is the controller of personnel as Director of Management and Budget. In my lexicon, they are radical reactionaries, and they are calling the tune of their willing and accommodating president, who is absorbed in becoming all-powerful, using governmental tools to get revenge on his detractors and suppress opposition with fear of his unbridled and unconstrained abuse of power. 

This relationship with the ideologues works for Trump's power-grabbing goals just as it works for both Miller and Vought's visions. Those visions include a strong-man executive's rule and the submission of the legislative and judicial branches to the executive's will by appointing and supporting only loyalists to Trump to carry out their duties. They are making a mockery of the original intent of the founders' Constitution and the rule of law that once democracy was crafted to be for, by, and of the people expressed through the ballot box, and not for, by, and of a Donald Trump.

 The Supreme Court, composed of fellow ideologues approved by idologically compatible think tanks, is the only one of the three divisions of government that stands in the way of certain policies. It is possible that if enough dissent and take to the streets, Congress could flip from red to blue and get a backbone. We still have free and fair elections, for now. Trump et al may have other plans for 2028, I suspect, but enthusiasm and math of voter turnout still count in 2026.  Over the past ten years, the GOP has been able to execute a strategy to replace the Supreme Court's retiring members and those who lost the battle for life with those approved by those think tanks, such as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. So far, most decisions granting the executive superpowers have been upheld by a 6-3 majority.. The floodgates for abuse were open when the Supreme Court exempted the president from criminal prosecution while performing his executive duties. Trump took the gift and made the most of it.

Trump sees his kinship in the world as modern-day dictators like Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, and Erdogan of Turkey. Even now, Trump wants to send billions of aid to a president he sees as like him, in Argentina, and punishes Brazil with extreme tariffs for persecuting another Trumpist wannabe past president. History and the fate of the dictators of the 1930s seem to hold no meaning for him as he strives to repeat what he never learned. His is a reaction to who and what stood in his way in the past to achieve power and scare off those who would dissent from acting in the future. 

 We in the USA have not had a model of an executive like Trump govern us since 1776.  Even Nixon fades in comparison, and even he ultimately abided by the rule of law and the intent of the Constitution.

So, media, what do you call MAGA? Please do not call them "conservatives". They are more than just "right wing" on the political spectrum. They are radical reactionaries.

For more about the ideology of Russell Vought and Stephen Miller, go to MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: What if it is true: Trump's got dementia as some claim

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Chainsaw 1 and Chainsaw 2 : Fulfilling Russell Vought's Project 2025 dreams

John Fugelsang - “Separation of Church and Hate” | The Daily Show - YouTube

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Racists and white Christian nationalists are laying the groundwork for a future of conflict

So is it fascism? Here is one take on it well stated by another blogger: If it walks like a fascist, talks like a fascist and jokes like a fascist, it's likely a… - Raw Story

nytimes.com

Trump Considers Overhaul of Refugee System That Would Favor White People

The proposals would transform a program aimed at helping the most vulnerable people in the world into one that gives preference to mostly white people who say they are being persecuted.

. A district court judge just called out Trump's attempt to end all temporary protective visas for migrant refugees fleeing violence, persecution, or natural disasters, racist and discriminatory, and put a temporary hold on the execution of the removal of those holding such visas . The purpose of the special visas was to give refugee status until the conditions in their home from which they fled had improved. The judge found that the condition of their home countries of the plaintiffs had not improved. The evidence of racial discrimination was the words of the Trump regime's administrators themselves. No doubt this will go through the appeal process to end up in the lap of "his" Supreme Court, but the damning language from the judge needs to be cited. For those who protest this ruling, first look in your own mirror.

From: Judge halts Trump's termination of TPS for Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua https://www.msn.com/.../judge-halts-trumps.../ar-AA1JHjR7...

"By stereotyping the TPS program and immigrants as invaders that are criminal, and by highlighting the need for migration management, Secretary Noem's statements perpetuate the discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population."

Thompson also mentioned comments from Trump and other White House officials about migrants that show racial animus."

msn.com

Donald Trump suffers major legal blow over migrant protections

The decision extends protections for more than 60,000 people from countries inclu