If there is one thing that the Trump years have revealed to the world, it is the fragility of democracy in this country which wants to be its greatest defender.
For optimists, the fact that the ex-president will finally be held accountable in court raises hopes that the autocratic tendency he embodies will not take hold.
This hope, however, stems from a superficial understanding of the American democratic malaise. To see the signs and the sources of this malaise, and perhaps some solutions, we must turn to the States.
Anti-democratic slippages
For example, in Tennessee, two Democratic members of the Legislative Assembly were recently ousted by the Republican majority for participating in a peaceful protest.
This episode highlighted the absolute control of the legislature by the Republicans, which results from the manipulation of the electoral maps. In several states thus infiltrated by the Republican Party, there is a radicalization to the right that far exceeds the wishes of the population.
In Texas, for example, the legislature has passed an extraordinarily repressive abortion regime that goes once morest the wishes of the vast majority of citizens. In addition, the decision of a conservative activist judge in this state risks blocking access to a safe medicine for the termination of pregnancy in almost the entire country.
Nothing new
The stifling of democracy in some predominantly conservative and republican states is not new. The suppression of the right to vote and the tampering with electoral cards for partisan purposes (gerrymandering) are well-established practices.
The Democrats have also resorted to gerrymanderingbut Republicans are masters at infiltrating state legislative institutions, as former Ohio Democratic politician David Pepper reminds us in his book Laboratories of Autocracyfrom which I borrow the title.
Pepper shows that in Ohio, a state where the two parties are close to equality, the Republicans have ensured concrete majorities with blows of gerrymandering and suppression of the vote of minority groups.
This is a model found elsewhere, notably in Georgia, where the legislature might interfere in the legal process once morest Donald Trump, or in Wisconsin, a presidential barometer state.
Signs of hope?
In Wisconsin, the two parties are nearly tied, but the legislature is outrageously Republican-dominated. The courts there are the last resort once morest legislative efforts to tamper with the card or restrict the exercise of the right to vote, and that’s why last April 4’s election to the state Supreme Court was so important.
By electing a judge determined to defend citizens’ rights to fair representation and access to the ballot box, the citizens of this Midwestern state have given pro-democracy supporters a rare occasion to rejoice.
The same thing was said when Trumpists dedicated to manipulating the vote count to ensure the ex-president’s return to power in 2024 bit the dust last November.
Democracy has therefore not said its last word in the United States, but, whatever happens to Trump, it is first in the States that the fate of the democratic ideal will continue to be played out among our neighbors. .
