LAST UPDATE | 28 Mar

DONALD TRUMP IS ten weeks into a four-year term. In that time, his administration has launched a voracious assault on the norms and conventions of American democracy.

The country is being led by a cabinet of conspiracy theorists, TV personalities and religious zealots, all of whom secured their place at the top table by positioning themselves as Trump loyalists. There are no voices of reason, no safeguards.

The Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News presenter, this week played a central role in an astonishing revelation that he, alongside other top government officials, used the messaging app Signal to discuss attack plans on Yemen, including launch times.

Top US officials used the messaging app Signal to discuss sensitive information about an assault in Yemen. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz inadvertently added the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the conversation, who broke the story this week. Hegseth first sought to claim no sensitive information was shared. Once Goldberg released the chats, the White House shifted to the claim that sharing attack plans on an open-source messaging app was not an intelligence breach because such plans are not classified. Never has a US cabinet had so little experience and been so dangerously incompetent.

This should be easy pickings for the Democratic Party, but rather than counter the Trumpification of the Republicans, the Democrats are flailing in the wind, directionless. The inability of the Democratic Party to form an effective opposition empowers the Trump administration and widens the ideological rift in American society. The left feels abandoned, while, inversely, those who support Trump and ‘Make America Great Again’ – an extreme protectionist agenda isolating America – grow more emboldened.

What opposition?

A painful display of the Democratic Party’s inability to formulate a response to Trump’s unprecedented takeover was during the president’s joint session of Congress, which saw members raising diminutive placards like bidders in an auction, with toothless statements reading ‘Musk Steals’ and ‘Save Medicaid’. During my recent visit to the Capitol, I could not find a Democratic supporter who was not embarrassed by the spectacle; it was student politics 101 and did not meet the moment.

Weeks later, ten Democrats voted with Republicans to pass the controversial Spending Bill, which will gut Medicaid and directly impact many of the most vulnerable. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer’s decision to vote with the Bill, and his directive to fellow members, is emblematic of the problem. If there is to be any hope of recourse, the Democratic Party must urgently change course, and leadership.

There are two options: Occupy the left and lean into firebrands such as Maine Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both of whom command large followings and whose current messaging is resonating within Democratic bases or move further to the centre to bridge the ideological divide. Instinct may favour the former, and there are those who will effectively argue that the problem for the Democrats is that they are already too obtuse; many critics of the Harris/Walz campaign suggest they played it too safe.

Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders represent the left of the Democratic Party, Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

However, there needs to be an acceptance that a substantial section of American society has shifted to the right, with many slipping headlong into extremist ideology. As with numerous other countries in which the far-right secures a foothold, the root causes are economic inequality and political alienation, both of which will increase substantially under Trump’s term. To reach those furthest removed from the political system, the Democrats may have to meet them halfway, and there’s evidence that this approach can work.

In the United Kingdom, the Conservatives were in government for 12 years, successfully realising a long-term aspiration of protectionist politicians by removing the United Kingdom from the European Union. Brexit was the great divider, splitting society down opposing ideological lines. Corbyn’s left agenda proved unsuccessful in countering Brexiteers in the 2019 election, prompting an overhaul of the Labour Party’s leadership and strategy, Keir Starmer all but eradicated its left credentials to much criticism from its traditional base and has been robustly referred to as ‘Tory-light’, but this was a deliberate choice by the party and a move that ultimately returned Labour to government in 2024.

In the context of the US, moderate Democrats have had success; Clinton was no Bernie Sanders, while Obama courted Republican policies during his first campaign. The fraying political fabric of American society is now so sheer that adopting a liberal agenda may only wear away the few remaining threads. The Democrats, like Labour, must face this potentiality if there is to be any hope of reclaiming the House in the 2026 midterms.

Will the system hold?

The US political system is built on the foundation of checks and balances – the three branches, Executive, Legislative and Judiciary, are designed to prevent overreach. The legislative branch has been effectively neutered; the last bastion is the judiciary. The Trump administration knows this, which is why there are concerted efforts to weaken trust in the rule of law.

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Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Earlier this month, Trump called for the impeachment of a federal judge challenging his administration’s immigration policies. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt labelled judge James Boasberg “a Democrat activist”. Boasberg was first appointed by Republican President George W. Bush.

MAGA supporters followed suit by targeting Trump-appointed conservative Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett when she voted against the Trump administration’s freeze of USAID funding, labelling the judge a “DEI hire”, a slur now being slung at anyone who isn’t a white man espousing Trump’s view.

To date, the judiciary is holding up; federal judges and the Supreme Court have ruled against the Trump administration, but there is a question as to how long that may last. Trump will soon seek to weigh the judiciary in his favour by appointing a slew of conservative judges with as many as 300 vacancies predicted over the next four years, including 54 currently open posts.

While the Democrats mull over their purpose, the Trump administration will continue at breakneck speed to reshape American democracy with attacks on press freedom, the judiciary, and liberties such as freedom of political thought and religion. The detention of an academic with a green card over his views on Gaza is a test case for limiting freedom of political speech.

The constant bombardment of executive orders, court challenges, and deranged ideas, including the mass displacement and removal of Palestinians from Gaza, is deliberate; over-saturation desensitises society. I could see that firsthand in the US this month, people are disengaging. We are witnessing the annihilation of decades of progress toward mitigating climate change, racial equality and workers’ rights – the impact of which, like Brexit, will be felt for decades and will have far-reaching global consequences. If the Democrats do not rise to action with urgency, there is no blueprint for what might happen next.

Emma DeSouza is a writer and campaigner.