Normalization of the Presence of Uniformed Military on our City Streets
The decisive question is no longer whether Trump tests constitutional limits, but whether those around him will resist or accommodate expanding executive power.
The country is well launched on the road to autocracy, and the President is leading the MAGA faithful and the rest of us into an authoritarian abyss. Every week, there is a new incident or event confirming this dangerous truth.
After ten years, it’s beyond time for non-MAGA “Republicans” to step forward and work actively to counter the one-party Trump cult, its destabilizing corrosion, self-dealing and corruption, and endangerment of our national security. It’s simply unfathomable how MAGA and non-MAGA alike — have been and are being played.
The problem is the man himself; examples are endless. The starting point is his total lack of a moral compass, evident to all, even to himself, if he understands what he says and does. For him, truth and morality do not matter and are simply obstacles to his manipulative political ambition. He tests legal and moral limits to prepare the ground for even more egregious statements and actions. It has been a long-term march toward consolidation of autocratic rule and re-shaping the U.S. political system, in a glaring challenge to the U.S. Constitution, to sustain the rule of MAGA elites once his time on the stage has passed.
He has been preparing this ground for decades. He challenged President Reagan’s successful foreign policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union in three major U.S. papers on September 2, 1987, built his tough guy political brand based on a “reality” TV show, fed the birther myth about President Obama, and launched an unrelenting assault on the media and free press. He justified his mountain of falsehoods with “people are saying,” and countless repetitions of “Only I alone can fix it” and “I know better than anyone.”
He openly dismissed Constitutional rule during the October 19, 2016 Presidential debate in Las Vegas, a coldly un-American strategy that should have outraged the nation and immediately disqualified his candidacy. In his first term, Trump was, as the Washington Post carefully and credibly documented, an administration of 30,000 misrepresentations or outright lies. His behavior in the wake of his November 2020 electoral defeat was both amoral and incendiary, and on January 6, 2021, he brazenly manipulated a mob to block Congressional certification of Biden’s election.
The list goes on, with Trump now delivering more of the same, but on steroids. His wholly disingenuous disavowal of the hard right Project 2025 document during the campaign was followed by his tsunami of Project-2025 related and legally challengeable executive decrees that created deep and contentious disruption of the country. Gutting the heart of Federal government staff and programs benefiting rank and file Americans, food support via SNAP, disaster relief via FEMA, sound public health programs etc., and the world (USAID) was done without remorse or valid justification.
Here we are approaching mid-2026, and the country’s situation couldn’t be more perilous. Uncertainty abounds on all fronts but one, the self-enrichment of the President, his family, and the MAGA monied elites and fellow travelers. He and his team of acolytes are working 24/7 to undercut popular trust of and confidence in the gamut of U.S. institutions and practices.
Politically, his efforts to normalize the presence of the U.S. military on the streets of U.S. cities foreshadows direct federal intervention in and disruption of the November mid-year elections; he has excoriated the Supreme Court, and pounded the former Republican Party into a rubber stamp of party-line faces in a manner reminiscent of those in communist party meetings in the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. For those of us with experience in such countries, the MAGA movement’s authoritarianism looks distressingly familiar.
The U.S. economy, once the anchor and engine of the world economy, confronts problems only deepened by Trump’s executive decrees and administrative actions, fiscal irresponsibility, and unbelievable statements. The President’s unceasing effort to erode confidence in public institutions has its economic dimension: non-stop attacks on the Federal Reserve Board, politicization of such trusted institutions as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, similar politicization of federal health institutions, and the dismantling of the science foundation of national environmental programs.
Meanwhile, Trump’s economic authoritarianism has brought chaos to the country’s foreign trade via unconstitutional tariff wars with friends and rivals alike. He then willfully and unnecessarily exacerbated inflation through a misguided and poorly managed war with Iran, which is having serious and adverse economic impact around the globe.
Perhaps most serious, and threatening, of all, the President’s authoritarian and autocratic governance has weakened the U.S. internationally to the point where one is forced to ask, “Why?” A naïve and flawed National Security Strategy, an inexplicable but definite alignment with Russian strategic interests, unending bullying and bluster against such stalwart allies and partners as Canada and fellow NATO members, whimsical and extra-legal actions on any number of fronts, and simple non-stop hubris have greatly diminished respect for the U.S. and its Presidency.
It is questionable whether the U.S. can regain its stature and influence even if the MAGA movement becomes the regrettable relic of history that it should.
It is time to meet the moment. The President’s take-no-prisoners retribution against Republican Party critics or non-yes men and women, and his unconscionable self-dealing with respect to the creation of a $1.8 billion political slush fund, should be decisive breaking points for the “thin red line*” as a final straw or bridge too far, irrefutably confirming that the man is in it solely for himself and not for the country or you.
The President is a man of no morals, no remorse, no interest in the country or his fellow Americans. While the clock is ticking until November, there is time to turn the authoritarian tide, but inaction or passive hope will not meet the test.
The time for truth, integrity, and principle is now.
*This essay is one of a series of an open letters to “The Thin Red Line” of MAGA and Non-MAGA Republicans
Mike Mozur is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer with over 33 years of experience in the Soviet Union, former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Latin America. Mike also led a global professional association of environmental scientists and writes periodically on current political, economic, and social issues. He is a member of The Steady State.
Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.
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