Ask Us Anything
ICE, polls, fraud, and party unity
Your post titled “Democracy on the Edge: Possibilities” seemed to indicate you think Trump may be successful in defeating our democracy and establishing an authoritarian regime. I may have misread your meaning a year ago as your current analysis. Perhaps that message was your message last year. I am hopeful that the degree to which Trump is disliked will prevent the US from any dictator-like government.
(Matt) You’re talking about Monday’s post, where I excerpted a passage from my upcoming book Democracy on the Edge, in which my co-author John White and I speculate about what a second Trump presidency would mean for democracy in America. The passage—actually, the whole book—was written immediately after Trump’s election, so we didn’t have the benefit of knowing how the administration would play out.
At the time, there was speculation in political circles that four years of reactionary governance could break the country apart. John and I rejected that idea, but we predicted that Trump would do everything possible to damage or destroy whatever institutional obstacles prevented him from doing whatever he wants. Whether he succeeded would ultimately depend on the degree of popular resistance to what we believed would be an unpopular agenda, and how much ordinary people would defy what we imagined would be widespread government intimidation efforts.
At the time, we held open the possibility that Trump could establish authoritarian rule in America. Not that he would be successful, but that he could be successful. We predicted that democracy would face a protracted stress test—and that has come to pass. But we proposed an alternative outcome, in which Trump’s failure to overcome mass resistance to his actions would lead to a constitutional revolution after he passes from the scene—a reaction to reactionary rule that would have been unthinkable just several years ago. In this scenario, a reimagined Democratic party would address the economic and social inequities that paved the way for Trump’s ascendency and create the framework for a multicultural democracy that would be no less transformational than the elimination of slavery or the New Deal.
One and a half years later, this possibility looks to be the most likely. The MAGA experiment has failed, Donald Trump is flailing, and Republicans face a reckoning in a few short months. So while I was uncertain about how things would play out when I wrote that passage, I am more confident than ever that American democracy will survive this dangerous period—and thrive.
If you’re interested in reading more, you can pre-order Democracy on the Edge by clicking here to access the book’s home page and receive a 30% discount by typing the code 24ONTHEEDGE at checkout.
I thought ICE agents were legally required to wear body cams. After the last few deaths at the hands of ICE, the media reported that body cams were not worn. What’s the deal with this?
(Chris) I found this explainer from CNN useful, and I think you will as well.
Short version: There is no legal or departmental requirement for ICE agents to wear body cameras. Instead, former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem simply pledged on social media that all ICE agents would wear them. After that, $20 million in funding was made available for this purpose in the Department of Homeland Security funding bill passed in late April.
When asked about the lack of body cameras on the federal agents in the recent shootings, a spokesperson for the Trump administration said, “[b]ody cameras have been deployed to more than half the field offices, with the remaining half to receive them in the next 60 days.” Whether you believe that or not is up to you.
Notably, ICE is now pausing most traffic stops following the shootings in Houston and Maine. This is likely in keeping with Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin’s new strategy of trying to keep immigration enforcement out of the headlines. Predictably, Donald Trump is opposed.
What happened to the ICE agents who murdered Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti?
(Chris) This is an older question, but since there is some recent news about it I am answering it today.
On Monday, local authorities in Minnesota obtained all of the relevant evidence in the two cases for the first time. This appears to have happened as the result of the state agreeing to share “evidence state investigators gathered in the investigation of ICE agent Christian Castro” with federal authorities.
As a result of local authorities obtaining this evidence, there may be more news soon. Expect both Hennepin County and the state of Minnesota to pursue criminal cases against the agents in the two shootings.
As of right now, it appears that federal authorities have opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting of Alex Pretti, but not into the shooting of Renee Good.
The Minnesota Reformer has an explainer on the situation that I believe you will find helpful.
Do you believe that political polls are still reliable?
(Matt) I do—as long as you appreciate their limitations. Public opinion surveys can only give us probabilistic estimates of what a population is thinking or feeling. Carefully constructed polls from reputable pollsters can do this well. Pollsters face a range of challenges in an age of spam filters and low response rates, but—again— good pollsters know how to address these issues.
However, there are bad pollsters out there, and a lot of bad polls. Some of these are tools of misinformation, such as when unknown Republican-aligned polling firms flood the media with polls that are at odds with independent polling in order to prop up their candidates. I ignore these polls.
There is also the matter of how difficult it has been to poll MAGA voters, which led to underestimating Trump’s support in each of his presidential runs. Honestly, I think much of the skepticism about polling stems from this. And it is a genuine dilemma. But it has only proved to be a problem when Trump was on the ballot. That will never happen again.
Trump is planning to talk about 2020 “election fraud” on Thursday, and I have been seeing a lot of posts on Bluesky about how he is going to use an excuse about “national security” to cancel the midterms. I don’t think he can do that, but when a lot of people say it, it is easy to get swept up in the hysteria. I think what’s most scary is this: no one really knows what he will try to do, because we’ve never faced something like this before.
(Chris) It is true that Donald Trump cannot, in fact, “cancel the midterms.” I honestly don’t even know where this stuff comes from. It’s like people believe there is some sort of “cancel the midterms” button in the Oval Office.
Fears of this sort have, at their core, the lingering belief among many people that Donald Trump is all-powerful. He is not. That is a con job. It’s actually a con job that Trump wants you to believe.
It is incumbent on folks to stop falling for stuff like this and feeding the hysteria. Trump can’t get his ballroom funded, launch his anti-weaponization fund, stop the housing bill, or kick Jimmy Kimmel off the air. He has suffered meaningful rebukes on a whole host of other topics on a regular basis. This is not the track record of someone on the verge of successfully seizing dictatorial powers via military coup.
On June 26, Matt wrote that “Assembling a broad coalition is the sign of a healthy party.” Looking ahead to 2028, if the Democratic coalition is too broad and/or the party is not healthy enough, might we again see the same kind of internal fracture that paved the way for Trump’s victory in 2016?
That post was about how the deterioration of the Republican coalition is destabilizing entire the party system. As the Republican party shrinks, more voters become available to Democrats. This gives Democrats an opportunity to broaden their tent, offering them a chance to establish a large coalition that can win elections nationwide. But that promise poses a threat to the status quo, as a young crop of Democratic candidates is attracting new voters by rejecting a politics that people know isn’t working for them. They are poised to take power from established party leaders if the country rallies behind their candidacies, and that process can be rocky and unpleasant. But it is a necessary step if Democrats are going to take advantage of the opportunity Trump is handing them.
You mention 2016, when Democrats divided between Hillary Clinton’s establishment candidacy and the progressive insurgency of Bernie Sanders. This time around, it will be much harder for Democratic elites to defend the status quo ante, and Bernie’s Democratic Socialists will find natural allies in prairie populists and young progressives who will rise to power on a message of reconfiguring the system to work for everyday voters. It may be messy. There will be disagreements. Coalition members will not always see eye to eye. But that’s democracy.