Political Violence Informing Trump's Grip on Congress
With the president smashing norm after norm, even lawmakers within his party have feared for their personal safety, and at least one has told confidants that it has swayed his decision-making.
By Gabriel Sherman
February 19, 2025
Germany’s extreme-right AfD party. On Saturday, Trump declared on social media: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” This Tuesday, Trump blamed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the brutal war that was launched by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. “You should have never started it,” Trump falsely said of Zelenskyy, when in fact Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The US president then doubled down on the feud Wednesday, calling Zelenskyy a “dictator.”
Democrats are in the minority in both the House and Senate, which means the federal courts and congressional Republicans are the only guardrails on Trump’s second term. So far the judicial system seems to be holding—though a Trump-packed Supreme Court is now destined to rule on all manner of alleged overreach in the coming months. (And it’s an open question as to whether Trump will actually abide by rulings that go against him.)
Republicans in Congress, however, have consistently folded—approving all of Trump’s Cabinet picks, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, with only a faint whiff of pushback on some of their boundary-scorching backgrounds. The confirmations predictably short-circuited many Democratic observers, but the rolling headlines of late have even some Republicans decrying the seeming erosion of checks and balances in recent weeks.
“These are the heirs of the Greatest Generation, and they turned out to be the worst generation,” says Stuart Stevens, who served as a chief strategist on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and has since left the GOP, joining the anti-Trump Lincoln Project as a senior adviser. “It’s tempting to compare Republicans to Prussian aristocrats in 1930s Germany. But Prussian aristocrats were more responsible. They were dealing with civil unrest and the threat of a communist takeover. Republicans today have historically low unemployment, a record stock market. What’s their excuse?”
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