When the Ground Shifts Beneath Us

We are watching authoritarianism take root in real time. Not in history books. Not in far-off places. Here. Now.

It doesn’t arrive with a single blow. It seeps in through executive overreach. It corrodes democracy through sabotage. It weaponizes government against its own people.

Trump is showing us, piece by piece, how authoritarian rule works. Dismantle agencies. Bypass Congress. Punish enemies. Use children and refugees as pawns. Choke off climate progress. Manipulate transparency. Control markets for personal gain.

The other night, my daughter looked up from her homework and caught me staring at my phone.

“What happened now?” she asked. Not in that curious little-kid way, but in the weary way of a teenager who already knows the answer.

I tried to brush it off, but the truth is hard to hide. Every day, it feels like another line is crossed. A billion dollars in foreign aid, slashed. Children in custody lined up for deportation. A Vice President stripped of her protection. A map redrawn to erase voters.

These are not small things. They should stop us in our tracks. But the sheer pace of it all makes it easy to miss how fast the ground is shifting beneath us.

It reminds me of a conversation I had years ago in Aruba while I was on a press trip, with a driver who had watched another country collapse just across the water.

He told me how easy it used to be to fly from Aruba to Venezuela, just a 15-minute hop across the water. People would earn their wages in Aruba and then spend a weekend in Venezuela, where the exchange rate made them feel like kings. Warm people. Vibrant cities. Life was good. And then, he said, it all collapsed.

Venezuela, once one of the richest democracies in Latin America, slid into authoritarian rule. Hugo Chávez centralized power, rewrote the rules, and built loyalty through oil wealth. When oil prices crashed, the system did too. Under Nicolás Maduro, hyperinflation hollowed out the economy. Hospitals ran out of medicine. Grocery shelves went bare. Poverty climbed above 90 percent. Millions fled. Those who stayed became desperate, some even trying to swim to Aruba, many not surviving the journey.

What struck me was not just the tragedy, but how my driver described the change. It wasn’t only about laws or leaders. It changed the people. It made desperation normal. It turned cruelty into survival. No, the U.S. isn’t Venezuela. But the pattern is the same: when power concentrates in one man, when laws bend to him, the people always pay the price.

I think about that conversation now as I watch my daughter grow up in a country that is shifting under her feet, too. Trump is consolidating power in ways that echo every authoritarian regime we swore we would never emulate. And it always starts the same way, by breaking the rules that are supposed to hold power in check.

Like how he is bypassing Congress. Trump’s latest move is to attempt to cancel $4.9 billion in foreign aid that Congress had already approved, doing it unilaterally, without their consent. Senator Susan Collins made headlines for sounding the alarm, but her words ring hollow. She has backed Trump almost every time it counted. Her outrage is theater. But her words are true. The Constitution is clear: Congress controls the purse. If a president can simply erase their decisions, then Congress is reduced to decoration. And that is how democracies fall.

The whole point of our system is checks and balances. No single branch was ever meant to control everything. That’s why the Founding Fathers gave Congress the power of the purse, to make sure one man could never act like a king. They believed that with so many representatives, there would always be enough people to put country over party. They anticipated factions, but they never imagined a Congress so captured that it would bow to one man. Yet here we are. Trump already wields influence over the executive, the courts, and much of Congress. And still he reaches for more, ignoring the limits written into law. If Congress approves spending, only Congress can change it. A president cannot simply erase it. That is not how democracy works.

And it’s not just abstract money on the line. Those foreign aid dollars mean fewer vaccines for children, less food for families, and weaker disaster response. Cutting it makes the world more dangerous, and America weaker.

As infectious disease specialist Dr. Daniel Griffin often reminds listeners at the end of his weekly Clinical Update podcast, “no one is safe unless everyone is safe.” He uses the phrase to underscore the interconnectedness of global health, especially during viral pandemics. And the same lesson applies here. Foreign aid isn’t charity, it’s protection. When other countries have the tools to fight disease, respond to disasters, and stabilize their governments, we are safer, too. COVID-19 didn’t start in the United States, but it still reached every corner of our country. Pathogens, instability, violence, none of it respects borders. Even if you don’t care about families in another country, you should care about your own. Because if the world isn’t safe, America isn’t safe.

And now he’s going after the very agency that makes that safety possible.

He is dismantling agencies. Marco Rubio and Russ Vought are shutting down USAID, folding it into the State Department, and stripping away oversight. They’ve been deconstructing it for months, right when it is needed the most. USAID once delivered U.S. foreign aid, responded to disasters, and supported democracy abroad. Without it, those missions collapse. And when America pulls out, power vacuums get filled by China, Russia, or extremists. Once, USAID represented America’s commitment to stability. Now, with its independence erased, the void will be felt for generations.

And it doesn’t stop with aid. Even the fight for our planet’s survival is being dismantled.

He is sabotaging the future. Trump just canceled $679 million for offshore wind projects. Climate change isn’t waiting. Every year wasted is another year of fires, floods, and storms our kids will inherit. These projects weren’t just about the environment; they meant new jobs, cheaper energy, and independence from fossil fuels. Why cancel them? Because oil and gas donors demand it. Because progress itself is his enemy.

And when he isn’t sabotaging the future, he is weaponizing cruelty in the present.

His administration is preparing to deport hundreds of Guatemalan children who have been in U.S. custody. Some may not even remember the country they were born in. Some may not have family waiting. This isn’t policy. It’s punishment. Authoritarian regimes use human beings as leverage, stripping them of their humanity to send a message of fear.

And the cruelty doesn’t stop there. In Maine, ICE arrested a Jamaican-born police officer who had been working legally for years, despite having passed E-Verify with authorization through 2030. E-Verify is the federal system employers use to check if someone can legally work here. If even a uniformed officer who passed every check can suddenly be arrested and labeled illegal, it shows how broken and arbitrary the system is. If it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone.

He is targeting opponents. In a stunning move, Trump revoked Secret Service protection for former Vice President Kamala Harris. By law, former vice presidents normally receive protection for six months after leaving office. But President Biden had extended Harris’s coverage to over 12 months, most likely because the world is more politically charged than ever, and because she had just run for president.

That made her a clear target. To take away her protection now is not about cost or procedure. It is personal. Harris was his opponent, and Trump is treating her safety as a bargaining chip. He doesn’t care what happens to her. In fact, his pettiness suggests the opposite: that he wants her vulnerable. What kind of leader strips away protection from a former vice president who still faces potential threats? If a president can remove the guardrails that keep opponents safe, what message does that send?

He is reshaping the economy in his image. Trump pushed for tariffs that the courts have now ruled largely illegal. That hasn’t stopped him. In fact, he’s doubled down, posting unhinged rants on Truth Social, insisting that tariffs are still in effect and calling them America’s “best tool.” But here’s the truth he won’t admit: tariffs are nothing more than taxes on the American people. They raise prices on everything from groceries to household goods, hitting working families the hardest. And they don’t protect American workers. They concentrate wealth at the top. That’s exactly what Trump wants, a small circle of elites who care more about money than democracy holding all the power, while the rest of society grows desperate enough to do whatever he says. The result is not protectionism. It is isolation. That is the model dictators prefer: a people cut off from the world, dependent on their leader, unable to see beyond the walls he builds.

Some so-called moderates still pretend to stand up to Trump, but the real cracks in his power are starting to appear elsewhere. Senator Joni Ernst has announced she will not run for reelection. She once joined the MAGA circus with bizarre stunts, but now she is stepping aside. That didn’t happen in a vacuum. Public pressure works. Accountability works. Every politician who bows out under the weight of it chips away at their power.

And the courts, too, are proving that Trump doesn’t get away with everything. An appeals court blocked him from ending protections for 600,000 Venezuelans. Another ruled his tariffs illegal, no matter how loudly he rages on Truth Social. These rulings are not permanent victories, but they are real. They show us that not every institution has fallen, not every safeguard has been erased. We need to take hope from that, because hope is proof that the authoritarian project is not complete, and resistance still matters.

I keep going back to my driver in Aruba, and what he said about Venezuela. That the collapse of democracy didn’t just topple the government. It changed the people. It made desperation normal. It made cruelty ordinary.

We see shades of that here. I see it every time I open my social media comments. Strangers telling me that facts don’t matter, that cruelty is justified, that I must be lying because the truth doesn’t fit their worldview. These aren’t bots. These are real people, broken by propaganda. And I wonder sometimes if they can ever come back.

Authoritarianism is not just a political system. It is a disease of the spirit. It numbs outrage. It breaks the bond between neighbors. It teaches people to look away. Or worse, to cheer cruelty on. That is why every headline matters. That is why none of this can be normal. Because the moment we stop being outraged, we stop being free.

But here’s the other truth my driver taught me, though he didn’t say it directly. Even as he described Venezuela’s collapse, he was still proud of Aruba. Still hopeful for his own country. Still eager to share it with a stranger in his car. That pride, that humanity, that willingness to tell the story is what survives authoritarianism. And it is what can save us.

I think about that as I look at my daughter. She’s old enough now to see the world clearly, to ask hard questions, to know when something feels wrong. And I wonder what lessons she is carrying forward from this moment. Because she deserves to grow up in a country where cruelty is not wallpaper, where corruption is not shrugged off, where the ground beneath her feet feels steady.

We are not Venezuela yet. We are not beyond saving. The courts still push back. Public pressure still works. People still show up in the streets. And every time we refuse to let cruelty become wallpaper, every time we speak the truth out loud, we chip away at the authoritarian project.

Trump wants us numb. He wants us silent. He wants us to believe this is normal.

It isn’t. And it never will be.

I saw what happens to a country when authoritarianism takes hold. I heard it in the voice of a driver in Aruba, remembering the Venezuela he used to know. The choice in front of us is simple. We can let Trump change us into something unrecognizable. Or we can fight to remain human, remain outraged, remain free.

That fight is not easy. But it is not lost. History tells us something, too: every authoritarian thinks he is unbreakable. Every dictator believes he has sealed his grip on power. But none of them last forever. Not one.

So don’t give up. Don’t go numb. Don’t let the shifting ground trick us into thinking collapse is normal. What feels unsteady today can be steadied again.

If we hold on, if we refuse to let authoritarianism become routine, then one day my daughter will look back on this chapter the way my driver looked back on his trips to Venezuela: remembering how quickly it all changed, how close we came, and how we found our way back to solid ground.

Because I still believe in America, and you should too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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