The Post reports: “A wide-ranging subpoena served on the inaugural committee Monday seeks an array of documents, including all information related to inaugural donors, vendors, contractors, bank accounts of the inaugural committee and any information related to foreign contributors to the committee. . . . The request for documents, first reported by ABC News, is a sign of another widening legal headache for Trump, whose business, personal charitable foundation and campaign are all under investigation by state and federal authorities." Perhaps we will learn more about what foreign entities (not to mention Federalist Society Executive Vice President Leonard Leo) expected for their donations. What’s clear is that the inauguration committee was the beginning and not the end of transforming the Oval Office from the seat of executive power to the seat of a multi-faceted money-making machine for Trump and his family.

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Like right-wing nativist parties in Europe, the Republican Party has taken up anti-immigrant hysteria with a tenaciousness matched only by its dishonesty. At a time when illegal border crossings are at their lowest in decades, when U.S. cities benefit from a huge drop in violent crime and the most diverse generation in U.S. history has reached adulthood, Trump has championed white grievance. It served to lift him to the presidency and strengthen bonds with his white, less-educated and mostly male base. However, it’s (sorry) hit a brick wall in the fight over his dreams of a magnificent border edifice, a lasting symbol of immigration exclusion.

Trump’s caravan demagoguing failed to deliver him midterm victories and, according to a raft of polling, has not swayed the electorate as a whole on the topic of a wall. (“Sixty percent of Americans oppose major new construction of walls along the U.S.-Mexico border — the goal behind President Donald Trump’s budget showdown with Democratic leaders that led to a record 35-day partial shutdown of the federal government,” a Gallup poll reports.

Trump’s anti-immigration stance more generally hasn’t won many adherents either. A huge majority (81 percent) favors a path to citizenship for illegals “if they meet certain requirements over a period of time” while 61 percent “oppose deporting all illegal immigrants back to their home country.” Moreover, “Since Trump’s election, the proportion of Americans wanting to increase immigration levels has grown — from 21% in June 2016 to a record-high 30% now.”

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While Trumpian corruption and nativism have been met with legal and electoral opposition, his efforts to thwart democracy itself have sadly found more success and, worse, served as an inspiration to strongmen.

In its latest report on declining democracy around the world, Freedom House finds:

The 13 years of decline have touched all parts of the world and affected Free, Partly Free, and Not Free countries alike. Every region except Asia-Pacific has a lower average score for 2018 than it did in 2005, and even Asia declined when countries with less than 1 million people—mostly small Pacific Island states—are excluded. Not Free countries as a group suffered a more significant score drop than Free or Partly Free countries, which also declined. . . . The end of the Cold War facilitated a wave of democratization in the late 20th century, but a large share of countries that made progress during that time were unable to maintain it

Most troubling, “Challenges to American democracy are testing the stability of its constitutional system and threatening to undermine political rights and civil liberties worldwide. . . . While democracy in America remains robust by global standards, it has weakened significantly over the past eight years, and the current president’s ongoing attacks on the rule of law, fact-based journalism, and other principles and norms of democracy threaten further decline.”

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Freedom House further reports:

Freedom House has tracked a slow overall decline in political rights and civil liberties in the United States for the past eight years, punctuated by an unusual three-point drop for developments in 2017. Prominent concerns have included Russian interference in US elections, domestic attempts to manipulate the electoral system, executive and legislative dysfunction, conflicts of interest and lack of transparency, and pressure on judicial independence and the rule of law. . . . The score for equal treatment before the law declined due to government policies and actions that improperly restricted the legal rights of asylum seekers, signs of discrimination in the acceptance of refugees for resettlement, and excessively harsh or haphazard immigration enforcement policies that resulted in the separation of children from adult family members, among other problematic outcomes.

To put that in perspective the organization’s rating for the United States (86 out of 100) puts it on a par with Belize, Croatia, Greece, Latvia, and Mongolia.

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In short, Trump’s financial improprieties and xenophobic scare tactics are being checked, but his attacks on the foundations of our democracy have not been disabled — far from it. The midterm elections took a step in the right direction by re-establishing congressional oversight, but the erosion of the rule of law, efforts to delegitimize independent sources of information and ongoing accretion of executive power increase. It’s not until he has been removed by the ballot or otherwise and repairs to the institutions of democracy are made that we should rest easy. Until then, Freedom House’s admonition should guide Americans and other freedom-loving people:

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Those committed to human rights and democratic governance should not limit themselves to a wary defense of the status quo. Instead we should throw ourselves into projects intended to renew national and international orders, to make protections for human dignity even more just and more comprehensive, including for workers whose lives are disrupted by technological and economic change. Democracy requires continuous effort to thrive, and a constant willingness to broaden and deepen the application of its principles. The future of democracy depends on our ability to show that it is more than a set of bare-minimum defenses against the worst abuses of tyrants—it is a guarantee of the freedom to choose and live out one’s own destiny. We must demonstrate that the full promise of democracy can be realized, and recognize that no one else will do it for us.

Bluntly put, we cannot wait until the 2020 elections to thwart Trump’s assault on democracy. The effort to sow the seeds for a democratic revival should begin now.