Donald Trump puts democracy under tension
From Richard Nixon and the spy scandal of the Watergate opposition, half a century ago, never had an American president dared to use the state apparatus for personal purposes so much. Forgotten the lack of agreement on the federal budget, the peace promised between Ukraine and Russia, the growing Russian military threat, the persistence of inflation … The priority peril is elsewhere, according to Donald Trump.
On September 26, 2025, the 47th occupant of the Oval Office said that his administration was going to launch prosecution against “Democrats of the radical corrupt left”. The threat followed the indictment of James Comey, the ex-boss of the FBI. He is officially accused of having lied to a Senate commission of inquiry in 2020; In reality, the president has never forgiven this former Republican to have opened an investigation in 2017 in 2017 possible links between him and Russia in Putin. James Comey had been fired a few months later.
In a posterior book, he describes Donald Trump as a “president contrary to ethics and not attached to the truth or to the values of institutions”. A crime of lèse majesté. Seven years after the publication, the time to pay has come.
“It is a question of justice, really, no revenge,” minimized the president. The opposition is of another opinion: the charge proves that Donald Trump “makes our judicial system a weapon in order to punish and silence its detractors,” denounced the influential Democratic senator Mark Warner.
James Comey’s charge was announced in Virginia after the appointment on the spot as a former lawyer for Donald Trump. The previous prosecutor had just resigned under direct pressure of the White House occupier.
“A grotesque abuse of the presidential power”, for Mike Zamore, one of the directors of the respectable American Civil Liberties Union, a centenary NGO and not a partisan for the defense of civil rights. A few days earlier, the association had denounced the “intimidation” campaign launched by the Trump administration against civil servants, threatened with sanctions or dismissal if they criticized the memory of the ultra -conservative activist Charlie Kirk, murdered on September 10. In his eyes, it is an attack on freedom of expression, guaranteed by the first amendment of the Constitution.
Pressure also targeted the media. For a sarcastic comment on Donald Trump, humorist Jimmy Kimmel was suspended by the ABC channel where he works before returning to the antenna: a flood of viewers threatened in retaliation to unsubscribe …
Multiple resistors
Because Donald Trump may, every day, juggle pressures and threats, the counterpowers resist. An important part of the public, in the street or the media, protests against everything that is akin to an abuse of presidential prerogatives. The sending of soldiers in democratic cities, on the pretext of fighting delinquency, makes the military hierarchy uncomfortable. The opinion was shocked to hear the president suggest that the army uses these cities as “training grounds”.
The judges, too, watch out: not almost one day does not happen without a Executive order (presidential decree) legally doubtful is not blocked by a court. When Donald Trump claims last month at New York Times And at the PEGGUIN Random House publishing house the sum of $ 15 billion for “false, malicious, defamatory” items intended, according to him, to prevent his 2024 victory, his complaint was dismissed by a magistrate three days later. Even the Supreme Court, in which conservative judges are in the majority, does not hesitate, in certain files, to prove the president wrong.
Authoritarian drift
Admittedly, the republican party has changed. Formerly heterogeneous coalition of social conservatives and libertarian liberals, isolationists and Atlantists attached to the alliance with Europe, supporters of free trade and protectionist, he has turned into a formation aligned on the positions of a president inclined to decide and to hunt any dissident voice. This corporalization of the party and its elected officials prevents the traditional and subtle game of balance and negotiation between executive powers at the White and Legislative House in the Congress, the foundation of the American political system.
But voters could soon put an end to this institutional anomaly. According to surveys and partial elections, the Democratic opposition could recover the majority in the two chambers of the congress in the mid-term elections in November 2026: never a president since 1945 has had such a low rate of maximum approval and, today, a majority of Americans (58 % against 40 %) considers Donald Trump’s action unfavorably.
