Local View: With so much gone, all must fight for our democracy

So much gone: government websites and pages with information on climate change, medical issues, and civil-rights leaders. So hypocritical, given the MAGA outrage over the Jan. 6, 2021, committee supposedly eliminating its records (surprise: not true ).

Gone are certain words , as if a ban on their use makes them non-existent.

Gone are people picked up by ICE and shipped out without legally required due process, to a remote part of Cuba or to a prison in El Salvador. Never mind that the arrangement with El Salvador is illegal and cruel. Gone (fired) is the lawyer who admitted in court that one of those persons was mistakenly included, that the court order to return the group was disobeyed by President Donald Trump’s regime. Likely gone will be people vetted and admitted to the U.S. because their homeland is unsafe, from earthquakes or violence. Gone, apparently, are the compassion and generosity of past generations and administrations.

Gone are the guardrails of the first Trump administration: government workers refusing to sign illegal orders or to allow access to restricted databases, ethical lawyers admonishing Trump against illegal or unconstitutional actions, and military personnel explaining rules around the Insurrection Act.

There’s seemingly no one left to say, despite his insistence to the contrary, that Trump did not win in 2020 or that revenge is inappropriate. There’s seemingly no one to stop the executive orders that contradict the law or Constitution, such as freezing already allocated funds. There’s a legal reason so many lower courts rule against Trump’s orders.

Gone is economic security for workers and farmers, given market-manipulating tariffs, the elimination of unions and functioning labor agreements, and massive layoffs.

Gone are funds supporting infrastructure repairs, medical research, vaccination efforts, and FEMA. How many will die needlessly?

Surprised that Cabinet members were chosen for loyalty to Trump and not for their expertise? Case in point: the vaccine skeptic put in charge of health services.

Apparently gone is government’s commitment to civil rights, knowledge, and scientific research.

Disappearing are personal and religious liberties, guaranteed in our Constitution, as the writers of Project 2025 (as a candidate, Trump claimed ignorance of it) see their backward-looking, Christian Nationalist plan implemented. (Surprised to see them in positions of power? Shouldn’t be. After all, Trump told more than 30,000 lies in his first presidency, as tallied by the Washington Post .)

Gone are checks and balances and separations of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. The fourth branch, the free press, has largely disappeared, resulting in losses to its critical watchdog role, as have too many law firms bowing to pressure put on them by Trump. Congress is complicit in the slide into authoritarianism, with Republicans — including Northeastern Minnesota’s Rep. Pete Stauber — ceding without complaint congressional powers guaranteed in the Constitution.

Even the Supreme Court bears responsibility, having ruled that Trump would be protected from prosecution for any acts committed in his role as president; heretofore, no one was above the law.

We are facing a constitutional crisis: deadly for people and deadly for our democracy. (The government knowingly and falsely declaring immigrants dead could easily happen to citizens, as could deportations.)

I lived in Argentina during the first year of its military coup and dictatorship, which ran from 1976 to 1983. There was no difference between military and local police; they were all culpable in the tortures, disappearances, gifting of babies (born to incarcerated opponents) to their friends, and ultimately 24,000 to 30,000 deaths of those considered opponents of the military dictatorship. We’d be better off in the U.S. continuing the separation of local police from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and limits on the use of the military.

Trump continues to actively work to consolidate power in his office, seemingly committed to cruelty toward others and revenge on anyone who may have crossed him as they fulfilled their lawful job duties.

I fear we’ll ultimately fall under a dictatorship hiding in plain sight. It’s incumbent on us all, in Duluth and well beyond, to say no and for institutions at all levels to support us and work to preserve our democracy.

We need to stand against tyranny, united in defense of all.

Eileen Zeitz Hudelson is a retired University of Minnesota Duluth professor and researcher, a former Duluth School Board member, and a member of the Minnesota DFL Senior Caucus.