Are we in a Constitutional crisis right now? At this moment? Have we already crossed the red line signaling the potential end to our democracy? This question has been asked and answered multiple times in the past few months.

Inexplicably, there are those who continue to resist the urge to answer: “Yes.” They claim that, among other things, we must wait for the final judgements of the courts, allow them to adjudicate the lawsuits against Trump all the up to the Supreme Court, and wait and see what Trump does at that point — before making the call. Only if Trump refuses to obey at that point — has the crisis point been reached. For now, they urge caution, lest we overreact. According to them, we are currently only in danger of a crisis. One has yet to arrive.

If only that were true. The truth is that these “head-in-the-sand” political cowards have set an absurdly high bar — especially in reaction to someone as clearly and deliberately disparaging of the law and the Constitution as Trump.

When a President repeatedly does things that are plainly illegal and blatantly unconstitutional — and continues to defend these actions with phony justifications even after courts (including the Supreme Court) have almost universally ruled against him — and subsequently proceeds to issue further illegal executive actions on an almost daily basis, with an almost gleeful disdain — and then threatens prosecution against the very judges opposing his rulings — that is already more than sufficient to declare that we are in a crisis. The threat to our democracy is at our doorstep, with a battering ram.

As J. Michael Luttig lays it all out, in a stunning and frightening new article in The Atlantic, even if Trump ultimately loses in court, and even if he acknowledges those losses, it will be too late. That’s why we cannot not afford to minimize or ignore Trump’s actions — not for even another day:

“No court in the land will ever uphold any of these executive orders, and Trump knows that. He knows he need not win any of these cases in court to achieve what he wants. He will ruin the lives and livelihoods of lawyers and other American citizens and upend these institutions long before the courts render their final decisions on these orders. That’s his whole point.”

Trump has made it crystal clear: When it comes to a contest between the rule of law and the rule of Trump, the President is the unequivocal winner. He, and he alone, gets to decide what is or is not lawful. This is the very definition of a dictatorship.

“Donald Trump may wish he could dictate his unconscionable global tariffs; dispense with due process and deport whomever he pleases, citizen and not; and vanish away huge swaths of the federal government without check or rebuke. He may wish he did not have to contend with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the free press, or the Constitution’s birthright-citizenship guarantee. He may wish he could ignore the Constitution’s elections clauses and run America’s elections from the White House. And he may wish he could intimidate the nation’s lawyers and law firms from challenging his abuse of power and commandeer them to do his personal bidding.”

He may wish that. But we cannot grant him his wishes.

“After these first three tyrannical, lawless months of this presidency, surely Americans can understand now that Donald Trump is going to continue to decimate America for the next three-plus years. He will continue his assault on America, its democracy, and rule of law until the American people finally rise up and say, ‘No more.’ ”

As the Trump regime continues its relentless march toward autocracy…implementing all the key components of Project 2025, you need a scorecard (and a rather big one) to keep track of all the damage they are doing along the way.

As you try to assess just how dangerous the current situation is, bear in mind these words from a trio of political scientists who have studied how democracies come to an end:

“Authoritarianism is harder to recognize than it used to be. Most 21st-century autocrats are elected. Rather than violently suppress opposition like Castro or Pinochet, today’s autocrats convert public institutions into political weapons, using law enforcement, tax and regulatory agencies to punish opponents and bully the media and civil society onto the sidelines. We call this competitive authoritarianism — a system in which parties compete in elections but the systematic abuse of an incumbent’s power tilts the playing field against the opposition. It is how autocrats rule in contemporary Hungary, India, Serbia and Turkey and how Hugo Chávez ruled in Venezuela.” “America has {already} crossed the line into competitive authoritarianism.”

While it is impossible to prioritize the awfulness of all the things Trump is done, certainly one of the worst is the unconstitutional stripping away of the fundamental rights and freedoms of every citizen — and legal resident — in this country. And he does this without any Congressional objection or even oversight. Following along from the Viktor Orbán playbook, Trump is:

“…redefining the rule of law as rule by executive decree” and “eliminating checks and balances and separation of powers by taking over the legislature, the courts, the media, and civil society.”

Trump has been systematically doing this since Day 1 of his second term. Yet, two of the most egregious examples of his lawlessness and authoritarianism have become evident in only the last week or so:

• Gutting the Civil Rights Act of 1964: As noted in The New York Times: “President Trump has ordered federal agencies to abandon the use of a longstanding legal tool used to root out discrimination against minorities, a move that could defang the nation’s bedrock civil rights law” In particular, “Mr. Trump directed the federal government to curtail the use of ‘disparate-impact liability,’ a core tenet used for decades to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by determining whether policies disproportionately disadvantage certain groups.” Slate further explained that prohibiting practices that have a disparate negative effect on certain minorities, regardless of the intent of the law, “is the sort of fundamentally fair, commonsense approach to rooting out systemic racism at which the Trump administration has taken aim through its Orwellian ‘Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy’ executive order.”
• Suspending Habeas Corpus: As reported in Time magazine: “President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller told reporters that the Trump Administration is ‘looking at’ the option of suspending habeas corpus…” Why is this so critical? Because habeas corpus is the legal term for the procedure that guarantee’s due process and whereby “a federal court may review the legality of an individual’s incarceration.” And while Trump and his cronies may believe they can suspend it on a whim, they cannot. Only Congress can suspend the writ of habeas corpus! “This is a question of fundamental constraints on the tyrannical power of people to throw you in jail and throw away the keys.”

The clear and present danger is that, even though what Trump is trying to do is blatantly illegal, he can still get away with doing it — if no one stops him. If Congress doesn’t do its job and exert its Constitutional authority over the executive branch, if the Courts allow Trump to ignore their prohibitory rulings without consequence, and if the people do not act alarmed and assert their strong resistance to the dire threat hanging over their heads — then Trump will assuredly become this country’s first dictator.

There is no appeasement possible. There is no compromise you can offer. As Robert Reich put it: “It’s impossible to appease a tyrant like Trump because tyrants always see appeasement as a sign of weakness, and will demand more and more.”