We speak of American democracy as if it were once whole—something noble now in crisis. But for Black people, democracy has always been partial, conditional, and enforced at gunpoint. This is not a story of decline. It is a story of exposure. A failed democracy is showing us its true face, and Donald Trump is accelerating that truth with open authoritarianism. The urgency of this situation cannot be overstated.
Trump is not destroying a functioning system. He is weaponizing one that was built to exclude. His politicization of the military is not new—it is simply more brazen. The U.S. military has long been used to suppress Black freedom struggles. What's different now is how openly Trump is reshaping it to serve his agenda: punishing dissent, fortifying White nationalism, and silencing justice movements.
Democracy Built to Exclude
American democracy was never designed for us. It was constructed to protect property, patriarchy, and Whiteness. The Constitution enshrined slavery and denied citizenship to Indigenous people, Black people, and the poor. The Naturalization Act of 1790 restricted citizenship to "free White persons." The weight of this historical context continues to shape our present reality.
Even after emancipation, White power adapted. Jim Crow was not a betrayal of democratic ideals—it was their fulfillment. Voter suppression, racial terror, and exclusion from public life were legally sanctioned. And when we fought back—when we forced the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965—the backlash came swiftly. Shelby v. Holder gutted those protections, and modern laws continue the same agenda: dilute our vote, block our access, and limit our power.
This exclusion extends beyond the ballot. Black communities are denied equitable education, clean water, healthcare, and safety. When we protest, we’re met with tear gas. When we organize, we’re labeled threats. The system adapts to our resistance by criminalizing it.
Trump's Military: From Defense to Domestic Control
The Legal Limits—And Loopholes—of Domestic Military Use
Trump is not content with rigged courts and voter suppression. He is turning the U.S. military into a tool of political enforcement. He has purged top commanders who refused to carry out unlawful orders and replaced them with loyalists. He has banned DEI programs, erased discussions of racism from military training, and redefined patriotism as obedience.
This is not about protecting the nation. It is about controlling it.
Trump sees dissent as destabilization, protest as subversion, and black-led resistance as insurrection. And you, if you're reading this and not yet alarmed, need to understand: his definition of 'enemy' includes anyone who dares to dissent. And now, he is preparing a military culture that will act accordingly. Executive orders have removed safeguards. Surveillance has expanded. The line between the military and the police is vanishing.
If this continues unchecked, the military will not be deployed in rare emergencies. Instead, it will be deployed to contain communities, monitor movements, and enforce silence.
The legality of using the U.S. military for domestic purposes is deeply contested. Under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, federal troops are generally prohibited from engaging in civilian law enforcement unless expressly authorized by Congress or the Constitution. The Insurrection Act is the key exception—it allows the president to deploy active-duty military within the United States to suppress insurrection or enforce federal law. But the law is vague and dangerously broad. It requires no meaningful oversight and grants sweeping discretion to the executive.
Trump has already threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in response to racial justice protests. He has blurred the lines between policing and military authority, both rhetorically and operationally. When the military is conditioned to view domestic dissent as a threat, the legal restraints become mere technicalities—loopholes that autocrats exploit. Without judicial and congressional resistance, the act of sending troops into our cities can be made to look lawful, even as it violates the spirit of democracy.
We must be clear: legality is not the same as legitimacy. Just because the law can be stretched to permit domestic militarization does not mean it is just—or safe. Especially not for Black communities, who have always lived on the other side of “law and order.”
From Slavery to Surveillance: A Familiar Pattern
State violence against Black communities is not a deviation. It is the norm. From slave patrols to National Guard crackdowns, from COINTELPRO to Ferguson, the military has long been part of domestic racial control.
The 1033 program transferred military-grade weapons to local police. Those weapons were turned on us. In Minneapolis. In Baton Rouge. In Standing Rock. When we rise, the state militarizes.
Trump is simply making this structure explicit. Under his leadership, the logic of counterinsurgency is being redirected inward—to target Black communities, protestors, immigrants, and any dissenters. He is reviving America’s original mission: control the margins to protect the center.
The Myth of Decline
Many still ask, "How did we get here?"—as if this were a sudden descent. But Black people know: we never left. There is no golden age of American democracy to return to—no moment when it truly protected us, served us or saw us as equal. There is only a history of exclusion, resistance, and denial. Yet, in the face of this, the Black community has shown remarkable resilience and strength.
What feels like a collapse to some is recognition to us. The protections others assumed were permanent have always been provisional for us. Our freedom has always been contested, and our rights have always been conditional.
This is not the death of democracy. This is the unveiling of what it has always been.
Conclusion: No More Illusions
We owe it to ourselves and to the future to stop pretending. America was never a democracy for all. And Trump is not its downfall—he is its mirror. He reflects on what this nation was built to protect: racial hierarchy, selective justice, and White power preserved through violence.
We are not in a moment of democratic collapse—we are in a moment of democratic reckoning. For Black people, that reckoning is centuries overdue. The Constitution has never protected us, though we are expected to revere it. We have been policed by it—arrested by its clauses, surveilled by its silence, punished by its priorities. The state has never sheltered us. We have been surveilled, punished, and blamed by it. And now, under Trump's rule, the institutions others once trusted have become weapons again—more openly, more aggressively, more permanently.
But recognition is not surrender. To name the truth is not to give up. It is to begin again, with eyes open and fists unclenched—not in naive hope but in strategic clarity. We are not asking for restoration. We are demanding transformation—a democracy that centers the people it once erased, a future that does not depend on presidential restraint but on community resistance and structural renewal.
We are here. We have always been here. And we are not leaving.
No more waiting. No more permission. No more illusions.
Vernellia R. Randall, Professor Emerita of Law, University of Dayton School of Law.
