Is the United States entering a post-constitutional order?

In feudal times, it was expected that vassals would kiss the ring of the lord of the manor to show loyalty and subservience to his power, to make it clear that they understood they belonged to him. I had thought those times were long gone, but apparently, they are with us again. Across America, politicians, businesspeople and media tycoons are lining up to do a modern version of the same thing, but now it is with a president. This is not good for what is supposed to be a democratic republic. Republicans led the way by showing up at various Trump trials to support their leader. They knew he was guilty of the crimes of which he was accused, but they showed up anyway. They said all of the right things — “the courts are biased against him” or “the deep state is after him.” However, the point of showing up was to curry favor with someone they expected to have power over them in the future.

It was a smart move. Trump has been ruthless in destroying the political futures of those Republicans who have shown him less than total personal loyalty, which involves embracing the big lie that Trump won the 2020 election. Those who have proven their loyalty are now being rewarded with positions in the new administration. Leading businesses are also jumping on the bandwagon, dismantling their companies’ diversity programs. They don’t actually believe these programs are wrong; they just know they will be targets if they don’t take action to please the new president. Trump and his supporters assert that DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) undermines merit, but Trump’s focus on loyalty is, as Jonathan Chait has pointed out, the true enemy of merit. The most disturbing trend has been watching the media buckle out of fear. It began with Jeff Bezos overturning the decision of the Washington Post to endorse Kamala Harris for the presidency. He understood that the newspaper would pay dearly if it were to offend Trump by failing to endorse him.

Now, Facebook has decided to end its independent fact-checking system. While that system was flawed, it was absolutely essential. As an article in the Wall Street Journal points out, last year Trump published a book about his first term in office with a picture of him with Mark Zuckerberg. The caption threatened, “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time, he will spend the rest of his life in prison.” And by “illegal,” Trump meant “disloyal.”

Fact-checking by a private organization is not illegal. What Trump actually meant was that he would not tolerate Facebook calling him or his supporters out when they lied or made false claims on Facebook. Zuckerberg understood that the threat was real and that it would not be enough to improve Facebook and eliminate some of its mistakes. He needed to demonstrate obsequiousness. He needed to be servile, to show that, like a vassal, he belongs to Trump. He needed to do the modern version of kissing his ring.

Trump is pushing ahead feverishly to make personal loyalty to him the standard for our government, as is apparent when one reviews the poorly qualified appointments to Trump’s Cabinet who have been confirmed by the Senate and the mass firings by DOGE within the administration. They have nothing to do with eliminating waste, fraud or inefficiency and everything to do with replacing expertise in the bureaucracy with loyalty. As Anne Applebaum points out, this is central to autocracy. If he succeeds, America will be fundamentally changed. People are nonetheless caving out of fear, doing whatever they can to show they support the president, who has made it clear he will ruthlessly pursue anyone who crosses him. They understand that Trump will not be bound by the Constitution by taking action against those who oppose him.

The Constitution is our democratic republic’s foundational law and the defining statement of our political principles. As our Pledge of Allegiance makes clear, our loyalty should be to the republic and not to a politician, no matter how powerful. John Adams, a leader of the American Revolution, our first vice president and our second president, famously said that we are a “government of laws, not men.” Today, we are seeing how quickly that can change. Have we reached what some have called a “post-constitutional order,” when personal loyalty to a politician replaces respect for and loyalty to the law? We are left with a question: Will people rediscover their courage and the Constitution in time to prevent regime change in the United States?