A second essential safeguard of democracy is now at risk

On February 6th, Senator Angus King (I-ME) gave an important speech as he and his colleagues debated the confirmation of Russell Vought to be the Director of OMB (emphasis mine). 

Here's a paradox at the heart of the creation of any government, whether it's here or anywhere else on Earth, and anywhere else in history. There's a paradox built in, because the essence of creating government is to give it power, give it our power,...in order to provide for the common defense, to ensure domestic tranquility, to provide justice to our people.

In other words, we're giving our power to this separate entity. But we have to do so with the realization that the power that's being given has the potential to be abused. In other words, how do we give power to this entity, this government, and ensure that the government itself doesn't use that power to abuse us as citizens? This is a question at the heart of all political discussion throughout history...

Our framers understood this. They were deep students of history and also human nature. And they had just won a lengthy and brutal war against the abuses inherent in concentrated governmental power...

So how did they answer the question? How did they answer the question who will guard the guardians? They answered it by building into the basic structure of our government two essential safeguards. One was regular elections. In other words, returning the control of the government to the people on regular scheduled elections...But the other piece that's built into our system that's the other essential safeguard is the deliberate division of power between the branches and levels of government.

As we are bombarded with the chaos and corruption emanating from the Trump/Musk administration on a daily basis, it is important to recognize that our democracy rests on two essential safeguards: (1) regular elections, and (2) the separation of powers. 

Much of what we're witnessing from Trump/Musk is the neutering of number two. Ignoring laws passed by Congress and threatening to disobey the courts is at the heart of destroying the separation of powers in order to establish the president as dictator. 

But recent news suggests that Trump/Musk might be going after elections as well. At this point, they're not threatening to stop them from happening. But here's what they ARE doing:

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has frozen all of its election security work and is reviewing everything it has done to help state and local officials secure their elections for the past eight years, WIRED has learned...

In a memo sent Friday to all CISA employees and obtained by WIRED, CISA’s acting director, Bridget Bean, said she was ordering “a review and assessment” of every position at the agency related to election security and countering mis- and disinformation, “as well as every election security and [mis-, dis-, and malinformation] product, activity, service, and program that has been carried out” since the federal government designated election systems as critical infrastructure in 2017.

“CISA will pause all elections security activities until the completion of this review,” Bean added. The agency is also cutting off funding for these activities at the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing & Analysis Center, a group funded by the Department of Homeland Security that has served as a coordinating body for the elections community.

For a quick review of some recent history, the initial concern of the Obama administration when Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 election was that they would hack into state/local election systems. Just before leaving office, then-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson designated election infrastructure as a "critical infrastructure" - setting up the federal government to help state/local officials prevent cyber attacks. Those are the funds/activities/personnel that are being frozen right now by the Trump/Musk administration. 

In reporting on this freeze, the right wing website New York Post quoted a DHS official who said, "The agency has determined that federally funded work organized under the EI-ISAC [the group that coordinates activities with local election officials] no longer effectuates Department priorities."

I know there's a lot to absorb right now. But shutting these systems down is basically a nod to Russia (or Iran, China, etc)) that they have an open door to hack into state/local election systems and control them. That's democracy's second essential safeguard going down the tubes.