How Democracies Collapse

Legislature is Now Acting as Arm of the Executive

Senate today voted to allow executive nominees to be approved with no oversight. Senators used their majority power so now they can confirm ten, fifty, or a thousand Trump nominees all at once. In one vote. Chris Murphy, Senator from Connecticut, spoke about what just happened, paraphrased below.

Senator Chris Murphy on Sept 10, 2025:

"We are watching in slow motion a daily assault on democracy. Institutions are shuttering, the judiciary is being used to harass the president's political opponents, the media are cutting deals to silence critics of the administration, and now this body, congress, will no longer get to vote on individual nominees to carry out these policies. None of this is normal, nothing like this has ever happened before. All is wildly dangerous and perhaps fatal to democracy if we continue to refuse to join together as Republicans and Democrats to save our democracy."

The 11 minute speech is on you tube, titled "Republicans Are Abandoning Their Constitutional Responsibilities to Help Trump Break the Law."

Constitution gives power of consent to congress

For nominees to high office, congress has the power to approve or disapprove, to check the power of the executive. But now, using the so called "nuclear option," to change a long-standing rule, Republicans have violated what the Constitution mandates, that is, the separation of branches of government. Granted, they have done so using the powers they have to end dissent, stop discussion, and abandon their constitutional responsibility to be a check on the president. Its not illegal, simply immoral.

Ending the Idea of Branches of Government

Before this rule change, nominees were subject to being questioned at a committee hearing, which can then advance the nominee to a vote of the full Senate, one nominee at a time. All Senators would be allowed to question the nominee, especially those being appointed to high office.

Now an entire block of Trump nominees can be voted in at once, with no individual consideration of each one. Apparently the administration was getting tired of nominees being questioned on their qualifications, so now they just will not have to bother anymore with this basic constitutional process.

Senator Murphy states that there are no limits to the number of nominees to be confirmed at once, no criteria for what type of office holders might not be allowed to be confirmed in this manner (Supreme Court Justices?). Neither is there any attempt to allow the opposing party in a supposedly two-party system to participate in any way. For more details, you can listen to Senator Murphy said, and you can read the transcript of what he said. Many articles have just appeared on the change, here's one from the Associated Press:

You can also read the text of the rule that was just changed. If you can find it. I found it once a week ago, but now I can't. I was going to add here a link so us average citizens can learn for ourselves what is actually going on. But for me, at the moment, I can't find it. Ten minutes of online searching is enough for the moment.

More to this Story, Do I Care?

Some nuances go along with this piece of news, such as how Republicans may live to regret this change. And what the actual rule change says and how it will be applied. And what the reaction has been, but must wait a day or so for that. I wonder why I keep trying to explain what is going on here. Explain to who? If anyone is interested, they will go to their favorite news source and find out what happened. Most people, not being interested, will just nod and say ok fine, or shudder and say, oh no, depending on their political outlook. People who generally don't like what Trump is doing will say what did you expect, no big surprise, it's just more of the same, more of what we can expect from this administration which wants to give itself powers it does not have.

How do democracies collapse? How many books and articles are written on the subject? I don't know. But I'll keep following along, for now, trying to understand. Explaining to myself, that's all, that's all I am trying to do.

Link to text of Murphy's comments:

On Trying to Keep Up

I started writing this post on Friday Sept 12 and am now finishing it on Friday Sept 19, 2025, one full week later when now this is so much old news. Current events of the week are of the overwhelming sort. So why bother? Its a habit I can't seem to shake. Document everything. Keep track. You may need to know this someday.