America is being urged to wake up—not to another distant threat or temporary political scandal, but to what one prominent columnist describes as a slow-motion coup unfolding in plain sight.
In a blistering opinion column, David Rothkopf argues that the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not the end of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn America’s democratic system.
It was merely the beginning.
According to Rothkopf, the opening weeks of Trump’s second administration revealed a more organized and potentially successful assault—one conducted through executive orders, mass firings, funding freezes and the dismantling of federal institutions rather than a violent mob.
Follow @allchronology“Yes, it’s a coup and yes, it’s targeting you,” he warned.
His characterization is an argument, not a legal finding. Trump and his allies maintain that they are exercising authority granted by voters to shrink the federal government, remove ideological opposition and make agencies more accountable to the elected president.
Rothkopf sees something radically different.
He argues that Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk are attempting to seize powers assigned to Congress, eliminate agencies without proper legislative authorization and replace career civil servants with politically loyal personnel.
The Americans being harmed, he contends, are not members of the so-called “Deep State.”
They are the ordinary people who depend upon a functioning government.
Civil-service protections exist partly to prevent each new administration from purging experts for partisan reasons. Aviation inspectors, scientists, law-enforcement officials and administrators serve under laws and budgets approved by elected representatives.
Removing them indiscriminately, Rothkopf argues, does not merely punish federal workers. It weakens the services and protections the public has already authorized through Congress.
He pointed to the departure of Federal Aviation Administration chief Michael Whitaker shortly before the deadly collision involving a passenger aircraft and a military helicopter near Washington.
The timing does not prove that Whitaker’s exit caused the disaster. But Rothkopf used it to illustrate the potential consequences of driving experienced officials from vital agencies.
He raised similar concerns about Trump’s reported purge of FBI personnel associated with investigations the president opposed.
Those agents, Rothkopf argued, were not enemies of the public. They were enforcing laws enacted to protect it.
The most alarming development involved Musk’s efforts to gain access to government payment systems responsible for distributing federal funds.
Those mechanisms process Social Security benefits, salaries, grants, contracts and countless other obligations. Allowing unelected political operatives broad control over them could potentially give the executive branch enormous leverage over programs Congress legally funded.
A senior Treasury official reportedly resigned after clashing with Musk’s team over access.
Rothkopf also condemned the administration’s effort to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Supporters portray USAID as wasteful foreign spending that should be reduced or reorganized. Rothkopf argued that destroying it would harm Americans by surrendering influence to rivals such as China and Russia.
Foreign assistance builds alliances, supports stability and gives Washington leverage in strategically important regions. Removing that presence creates an opening for Beijing and Moscow to expand their own power.
Follow @allchronologyThe administration’s aggressive territorial rhetoric and trade wars may produce the same outcome, he warned.
Threats involving Greenland and other territories could normalize the kind of expansionism Russia used to justify its invasion of Ukraine and China might invoke against Taiwan.
Tariffs and attacks on allies, meanwhile, risk weakening the international system the United States spent generations creating.
Rothkopf argued that culture-war measures—including removing references to climate change and transgender people from government websites—function partly as distractions.
They generate outrage, dominate headlines and exhaust the public while officials carry out less visible changes to the machinery of government.
The volume of actions is itself an advantage.
When people cannot absorb one controversy before the next begins, some disengage entirely. News organizations reduce constitutional confrontations to ordinary partisan disputes, and political leaders redirect public anger into fundraising rather than sustained resistance.
That creates time for the administration to act before courts intervene.
Even judicial intervention may not be enough, Rothkopf warned, if Trump refuses to obey unfavorable rulings.
The U.S. Constitution divides authority among Congress, the president and the courts precisely to prevent one person from accumulating unchecked power. If the executive branch can ignore laws, eliminate congressionally created programs and defy judges, those safeguards become symbolic.
Rothkopf placed the threat in the most dramatic historical context possible.
He argued that the United States has not faced a greater danger to its governing system since the Civil War—and suggested that even during that conflict, the federal government remained more committed to law and the public interest.
That comparison will strike some readers as hyperbolic. America continues to hold elections, courts are reviewing Trump’s actions and opposition parties, journalists and civil-society groups remain active.
But Rothkopf’s point is that democracies rarely disappear in a single unmistakable moment.
They can be hollowed out gradually as institutions are weakened, expertise is purged, legal boundaries are tested and violations become normalized.
The public may realize what has been lost only after the system can no longer correct itself.
Congress could resist by defending its constitutional authority, regardless of party. Courts could enforce their orders. Citizens could protest and demand accountability.
Rothkopf fears none will respond with sufficient urgency.
He predicts that much of the public will simply change the channel, scroll to another video or wait for political leaders to solve the crisis.
If that passivity continues, he warns, today’s chaos may be remembered not as the height of Trump’s power—but merely as the prelude to something much darker.
Follow @allchronologyHis conclusion is deliberately terrifying.
The target of this campaign is not an abstract bureaucracy. It is every American whose vote, benefits, safety and freedom depend upon institutions stronger than a president’s personal will.
January 6 showed what an attempted seizure of power looked like when the attackers broke windows.
Rothkopf’s warning is that the new version wears suits, signs executive orders—and may already be inside the building.
