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One of the biggest throughlines of the new administration is to destroy all mechanisms of accountability.

The felon-in-chief is famous for avoiding accountability himself. In a just world, he would now be in prison for inciting insurrection, stealing US classified documents, and trying to overturn a national election by various devious means. Instead, because he was able to delay justice till after the election, he avoided the Big House and went straight to the White House. No consequence for bad behavior.

One of his first official acts was to tell his supporters that as long as they were with him, they would never face accountability either. Beat up police officers in the US Capitol building? Smear feces all around? No problem! No consequence for bad behavior.

Now he’s eliminating all the people in federal government in charge of preventing bad behavior nationally. He has illegally fired all the inspectors general who serve as watchdogs for various federal agencies. He’s installing department heads that are incompetent and often have some kind of grudge against the department they lead. He’s aiming to remove all safeguards against corporations poisoning our air, land and water, and to remove all protections for workers. He’s preventing public health agencies from providing information necessary for public safety. And removing all career civil servants who might possibly object to any of his plans. And on and on. All institutional forms of accountability are being destroyed. Very deliberately.

His move to impound funds already appropriated by Congress is blatantly unconstitutional and clearly a test of how much he can get away with. Will Congress and the courts try to stop him? He wants to find out, and destroy all institutional guardrails design to prevent abuse of presidential power.

Meanwhile, he is already shaping the behavior of institutions outside of government that might hold him accountable. Most famously, his co-president Elon Musk bought Twitter and immediately eliminated content moderation and restored accounts that had been banned for bad behavior. More recently, Zuckerberg announced that Meta platforms will also suspend fact-checking and content moderation. Other captains of digital communications industry are also bending the knee and assuring the tyrant that whatever he wants is fine with them. What used to be understood as blocking hate speech and misinformation is now understood as censorship of his base.

Well, at least we have the Fourth Estate—the media will hold him accountable, right? Um… He’s already reshaping the White House press corps to prioritize right-wing media sources. Beyond that, unfortunately, legacy media has already been in decline, with major publications like the Washington Post and LA Times bought up by billionaires who have shown fealty to the MAGA agenda, and many smaller newspapers and magazines failing. Broadcast news is also shifting. MSNBC’s fate is now in question, as the sole counterweight to the Fox “News” disinformation machine.

All this destruction of institutional guardrails is meant to clear the way for the worst behavior by the tyrant-in-chief and his cronies. The message: As long you are with me, you can do anything you want without consequence.

On the other hand, if you are an undocumented immigrant, or someone who opposes my agenda, or any other target of official hate, you will be severely punished for the slightest transgression. You can be deported for shoplifting, you can be punished for asserting a gender identify not in alignment with your birth certificate, you can be punished for asserting your womb is yours to control, you can be punished for whatever we decide you should be punished for. He’s already fired any DoJ staff involved in investigating Jan. 6, or any bad behavior by himself or his staff.

This all classic dominance behavior, seen from chimpanzees to authoritarian regimes through history. It’s saying, “Who’s gonna stop me?”

It’s up to all of us to answer that question.