An American Comes to Jesus 

I recently spoke at Jesus College, Cambridge, to about 200 students, professors, and media figures about “Autocracy in America: Law and Politics in the Second Trump Administration.” The teaser for the event in a local blog was “US lawyer comes to Jesus,” which made me reassure my friends and family that the reports of my conversion were exaggerated. 

I reviewed the shocking departure from constitutional values and presidential norms of the second Donald Trump administration. In just 10 months, in a manner reminiscent of the Argentine junta of the 1970s, he has sent masked ICE agents in unmarked vans to seize presumed undocumented immigrants and deport them without due process to horrific prisons in El Salvador or to failed African states where they cannot speak the language. With a green light from the Supreme Court, many of these deportees were targeted based on skin color or their accents. He has unlawfully deployed the National Guard to U.S. cities. There are also the extrajudicial killings in international waters.  

The Brits I spoke with were most concerned about the drift toward autocracy in America, especially the targeting of political opponents, political gerrymandering, and the weakening of our constitutional system of checks and balances. Until the recent flap over the Jeffrey Epstein files release, Trump had full control over Congress, and it seems over the supermajority in the Supreme Court. Hopefully, nevermore. 

Slipping in the polls, stunned by fissures within the MAGA ranks, and set back by Democratic gains in the recent election—where Democrats won governorships by overwhelming margins and some local races by astonishing totals—Trump is pivoting like a whirling dervish. Under pressure from MAGA allies in Congress, he changed his position on releasing the Epstein files. Unless Pam Bondi succeeds in redacting some of the most embarrassing details, we may finally learn what happened in his 15-year relationship with the convicted pedophile.  

He turned to Zohran Mamdani, who was elected mayor of New York City on an affordability platform. Trump must realize that it is the high cost of living across America that, more than anything else, helped him beat Kamala Harris. And it is affordability more than anything else that explains the poor performance of Republicans earlier this month and Trump’s decline. The latest poll numbers show that Trump’s approval is below water. Only 33 percent of US adults approve of how he is managing the government, down from 43 percent in March.  

So, after labeling Mamdani a “communist,” he now tries to align with Americans who voted for him a year ago and supported Mamdani earlier this month. Trump loves winners and hates losers.  

Of course, affordability is a problematic issue for Donald Trump. To hang the bell on the cat, his inflationary tariffs have caused the economy to reach a point where healthcare and basic living expenses will be beyond many Americans’ means. 

Trump has fluctuated on Ukraine, and the negotiations are constantly changing. First, he thought Zelensky wasn’t sufficiently grateful. Then, while flying to Israel on October 12, he told reporters that, “if the war is not settled, we may very well transfer Tomahawk missiles to Zelensky. But at a meeting with Zelensky in Washington on October 17, five days later, Trump rejected the request. Later, after the Pentagon approved giving Ukraine the Tomahawks, he reconsidered and said he would sell Ukraine Patriot missiles, which can deter missiles and drones targeting military sites and civilians. Ultimately, he shifted back to calling Zelensky “ungrateful,” giving him until Thanksgiving to accept a 28-point “peace plan” that benefits Putin’s aggression, or face losing further U.S. support.  

November 30 marks Winston Churchill’s birthday. The deal Trump proposed is another Munich, rewarding aggression. Would Churchill have ever said that Trump brings us “peace in our time?” 

Foreign affairs expert Richard Haass is shocked by the Trump proposal. In a special edition of his newsletter “Home and Away,” he writes: 

The plan is extremely pro-Russian and one-sided. It favors, rather than punishes, Russia for this aggressive war of choice. It also requires Ukraine to rely not on itself but on Russia and the United States for its safety. The plan never should have been proposed; it definitely should not have been put into action. One can only wonder what influenced the American envoys—Steve Witkoff, Marco Rubio, Jared Kushner, and Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll—when they created and promoted it. 

There is, as well, a sordid quality to it all. The United States is to receive compensation for any guarantees it provides and share in the profits generated by infrastructure projects in Ukraine funded by frozen Russian assets. It also pledges to sign an economic cooperation pact with Russia covering just about anything and everything. 

The position the President is putting Ukraine in is simply unconscionable. 

But get this last pivot. Last week, Trump said the plan was not America’s “final offer,” and Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to distance Washington from it before insisting just hours later that the US had authored it. In a Truth Social post, Trump strangely declined to blame Russia for the Ukraine conflict, instead aiming his ire at Kiev and European allies for failing to endorse his truce proposal. 

Meanwhile, a joint Ukraine-US statement says there’s now a whole new deal in play, which it calls an “updated and revised framework document”. The Financial Times quotes one of the delegates, though—Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister Sergiy Kyslytsya—who talks of a new 19-point plan with “very little left” from the original draft. If the rewrite is sensible, it will likely be unacceptable to Putin. Security guarantees for Ukraine are what’s key here. If negotiations break down, Trump may pivot again and supply the Tomahawks, or not.

Given the English parliamentary system, many at Cambridge were surprised that Trump could survive. Britain is accustomed to frequent changes in government. Between 2016 and 2024, it had four prime ministers. When it was revealed that its Defense Secretary John Profumo had an extramarital affair with Christine Keeler, who was also the mistress of a Soviet agent, Profumo was forced out, as was the Conservative government of Harold MacMillan in the next election.  

France likewise has a chaotic form of government. It has elected five prime ministers in the past two years. And they still do not have a budget. 

One of the chapels in the newly restored Notre Dame Cathedral is dedicated to the patron saint of Paris, Saint Genevieve. Beneath a statue of Genevieve is the inscription, which we would do well to take measure, “In Saint Genevieve the spirit of strength restores law and justice when they are flouted.”  

We need a Saint Genevieve in America. We have Trump for at least three more years, assuming he chooses to leave office in 2029, as the Constitution requires.  

British lawyers I spoke with were bewildered by the Supreme Court’s shadow docket, where summary orders that are said to be interim become law without explanation, opinion, or even revealing which justices voted for the final decision. 

Then, there are the pardons. The rule of law is under serious challenge in the United States. Trump has pardoned violent criminals convicted and serving out their sentences over the events of January 6 as though they were Thanksgiving turkeys. His recent pardon of Joe Lewis, the former owner of Tottenham Hotspur football club, who pleaded guilty to insider trading in the U.S. last year, is a case in point, and of great interest in the U.K. The move was the latest in a series of high-profile pardons by Trump. Last month, he pardoned Changpeng Zhao, founder of crypto exchange Binance, who had pleaded guilty to money laundering charges. He also commuted the sentence of former Republican congressman George Santos, who was convicted of wire fraud and identity theft. He pardoned his daughter’s father-in-law and appointed him ambassador to France. 

“This president views the pardon power as a personal tool that he can use when it benefits him personally, politically, or financially, without assessing whether the use of the pardon power benefits the American public,” Elizabeth Oyer, a former senior Justice Department attorney under Trump told The Washington Post. The “traditional rules and procedures about pardons have been thrown out the window,” Oyer said. She called Trump’s use of the pardon power a “crisis.” 

But there is some cause for optimism. Looking at the signs of recent events, we see what was once unimaginable just a few months ago. Trump may be losing his hold on the Republican Party. One of the most telling signs was the announcement by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican, that she is resigning her House seat rather than allowing herself to be treated by Trump like what she called “a battered wife hoping it all goes away and gets better.” 

For years, Greene was, of course, one of Trump’s most loyal and high-profile hard-right supporters, but she has recently broken with him. That included issues like health care and the government shutdown, as well as pushing for the release of Justice Department files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Because of her betrayal, Greene has become a target for Trump, who has repeatedly attacked her on social media, calling her “a traitor” and “a ranting Lunatic” who has gone “Far Left.” Early Saturday, he wrote on social media that her decision to leave Congress was based on “PLUMMETING Poll Numbers and not wanting to face a Primary Challenger with a strong Trump Endorsement.”  

As John Lewis, the great civil rights leader and Congressman, famously said, “Democracy is not a state. It is an act.” Trump is blinking; hope may be on its way.  

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