Pay-to-play schemes. Protection rackets. Extortion. Corruption. Self-enrichment. Graft. Grift. Brutality. Roaming bands of thugs smashing car windows and terrorizing communities. Immunity for criminal behavior coupled with prosecutions of whistleblowers.
This is how a crime syndicate operates—not a constitutional republic.
What we are witnessing today is the steady transformation of the federal government—especially the executive branch—into a criminalized system of power in which justice is weaponized, law is selectively enforced, and crime becomes a form of political currency.
While the American police state has long marched in lockstep with the old truism that power corrupts—and absolute power corrupts absolutely—the Trump administration has ceased even the pretense of being bound by the Constitution.
Rather than abiding by the rule of law, this administration operates as if there are two separate legal systems: one for themselves and their cronies, and one for everyone else.
The corruption is off the charts, the conflicts of interest are in your face, and the brazenness is staggering.
Measured against this reality, it has become increasingly difficult to pretend that we are still dealing with a functioning republic.
What we have instead is a government that behaves like a criminal enterprise: rewarding loyalty, punishing dissent, monetizing public service, and enriching itself through favors, loopholes, and outright graft.
A pay-to-play culture now permeates the highest levels of power.
At the same time, the conflicts of interest just keep piling up.
This quid pro quo governance—private profit in exchange for public policy—does not resemble republican self-government. It resembles a protection racket, where the powerful exchange favors not for the public good but for personal gain—and access and immunity are available for purchase by those willing to pay.
Unfortunately, the rot doesn’t stop there.
The presidential pardon—intended to be a mechanism for mercy—has become a political reward system.
The numbers speak volumes.
During Trump’s first term, he issued 238 pardons and commutations; less than a year into his second term, he has issued nearly 2,000 pardons, costing victims and taxpayers more than $1.3 billion.
As ProPublica details, Trump’s pardons overwhelmingly benefit political loyalists, donors, grifters, extremists, and individuals either convicted of crimes in pursuit of Trump’s ambitions or who might help to advance those ambitions in the future—or both.
These are not miscarriages of justice being corrected; they are protection payments, signals to future operatives: do what we need you to do, and we will take care of you.
The double standard is staggering.
Critics, journalists, students, and whistleblowers face investigations, surveillance, and in some cases arrest for constitutionally protected activities—while those charged with committing actual crimes in support of the administration are shielded, absolved, or financially rewarded.
That is not the rule of law. That is the rule of power.
In a constitutional government, the pardon power is meant to temper justice with mercy.
In an unrestrained government, the pardon power becomes a mechanism for shielding insiders, silencing potential witnesses, rewarding political operatives, and signaling to future enforcers that their loyalty will be repaid.
Once justice is weaponized—once the government becomes both the ultimate lawmaker and the ultimate lawbreaker—once the president decides that his own power, not the Constitution, is the highest authority—the distinction between governance and criminality collapses.
A government that can ignore transparency laws will hide its misconduct.
A government that can lie to the courts will lie to its people.
A government that can criminalize political opposition can criminalize anyone.
A government that can pardon loyal criminals can persecute those who expose them.
This is not hypothetical. It is happening now.
Look at the surveillance state: millions of Americans monitored through AI-powered tools, data-mined by private intelligence contractors, and flagged by opaque algorithms—while the government shields its own communications, decisions, and financial entanglements behind secrecy laws and executive privilege.
Look at policing: violent, militarized crackdowns on immigrants, journalists, and protesters—even as the administration dismisses, excuses, or encourages lawlessness among vigilantes, paramilitary groups, and politically aligned street militias.
Look at governance: executive orders increasingly treated as substitutes for legislation, bypassing Congress, the courts, and constitutional checks. The president no longer requests authority; he assumes it.
This is not constitutionalism. This is consolidation—an executive branch absorbing the functions of lawmaking, law enforcement, and legal interpretation into a single, unaccountable center of power.
This is not “law and order.” This is the government redefining order in its own image and using law to enforce its will.
The Founders warned us about this.
Yet here we are.
This is how nations fall—not through foreign invasion but through internal corruption.
When the government becomes the greatest violator of rights, the people lose faith in justice.
When the government becomes the greatest source of disinformation, the people lose faith in truth.
When the government becomes the greatest beneficiary of criminality, the people lose faith in democracy itself.
Democracy becomes theater. Elections become rituals. Rights become privileges granted or revoked at the discretion of those in power.
The Constitution is not a self-enforcing document. It has no army, no treasury, no enforcement bureau of its own. It binds only those who agree to be bound by its edicts. When officials refuse to be bound, the Constitution becomes a relic—a symbol invoked rhetorically but ignored in practice.
The only way out is the way the Founders intended: by rebinding government down with the chains of the Constitution. But those chains must be enforced by “We the People.” They must be tightened around those who wield power.
Without constitutional chains, the president becomes an imperial dictator.
Without oversight, the justice system becomes a political weapon.
Without accountability, government becomes a self-serving, money-laundering enterprise masquerading as legitimate authority.
If America is to remain a free nation, those chains must be tightened—not loosened, ignored, or replaced with partisan loyalty.
The rule of law must apply to the powerful, not just the powerless.
The justice system must serve the public, not the president.
And as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, “We the people” must reclaim our role as the ultimate check on government misconduct.
For without constitutional restraints, there is no justice.
Without constitutional limits, there is no accountability.
And without accountability, there is no republic—only a crime syndicate masquerading as a government.
Reprinted with permission from the Rutherford Institute.
