As the United States approaches its 250th birthday, the future of democracy is as uncertain as ever, with President Trump continuing to blow past precedents and guardrails. Just Tuesday, the Senate passed a War Powers Resolution to limit Trump’s military action in Iran or seek congressional authorization to continue, a measure the president is expected to ignore. This came after Trump put his name on the Kennedy Center without approval and demolished the East Wing of the White House without public or environmental review. The U.S.’s semiquincentennial is poised to be a major test of the checks and balances the founders baked into the American experiment.
“What you're seeing is [Trump] trying to impose an authoritarian system, a personalized system, on that city that was [built for] the American people,” historian Heather Cox Richardson tells Katie in the new episode of Next Question. “Trump is saying he doesn't have to consult with Congress, the people’s representatives, about the changes he’s making. He can go ahead and put up things wherever he wants, and he doesn't need to get any kind of approval from any of the reviewing boards that Congress has set up over the years to make sure that the capital really does reflect that plan.”
Richardson says Trump's approach goes beyond just ignoring the rules: “From the time he took office the second time, Trump and his appointees have acted not simply to break the rules established in the Constitution, but to act as if they don't exist.” She says Trump wants to shape the U.S. into a country where “the person who leads that country can do whatever he wishes.”
That sounds bleak, but Richardson offers a bird’s-eye view of everything happening in this moment — and a reason to have hope. "As I’m watching all these pieces come together in the summer of 2026, the failure of cronyism and the personalized presidency of Trump, at the same time you’re watching the attempt of data centers to take over communities, Elon Musk turning out to have been a major player in a number of things, including, it appears, the initial strikes in Iran that ended up hitting a children’s school, and his profound white nationalism, while Trump is pouring money into his vanity projects in Washington, I’m thinking, it certainly looks like the Gilded age and how the American people pushed back against that." She adds, “The American people have rediscovered their agency and their power in a way I haven’t seen since perhaps the early 1970s.”
For more on Richardson’s thoughts on how America can survive this moment, what patriotism means today, and what accountability really looks like, watch the full interview.
