This Letter To The Editor is a response to Ignacio Gamero ’26’s op-ed titled “No Kings! Except the ones we like…,” published in the Nov. 6 issue of The Campus. In his piece, Gamero argued that outrage over presidential overreach is merely inconsistent partisanship and exemplifies selective outrage against President Trump.
Gamero’s article is a worthwhile contribution to campus and civic discourse, a strong reminder that, while left-leaning voices dominate Middlebury, there is a meaningful conservative minority. Intellectual diversity is a gift because it allows us to critically reflect on and strengthen our own arguments. While I agree with Gamero that democracy “depends on consistent, evidence-based scrutiny of all authority,” I also believe context, nuance and relativity are equally valuable considerations.
The article lists numerous examples of prior executive power from Covid-19 vaccine mandates to surveillance programs, deportations to internment camps, and executive orders from Presidents Nixon to Obama. His argument is clear: if you oppose Trump, you should oppose these policies too. This reasoning is fundamentally flawed because it fails to distinguish between who wields power and the kind of power they wield. We cannot, and should not, treat all presidential actions as equal simply because they involve high concentrations of executive power.
Covid-19 public health measures were temporary responses to an unprecedented global pandemic, grounded in scientific guidance and subject to legal challenges. Furthermore, courts have historically acknowledged that the government’s police power — the power to regulate health, safety and morals — is heightened during public health emergencies. One can debate their effectiveness or proportionality, as many on both sides of the political spectrum did. Still, they were ultimately exercises of established emergency public health authority intended to protect lives.
A democracy can survive bad policies, government overreach and the most serious abuses of power. Indeed, President Richard Nixon’s list of political enemies and President George W. Bush’s warrantless surveillance were met with institutional resistance, investigations and reforms. We survived. Yet now, I share the fears of legal experts, economists and historians about whether our democracy will survive a second Trump presidency.
President Trump’s actions represent more than mere presidential overreach – they constitute the systematic undermining of the rule of law, checks and balances and the peaceful transfer of power through elections. Attempts to overturn election results by pressuring state officials to “find votes” and refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power are categorically different from vaccine mandates. These aren't policy disputes or even controversial uses of existing authority. Rather, they strike at the very foundation of democratic legitimacy.
As a fellow political science student, I am disappointed by Gamero’s failure to understand how democratic backsliding actually happens. From Plato to Steven Levitsky to Timothy Snyder, ancient and modern scholars alike have taught us that democracies decay through the incremental erosion of norms, institutions and processes that make democracy function — all of which President Trump has spearheaded in recent months. Firing senior military leaders, leveraging the Department of Justice to prosecute his political enemies and attacking institutions of higher education constitute such erosion.
Comparisons to “real autocrats” like Vladimir Putin in Russia and Kim Jong Un in North Korea fail to appreciate the idea that democracy dies in silence. Why should the bar for concern be imprisoned journalists, murdered opposition leaders and missing protestors? The time to defend democracy is before it reaches that point, not after. This binary between North Korea and the democratic world erases the entire spectrum of democratic backsliding between healthy democracy and totalitarian dictatorship. Anyone who attended the Political Science Department’s Panel can tell you that.
Gamero laments political persecution against Trump in the form of impeachments, investigations, social media bans and ballot challenges. However, this is democracy at work. Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism. Criminal investigations support the rule of law. Social media companies make content moderation decisions. Courts are authorized to hear ballot-access cases. The “No Kings” protest wasn't about partisan preference. It was a call to action to our founding democratic principles – the rule of law, checks and balances and popular sovereignty – and an important reminder that democracy is not a state. It is an act.
