In the wake of Donald Trump’s federal indictment, the former president remains legally eligible to run again — even if he is convicted, and even (bizarrely) if he is incarcerated, which is unlikely to occur before the election.
In a functioning, healthy democracy, Trump would be denied the Republican Party’s nomination. GOP elites would stand together to reject his candidacy and rally behind a nominee who is not facing criminal prosecution related to willful retention of classified documents. In our current reality, however, the Republican Party is a cult of personality organized around one person and only a few prominent conservatives have said what ought to be obvious: that the evidence supporting Trump’s federal indictment demonstrates his unfitness to hold office. At the moment, Trump is the clear frontrunner for the party’s nomination, and if he is its nominee, there is a chance he will be elected president again.
All of this is evidence of a continuing authoritarian threat to U.S. democracy. There is no mystery about what Trump has in mind if he wins — he would take the country on a road toward something that looks like Hungary under far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The stakes are especially high for people who have been targeted, scapegoated and demonized by Trump and other Republicans; in particular, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, African Americans and other people of color.
