Former Pentagon official warns Trump is ‘following the playbook of authoritarians’
U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin sounded an alarm bell, characterizing President Donald Trump’s actions as “following the same playbook as almost every authoritarian in history,” in a speech the Democrat from Holly gave at the Brookings Institution’s 2025 Knight Forum on Geopolitics on Wednesday.
Slotkin, herself a CIA officer and former Pentagon official, laid out how Trump had garnered so much power — running on a legitimate concern of cost of living, surrounding himself with those loyal to him, and accumulating influence.
She also laid out how in other authoritarian governments, there comes a “tipping point” where the person in power realizes they have to stay in power somehow to prevent that very power from being used against them. In this case, that could happen in two ways, Slotkin said.
The first would be a scenario where Trump invokes the Insurrection Act and tries to impose martial law, either cancelling elections or surrounding polling places with military. The second, she continued, would be labeling opposition groups as terrorists or criminals, undermining the competitive nature of an election.
“There’s more than one way to lose our democracy,” she said. “I’m popping a flare today because we’re in danger of that happening here at home.”
But Slotkin also found hope in the “internal barometer for things that sound and smell authoritarian” that she said Americans have.
“Here’s what Trump hasn’t planned for: the will of the American people,” she said. “I’ve seen this in Michigan, where even ardent Trump supporters don’t like what they’re seeing.”
Much of Slotkin’s criticism centered on Trump’s recent strikes on 14 ships in the Caribbean in which 57 people have been killed, allegedly part of cartels and carrying drugs to the United States.
Slotkin was clear that the alleged premise of the strikes was not something she inherently opposed — but that she did strongly oppose the fact that Trump, when pressed by the Senate Armed Services Committee, would not give the names of those groups being targeted.
“I’m actually sympathetic to going after these types of groups, given what drugs do to Michiganders every day,” she said. “But here’s what’s different about the strikes and what’s precedent-setting: the President and Secretary Hegseth are refusing to tell the American people who we are fighting.”
That lack of clarity on foreign targets led Slotkin to believe that the same kind of force — including lethal force — could be used against Americans who he deems enemies, especially as the National Guard has been deployed in cities such as Chicago. That idea, she said, “should chill every American to the bone.”
Department of Homeland Security police, along with other federal police, push protestors at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility south of downtown Portland on Sunday, Oct. 12, 2025. (Photo by Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Slotkin also referenced a policy enacted by the White House in late September, which she had previously criticized on the Senate floor, that gives the president and the Attorney General broad authority to investigate any person or group that they consider to be involved in domestic terrorism or political violence.
“It seems clear from his own order that Trump plans to see how far he can stretch the law before someone tells him no,” she said. “And if the administration won’t publicly name drug cartels in the Caribbean, you can bet that they’re not going to tell you the name of this new list of domestic terrorist organizations, only this time the secret lists are not made up of drug traffickers and international waters, it’ll be Americans on American streets and in American homes.”
“I never thought I’d have to lay this out about my own government,” she said. “The idea that intelligence officers could be asked to target Americans turns my stomach.”
Slotkin also told the crowd that she is introducing legislation to give Congress the ability to immediately end a military deployment in an American city, the No Troops In Our Streets Act.
This story was published by Michigan Advance in partnership with Creative Commons. Read the original story here.