The Road to Autocracy: Rigged Rules, Broken Checks, and Stacked Courts
How a thousand “it’s not illegal if I do it”s paved the way for kleptocracy.
By Dr. Leo N. Order, Adjunct Professor of Unenforced Norms, Riggs University
with marginalia from Riggs D. Thermonucleon
Editor’s Note:
Previously on Pay-to-Play Kleptocracy Week
Monday, we defined the disease: selling access and erasing norms until corruption feels normal. Tuesday, we watched the East Wing go down—literally—to make room for a 90,000-square-foot flex. Wednesday, we traced the money hose from corporate donors to policy favors. Today, the big picture: how the guardrails failed exactly as designed.
Act I — When Congress Won’t Hold the Purse…
or a Spine
In civics class, Congress is the adult in the room: it funds projects, investigates abuse, and yanks the keys when the driver’s weaving across the constitutional lane lines. In practice, today’s House leadership treats oversight like a museum exhibit—look, don’t touch. The Anti-Deficiency Act exists to prevent government functions being financed with private cash and IOUs from oligarchs. That’s Congress’s Power of the Purse. Greenlighting a privately funded rebuild of the East Wing, the proper response was hearings before the backhoes rolled. Instead, we got silence, euphemisms, and a new chandelier. (CBS News)
This didn’t start yesterday.
In 2016, Senate leadership invented a “let the voters decide” rule to bury Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination by President Obama with a year left to go in his term. Four years later, Congressional Republicans speed-ran Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation eight days before the election. Norms aren’t laws; they’re vibes with teeth—until one party files them down. Result: a durable, obedient Court and a lesson internalized—there are no consequences if your side won’t enforce them. (Reuters)
Riggs’ Notes:
Congress didn’t “punt” the purse; they listed it on eBay with a Buy-It-Now price and threw in two committee chairmanships as a bonus.
And impeachment? Twice attempted, twice treated as performance art. ACLU and good-government groups warned what impunity would teach future presidents—namely, that they could bulldoze both norms and wings with the same shrug. Lesson learned. (Brennan Center for Justice)
Act II — How to Win When You’re Losing:
Map the Rules, Not the Country
The other branch that’s supposed to bark at authoritarian overreach—the electorate—has been fitted with a muzzle. Since Shelby County v. Holder (2013), statehouses passed wave after wave of “security” rules that made voting harder in precisely the places it mattered most. The Brennan Center has been cataloging this assembly line of inconvenience: strict ID laws, mass voter challenges, precinct closures, and purge-happy voter-roll maintenance. The result is not subtle: a system optimized for minority rule and majoritarian theater. (Brennan Center for Justice)
Add gerrymandering on nitrous. Carve maps until politicians pick voters, not vice versa. If your district looks like a python after Thanksgiving, that’s not “community of interest”—that’s entrenchment. And when a movement openly flirts with the “independent state legislature” fantasy—where state lawmakers could nullify popular votes—it’s less “spirited constitutional debate” and more speed-running Weimar. (SCOTUS slapped that theory down in 2023, but the appetite remains.) (Brennan Center for Justice)
Riggs’ Notes:
Pro tip for aspiring autocrats—if you can’t win the game, become the rulebook.
Act III — The Court that Forgot the Word “Ethics”
Courts are supposed to be the circuit breaker. Ours has spent the last decade hot-wiring itself.
“Tricksy Thomas” took undisclosed luxury travel from a mega-donor network with business before the Court. Recusal? Please. He’s busy writing originalist paeans to the 18th century on a 21st-century yacht. (ProPublica)
“Angling Ali” caught a private jet to a billionaire’s Alaskan fishing trip; then he ruled on cases tied to that billionaire. When asked about disclosure and recusal duties, his answer amounted to ethics are for other people. (Associated Press)
“Grifts-n-Such” sold a Colorado property to the CEO of a major law firm that frequently appears before the Court—buyer identity unhelpfully omitted on forms. Coincidence, surely. (The Guardian)
“The Handmaid” (you remember her, the one the Republicans jammed through confirmation just 8 days before a Presidential Election in open violation of their previous “Never within a year of an election” rule), sold a home (she has several?!?) to a religious freedom group that filed multiple briefs on cases before the Supreme Court. (Common Dreams)
“Brett Beer-Bong” in addition to lying during his confirmation hearings, 83 ethics violation claims were filed which a Federal judicial panel subsequently dismissed because, although serious, “there is no existing authority that allows lower court judges to investigate or discipline Supreme Court justices.” (NPR News)
“Johnny the Boss” won’t discuss any of this before Congress; meanwhile, reporting questions whether his household benefited financially from the very ecosystem arguing at his lectern. Ethics code? The Court finally produced one in 2023—self-policed, toothless, carefully laminated against use. (PBS NEWS, CNN)
Public trust has followed the gifts out to sea. A Court under an “ethics cloud” is a Court that won’t be the backstop when Dear Leader says “demolition isn’t construction, so no approval needed.” (Yes, that was an argument; yes, former planning officials called it nonsense.) (The Brennan Center for Justice)
Riggs’ Notes:
If the foxes write the henhouse ethics manual, the first line is “We have always been chickens.”
Exhibit A — Ballrooms, Backhoes, and Bylines
A majority of Americans opposed tearing down the East Wing for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom. The polling is not ambiguous; it’s arithmetic: 56% against, 28% in favor. Even independents recoiled. But the demolition happened first, oversight later, because the project exploited process gaps—exactly what guardrails are supposed to prevent. (Politico)
When preservation bodies and planning commissions stirred, they found rubble. The National Capital Planning Commission’s longstanding approval role was neatly dodged—“demolition isn’t construction” became the fig leaf. Former NCPC leadership called that distinction fiction. The effect was real: history reduced to dust before a court could schedule a hearing (perhaps that is fitting of a “I really don’t care, do you?” esthetic.) (Al Jazeera)
Riggs’ Notes:
He didn’t just launder money; he laundered time.
Exhibit B — “Zero Cost to Taxpayers” Isn’t Free. It’s Priced In.
Privately funding public architecture is not patriotism; it’s procurement by other means. Felon-34 boasted that “Patriots and Great American Companies” would foot the $300M bill, as if the words “patriot” and “pay-to-play” weren’t natural enemies. Constitutional lawyers point to the Anti-Deficiency Act for a reason: Congress decides what gets built and who pays. End-running that is not “innovative fundraising.” It’s a violation of design—constitutional design. And, as Bruce Fein noted, the donors don’t go home empty-handed. They get policy. They get regulators who take their calls. They get time. You get the bill later (both literally and figuratively). (CBS News)
The donor roster reads like a wish list of entities with federal business: big tech with antitrust heat, defense primes with evergreen contracts, crypto shops craving a softer SEC, health firms chasing reimbursement tweaks. That’s not philanthropy; that’s deal flow in formal wear. (See yesterday’s rogues’ gallery if you missed the receipts.) (Brennan Center for Justice)
Riggs’ Notes:
If you think a $10M “donation” buys a plate of rubber chicken and not a policy waiver, I have a used regulation to sell you.
The Operating System of Autocracy (Beta—Now Shipping)
Put the pieces together:
Congressional abdication turns “we appropriate, you execute” into “do what you want; we’ll tweet.” (CBS News)
Engineered electoral tilt ensures minimal electoral punishment for maximal abuse. (Brennan Center for Justice)
A compromised judiciary treats conflicts like opinions and ethics like optional UI. (Democracy Docket)
A presidency practiced in norm demolition acts first, litigates later, and fundraises in the middle. (Al Jazeera)
This is how you wake up in a country where a leader can bulldoze part of The People’s House during a self-inflicted government shutdown, hold up a rendering of a 999-guest ballroom like a game-show prize, and call corporate underwriting “free.” The law didn’t fail. We failed to insist it be applied.
Riggs’ Notes:
If democracy is a series of small habits, autocracy is a series of small exceptions.
“But Truman Renovated…”
Yes, with process, legislation, and public accountability. The Washington Post editorial board recently tried the “not the end of the world” line about replacing the East Wing, praising the utility of a permanent hall while tsk-tsking the fundraising optics. That’s like admiring a getaway car’s fuel economy. The problem isn’t whether a ballroom might be useful. The problem is how and who paid for it—and what they expect back. (Reuters)
What Now? (Besides Depression Shopping)
This isn’t a sermon on despair. It’s a user manual for reclaiming institutional muscle:
Re-weaponize oversight. Subpoena the paper trail of the private funding pipeline. Audit the favors. Make “Anti-Deficiency” more than a crossword answer. (CBS News)
Unrig the electorate. Support state-level voting access expansions and independent redistricting. The math of minority rule only works if you don’t overwhelm it. (Brennan Center for Justice)
Put teeth in Court ethics. A self-policed “code” is a PR brochure. Congress can and should legislate bright-line recusal and disclosure standards. The public already knows the score; approval is underwater for a reason. (Brennan Center for Justice)
Riggs’ Notes:
Sunshine isn’t a metaphor; it’s a method. Turn on the lights and watch the cockroaches look for a code of conduct.
The End Blitz
Tomorrow, we close the loop. You’ve seen the rubble, the donors, the rigging. Now we talk about us—the citizens—and what levers still work when the palace has a sponsor wall. Spoiler Alert: more than you think, fewer than you’d like.
P.S. Receipts, for the record
East Wing demolition & NCPC dodge; “demolition isn’t construction” gambit; timing amid shutdown: ABC News coverage of the approvals mess and the speed of the teardown. (Al Jazeera)
“Zero cost to taxpayers,” donor funding, Anti-Deficiency concerns (Bruce Fein): Al Jazeera analysis of the private-funding scheme and legal critiques. (CBS News)
WaPo editorial framing (“reasonable idea,” process hand-wave): Washington Post opinion page, October 25, 2025. (Reuters)
Public opposition (polling): ABC/WaPo/Ipsos toplines and subsequent coverage showing majority opposition to the teardown/ballroom plan. (Politico)
Donor motives & federal business upside: CBS donor-benefit reporting (see yesterday’s piece for specific examples and links). (Brennan Center for Justice)
Voting restrictions & post-Shelby environment: Brennan Center’s synthesis on the wave of restrictive voting laws. (Brennan Center for Justice)
Supreme Court “ethics cloud”: Reuters overview of undisclosed trips, property deals, recusals ignored, and the PR “code of conduct.” (Reuters)
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This is satire with facts in its pockets. Do not bulldoze national landmarks, launder public functions through private checkbooks, or cite “vibes” as legal authority. Consult a lawyer, a historian, and your better angels.