If you could teach average citizens one thing about protecting democracy, what would it be?
Civic Witness Series: Questions from the Attic, is founded on a simple premise: the people living through democratic erosion have questions the ‘experts’ aren’t addressing; it is inspired by and in honor of Adia in the Attic. Those questions matter because they provide an opportunity for sharing and documenting what democratic erosion feels like to people living through it. We don’t pretend to have “The Answer” to these questions, but we hope to stimulate the conversation her questions have prompted.
How do we Escape from the “Quagmire of Power”
The Trump administration has created a political quagmire in which controversy follows controversy, public attention is fragmented, and accountability struggles to keep pace. The midterm election offers an opportunity to change that dynamic. But escaping the quagmire will require sustained congressional oversight, persistent journalism, judicial enforcement, and citizens unwilling to let yesterday’s unanswered questions disappear beneath tomorrow’s headlines.
A quagmire is ground so unstable that every attempt to escape can leave a person more deeply trapped. In politics, the trap can be built from overlapping controversies, shifting explanations, legal disputes, and constant demands for attention.
For a leader seeking to protect power, such confusion can be useful. Opponents struggle to establish priorities. Reporters move to the next headline. Citizens grow weary. Institutions spend their time responding rather than completing the work of accountability.
For aspiring authoritarians, creating and sustaining this kind of political chaos can be a strategy in itself, and such has been the case with the Trump administration. There is nothing to suggest that this will cease as a result of the Midterm elections. However, that same election has provided the opportunity to begin what promises to a difficult extrication.
The Creation of a Quagmire: Speed, Distraction, and Acceptance
Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon provided the unusually direct strategy for the Trump administration to create this quagmire: In a 2019 PBS FRONTLINE interview, he said: “Every day we hit them with three things.” His argument was that overwhelming the media would allow other actions to proceed without equal scrutiny. A president can announce an action in minutes. Establishing its legality, tracing its consequences, and obtaining a remedy can take months and months. That mismatch can protect power. Even when a challenge succeeds, the public may have moved on, and the practical damage may already be difficult to reverse.
DOGE and the Watchdogs
The Department of Government Efficiency provided a revealing example. Its stated purpose was to confront waste and improve government. Yet on January 24, 2025, Trump dismissed 17 inspectors general—independent watchdogs whose responsibilities include investigating waste, fraud, and abuse.
In litigation brought by eight dismissed inspectors general, a federal judge later found their removals unlawful but declined to reinstate them.
These facts do not prove DOGE was created as a diversion. But its spectacle could serve a distracting function while less theatrical safeguards lost strength. The question for citizens is straightforward: If eliminating waste is the goal, why weaken independent institutions equipped to uncover it?
When Repetition Makes the Extraordinary Ordinary
My experience at NASA during Challenger and later on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board taught me that repeated survival can produce dangerous reassurance. Institutions may continue operating while their ability to recognize and correct risk deteriorates.
A similar danger exists in government. An unusual dismissal becomes yesterday’s news. Eventually, the public hears “another controversy” and assumes nothing can be done. Too many unresolved questions can weaken the pressure to resolve any one of them.
The central concern is the cumulative effect: speed strains oversight, distraction fragments attention, and repetition lowers expectations. Exhaustion can be enough. People may continue to object while losing confidence that objections will produce consequences.
Iran, Epstein, and the Limits of Inference
The United States and Israel launched a major campaign against Iran on February 28, 2026. A war can displace scandal coverage without having been launched to accomplish that purpose. The available evidence does not establish that Trump ordered the Iran attacks to divert attention from the Epstein files.
A national-security crisis does not cancel the government’s responsibility to explain its handling of those records. The public should be capable of asking two questions at once: Is military action justified, and is the administration meeting its obligations for transparency?
History Offers Parallels—and a Warning
President Bill Clinton faced accusations that his August 1998 strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan were intended to distract from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But the bipartisan 9/11 Commission found no reason to question his advisers’ statements that their recommendations rested on national-security considerations.
That history warns against treating suspicious timing as established motive. The danger arises when the president’s ability to reset the conversation repeatedly exceeds the institutions’ ability to finish examining the previous action.
Finding Firm Ground
The remedy is disciplined follow-through.
Congress. The new Congress must assume its constitutional responsibilities as a separate and equal institution of government; this includes oversight that tracks investigations to completion. Effective oversight requires a clear record of what happened, who authorized it, what authority supported it, and what consequences followed. The standard must apply across parties.
Journalists should revisit consequential actions after the headlines fade. (And their readers, listeners and viewers should demand it.)
Courts need to demand compliance with their decisions.
Citizens need to engage: Track the actions of and stay in communication with your newly installed congressional representatives. At the same time, citizens should carefully distinguish an announcement from a lawful action and a campaign promise from a delivered benefit. (A case in point: Trump’s electoral pledge to give every adult American citizen $5,000 if Republicans retained control of the House and Senate, a proposal that would have required congressional approval and funding.)
A republic can withstand controversy when it retains the ability to establish facts, enforce boundaries, and correct mistakes. It becomes vulnerable when unresolved controversies accumulate faster than accountability can respond. The danger of a political quagmire is that those responsible may gain protection from the difficulty of untangling it. The midterm voters have provided a pair of scissors to begin unraveling this quagmire. Our task is to keep asking the consequential questions until they receive answers—long after the president has introduced tomorrow’s headline.
For a deeper dive on this subject from John Barry, keep reading here.
Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 450 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.