Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, columnist and reporter for 40 years. The author of four books, his new study of the Ken Curtis administration is due next year.  He welcomes comment at [email protected].

As we vote in the Nov. 4 election, we should understand that this election — and all those in the foreseeable future — will be about more than choosing between candidates and deciding referendums. In the back of our minds must be concern whether our votes will continue to count, whether elections will provide accountability for those acting as the people’s representatives.

Prospects aren’t good. When Donald Trump took office in January, he set to work implementing Project 2025, a plan for putting countless executive functions directly into the president’s hands, designed by Russell Vought, now federal budget director. Vought envisioned reclassifying tens of thousands of federal jobs, removing civil service protections that have existed since the 1880s, and without which there are no limits to presidential power over federal employees.

Vought might not have expected Trump wouldn’t bother asking Congress for approval, but simply start firing people. Distracted by Elon Musk’s brief DOGE episode, few saw that Trump would treat the law as a mere inconvenience.

His “Apprentice”-like firing spree extended to independent boards designed to be insulated against political pressure and virtual elimination of whole agencies such as the Department of Education and the Agency for International Development, our only conduit for foreign influence besides military force. No one ever voted for this, but Republicans controlling Congress did nothing.

Federal courts enjoined most of these actions, finding “irreparable harm” in illegally ending careers and scuttling entire agencies, but the U.S. Supreme Court quietly dissolved these injunctions, usually without explanation. The administration won 18 of 20 appeals to the court. No one in authority seems willing to even slow things down.

Having secured impunity, Trump has daily expanded his reach over the past nine months. He bases his whimsical and constantly shifting tariffs on his “emergency” authority from Congress, even though there obviously is no economic emergency.

Likewise his decisions to send the National Guard into various cities to “protect” armed and masked ICE agents who make arbitrary arrests daily. That too requires an emergency, and there is none. There’s no legal basis for what Trump is doing, yet this is hardly mentioned in news accounts; he’s the center of every story.

The impunity extends to foreign affairs, already an area in which presidents often have a freer hand. Seven times now the military, currently being paid privately, has attacked Venezuelan boats in international waters, killing more than 30 civilians. The U.S. is not at war with Venezuela, and whether the boats were carrying illegal drugs is irrelevant; this is not “self-defense.”

As one legal scholar noted, the strikes constitute “premeditated murder, pure and simple.” Yet in a story about parallel threats to Mexican cartels, the New York Times described this as merely “blowing up boats.” We’re not far away from Trump’s boast that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without consequences.

Now the president has seized the moment to tear up his own plans to renovate the East Wing to accommodate a ballroom and instead demolish it. Even the British burning the White House during the War of 1812 didn’t go that far. Maine’s congressional delegation had a rare moment of unity in condemning the move.

But the Washington Post editorially praised Trump’s “aggressive approach,” saying, as the paper used to note, “without evidence,” that  “the next Democratic president will be happy to have this.” Post owner Jeff Bezos is among the project’s donors. Clearly, we cannot depend on the former “liberal media” to fault this president’s overreach.

We must find resistance elsewhere, such as the 7 million or so peaceful protesters who turned out on “No Kings” day. In Congress, Sen. Corey Booker of New Jersey set a record April 1 for a 25-hour floor speech protesting Trump’s policies. Jeff Merkley of Oregon spoke for 22 hours last week during the federal shutdown, the third longest.

Maine’s Sen. Angus King and Rep. Jared Golden voted against the shutdown, claiming it enhances Trump’s power. Can they really think it would make any difference?

Without the shutdown, there’s absolutely no assurance health insurance won’t become unaffordable or unavailable to millions of Americans by year’s end. This is not a game.

Our voting will doubtless proceed uninterrupted — this time. But we have to think this through. When a president won’t follow the law voluntarily, even if the Supreme Court finally tries to rein him in, it may be too late.

This is about more than party, more than ideology, more than any personal belief. It is about whether we will continue the American experiment, or end it.