Trump's America is currently following the playbook played out in the Philippines under Duterte

Duterte’s Legacy

When Rodrigo Duterte took power in 2016, his promise to clean up the Philippines unleashed a brutal war on drugs. It's said that from 12,000 to 30,000 extrajudicial killings, were carried out with police encouragement and near-total impunity. Civil society was crushed: journalists threatened, NGOs “red-tagged,” and academic freedom stifled as dissent was silenced. He didn’t just bully people—he hollowed out the systems meant to stop it. Sound familiar. It should.

America’s not ruled by death squads ... yet. But Trump’s second term is a threat to democracy with its own version of executive consolidation and institutional sabotage.

Homeland Security: Power Through Fear

Under Kristi Noem, ICE has ballooned into a $45 billion beast. In April 2025, more than 3,000 immigrants were detained in just a week. A new detention center AKA concentration camp —“Alligator Alcatraz”—signals a permanent infrastructure for mass deportation. Just like Duterte’s drug wars, immigration is now a wedge to stoke fear and centralize authority.

Experts eliminated

During the pandemic, Duterte sidelined medical experts; Trump is gutting them. HHS is set to lose 20,000 positions across CDC, FDA, and NIH. A federal judge temporarily halted the cuts, but the message is clear: evidence is expendable. Add the cancellation of 1,600+ NSF grants, and you've got a brain drain in motion. The first causality of authoritarian drift is FACTS.

Science, Education & Media: Campus Crackdowns and News Warfare

Duterte muzzled teachers and rewrote curriculums to serve his nationalist agenda. Trump is doing the same, but with more lawyers and headlines.

Linda McMahon is hollowing out the Department of Education, heading toward potential abolition. DEI has become a four-letter word. Hundreds of university staff have been suspended or fired, DEI initiatives dismantled, and federal funding yanked.

Then came the Harvard showdown. Trump ordered Harvard (and peer schools) to ditch DEI or risk losing billions in federal grants and contracts—roughly $3 billion across multiple agencies. Harvard sued, arguing the move threatened academic freedom and the First Amendment.

And while that battle rages, Trump deployed the same playbook against media:

• Banned outlets like AP, Reuters, and Bloomberg from the White House press pool.

• He pulled federal funding for public broadcasters NPR and PBS via executive order.

• Targeted Voice of America and Radio Free Asia—placing over 1,300 staff on leave and cutting contracts.

• Threatened prosecution of CNN over coverage of the ICE‑tracking app.

  
  

It’s all part of the same authoritarian pattern: institutions that challenge power get starved, silenced, or sued. Critical thinking? Cancelled. Independent journalism? Under attack. When education and media become enemies, democracy is in trouble.

Using the DOJ as a weopon

Duterte used his DOJ to crack down on dissent. Trump’s DOJ isn’t investigating Wall Street as they should—they’ve sued California over sanctuary policies and preyed on blue cities, they've even arrested a judge and gone after democratic congressmen, twisting justice into a political tool.

Foreign Affairs: Trading Allies for Strongman Clout

Duterte pivoted toward China, shrugging off the U.S. Trump’s Rubio-led State Department has slashed over 700 positions, axed democracy-promotion offices, and replaced diplomacy with deal-making. They've aligned with Russia, and have attacked our closest allies.

Echoes and Warnings

Both Duterte and Trump weaponized fear—of drugs, immigrants, and “biased” elites—while collapsing the very institutions built to check power. One used gunfire on the streets; the other used executive orders, subpoenas, lawsuits, and budget lines.

Erosion by Design

Expect more deportations, agency purges, education wars, and media crackdowns—each a small cut, but together, a democracy killer. This erosion doesn’t erupt—it seeps.

Strongmen don’t always seize power violently. Often, they choke it through legal and extralegal mechanisms. Once you've hollowed out your watchdogs—academia, science, media and institutions, the rot spreads. The playbook? Find an enemy, cripple oversight, and claim you’re protecting the people. They aren't overthrowing democracy yet, they are simply cutting it bit-by-bit into to irrelevance.

Could There Be No Election?

We all know the ultimate step, and it sounds like the plot of V for Vendetta. But if we’ve learned anything from the Philippines under Duterte, it’s that no tactic is truly off the table once democratic norms start to rot.

What's bubbling under the surface today is this: What if there is no real presidential election in 2028 at all?

"Emergency" is a Tool for Authoritarians

Authoritarian leaders love emergencies. In the Philippines, Duterte used the "drug war crisis" to justify police militarization. Later, during COVID-19, he extended emergency powers to bypass legislative oversight, threaten journalists, and centralize executive authority.

In the U.S., Trump has already laid the groundwork: constant talk of "border invasions," "domestic terrorism," "blue state insurrections," and "foreign election interference."

Now imagine this: as 2028 approaches, Trump’s administration manufactures or amplifies a national emergency, let’s say large-scale riots or coordinated violence in major cities. This could be spun as a justification for postponing or even suspending elections "for public safety."

People point to what happened in Los Angeles earlier this year — the massive federalized crackdown following city-wide protests against the DHS raids. Over 1,000 protesters were detained without charge for more than a week. Military vehicles rolled through South Central LA and Koreatown, and local officials were powerless to intervene.

It was a "dress rehearsal" for martial law. It wasn’t labeled that officially, of course — it was spun as a "temporary federal stabilization directive." But the ingredients were all there: curfews, media blackouts, broad surveillance sweeps, and National Guard units acting under direct federal orders rather than the governor of California.

It might sound impossible, "This is America, not the Philippines" we tell ourselves. But under the Insurrection Act of 1807, the president has broad authority to deploy the military domestically without state approval. Trump has already flirted with invoking it during his first term in 2020, when protests erupted nationwide after George Floyd’s murder.

Combine that with a loyal Department of Justice, a defunded and cowed media, and an ICE-DHS apparatus now bloated with funding, and the scenario of indefinite "emergency rule" stops sounding like paranoia and starts feeling chillingly plausible.

MAGA supporters will cheer the destruction of democracy

Duterte stayed in power largely because a huge segment of Filipinos genuinely believed he was "cleaning up" the country. Similarly, Trump’s base is deeply loyal and often receptive to narratives of existential threats. If convinced that elections are "compromised by illegals" or "controlled by global elites," a significant chunk of voters might actually support suspending them "temporarily" to "save the republic."

That’s the ultimate authoritarian twist: it doesn’t always take force to kill democracy. Sometimes it just takes enough people cheering as you do it.

What if 2028 comes, and instead of an election, we get an indefinite extension of executive rule "until order is restored"?

What if Los Angeles was just a test, just a trial balloon to see how far the public, media, and courts would tolerate a federal lockdown?

Even if it doesn’t happen exactly that way, the signs, the legal groundwork, the attacks on media, the control of federal agencies, the rhetorical groundwork, are all there.

Stay vigilant SAV'ers!

If this seems terrifying, it should. But the point of examining these possibilities isn’t to create despair; it’s to stay vigilant. Democracies don’t always vanish in a single coup, they erode under the weight of "emergencies," hollowing out institutions until no one notices the final death rattle. I saw this quote recently: "The scariest part of authoritarianism isn’t the tanks in the streets, it’s when the streets are empty because everyone has accepted it".

Duterte taught us that once the strongman playbook begins, the exit ramps disappear quickly. America still has a chance to slam the brakes, but only if enough people understand how the playbook works and refuse to play along.

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