Is the United States becoming more like Russia under Trump?

August 8, 2025

OPINION by ALLAN COOPER

I and others here in the United States are looking into a future where the similarities between our country and Russia are becoming more and more resoundingly clear. The following are a dozen ways that the United States and Russia, under the present Trump administration, are beginning to increasingly mirror one another.

1) Russia has one ruling party called the United Russia Party. Currently, Republicans are maintaining their role as the ruling party through gerrymandering (i.e., Texas), disempowering and replacing election officials who are encouraged to alter election results (i.e., Georgia) and through shifting Democratic governor’s appointment authority to Republican-held offices (i.e., North Carolina).

If terrorist cells within the United States manage to pull off a devastating attack on American soil, God forbid, while Trump is president, which is likely now that the CIA and FBI are being systematically dismantled, Trump will declare martial law allowing him to postpone all elections. This would leave the Republican Party as our only de facto party.

2) Russia has few if any checks and balances between their executive, legislative and judicial branches. Trump, with the help from the Supreme Court and the Republican Party is also significantly scaling back these checks and balances.

Trump has been politicizing the military by replacing generals with his yes-men, he has control over the judicial branch thanks to an obeisant Justice Department and Supreme Court and he has control over the legislature as long as the Republican Party remains in power.

3) Putin exerts political influence with the help of the Russian state-run television and radio channels. Trump is now exerting power over the forth estate by his legal harassment and intimidation of the press (note the defunding of NPR, PBS, Comcast and Voice of America). And if there ever was a state run television channel in the United States that helps to promote Trump’s agenda, it would be FOX.

4) The Russian president holds a dominant role, including the right to issue decrees. Trump, through his unconstitutional executive orders, is now exercising a dominant role over the other two branches of government.

5) Russia has never had a deeply ingrained tradition of a legal system that binds the ruler. Thanks to the Supreme Court, Trump is no longer bound by the laws of the land either.

6) In Russia, the role of other political parties (if they are allowed to exist) appears to be more about legitimizing the existing system by creating an appearance of democracy. So too, in the United States, there is an attempt to portray elections as legitimate but only if the Republican Party is guaranteed to win that election.

7) In Russia, the vast majority of incarcerated individuals are housed in penal colonies. So too, in the United States Trump is creating massive penal colonies (a.k.a. detention centers) for those people he considers “undesirable”.

8) Russia’s penal colonies, often located in remote locations, are overcrowded and have poor sanitation and inadequate heating .The incarcerated are subjected to systematic torture. So too, Trump’s penal colonies mirror these conditions and are located in remote locations as well (El Salvadore, South Sudan, Guantanamo and the Florida everglades).

9) In Russia the incarcerated have limited or no communication with the outside world. So too, with Trump’s penal colonies.

10) Russia incarcerates political prisoners on trumped up charges (excuse the pun). The U.S. government no longer provides habeas corpus (the right to challenge one’s detention) to those it considers undesirable which now includes U.S. citizens who are also considered undesirable, and that could include you or me.

11) In Russia, oligarchs maintain close ties with the government, wielding influence over policy and relying on political connections for business security. This parallel has become even more conspicuous in America through Elon Musk’s presence in the Trump administration.

Like Russia, courts and other legal systems in the United States, due to deregulation and the elimination of any oversight, can no longer prevent oligarchs appropriating more business through their political connections.

12) In Russia, Putin is allowed to enrich himself through bribes, control over state assets, and quid pro quos with his oligarchs. His wealth is concealed through the use of off shore shell companies.

Because the U.S. Justice Department no longer seems to uphold the emoluments clause, Trump can build and conceal his wealth through the use of opaque financial structures such as payments from unknown LLC’s and cryptocurrency ventures – many involving foreign actors.

Of course, there will continue for a while to be one major difference between Russia and the United States.

Russia has a GDP of $2.1 trillion and the United States has a GDP of $26.9 trillion. So there will still be plenty of money for some U.S. consumers to play with up until the arrival of the Second Great Depression.

Note that because of the tariffs that Trump is unilaterally imposing, many economists are predicting that a great depression could occur within the remaining years of Trump’s “reign.”

Alan Cooper, a long-time San Luis Obispo resident, is a member of Save Our Downtown.