By Jared O. Bell
Like many Americans right now, I want to believe that the 2026 and 2028 elections will offer a reprieve from the chaos that increasingly defines our political life. There is a widespread hope that one or both cycles will somehow reset the country and restore a sense of normalcy. But that hope, however emotionally understandable, is dangerously misplaced.
Even if electoral outcomes change, they will not by themselves undo the forces that produced our current crisis. To believe otherwise is a form of false optimism, one that ignores the deeper condition the United States now finds itself in. We are no longer simply navigating partisan disagreement. We have crossed into something far more perilous.
The current authoritarian drift, pervasive corruption, and open violations of the Constitution, human and civil rights, and international law are not failures of governance but acts of democratic sabotage. History will record tolerance of these acts as complicity if they are not confronted. This is not politics as usual, nor can it be dismissed as routine excess or institutional friction. To reduce it to partisanship collapses the moral distinctions on which democratic governance depends.
The murders of Alex Pretti and Renée Good in January 2026 at the hands of federal immigration agents in Minneapolis should not be viewed as isolated tragedies. They are warning flares. Political violence, radicalization, and impunity do not arise spontaneously; they take root when institutions fail to enforce boundaries, when power is untethered from accountability, and when the rule of law becomes optional rather than binding.
That is why the real question facing the United States as it approaches the 2026 and 2028 elections is not simply who wins, but whether the country chooses accountability or denial, justice or amnesia, and whether it elects leaders willing to uphold the rule of law rather than entrench impunity.
This dilemma is not new to me. Much of my career has been spent studying and working in post-authoritarian and post-conflict societies grappling with questions of accountability, repair, and democratic renewal. For years, I comfortably othered these debates, assigning them to places emerging from repression elsewhere.
I remember vividly the summer of 2018, when I was a visiting professor in The Gambia. A student association invited me to speak with young activists energized by the possibility of a new country after the fall of Yahya Jammeh’s repressive regime. I spoke about what it means for a society to transition from authoritarianism toward accountability, democratic norms, and the rule of law. During that lecture, I emphasized that while the U.S. justice system was far from perfect, it was still a country where the government investigated itself, where fraud, waste, and abuse were taken seriously, and where corruption was prosecuted rather than ignored.
Fast forward to today and that claim feels increasingly unrecognizable.
Congress, in what should be a moment of historic gravity, has confined itself largely to partisan statements rather than the exercise of power. It has remained mostly impotent and, in some cases, complicit in blocking accountability measures, even as this administration has shuttered government agencies and fired thousands of federal workers, bypassing long-standing civil service protections and statutory limits on executive authority, while enabling corruption and the weaponization of federal institutions against the president’s alleged enemies.
The judiciary offers little reassurance. While some lower court judges continue to enforce the law with rigor, the Supreme Court increasingly appears less an independent check than a willing instrument in the consolidation of executive power. Recent rulings expanding presidential immunity, combined with unresolved ethical controversies and the absence of enforceable accountability standards, have further eroded the Court’s legitimacy. In a system designed for checks and balances, this erosion blurs the line between constitutional adjudication and raw political power.
Against this backdrop, the stakes of the coming elections must be understood clearly. The elections later this year and in 2028 cannot be reduced simply to debates over affordability or access to healthcare, important as those issues are. They must also confront how justice and accountability will be exercised by whoever controls Congress and the White House. Transitional justice is often associated with societies whose institutions have collapsed entirely. The U.S. has not yet reached that point, but accountability is no longer optional.
Those most exposed to accountability appear to understand these stakes clearly. In early January 2026, the president publicly warned Republican lawmakers that a loss of congressional control in the midterms could expose him to impeachment proceedings. Speaking at the Republican conference retreat at the Kennedy Center, he told them plainly, “You gotta win the midterms. Because if we don’t win the midterms, they’ll find a reason to impeach me.” At the same meeting, he also publicly mused about canceling the 2026 elections altogether, comments the White House later dismissed as a joke.
One of Trump’s closest political advisors, Steve Bannon, was even more explicit. Speaking at a Conservative Partnership Institute event on November 6, 2025, Bannon told supporters, “As God is my witness, if we lose the midterms and we lose 2028, some in this room are going to prison, myself included.” These are not stray remarks. They are admissions, spoken aloud, that electoral outcomes are being treated as shields against accountability itself.
Call it transitional justice or call it something else, but whatever it is must involve holding accountable those who have violated constitutional norms, human rights, and international law, or who engaged in corruption as though tomorrow would never come and accountability would never arrive. Accountability, however, is not synonymous with investigations and prosecutions alone. Legal consequences are only one part of the reckoning. The other, equally necessary task is institutional reform: repairing and redesigning the systems that failed, and enacting new laws, safeguards, and oversight mechanisms to ensure such abuses cannot recur.
This cannot be a kumbaya moment. Some will argue that prosecutions risk appearing political and could further divide the country. But history points to a more dangerous truth: when abuses of power and violations of the law go unchecked, as they did in the lead-up to and aftermath of January 6, there is no deterrent, only permission. Impunity invites repetition.
The United States has made this mistake before. Its failure to fully confront and condemn the ideology and crimes of the Confederacy did not produce reconciliation or unity. It allowed a defeated, treasonous cause to be romanticized, normalized, and woven back into public life through monuments, mythology, and political accommodation. By choosing reunion without accountability, the country embedded the legacies of racial hierarchy and political violence into its institutions and culture.
The implications for the present moment are clear. What is required now is leadership in Congress and from a future president who understands that justice is not a threat to unity but its foundation, and that accountability is a core condition of democratic survival. There will be no healing without truth, and no reconciliation without responsibility for the damage this administration’s lawlessness, and that of its enablers, has inflicted on the country.
Amnesia is not an option. The cost of forgetting is simply too great.
Jared O. Bell, PhD, syndicated with PeaceVoice, is a former U.S. diplomat and scholar of human rights and transitional justice, dedicated to advancing global equity and systemic reform.
