The late Rep. Elijah Cummings, crusader for civil rights and defender of the downtrodden and dispossessed, may yet be best remembered for sounding a trumpet call to Americans: “When we’re dancing with the angels, the question will be asked: In 2019, what did we do to make sure that we kept our democracy intact?”

That question, both poignant in its echoes of Benjamin Franklin’s challenge to Americans to “keep” our republic, and pertinent to all who recognize the continuing assault on America’s constitutional democracy, throws into sharp relief the grim circumstances that mark the passing of the second decade of the 21st Century.

The 2010s will be remembered for important social gains, including the Me Too Movement, but more prominently for the social ills that have afflicted our nation — the opioid crisis, gun violence, the mounting problems of food insecurity and homelessness, growing economic dislocation and isolation, among them — and governmental indifference to reasonable solutions.

The decade will be remembered as well, for its profound threats to our constitutional order. President Trump has laid claim to unlimited executive power, an assertion so breathtaking in scope as to defy any measure of constitutional government, but one fully compatible with the autocratic leaders that he admires and emulates.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has sacrificed the institutional integrity, independence and responsibilities of the Senate, as well as the received wisdom and virtues of the separation of powers, in declaring that he is working hand-in-glove with President Trump in planning the nature and direction of a forthcoming Senate impeachment “trial.” Mitchell’s stunning obeisance to Trump has converted constitutional restraints on the president into ropes of sand.

Reflections on this passing decade, and the mystifying reasons behind the disappearance of the GOP, will engage the wit and wisdom of scholars for years to come. The extreme makeover of the Republican Party — the surrender of the party of Ronald Reagan to the “Cult of Trumpism” — is conspicuous in the about-face of the party’s attitude toward national security and Russia.

Since the end of World War II, republicans have campaigned as the party of national defense. Its steadfast opposition to Russia and its ambitions throughout the Cold War and beyond, was the defining element of its platform. The planks and pillars of its platform exalted the FBI, the CIA and other national security agencies and offices.

In the Presidency of Donald Trump, however, republicans have marched in lockstep with Trump’s preference for Putin’s denial of republican interference in our 2016 election rather than the conclusion of all 17 of the United States’ intelligence agencies that Russia did, in fact, interfere and did it for the purpose of aiding and abetting Trump’s candidacy. Our national security is merely the most recent casualty of Trump’s embrace of Putin; his disregard of truth, evidence and facts will have long — lasting implications for our nation.

Republicans’ support for Trump’s — and Putin’s — discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in that election, ignores once more the wisdom of the U.S. intelligence community as well its warnings to Senators to avoid articulation of Putin’s talking points. Thus we bear witness to the republican’s erection of the Putin-Trump axis in matters of foreign affairs and national security.

Among other things unknown and uncertain, we close this decade without a definitive explanation of Trump’s affinity for, and supplication to, Putin, but retain confidence in our knowledge that, for Trump, as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has stated, “all roads lead to Putin.”

The roads to Putin are most certainly not the roads that lead to the America we herald as a shining “city upon a hill,” a prosaic characterization of our nation invoked time and again by patriots of both political parties aiming to secure our high democratic principles and ideals. But democratic principles are elusive, and can be lost; they require energetic support from citizens who value their influence in shaping our country. In this year, we may ask with Rep. Cummings, what have you done to “keep our democracy intact?”

David Adler is president of the Idaho Falls-based Alturas Institute, which promotes the Constitution, civic education and gender equality. He has lectured nationally and internationally on the Constitution and presidential power. Adler is a former Idaho State University political science professor.