Over the first months of the second Trump presidency, we have watched the guardrails of democracy come off rapidly in real time. Mass firings of civil servants, the dismissal of government watchdogs, the weaponization of the military against our citizens, the use of the national budget as a cudgel, and the dehumanization of immigrants.
President Donald Trump and his allies are following what we believe is a similar path as autocrats abroad, with an American twist. Such leaders often speak in the language of crisis—border invasion, urban chaos, national decline—so they can justify authoritarian measures. They attempt to manipulate elections—something we fear is happening amid steps to purge voters in Georgia and redraw political lines in Texas. They control information by defunding public broadcasting and suing media organizations. They intimidate institutions by cutting their funding, threatening regulatory revenge, and violating long-standing assumptions about how the budget works.
Each of these moves fits into a common playbook of autocracy—a strategy that leaders from Venezuela to Hungary have used to dismantle democracy from within. The pattern is clear: expand power, normalize abuses, and desensitize people to the erosion of our rights. If we allow American institutions and our will to crumble, soon enough there will be nothing left to save.
But we cannot be lulled into believing that this is like anything we’ve seen before and can therefore be solved by simply waiting for the midterm elections. The antidote to Trump’s American breed of autocracy is understanding the severity of the threat at hand. Resistance is insufficient; defeating tyranny requires intention, and that begins here.
The threat of autocracy impacts us all
In order to consolidate power, the Trump administration has pursued policies which pit Americans against once another. They say, “we’re not attacking you—just them.”
But even such splintering policies impact all of us. The raids, the rollbacks, the repression—they are happening now to our neighbors, our teachers, our workers, our families. And we’re seeing the very real effects—from labor shortages at farms, to the kidnapping and deportation of American citizens. Americans from New Hampshire to Idaho and Texas are uprooting their lives and fleeing in fear of the Trump Administration’s autocratic policies.
Twenty-first century aspiring autocrats are generally elected in free and fair elections the first time. However, an autocrat in power often has the ambition, and the ability, to adjust elections so that they never have to leave office.
That’s why free and fair elections can no longer be taken for granted. Already, Republicans are laying what we view as the groundwork to challenge and overturn results they don’t like by installing loyalists in key positions and rewriting the rules to make future victories impossible for anyone else. The U.S. Department of Justice recently requested voter registration lists and other election information from at least nine states ahead of the 2026 midterms. An executive order President Trump issued on elections warned that election officials who refuse to cooperate will have their actions scrutinized closely for violations of federal law. It’s clear to us that the Trump administration is attempting to gather voter data and inspect voting equipment to allow federal intrusion in state elections. Then there’s the pending Supreme Court case that will permit all of these networks to share data, propaganda and resources.
From immigration to our elections, these policy shifts impact us all. Understanding this universality is the first step to protecting our democracy.
We’ve seen this playbook before
Second, we need to adapt and learn from previous autocratic playbooks.
Democracy doesn’t disappear in one dramatic moment. There is no bright red line that signals when it is over. Instead, it erodes gradually—through voter suppression and politicized prosecutions, surveillance and settlements, book bans and intimidation. What starts as public policing becomes masked ICE agents—a modern secret police. What looks like immigration enforcement becomes a dragnet for dissidents and marginalized communities. Agencies like ICE and the FBI now operate with near impunity, justified by exaggerated claims of violence by “enemies” or threats to law and order. We’re just starting to see what happens when they’re unleashed with no constraints and no oversight. Their strategy is to assail us with so many destructive actions at once that by the time people ask, “How did this happen?”, the harm is already done.
We’ve seen this playbook before. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán was elected with a legislative majority that agreed to support whatever he did. Each new law that Orbán proposed gave more power to himself until there was little power left for the parliament to exercise. The courts acquiesced, not least because he packed them with his own supporters. Step by step, democracy was hollowed out until only the shell remained.
Orban has openly bragged about his close connections within the Trump Administration. “We have entered the policy-writing system of President Donald Trump’s team,” said the far-right prime minister in 2024. “We have deep involvement there.”
Trump’s blueprint, which we know as Project 2025, was written by former Trump officials and right-wing think tanks. It outlines how to purge tens of thousands of civil servants, dismantle federal agencies, weaponize the federal budget and turn the Justice Department into a tool of retribution. At its core, we believe it’s about expanding the executive branch’s power and permanently converting our democracy into autocracy.
But, like in Hungary, the plan wouldn’t be able to come to fruition without a complicit Congress, and a Supreme Court that endorses excesses without explanation. And that’s what Trump now has. It’s been no surprise, then, to see Republicans in Congress grant the Trump Administration’s every wish—from gutting Medicaid and food assistance, to giving billionaires tax breaks to privatizing vital services. We cannot be astonished to see the Supreme Court rubber-stamp nearly every effort by the right to expand executive power—including undermining the legitimacy of the lower courts.
Watching what’s unfolding around us can be demoralizing. People ask themselves: what can we do about it? The systems are too opaque, our power is weakened, and our allies seem too scattered to marshal the defenses we need.
History tells us how autocrats rise and it also tells us there is still time—but not much. If we want to stop American autocracy, we need to treat this as the emergency that it is.
We’ve seen what happened in Hungary, Russia, Venezuela, Turkey and the Philippines—once autocracy sets in, it is very hard to undo. Autocracy in countries such as these offer us ample cautionary tales. And though the U.S. is unique, the threats of autocracy are already here, and three more years of damage might leave our democracy unable to fully recover. If we fail to act now, we may not get another chance.
So in order to respond, we must reject the fear they’re trying to instill in us, because a country in fear is a country whose democracy is easier to undermine. We must organize like never before and build broad coalitions, even across disagreement. We must show up—in the streets, at the polls, in every contested space where power is exercised. But most importantly, we must cultivate community, because before we had power, we had each other.
This is not just about saving democracy in the abstract. It’s about protecting people’s lives, freedoms, and futures.
The post We Can Stop the Rise of American Autocracy appeared first on TIME.
