Trump's America Is in a Free Fall—Not a Slippery Slope—to Tyranny
He is instilling fear not just among lawmakers but every sector of society that dares to criticize him or hold him accountable
“There is no universally accepted definition of a constitutional crisis, but legal scholars agree about some of its characteristics. It is generally the product of presidential defiance of laws and judicial rulings. It is not binary: It is a slope, not a switch. It can be cumulative, and once one starts, it can get much worse.” — Adam Liptak
A mere month into his second term as president, Donald Trump and his loyalists in government are already posing grave risks to the legal, constitutional, and normative foundations of American democracy. The threat Trump poses is much more severe than during his first term, which ended with him and his allies staging an insurrection to nullify the national election outcome and block the peaceful transfer of power. This time, there are no weighty figures in his administration willing to put the Constitution above personal loyalty to him. This time, Trump and his MAGA team have had four years to plan a more concerted assault on democratic checks and balances, and a revolutionary campaign to destroy many core institutions of the federal government. And this time, Trump and his loyalists have a long agenda of revenge against a wide range of actors who they believe have wronged them and who they now want to punish and subdue.
No doubt, MAGA extremists will view this essay as purely partisan. I hope more open-minded and objective readers will see it for what I believe it is: an articulation of urgent concern for the future of American democracy, shaped by my study over the last half-century of how democracies rise and fall, and my last two decades of tracking and unpacking the global democratic recession. Having won the presidency fair and square, Donald Trump has earned the right to propose, and in many cases to implement, radical new policy directions. But he does not have the right to violate the law, the Constitution, and the civil liberties of Americans in doing so.
My arguments in this essay are as follows. First, the crisis of American democracy is now squarely upon us. Multiple illegal and unconstitutional acts are happening, and the guardrails that check and restrain authoritarian abuse are rapidly falling away.
Second, it is going to get a lot worse. Trump is following an authoritarian playbook for destroying constitutional government that has been widely deployed over the last two decades and that in some respects dates back not only to the political calamities of the 1920s and ‘30s but all the way to Machiavelli, as Jeff Bleich has recently explained. The pathway to authoritarianism in America lies in subverting our constitutional checks and balances. Trump has moved rapidly on that front and there will be much more to come.
Third, democratic backsliding is moving quickly now in part because of the lack of resistance. Part of this void owes to confusion and division within the opposition (the Democrats), part to opportunism and submission among congressional Republicans, and part to the tactical decisions of key actors in business, the media, and the bureaucracy to comply in advance, again partly out of opportunism but also heavily out of fear. Fear is the common denominator in all of this—palpable, paralyzing, and quite justifiable fear. Fear now stalks the land. This is the most visceral indication that America has entered an existential era for the future of democracy.
The threats to American democracy in the United States are now immediate, serious, and mounting by the day. However, it is possible to contain them. Doing so will require a national, multifront bipartisan strategy. But time is of the essence. Such a strategy must be assembled and activated expeditiously, because the longer and further Trump and his acolytes proceed with their authoritarian ambitions, the harder it will be to resist, and the greater will be the risk not just to our democratic process but to our basic liberties. The key is to unite in defense of our democratic checks and balances, rather than to argue that every one of Trump’s policy initiatives is illegitimate. The markets will take care of stupid and self-harming tariff policies. They will not on their own save American democracy.
The Crisis is Here and Now
Donald Trump was not truthful when he said he just wanted to be a dictator on Day One. He aspires to make it last for four years, and probably well beyond. Some of what his administration has been doing is blatantly illegal or unconstitutional. Many actions and policy directions, legal or not, will severely damage the national security and economic and physical health of the United States. But it is important to separate policy directions that are cruel and heartless, and that undermine even the president’s own stated goals, from actions that are anti-democratic in law or in motive and effect.
It may be cruel to millions of people around the world to terminate U.S. foreign assistance that is providing vital nutritional, health, educational, environmental, and governance assistance. But if the decision is taken democratically, then it is not a violation of our democratic constitutional order. It may be shockingly short-sighted to stop flows of aid that are working abroad to prevent or end violent conflicts, make life more liveable, generate economic opportunities, preempt pandemics, fight corruption and tyranny, and so reduce refugee flows, contain China’s imperial ambitions, and improve America’s global power, prestige, and security. It may be specious to claim that this is being done to balance the books when foreign aid is barely 1% of the federal budget. But it is not necessarily unconstitutional, or even undemocratic, for presidents to do cruel, shortsighted, and deceitful things.
All of this becomes illegal, unconstitutional, and undemocratic when it is done unilaterally and arbitrarily, bypassing Congress and its preeminent authority to appropriate funds. In 1975, the Supreme Court—dominated by Republican-appointed justices, including four appointed by Richard Nixon—ruled unanimously against Nixon’s attempt to impound certain congressionally-appropriated funds. Subsequent legal interpretations and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 make clear that presidential impoundment of funds is both unconstitutional and, since the Act was adopted, illegal. The president does not have the authority on his own to suspend all foreign aid flows, much less terminate them, much less eliminate an entire agency established and annually funded by Congress.
With the assault on the U.S. Agency for International Development (which is just the initial sacrificial lamb, because foreign aid lacks a strong domestic constituency), we are already in a constitutional crisis. It is all made worse and more alarming by the fact that completely unaccountable actors—Elon Musk and his young digital hatchet men (completely unvetted by any government clearance process)—are wreaking much of this havoc. But even if the orders come from a Cabinet officer—Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, one of the key intellectual architects of the “unitary executive” theory that exalts presidential power to a nearly absolute level—these actions are still not legal or constitutional.
The catalogue of Trump’s presidential actions that defy the law and the Constitution is rapidly growing. On the very first day of his new presidential term, Trump ordered an end to birthright citizenship for undocumented immigrants, seeking with the mere stroke of a pen to set aside the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Four federal judges have blocked that executive order—and a federal appeals court panel just rejected an emergency request from the Justice Department to reinstate it. On Friday, Jan. 24, Trump fired 17 inspectors general in government departments and agencies (including the Departments of Defense, State, and Housing and Urban Development).
These IGs are supposed to be nonpartisan watchdogs to look out for precisely the “waste, fraud, and abuse” that Trump and Musk claim to be battling—but who also expose corruption and conflicts of interest that could embarrass any administration. By law they cannot be fired without giving Congress 30 days’ advance notice. Even as loyal a Senate soldier for Trump as Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley raised concern and demanded an “explanation” for the firings, as reported by no less than Fox News. An analyst for the Cato Institute was more blunt: “It provides comfort to those hoping their illicit government activities might now be allowed to slide.”
On Feb. 3, Musk and his “DOGE” team gained access to the Treasury Department’s highly guarded computer system for making most federal payments. A lawsuit filed by several citizens’ groups called the intrusion into the personal payments data of individuals and organizations “massive and unprecedented.” The highest-ranking career official at Treasury, the man who ran “the nation’s checkbook,” strenuously objected and subsequently resigned, ending a storied decades-long career. A few days later, citing the danger of “irreparable harm,” a federal judge temporarily blocked Musk’s team from access to the Treasury Department’s payments and data systems.
It is quite possible that before that order was issued, Musk’s young digital wizards had already downloaded payments data, including bank account information, for tens of millions of Americans. The judge ordered the digital interlopers to “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems.” But there is no mechanism to enforce this or even scrutinize compliance. The data—along with other government records that Musk’s team has been collecting—would be priceless to Russia, China, and other adversaries of the United States. It may well have been downloaded by a young “masters of the universe” tech squad (some ranging in age from 19 to 25) with no government experience, no security clearance or vetting, and in some cases highly troubling records (including one who bragged online that he was “a racist before it was cool”). The violations continue on pretty much a daily if not hourly basis.
There are other steps that degrade American democracy without technically violating the law. These began with the shocking but expected pardoning (or sentence commutation) of all of the more than 1,500 individuals who were charged or sentenced for the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, including those convicted of violently assaulting police officers. Dozens of these liberated insurrectionists had unrelated serious criminal convictions or charges pending, and some had prominent roles in violent domestic terrorist organizations. One of Trump’s executive orders (also on Jan. 20) reclassified potentially tens of thousands of “policy-influencing” workers in the federal civil service from career jobs into roles where they could be replaced at will for political reasons. This will likely undermine the feature of the civil service Trump said he was seeking: meritocracy.
The most ominous question is what will happen if the federal judiciary arrives at a clear and final ruling that some (or even most) of these acts are unconstitutional or illegal, and then Trump carries on with them defiantly. According to a 2018 Harvard Law Review article cited by The New York Times, “There has been no clear example of ‘open presidential defiance of court orders in the years since 1865.’” That could now change.
On Monday, Feb. 10, a federal district judge ruled that the administration has been violating a previous federal court order by continuing to withhold federal funds for a variety of purposes. Having gotten into the Treasury Department’s payment system, Trump’s agents of the “unitary executive” now control the plumbing of federal fiscal flows, and they can simply turn off the pipes any time they wish—quietly, with no declaration. This is in essence what several Democratic state attorneys general were alleging in their suit before the federal district court. Many Washington insiders suspect this is happening when their congressionally-obligated funds simply fail to land in their accounts at the usual times. Laws and court rulings notwithstanding, it appears that a cohesive band of political zealots within the administration and in key operational positions in Cabinet departments are determined to simply starve broad swaths of American public life they do not like into submission or death.
The federal district judge who ordered the above ruling warned that defiance of court orders could cause individuals to be held in criminal contempt of court. That would seem to be an important step toward restoring the founding vision of a federal government with three distinct branches and reciprocal checks and balances. We need to realize the most important insight of James Madison’s constitutional genius, the dictum that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” But in tweeting on Sunday, Feb. 9, that “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Vice President JD Vance may have been laying the groundwork to restore the United States to an era of constitutional chaos that we have not seen since the Civil War.
It Will Get Worse
One reason to worry deeply about possible open defiance of federal court orders by the Trump administration—which would be an obvious impeachable offense—is that in his first term, Trump committed other impeachable offenses for which he was not held accountable. The current Congress, with Republicans controlling both houses, seems even less inclined to do anything to stand up to an increasingly Caesarist ruler who claims absolute and imperial powers in his presidency. It is a reasonable conjecture that a great many Republican senators are privately quite troubled by how Trump is behaving and the kind of people he is appointing. This would seem to include the 23 senators who voted on the first ballot for the most institutionalist and least Trumpian candidate, John Thune, to be the Senate majority leader. Of the 53 Republican senators (and senators-elect) who voted (by secret ballot, crucially) for Thune, only 13 opted for Trump’s choice, Sen. Rick Scott.
However, Trump and his plutocratic partner-in-ruling, Elon Musk, have done a brilliant job of isolating Republican senators and squeezing them one by one. Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, it was quite apparent, wanted to vote against confirming Pete Hegseth. Had she done so, he would not have been confirmed. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a medical doctor, was inclined to vote against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Sen. Todd Young of Indiana was signaling grave concerns about voting for Tulsi Gabbard to be director of National Intelligence. These were the Republicans who were publicly voicing concerns. Many others were privately agonized, if not horrified.
But fear prevailed. Ernst was hit with withering pressure from the MAGA right, who warned that they would mobilize to defeat her in the next Republican primary if she voted no on Hegseth. I have heard multiple reports from Washington political insiders that Musk privately threatened to fund a Republican primary challenge to Ernst if she did not fall in line, and that he did the same to Cassidy and Young as they wavered on their votes of conscience. There is no way to verify these reports, but it has long been obvious that Republican members of Congress have been running very, very scared. Trump’s standing with the Republican base is such that an endorsement from him of a Republican primary challenger could be enough to defeat many of these incumbents. This kind of intimidation has figured prominently in the decision of several Republican members of Congress to retire rather than endure this humiliation any longer.
But it gets worse. Recent years have seen a rising number (and intensity) of death threats against members of Congress and other public officials. The number received in 2024 was three times the level in 2017. The U.S. Capitol Police Chief testified in December that 700 death threats were made against members of Congress in November alone. Most current members of Congress were there on Jan. 6, 2021, and they were deeply shaken by the experience. Many regard it as a near-death experience for democracy, and perhaps for themselves.
The most underestimated element in the current crisis of our democracy is the degree to which many politicians fear for their lives if they do anything forthright to cross or defy President Trump. If this concern contributed to the speed with which almost all of them fell into line behind him during the election campaign, how much worse must it be now that all of the insurrectionists—some of them known to be heavily armed and out for revenge—have been pardoned and set loose? As for the extremist, anti-democratic organizations that some of these individuals lead or support, the FBI was vigilantly monitoring these and other extremist organizations over the last four years. Will it do so with Kash Patel, a ferocious Trump loyalist who has published his own list of “deep state” enemies of Trump, as director?
With regard to the third branch of government, the judiciary, the ultimate nightmare would be if Trump defied a final judgement on a matter by the Supreme Court. But if the Supreme Court were to radically embrace the theory of the unitary executive by overturning hallowed precedents, for example on presidential impoundment or the illegal dismissal of federal officials, that would also have chilling implications for the future of American democracy.
If the courts are defied and Congress will not act, that leaves only two other potential checks. One is the complex array of regulatory and monitoring checks on administrative corruption and abuse of power. I consider these types of nonpartisan or bipartisan actors and agencies—such as the Federal Reserve, the Government Accountability Office, the Inspectors General, and some federal regulatory agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Election Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board—something like an informal fourth branch of government in their potential, even if weakly and imperfectly, to call out wrongdoing or bring independent judgement to policy. But Trump has been firing members and leaders of many of these agencies, some of which he has the right to do, others not. And he seems intent on ruthlessly politicizing extremely sensitive parts of the government that need to be non-political to protect democracy, such as the FBI and the CIA. In his campaign to bring opposition to heel and intimidate and punish his critics, watch what happens to the Internal Revenue Service.
The last line of defense is civil society. Liberal democracy has survived and thrived in wealthy capitalist economies because of the density and vigor of independent policy organizations, interest groups, religious institutions, media, think tanks and universities, and the strength of independent businesses that do not depend on the state for their markets. These form a thick layer of autonomous capacity to organize and mobilize in the face of abuse, illegality, and incipient tyranny. But in this century, this vital Tocquevillian arena of democratic vitality in the United States has been badly strained by intense political polarization and declining trust in one another and in all the institutions of government, partly as a result of the rise of social media with its algorithms to promote outrage and its profuse flows of misinformation, disinformation, and invective.
Civil society in America was always cleaved in many directions, but its capacity to shout, rally, lobby, and march effectively in defense of democracy is now diminished. Its resources remain formidable, but so now are its divisions, and its fears. Many media practitioners and observers are growing worried about the mounting signs of major media trying to placate Trump by generously settling defamation lawsuits that Trump seemed likely to lose (as ABC and Meta, owner of Facebook, have recently done). Most major media outlets are owned by big corporations that have multiple interests or “equities” at stake. And of course, the big social media companies are titanic corporations. They don’t want trouble. They don’t want resistance. They just hope to ride out the storm.
Universities, too, are highly vulnerable. The country’s major research institutions, especially those with large medical, engineering, and scientific infrastructure, are heavily dependent on federal funding. Their capacity to do the research and innovation that powers the American economy, improves human welfare, and advances the national interest by sustaining our scientific and technological edge (which we are rapidly losing to China in many fields) would be badly damaged by significant cuts in federal funding. The recent Trump administration announcement of a cut in the “indirect cost” (overhead) rate on National Institute of Health (NIH) grants to 15% maximum (down from 40-50% for many leading research universities) will devastate U.S. universities’ ability to maintain and update the infrastructure that makes this research possible. Chinese universities have no such constraint. The cut would cost Stanford University alone $160 million annually. Meanwhile, the federal government can also strike fear into universities through lawsuits and ponderous investigations.
While big corporations may have more autonomy in theory, many of them have large federal government contracts and depend on them massively in the defense sector. Others are vulnerable to regulatory discretion of various kinds. And there is not just the fear factor. Many business leaders backed Trump politically, sincerely believing that his intention to cut corporate and personal income taxes and reduce government regulation would spark a new era of investment and growth. These business leaders want to privilege the financial interests and economic policy preferences that motivated their often reluctant political support for Trump. They were never happy with the “DEI agenda” imposed upon them by left-of-center administrations and constituencies, and hoped that all of Trump’s imperial excesses will prove to be mostly bark and little bite. They hardly seem ready for the ferocity of what is coming, and many analysts are questioning how much they will care until the chaos of an authoritarian presidency run amok begins to unravel economic and social stability in the U.S.—which it will.
This article is adapted from the "Diamond on Democracy" column hosted by American Purpose at Persuasion. To sign up for Larry Diamond's column and other content from the American Purpose family at Persuasion, click here.
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Thanks for all the comments. In a follow-up to this column, I will offer a number of specific ideas of what individual citizens can do to defend our democracy. I agree that state government are a crucial part of the response.
And I'll just add to Shikha's cautionary note: One thing we absolutely cannot do is respond to Trump's unconstitutional or undemocratic behavior with unconstitutional--or even questionably constitutional--behavior of our own. The U.S. military has not only the right but the duty to refuse to obey clearly illegal or unconstitutional orders. But we don't want to event hint at the possibility that the military would act outside of its scope of authority to contain Trump. That is the job of the Congress, the courts, and the American people. It would also be the job of the inspectors general and independent agencies, if Trump were not proceeding to neuter and politicize them.