An often-asked question since January 21, 2025, “Is America really in danger of slipping into authoritarianism?” On July 4, 2025, I wrote an essay outlining indicators of the slide toward an autocratic government, which was expanded upon in an August 8 essay. In October, it felt to me as if the authoritarianism we fear was already upon us, and I compared what I was observing to the Jim Crow era that I grew up in.
As the first anniversary of this administration approaches, I’ve been reflecting on recent events and see nothing to contradict my conclusion from October. I am convinced that the United States is now an elected autocracy closely resembling Viktor Orban of Hungary, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, Narendra Modi of India, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, and, lest we forget, the man recently deposed by the U.S., Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela. These are (or were, in Maduro’s case) leaders who gained power through elections (sometimes even honest elections), but who rule through manipulation and repression, and who, once in power, dismantle democratic processes and institutions. We’re not yet a full-blown dictatorship, but the signs are ever clear that this is where we could end up if the trend is not reversed.
As hard as it might be for Americans to accept that this country falls into that category, it behooves us to take a hard look at what has happened in the last year and evaluate it against the key characteristics of authoritarianism.
Concentration of Power. Since day one, the Trump administration has sought to expand the power of the executive branch, weaken institutional checks and balances, and undermine the independence of the judiciary. From the dismantling of USAID to an executive order ending birthright citizenship, actions that have been challenged in court, but not yet decided, Trump and his advisors have continued to assert that his power over the executive branch is unlimited and unquestionable. The capstone of his quest for power, and his views on limitations on his power, were highlighted in a January 8, 2026, interview with The New York Times, when he said, in answer to a question if there were any limits on his global powers, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me. I don’t need international law.”
Restriction of Civil Liberties. In the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, he went full bore in undoing decades of civil rights work, including eliminating diversity initiatives across all federal agencies, firing staffers of agencies working on civil rights issues, and pushing to roll back provisions of the Civil Rights Act; dismantling laws intended to protect people from discrimination in schools, the workplace, and at the voting polls. In a January 11, 2026, article in The New York Times, Trump’s views on civil rights were summed up in his remarks that white people were ‘very badly treated’ by civil rights-era protections.
Political Repression. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump pledged to punish his political opponents. As of November 26, 2025, a Reuters tally indicated that at least 470 Americans, individuals, institutions, and organizations had been targeted for retribution. The list included prosecutors who investigated his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, media organizations he deemed hostile, law firms associated with opponents, and government employees who questioned his policies. On January 11, 2026, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell received a subpoena and a threat of criminal indictment from the DOJ regarding his 2025 congressional testimony on renovations to the Federal Reserve’s buildings. In a video statement, Powell said the subpoena was an effort to undermine the Fed’s independence when it comes to setting interest rates. Trump has denied knowledge of the case but has clashed with Powell (whom he appointed during his first term) over interest rates, which he seeks to manipulate for political reasons, whereas Powell insists on using economic indicators to make that call.
Manipulation of Democratic Processes. While many of Trump’s early actions by executive order have been challenged in the courts, and some of those orders have been declared unconstitutional, he continues to look for workarounds and loopholes in the law to implement the proposals in the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page Project 2025, a blueprint for placing the federal bureaucracy under direct presidential control without Congressional or Judicial Branch oversight. He has tried eliminating job protections for federal employees and has weaponized federal agencies against his political opponents, overwhelming the courts—and the public—with constant policy changes, in an effort to normalize authoritarian governance through the sheer volume of controversial actions.
Use of Propaganda and Control of Information. Control of the media and use of propaganda to shape public perception is right out of the authoritarian playbook, and this has been Trump’s tactic from the start of his second administration. Even now, he continues the ‘big lie’ that the 2020 election was ‘stolen’; he denigrates and mocks opponents with ad hominem attacks; and he uses threats and intimidation to force the media to hew to his line. A prime example of the use of propaganda (outright lies) to shape public opinion and control the narrative was Trump’s comments after an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Ncole Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 7, 2026. Despite video evidence showing that Good was turning her car away from the agents when the first shot was fired, and the next two shots were fired through the left front window, Trump, in a statement to The New York Times, accused the victim of “trying to run over policemen…”
Institutional Support. During his first administration, Trump, who was new to the federal government scene, appointed officials who, in many cases, placed their oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution’ over personal loyalty to him. Thus, he was restrained in some of his worst impulses, such as his desire to deploy the army to DC to deal with the demonstrations after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman. In his second administration, however, he appointed only loyalists to key positions, such as the DOJ, the FBI, and the DOD, which has led to National Guard deployments, primarily to Democratic-run cities and states, until the courts ordered them out of California, Oregon, and Illinois. Because he has more direct control over the DC National Guard, troops remain in the capital, and at the request of Louisiana’s Republican governor, in New Orleans. Until his raid on Venezuela and abduction of its president and his wife, and the DOJ subpoena to Fed Chair Powell, the Republican-led Congress has, for the most part, either supported his actions or looked the other way. Democratic legislators’ efforts to rein him in have been blocked by the Republican majority. The Venezuela crisis, the attack on the Fed, and his obsession with taking over Greenland, however, have exposed cracks in Congressional support that have yet to stop his actions—but they offer hope. Right-wing media outlets have been consistently supportive, or silent on his abuses of power, and his efforts to bring the rest of the media in line continue.
Fear and Violence. Finally, there is the use of fear and violence to manipulate and control the population. One need look no further than the aggressive and militarized tactics that ICE uses in its raids, and the demographics of those being detained and deported to conclude that instilling fear is as much—if not more—a goal of the administration as its stated goal of removing the worst and most dangerous undocumented alien criminals. Targets of these raids have increasingly been those with no ‘criminal’ record, legal permanent residents, and even U.S. citizens.
It is maybe premature to call the U.S. a full-blown autocracy, but it’s hard to deny that we are no longer ‘approaching’ that status. We’re now a hybrid, perhaps still more free than unfree, but the move to dictatorship seems to be accelerating each day, and one can only wonder when we’ll reach the point at which a U-turn becomes difficult.