Why so many Republicans are bailing out of Congress
June 29, 2026
A new report reveals the speed of autocratisation in the United States and how Trump is acting increasing without Congressional approval.
It is arguable that the US has never been a democracy in the normal sense of the word. From slavery to restrictions on voting, people have been disenfranchised – often by violence. And Donald Trump is working hard to keep it that way.
The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) produces the largest global dataset on democracy, with more than 32 million data points for 202 countries and territories from 1789 to 2025. Its latest report – Unraveling The Democratic Era, which includes a chapter on autocratisation in the United States – says the speed with which American democracy is currently being dismantled is unprecedented in modern history.
It says that under Trump presidency the level of democracy has fallen back to the same level as in 1965 and that the derailment of democracy is marked by executive overreach, which undermines the rule of law, and that civil rights and equality before the law are also rapidly declining, falling to late 1960s levels.
Most analysts and historians see 1965 as the point at which US democracy became more robust thanks to the end of the vicious disenfranchisement of African Americans and the suppression of civil rights in the South.
Now Trump is set on reproducing that era. He has declared the only limits to his power are “his own morality” and then “only under certain circumstances”. His “executive aggrandizement”, the report says, is the most rapid in modern history. The report notes it took Hungary’s Viktor Orban four years, Serbia’s Aleksandar eight years, and India’s Modi and Turkey’s Erdogan about a decade to do the same.
Legislative and judicial constraints on the Executive are also in decline: purges; politicisation of the public service; appointing unqualified supporters to important executive positions; weaponisation of the justice system; and governing by executive orders.
The Components of Liberal Democracy Index in the USA 1955-2025 shows dramatic declines. Characteristic of dictatorships, Trump pardoned 1,500 criminals convicted of the January 6 Capitol Hill assault and has tried – unsuccessfully – to give them large payments for their actions.
Many of the Trump actions have been driven by Heritage Foundation and Claremont Institute reports urging Trump to adopt the ‘Unitary Executive Theory’, which says the President holds sole authority.
Trump is also using dictatorial tactics against protests in major cities across the country and authorising agencies to target organisations and individuals based on their ‘anti-Christian or anti-capitalist’ views. Effectively this criminalises political dissent. Freedom of _expression_ has fallen to its lowest level in the end of the Second World War.
The report says the Trump administration has the most rapid executive aggrandisement in modern history. It has systematically sought to evade legislative constraints on the executive and Congressional oversight has been overlooked, to put it mildly. The Administration has also removed “constraints in the executive including purging perceived opponents and removing of oversight by independent agencies and auditors”:
For example, the Trump administration expunged higher levels of the Department of Defence, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI of those who were not personally loyal to him.
The report also points to Trump’s efforts to increase control of academia through reduction of autonomy, restriction of freedom to research and teach, the politicisation of educational content and weaponising federal funding.
It also warns of a threat to the integrity of the 2026 mid-terms. Trump and allies unsuccessfully challenged the legitimacy of the 2020 election results but now Trump is in the position to tilt the outcome by: lawsuits, encouraging gerrymandering in the States, demanding voter registration material and making more demands on electronic voting and restricting mail-in-voting – all without Congressional approval.
This whole process has been helped along by a partisan Supreme Court. The blocking of the Garland nomination to the Supreme Court by Senate Republicans entrenched that partisanship. There are rumours that one of the Trump appointees – Alito – may want to retire. He may be persuaded to hang on or some new appointment will be fast tracked. The latest Congressional voting trends suggest that it will have to be very fast, as they may not have the numbers in Congress for much longer. According to the inimitable G Elliott Morris, the Republican lead in last May was plus 1 per cent but since then there has been a steady increase to Democrats leading by 13 per cent in May this year.
All this shows why it’s not wonder so many Republicans are bailing out of Congress.
The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.