In its 2024 annual report, Freedom House, a nonprofit organization known to assess the condition of political rights and civil liberties around the world, highlighted the United States as its “pivotal country to watch.” The report cited that although the U.S. held fair and credible elections in 2024 when compared to the previous two presidential elections, President Donald Trump’s promises with regard to domestic and foreign policy could “substantially impact freedoms at home and abroad.” His promises ranged from bringing prices down by increasing drilling to reduce energy costs, to launching “the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out.” 

Now, in the midst of his second administration, the President’s attempts to challenge judicial authority, dismantle federal institutions, and consistently undermine electoral integrity in various ways are starting to exhibit hallmarks of democratic backslide — raising serious concerns about the resilience of American democracy. While some scholars argue that the country’s institutional framework is robust enough to withstand these pressures, others highlight that the erosion of democratic norms is often a slow process—one the United States has also been gradually experiencing over the last decade, according to Freedom House. As political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way caution, democratic decline does not require an outright coup (although the United States may be in the midst of a subtle one considering the growing influence of billionaire businessman Elon Musk) or dictatorship that explicitly usurps power from the people and their existing government; rather, it can occur when elected leaders manipulate institutions central to the nation’s democracy to secure their dominance while maintaining a facade of legitimacy. 

Democratic backsliding is characterized by the gradual weakening of institutional checks and balances, electoral manipulation, and suppression of dissent. According to Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s framework, the United States is exhibiting clear signs of democratic erosion, with some of the key indicators being: 

Defying the judiciary: On March 15, the Trump administration revealed a proclamation invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to target alleged members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan prison gang, which he believes is “invading” the United States. In response, Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg questioned the invocation of such rarely-used powers in peacetime to deport hundreds of Venezuelan migrants, ultimately issuing a verbal orderon March 19 to turn around the deportation flights. However, the White House insisted it was too late, raising serious constitutional concerns given that U.S. government agencies are expected to comply with a federal judge’s ruling. 

The Trump administration’s refusal to comply with court orders undermines the judiciary’s role as a check on executive power. As Trump and his allies call for Boasberg’s impeachment, accusing him of trying to usurp the presidency, they further exacerbate concerns about the erosion of judicial independence. While this is just one example, it only highlights how Trump’s continued defiance of judicial rulings is setting a dangerous precedent, particularly as he escalates attacks on judges who rule against him — overtly defying a core pillar of American democracy.

Suppressing dissent and free press: Trump continues to target media outlets critical of his administration, having previously labeled journalists and news outlets as “the enemy of the American people.” In his second term, he has taken this a step further: he has blocked Associated Press reporters from covering news events in the Oval Office and evicted major news organizations like The New York Times, NPR, NBC News, and Politico from their workspaces at the Pentagon. Replacing them are the New York Post, Breitbart News, The Huffington Post, and One America News Network, a pro-Trump outlet that airs a show hosted by former U.S. Florida Representative Matt Gaetz. Not only that, but his administration is actively threatening large law firms he politically opposes with potentially devastating sanctions, revealing how he is essentially working to eliminate any form of major opposition to his political agenda. Just three months into his second administration, Trump is attempting to exert control over academic institutions and the media, which according to major critics, explicitly violates the First Amendment to concentrate his own executive power. Over the past few weeks, Trump has threatened public schools and universities with massive federal funding cuts if they refuse to submit to his agenda, which includes dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and banning what he refers to as “illegal protests,” raising serious concerns in regard to people’s ability to exercise their rights, and by extension, the overarching resilience of American democracy.  

Attacking civil liberties: During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to execute the “largest deportation operation in American history” starting day one. Almost immediately after coming into office, the Trump administration issued a flurry of orders calling for a border shutdown and ramping up aggressive immigration enforcement.

Days later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were found raiding cities home to major immigrant communities like Chicago, Denver, and Minneapolis. ICE agents are even permitted to enter schools, instilling fear in students and families, and have arrested people on the basis of overhearing them speak a different language in public. As of March 31, I.C.E. has arrested around 113,000 migrants and deported over 100,000—including those living in the United States legally with a clean criminal record. Matters have escalated more recently, as the Trump administration diverted thousands of federal agents who usually hunt down child abusers to crack down on immigrants living in the United States illegally. The administration has also begun to initiate mass arrests on visa and green card-holding students at Tufts and Columbia universities, among others, for participating in pro-Palestinian activities, raising questions about their First Amendment rights. This is not just an attack on civil liberties but an attack on political opponents — be it students, migrants, or even the media. In fact, the United States was recently added to a global human rights watchlistin response to Trump slowly chipping away at people’s civil liberties. 

In each of the previous indicators of democratic backsliding in the United States, one thing has been a constant thread: Trump’s overt attempts at expanding his presidential powers. His actions aren’t unlike those of leaders like Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, or Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, all of whom suppressed media and opposition, attempted to expand their executive powers, and brought major institutional changes that challenged democratic norms. A commonality among these countries is their transition from democracies to what Levitsky and Way describe as competitive authoritarianism, which is a system where parties compete in elections but “the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition.” Under competitive authoritarianism, electoral competition exists, but it is often unfair, and many see the current signs of democratic erosion and Trump’s attempts at consolidating the government as a critical step toward building a competitive authoritarian government.

In many ways, Trump’s actions do mildly echo those of the leaders of once-democratic nations and align with key elements of competitive authoritarianism. For instance, despite his claims of knowing nothing about the right-wing policy agenda Project 2025, Trump has already executed 43% of the project’s propositions. From ordering an immediate pause on gender-affirming care for transgender people, to reversing the Biden-era environmental protections, to blatantly purging bureaucrats and replacing them with political loyalists all while threatening any form of dissent — the Trump administration is undermining the institutional checks that have historically constrained presidential power, initiating moves that blur the constitutional line and leave behind serious repercussions. 

But democratic backsliding is not just a top-down phenomenon; it interacts with, and is reinforced by, bottom-up social and political dynamics. The growing polarization of American society today has allowed partisan loyalty to override democratic principles. As individuals increasingly engage in political discourse only within their own ideological echo chambers, they start to fuel resentment toward those with differing views. Moreover, echo chambers are isolating. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General released an advisoryunderscoring the serious reverberations of loneliness and isolation in the nation. However, the impacts of isolation are rarely limited to the individual. Political scientist Robert Putnam says that people, especially young men, who are isolated are more “vulnerable to the appeals of some false community.” Recruits to the Nazi Party in the years leading up to World War II were lonely young men, he says, drawing parallels to the United States today where lonely young white men are most attracted to white nationalist groups. Studies indicate that between 2012 and 2016, white nationalists on social media apps like Twitter saw a 600% increase in followers, who were also far more invested in Trump’s campaign. Trump has been earning the votes of civically disengaged people since 2016, a pattern that only grew, much like Trump’s growing shift to conservative populism, in the following elections. 

Democracy is rooted in societal interaction. When people start to engage only with their echo chambers, and reject those with differing perspectives, they are bound to not only fuel mass isolation, but also succumb to misinformation and exacerbate distrust in democratic institutions — ultimately allowing competitive authoritarian leaders to use them as tools to further justify major crackdowns on dissent and political opposition, according to Putnam’s theory. 

The rise and growing normalization of political violence is another troubling indicator of democratic backslide. As of October 2024, Reuters has identified at least 300 cases of political violence since Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, following his 2020 election loss. Two assassination attempts against Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign and a Michigan ATV driver hitting an 80-year-old man for putting up a Trump sign in his yard are cases that exhibit the biggest and most prolonged increase in political violence in the United States since the 1970s. More importantly, Americans are starting to see violence as a normal partof politics, which, when fueled by Trump’s rhetoric, encourages political violence on a civilian level, ultimately threatening a key pillar of American democracy.

In the long run, the normalization of political violence paves the path for intimidation to serve as a legitimate political tool, further accelerating democratic erosion by censoring opposition or discourse on important subjects. This intimidation can manifest itself through top-down censorship, similar to the Trump administration’s threatening to impose sanctions at major law firms, or through bottom-up coalitions like the right-wing extremist groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who, as part of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, endorse and partake in political violence. Trump has encouraged the group’s actions on January 6, even calling them “patriots,” thus aligning himself even further with the core framework of competitive authoritarianism in which governments tolerate or even encourage political violence to weaken opposition.

The interaction between these top-down and bottom-up forces ultimately perpetuates a vicious cycle of civilian distrust and institutional manipulation. The erosion of democratic norms, heightened by economic and social polarization, enables leaders to weaken institutional checks and diminish public trust in democracy — ultimately enabling an escalation in authoritarian measures. Meanwhile, grassroots polarization and political violence add to the justification for restrictive policies like major crackdowns on media and civil liberties. This constant interactive dynamic resembles the gradual democratic decline seen in other democracies throughout history, and even today, where public resentment and institutional degradation reinforce each other and make democratic recovery increasingly difficult. 

Despite these concerning patterns, however, scholars like Kurt Weyland of the University of Texas, Austin, argue that American democracy’s structural resilience is capable of withstanding democratic backsliding. He posits that the country's independent judiciary, decentralized system, and historical precedents for democratic stability are strong enough to prevent Trump’s increasingly authoritarian threats and the public’s growing polarized response. 

However, institutional resilience is not infinite; once democratic norms, which serve as the core of any democracy, are eroded, reversing the damage is likely to become exponentially harder. As Trump continues to power through various executive orders and mandates for the remainder of his term, he is tied to the burden of governing a deeply polarized society. National resilience can only last so long, and the impacts of its internal deconstruction are bound to seep outside the nation’s borders through foreign policy. 

Democracies have rarely collapsed overnight. Instead, the process often unfolds gradually, through legal and political maneuvers that slowly chip away at institutional norms. The future of American democracy, therefore, hinges on whether institutions and civil society can resist these internal and external pressures. If the judicial system, the press, and public activism remain robust and have room to participate in public discourse, they might be able to rekindle public trust and push back growing unilateralism, serving as a strong counter to a potential backslide. But if these integral institutions continue to falter as the Trump administration abides by a playbook used by illiberal governments worldwide, the country risks following the trajectory of other nations that gradually transitioned into competitive authoritarianism.