Trump discovers that the road to autocracy is lined with potholes

A little over a year into his second presidency, President Donald Trump has yet to turn America into a pure, uncut authoritarian nightmare — but not for lack of trying.

Back in January 2025, if you asked a liberal what the new Trump administration would do in the worst case scenario, they would probably have said things like:

• Bring bogus charges against its political enemies, up to and including Democratic lawmakers.

• Strong-arm television networks to de-platform critical comedians.

• Deploy the military to Democratic cities to put down protests against its policies.

• Empower immigration enforcement agents to kill American citizens with total impunity.

The president has already done all of these things. 

And yet, on each front, pushback from the judiciary and civil society has either beaten back his assertions of dictatorial power or at least constrained them. 

This week brought a particularly vivid illustration of this dynamic in which Trump cooks up some cartoonishly tyrannical plot, only for America’s citizens and constitutional order to force him into retreat.  

It’s still legal to advocate against war crimes

On Tuesday, Trump’s Justice Department attempted to secure an indictment against six Democratic lawmakers for the crime of exercising their First Amendment rights. 

Specifically, the Democrats — including Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin — released a video last fall in which they warned those serving in America’s military and intelligence agencies that “threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home.”

The lawmakers, all former soldiers or intelligence operatives themselves, reminded their counterparts that they “must refuse illegal orders.” They did not explicitly question the legality of any specific military operation. 

But the video came months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth allegedly ordered the military to “kill everybody” aboard a Venezuelan fishing boat — a command that was illegal on an array of different levels. 

Some might struggle to see what law the Democrats’ message could have broken: How could it be illegal for an elected official to encourage compliance with the constitution or Geneva Convention?

Alas, the president decided that this was not only a crime, but a capital one. On Truth Social, Trump declared the Democrats had committed “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” and reposted a supporter’s call to “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!”

In this administration, it seems, the Justice Department’s first loyalty is to the president’s whims rather than America’s laws. So, it was shocking but unsurprising that the US attorney’s office in Washington actually tried to indict the so-called “seditious six” this week. 

Yet it was also remarkable that the DOJ failed. Grand juries almost always side with the prosecution, as they hear only the government’s side of a given case. And to approve an indictment, they must merely determine that there is “probable cause” that the accused may have committed a crime. 

Yet, the administration could not clear this low bar.

This is part of a broader pattern. The DOJ’s attempts to prosecute some of Trump’s other adversaries, such as former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, were also quickly dismissed by judges and grand juries. And although the outcome of the administration’s criminal investigation into Fed chair Jerome Powell remains uncertain, to the extent that it was intended to pressure him into prematurely forfeiting office, it has failed. 

Trump seems to be retreating on martial law

This week brought one other, quieter indication of democratic resilience. 

In 2025, the Trump administration repeatedly surged federalized National Guard troops to Democratic-run cities in the name of putting down civil unrest — or else, merely deterring protests that the president doesn’t like.

In a June memorandum, Trump authorized the Guard’s deployment to any “locations where protests against” ICE functions “are occurring or are likely to occur based on current threat assessments and planned operations.” 

In other words, he asserted the authority to send the military anywhere in the US where a demonstration against his immigration agenda is happening or might soon occur.  

This contravened a bedrock norm of American democracy. In the United States, responsibility for upholding civil laws is supposed to lie with civilian officials — not the military — except under the most extraordinary circumstances. 

Happily, the administration’s weaponization of the National Guard provoked rebukes from the judiciary, including the conservative-dominated Supreme Court. And on Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration had withdrawn all federalized National Guard troops from U.S. cities. 

American democracy isn’t going down without a fight

This basic pattern — of the administration trying but failing to perpetrate a nightmarishly authoritarian act — has repeated itself on many other fronts over the past year. 

The Federal Communications Commission tried to bully Disney into taking Jimmy Kimmel off the air for telling jokes it did not like; entertainment unions and Disney+ subscribers threatened to boycott the company if Kimmel were fired, and the network reinstated him.

When Border Patrol agents in Minnesota fired 10 times at the prone body of protestor Alex Pretti, the administration tried to vilify the victim and glorify his killers. But citizens and officials in both parties responded by demanding an investigation into the shooting, and the Justice Department grudgingly obliged. 

Meanwhile, the backlash to Pretti’s killing eventually forced the administration to draw down its unprecedented deportation surge in Minnesota, which had been generating routine violations of residents’ civil liberties.  

The White House has waged open war on the due process rights of immigrants, with no small amount of success. But one of its most egregious violations of such liberties — the unlawful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a foreign prison infamous for torturing its inmates — was rebuffed by federal judges. And the administration eventually repatriated Garcia.

Likewise, the administration tried to deport a Tufts student for authoring an op-ed it disagreed with, only to lose in court.

Perhaps, most importantly, although the president has broadcast an interest in unduly influencing elections in his favor, Democrats have nonetheless dominated special and off-year elections since Trump took office.

The state of the union is still… horrible

None of this is cause for complacency or comfort. A great many of the Trump administration’s attempts to subvert the rule of law have succeeded. 

The president has freed insurrectionists who attacked the Capital in his name while barring a federal investigation into Renee Good’s killing. He has purged the Justice Department of career prosecutors loyal to the Constitution and replaced them with allies loyal above all to himself. His administration has nullified many court orders and, at least allegedly, immigrant detainees’ human rights. It has intimidated news organizations and law firms into granting the president concessions to avoid legal trouble. 

What’s more: So long as Republicans control the Senate, America’s judiciary is bound to grow more deferential to Trump over time, as his handpicked judges occupy an ever larger share of its seats.

The point then is not that things in America are going well, only that, were the president able to fully execute his will, they would be going incalculably worse.

One year in, this administration’s intentions have proven about as nefarious as predicted. But American society has resisted his assaults on democracy better than one might have feared.