The Erosion of Democratic Norms and the Path to Competitive Authoritarianism
Democracy is dying! Oligarchs seize media, dissent is criminalized, voting rights vanish. "Trump 2028" looms as competitive authoritarianism takes hold. Fight back!
The Structural Consolidation of Power
Many observers have held onto the hope that American democracy could be restored once the Trump administration leaves office. However, an increasingly pessimistic view suggests that competitive authoritarianism—a political system where elections still occur but meaningful democratic competition is systematically undermined—may be entrenching itself for the foreseeable future. This isn't merely about one administration's policies, but rather about fundamental structural changes that make democratic restoration extraordinarily difficult.
The Oligarchic Control of Information Infrastructure
One of the most significant developments involves the consolidation of media and social media companies under right-wing oligarchic control. The most prominent platforms for public discourse and information dissemination in the country are now owned by individuals aligned with right-wing political interests. This creates a self-reinforcing information ecosystem where narratives can be shaped, alternative viewpoints marginalized, and democratic discourse itself constrained.
Beyond media control, there are emerging concerns about voting infrastructure. The recent purchase of Dominion Voting Systems by a Republican represents a troubling development—the mechanisms by which votes are cast and counted coming under partisan control creates opportunities for undermining electoral integrity at the most fundamental level.
The Criminalization of Dissent
Redefining Protest as Terrorism
Recent statements from high-ranking government officials reveal an alarming framework being constructed to treat political opposition as criminal conspiracy. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have publicly outlined plans to treat anti-fascist protesters with the same aggressive investigative and prosecutorial tactics historically reserved for drug cartels and international terrorist organizations.
Bondi explicitly stated the administration's intent to "destroy the entire organization from top to bottom" when referring to Antifa, characterizing it as "a criminal organization" that is "very organized." She pointed to the presence of matching signs at protests, pre-purchased equipment, and coordinated logistics as evidence of criminal conspiracy requiring investigation into funding sources.
Bessent drew an even more dramatic parallel, comparing contemporary domestic protests to the September 11th terrorist attacks. He invoked the post-9/11 Treasury Department's role in tracking terrorist financing networks and suggested applying identical methodologies to domestic protesters. In his framework, he described an unspecified individual's death as "like a domestic 9/11," using this comparison to justify treating protest organizers as terrorist financiers requiring the same level of surveillance and prosecution that followed international terrorism investigations.
The specific details cited as evidence of conspiracy include:
- Matching signs at protests
- Hundreds of identical umbrellas used by protesters
- Coordinated use of lasers to allegedly blind police officers
- The logistical organization required for large-scale demonstrations
Bessent explicitly stated that Treasury has "started to compile lists, put together networks just as after 9/11 and Osama bin Laden" and promised that "the ultimate culprit was captured. We are operationalizing this here at Treasury and we are going to track down who is responsible for this."
The Chilling Effect on Constitutional Rights
This rhetorical framing serves a calculated purpose: to create a climate of fear around exercising First Amendment rights. The comparison to cartels and terrorist networks is designed to make citizens understand that organizing protests—an explicitly protected constitutional activity—could subject them to the full force of federal investigative and prosecutorial power typically reserved for national security threats.
The fundamental flaw in this framework is apparent: organizing protests is not a crime, and having similar signs is not evidence of conspiracy. A parallel example illustrates the absurdity: it would be equivalent to Democrats investigating and prosecuting the designer of the mass deportation signs visible at the Republican National Convention. One example provided involves Andrea, a graphic designer creating signs for the "No Kings" protest, making these materials available for people to print themselves. She receives no payment for this work, is not funded by any outside organization like George Soros, but rather creates these materials "out of the goodness of her heart because she cares about this country." This represents precisely the kind of civic engagement that the First Amendment was designed to protect—citizens exercising their creative and organizational capacities to participate in democratic discourse.
The administration's approach effectively weaponizes law enforcement against the core principles of free speech and assembly. By treating legitimate protest organization as terrorism financing, the regime signals its intent to wage war on American citizens who exercise their constitutional rights to criticize the government.
Generational Consequences of Authoritarian Conditioning
The long-term implications extend far beyond any single administration. This systematic intimidation of dissent will foster a generation of Americans conditioned to remain silent to avoid the regime's wrath. When citizens internalize the understanding that political expression carries the risk of being labeled a terrorist or cartel member, self-censorship becomes rational behavior. This represents perhaps the most insidious form of authoritarianism—not the one that requires constant overt repression, but the one where citizens police their own speech and actions out of internalized fear.
These changes will have profound long-term damaging effects that won't be easily reversed once Trump leaves office. The infrastructure of surveillance, the legal precedents established, the normalized association between dissent and criminality—these elements create a framework that outlasts any individual leader and fundamentally reshapes civic culture.
The Question of Presidential Term Limits
Trump 2028 and the 22nd Amendment
Adding to concerns about democratic restoration is the growing discourse around Trump running for a third term. According to Newsweek reporting, conversations about "Trump 2028" are ramping up among Republican politicians and operatives. Representative Randy Fine has explicitly called for repealing the 22nd Amendment, which limits presidents to two terms.
Steve Bannon and other operatives are reportedly working to find mechanisms for Trump to "essentially bypass the 22nd Amendment" to enable a third-term run. This represents more than idle speculation—it reflects a serious effort within Republican circles to extend Trump's presidency beyond constitutional limits.
The very fact that such discussions are occurring openly, without significant pushback from within the Republican establishment, signals a fundamental shift in how constitutional constraints are viewed. The assumption that Trump is "even planning to leave" office after his current term can no longer be taken for granted.
Louisiana v. Kalise: The Existential Threat to Voting Rights
Understanding Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act
The Supreme Court case Louisiana v. Kalise represents what may be the most devastating blow to American democracy in generations. While the case has received some attention for its connection to the Voting Rights Act, the full magnitude of its potential consequences remains underappreciated by the general public.
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act makes it illegal to gerrymander electoral districts in a racially discriminatory manner. This provision has been crucial in preventing Republican-controlled states from eliminating representation for Black Americans, particularly in southern states. This protection represents one of the central achievements of the civil rights movement—ensuring that racial minorities cannot have their voting power diluted through discriminatory district drawing.
The Diabolical Legal Strategy
The origins of this case reveal a particularly cynical legal maneuver. The sequence of events began when a conservative Fifth Circuit Court affirmed a lower court's ruling that Louisiana's GOP-drawn congressional maps in 2022 constituted illegal racial gerrymandering. Despite Black residents comprising roughly one-third of Louisiana's population, these maps crammed many Black voters into a single district while the other five districts remained majority white.
Following this court ruling, Republican Governor Jeff Landry convened an emergency legislative session to draw new maps complying with the court's order, which granted another majority-Black district and gave Black voters fairer representation.
Here's where the strategy becomes diabolical: shortly after these compliant maps were finalized, they were challenged by a group of white voters. These challengers alleged that by drawing maps that gave Black voters fairer representation, Louisiana's legislature was "effectively enacting an illegal racial gerrymander against voters who are not Black."
This represents using Section 2 against itself to destroy Section 2. The conservative legal argument, stripped of its technical language, essentially claims that not being able to discriminate against Black people constitutes racism against white people. While this may seem like an oversimplification, it captures the fundamental logic: the inability to dilute Black voting power through gerrymandering is framed as unfair discrimination against white voters.
The Brett Kavanaugh Factor
The Supreme Court's decision to take up Louisiana v. Kalise is particularly concerning given recent precedent. In 2022's Allen v. Milligan case, the Court rejected this same argument and upheld Section 2 of the VRA. Under normal circumstances, this recent precedent would suggest Louisiana v. Kalise should be decided the same way.
However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh represents the pivotal variable. In Allen v. Milligan, Kavanaugh voted to uphold Section 2, but his concurring opinion revealed troubling reasoning. He agreed with Justice Clarence Thomas's dissenting argument that bans against discrimination "can't go on indefinitely" and "have to expire at some point." While Kavanaugh believed in 2022 that Section 2 remained necessary, he telegraphed his agreement that it should eventually be eliminated.
Just three years later, Kavanaugh's position appears to have shifted. During oral arguments for Louisiana v. Kalise, according to Politico reporting, Kavanaugh—whose vote will likely be pivotal—"repeatedly suggested that race-based remedies under the Voting Rights Act should be permitted only for a limited period of time." He emphasized that "they should have an end point."
While other conservative justices were described by Politico as "outright hostile" toward Section 2, Kavanaugh's position is characterized by a different flaw: he apparently believes that racism in politics has been solved. This represents a stunning reversal from just two years earlier when he agreed that Section 2 was necessary to prevent Republicans from racially discriminating against Black voters in their states.
Kavanaugh's importance cannot be overstated: if he flips, the decision becomes 5-4 in favor of gutting the Voting Rights Act. This would give the Act its "final death blow" and effectively legalize electoral racial discrimination once again.
The Concrete Political Consequences
Analysis by Max Flugrath in Slate, drawing on research from Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter, quantifies the political impact of eliminating Section 2. The projections are staggering:
Immediate Congressional Impact:
- Gutting Section 2 could help Republicans secure an additional 27 safe GOP House seats
- At least 19 of these seats would be directly tied to the loss of Section 2
- This is sufficient to cement one-party control of the House for at least a generation
The result would represent "a return to the pre-1965 Jim Crow playbook masked in pseudoconstitutional language." Prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, southern states systematically disenfranchised Black voters through various mechanisms. The elimination of Section 2 would enable a return to this model, using the veneer of neutral redistricting principles to mask racial discrimination.
Impact on Minority Representation: According to Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter estimates:
- 30% of Congressional Black Caucus members would lose their seats
- 11% of Congressional Hispanic Caucus members would lose their seats
These aren't abstract percentages—they represent the systematic elimination of minority voices from the legislative process.
The Mechanics of Democratic Erosion
The analysis emphasizes that this represents an "existential shift in power"—a transformation in which representation reflects "not the will of the people, but the will of those in power." Congress would become "insulated from accountability, its makeup preserved by maps drawn to protect incumbents."
Context matters for understanding the fragility of current democratic structures: Trump won the 2024 election by just 2.2 million votes out of more than 155 million cast. This narrow margin demonstrates how relatively small systematic advantages, when locked in through gerrymandering, can create insurmountable barriers to political competition.
The Supreme Court decision would hand "the Trump regime and its allies a powerful tool to permanently weaken fair representation, tighten their grip on power, and drag the country further into authoritarian rule."
The Erosion of Democracy as Process
Democratic collapse rarely happens in "one dramatic moment, but slowly, deliberately, and often quietly by design." The VRA was passed specifically to prevent those in power from deciding "who gets to have a voice and who doesn't." Removing this protection creates what the analysis describes as "a hollow shell of democracy"—elections that "appear free but are rigged to keep power in the same hands."
This represents the essence of competitive authoritarianism: the procedural forms of democracy remain in place, but substantive democratic competition becomes impossible. Elections still occur and may even see power occasionally change hands, but they "will by no means facilitate meaningful changes in power, which is antithetical to democracy." Elections become performative rather than transformative.
As noted in the analysis: "Elections happen in every single regime, even totalitarian ones. They just are there for a show." American democracy is "slowly but surely turning into" this model—elections as democratic theater rather than mechanisms for accountability and change.
The Emerging Authoritarian Status Quo
Defining Competitive Authoritarianism
The various elements described—media consolidation, criminalization of dissent, potential for term limit violations, and voting rights elimination—combine to create what political scientists term competitive authoritarianism. This system maintains the formal structures of democracy while systematically undermining any realistic possibility of opposition victory.
In this model:
- Black Americans become legal second-class citizens once again with minimal meaningful representation
- Ideological opponents face intimidation and punishment for challenging the regime
- Information is suppressed and controlled by the ruling party's oligarchs
- Elections serve performative rather than competitive functions
The Historical Parallel
The framework being constructed deliberately echoes Jim Crow-era suppression, but with modern mechanisms and constitutional language providing a veneer of legitimacy. The pre-1965 South demonstrated how democratic forms could coexist with systematic racial exclusion. The current trajectory suggests a return to this model at a national scale.
Potential Responses and Resistance
Institutional Counter-Strategies
Some strategic responses have been proposed, though their implementation remains uncertain:
Aggressive Counter-Gerrymandering: Max Flugrath recommends that every Democratic-controlled state should aggressively gerrymander as many seats away from Republicans as possible to counter Republican gerrymandering. The principle: "you have to fight fire with fire." However, there's skepticism about whether Democrats possess the political will for such tactics. Most Democratic-controlled states aren't currently pursuing aggressive gerrymandering, with Governor Gavin Newsom cited as a potential exception.
The logic is simple: if Republicans are going to systematically manipulate district boundaries for partisan advantage, and if the Supreme Court removes legal barriers to such manipulation, then Democrats must respond in kind wherever they have the power to do so.
Creative Electoral Strategies: If the Supreme Court transforms America into a one-party state, more creative approaches may become necessary. One suggestion: infiltrate the Republican Party by having leftists and progressives run as Republicans. This could potentially allow opposition voices to participate in what may become the only meaningful electoral competition—Republican primaries. Though Republicans might respond by tightening eligibility criteria, the broader point is the necessity of "thinking outside the box."
The Imperative of Mass Mobilization
More fundamentally, the analysis emphasizes that democracy isn't going to be restored automatically by waiting out the clock and hoping Trump leaves office in 2028. The assumption that things will simply revert to normal represents dangerous wishful thinking.
What's required instead is "a robust movement driven by working-class people of all colors and stripes to take power back from the fascists." This can't be a passive process of waiting for authoritarianism to collapse on its own. The grip on power is too tight, the propaganda too powerful, and the structural changes too profound.
Learning from History
Historical perspective provides both warning and hope:
The Precedent of Past Struggles: Indigenous people, women, civil rights leaders from the 1960s, and LGBTQ+ leaders "were up against far worse than what we're up against now as bad as things are. But they never gave up." Their struggles occurred in contexts with fewer legal protections, more overt violence, and less public support than contemporary movements enjoy. If previous generations fought for future generations despite overwhelming obstacles, current generations bear the same responsibility.
The Reality of Authoritarian Rule: Most people around the world live under some form of authoritarian regime—this isn't unique to the United States. Even the most repressive dictatorships can be challenged and sometimes overthrown through mass mobilization. While regimes attempt to suppress opposition, "it doesn't take much to spark an entire mass movement."
The Choice Between Permanence and Phase: Whether American authoritarianism becomes permanent or represents a temporary phase "is going to hinge on whether or not we choose to give up." The ease of seeing discouraging news and wanting to disengage is understandable, but ultimately counterproductive.
Concrete Actions for Resistance
The analysis concludes with specific recommendations for productive engagement:
Active Political Participation:
- Organizing at local and national levels
- Meeting with like-minded people in communities
- Canvassing and direct voter contact
- Getting involved in political organizations and campaigns
Channeling Frustration Productively: Rather than checking out—which is "exactly what they want"—citizens must transform frustration into organized action. The cliché that "change is only going to become impossible once we all stop trying" represents an uncomfortable truth. Individual efforts may seem small, but collective action creates the conditions for broader transformation.
The Present Moment and Future Trajectory
The Bleakness of Current Circumstances
The assessment doesn't shy away from the gravity of the situation: "it's bleak right now, and it may get even worse." The Supreme Court appears poised to "do the unthinkable" by gutting the Voting Rights Act. If this occurs, "we're going to be in very, very bad shape, to put it mildly."
The Terminal Diagnosis of Democracy
Perhaps most significantly, the analysis suggests accepting a difficult reality: "we have to come to terms with the fact that that ship has sailed and democracy is already dead." This isn't defeatism but rather clear-eyed assessment of the current state. The normal that many hope to return to "wasn't good to begin with," and indeed, "that normal is what facilitated the rise of authoritarianism."
The combination of factors—oligarchic control of information, criminalization of dissent, elimination of voting rights protections, potential for unlimited presidential terms, and systematic gerrymandering—has already transformed the American political system into something that no longer functions as a genuine democracy.
The Possibility of Restoration
Yet this terminal diagnosis doesn't imply resignation. "Authoritarianism doesn't have to be permanent." The question is whether Americans will organize resistance sufficient to challenge authoritarian consolidation, or whether they'll accept competitive authoritarianism as the new normal.
The stakes extend beyond any single election cycle or administration. These are "political consequences that are so devastating they would outlive the Trump regime." The structural changes being implemented will persist long after current political actors leave the stage, creating a system designed to perpetuate itself regardless of nominal leadership changes.
Conclusion: The Fork in the Road
American democracy stands at a crucial juncture. Multiple overlapping crises—the criminalization of dissent through terrorism frameworks, oligarchic information control, voting infrastructure concerns, challenges to presidential term limits, and the potential elimination of voting rights protections—combine to create conditions for permanent authoritarian rule masked by electoral formalism.
The coming Supreme Court decision on Louisiana v. Kalise may represent the final inflection point—the moment when formal democracy becomes irrevocably hollowed out, creating a system where elections occur but meaningful democratic competition becomes structurally impossible.
The path forward requires acknowledging this reality while refusing to accept it as inevitable. Democracy may already be dead in its previous form, but what emerges from its collapse remains contested terrain. Whether the result is permanent competitive authoritarianism or a new democratic reconstruction depends entirely on whether citizens organize, resist, and build alternative power structures capable of challenging oligarchic control.
The historical precedent is clear: no authoritarian system is truly permanent when confronted with sustained mass mobilization. The question is whether Americans will mount that challenge or accept the comfortable illusion of democratic forms without democratic substance.