How close is Trump to full autocracy? New York Times examines 12 signs

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U.S. President Donald Trump salutes during a ceremony marking the 24th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States at the Pentagon, in Washington D.C., U.S., September 11, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Using case studies from dead democracies, the New York Times editorial board compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion, with help from scholars who have studied the collapse of democracies. According to the board, under President Donald Trump the United States is staggeringly similar to such cases.

First, a modern authoritarian stifles dissent and speech. Like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Trump and his allies have pressured television stations to stop airing comedians who hurt his feelings. He has also revoked the visas of foreign students for sharing their views on the genocide in Gaza and ordered investigations of liberal nonprofit groups.

Second, autocrats use the power of law enforcement to investigate and imprison people who oppose them, similar to how Trump has ordered his Justice Department to target people who have made him angry with “dubious” accusations, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and former F.B.I. Director James Comey. And Trump has also ordered investigations of Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), among others.

Third, a modern autocrat finds ways to neuter their nation’s legislature, similar to the way Trump commands a legion of lockstep allies in the modern Republican Party, who rubber stamp his every decision.

Number 4, according to the Times, is an autocrat’s need to use the military to control opposition in dissent. Trump deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles, over the outcry of local leaders, and he has made similar attempts in Portland, Ore. and Chicago.

Likewise, the Editorial Board draws similarities to Trump’s defiance of national courts and his penchant for declaring national emergencies to a push his agenda. Like despots elsewhere, Trump has “vilified transgender Americans and barred them from military service,” said the Board. “He has fired women and people of color from leadership posts and ended programs that promote workplace diversity.”

He has also labored to erase Black history by removing books on slavery and segregation from military libraries and pressuring Smithsonian museums to minimize those subjects.

“At the same time, he has suggested that white people and Christians are victims, which echoes the autocratic habit of claiming that majority groups are in fact oppressed,” said the Board.

Also, like a despot, Trump rails against accurate information to guide decision-making, and he works to suppress inconvenient truths. He has already fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for truthfully reporting disappointing job growth, and he has shut down federal data collection efforts related to climate change.

Throw that in with No. 9: An authoritarian’s predictable effort to take over universities and suppress dissident scholars, which Trump has also begun to do by cutting millions of dollars in school grants and attempting to dictate hiring methods and school policies.

Nos. 10, 11, and 12 involve an authoritarian’s cult of personality; his effort to use government levers to personally enrich himself and his family; and his unending crusade to manipulate law to stay in power.

“Authoritarians change election rules to help their party, and they rewrite laws — or violate their spirit — to ignore term limits,” writes the Board, and although Trump’s biggest attempt to follow this playbook failed when he was “unable to undo his election defeat” in 2020, the Board says “he has shown worrisome signs of using his power to entrench the Republican Party’s hold on the government” through gerrymandering extremes and an executive order to interfere with state elections.

“These moves increase the chances that Republicans will keep control of Congress even if most voters want to oust them,” the Board writes, creating a one-party government similar to the single-party misery of the U.S.S.R, which eventually led to Putin.

“The clearest sign that a democracy has died is that a leader and his party make it impossible for their opponents to win an election and hold power. Once that stage is reached, however, the change is extremely difficult to reverse,” the Board said.

Read the New York Times report at this link.

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