Democracy Dies in Silence

Before We Can Save Public Schools, We Have to Save Democracy

Democracies rarely fall in a blaze; they rot from within when ordinary citizens yield to a ruthless power-seeker. The scholarship is consistent. Democratic backsliding begins when a leader openly violates constitutional norms—attempting to overturn elections, attacking judicial independence, deploying state violence against citizens, treating political opposition as enemies of the state.

Sound familiar? Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey exemplify how autocrats weaponize law: Orbán rewrote constitutions and election rules to entrench Fidesz dominance, while Erdoğan used emergency decrees and purges after the 2016 coup attempt to cripple dissent, both hollowing out courts, media, and opposition under a veneer of legality.

Scholars from Harvard, Oxford, and the University of Chicago agree: Autocrats use laws themselves as weapons against democracy.

In their 2018 book How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt document that democracy ends not with bombs bursting in the night but with a death rattle. A professor of government at Harvard University, Levitsky’s research focuses on Latin America, political parties, democratization, and authoritarian regimes. Ziblatt is the Eaton Professor of Government at Harvard whose research examines European political development, conservative parties, and democracy.

In most contemporary cases, elected leaders use legal tools for their own purposes and corrupt existing institutions to concentrate power, change rules in their favor, and hollow out democracy while keeping its formal shell. This electoral route to authoritarianism is incremental and often technically lawful, which makes it harder for citizens and elites to recognize and resist in time.

Many of us lived with persistent outrage during Trump’s first term. Few thought that he would succeed to the degree he has. After all, the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms produced two impeachment efforts.  What matters, however, according to Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018), is whether elite institutions respond with clarity and consequence. Our Congress responded with obfuscation and inertia.

Chair of Comparative Politics at Oxford University and PIIRS Senior Scholar at Princeton University, Nancy Bermeo’s 2016 essay in the Journal of Democracy identifies executive aggrandizement as a common form of democratic backsliding that occurs when elected executives weaken checks on executive power. 

According to Bermeo, democratic backsliding, i.e., the “state-led debilitation or elimination of the political institutions sustaining an existing democracy,” happens at a glacial pace. Courts can delay rulings indefinitely. Legislatures can refuse to impeach or convict despite clear evidence of constitutional violation. Political parties can prioritize coalition maintenance over democratic defense.

Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq argue in their 2018 work How to Save a Constitutional Democracy that constitutional retrogression happens through incremental erosion occurring simultaneously across three institutional predicates: competitive elections, rights of political speech and association, and the administrative and adjudicative rule of law.

Ginsburg is a professor of law at the University of Chicago known for his work on comparative constitutional law, the design and endurance of constitutions, and courts in new or fragile democracies. Huq is also a law professor at Chicago whose research focuses on constitutional law, democratic governance, the separation of powers, and civil liberties. He often examines how legal rules and institutions can either protect or undermine liberal democracy.

Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) demonstrated that elected autocrats use the very institutions of democracy—gradually, subtly, and even legally—to kill it, packing and weaponizing courts and other neutral agencies, buying off or bullying media into silence, and rewriting rules to tilt the playing field. 

When institutions with power to constrain choose instead to accommodate, they don’t just fail to stop democratic erosion. They actively restructure political reality, establishing that oaths don’t bind and constitutional violations carry no cost.

Historians examining collapsed democracies consistently find the turning point wasn’t the would-be autocrat’s emergence. It was the moment institutions refused to call him what he was.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The United States, once thought immune, now echoes these patterns.

The Fake Electors Scheme

Beginning in November 2020, Trump and his attorneys coordinated the creation of fraudulent slates of electors in seven states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—where Biden had won.  Federal District Judge David Carter ruled in March 2022 that “the illegality of the plan was obvious,” writing that “every American—and certainly the President of the United States—knows that in a democracy, leaders are elected, not installed. With a plan this ‘BOLD,’ President Trump knowingly tried to subvert this fundamental principle.” 

Trump campaign operatives even considered chartering a jet to fly fake elector certificates to Washington in time for January 6, and Congressional staffers from Representatives Mike Kelly and Scott Perry’s offices attempted to hand-deliver the fraudulent documents to Vice President Pence.  In Michigan, Trump campaign officials proposed that fake electors hide overnight in the Capitol to “fulfill the role of casting their vote,” a plan the Michigan GOP chair called “insane and inappropriate.” 

Direct Pressure on State Officials

On January 2, 2021, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and demanded: “I just want to find 11,780 votes”—one more than Biden’s margin of victory. During the hour-long call, Trump alternated between flattery and threats of criminal liability, telling Raffensperger “you’re a Republican” while warning about political consequences. 

When Raffensperger pushed back on false fraud claims, Trump responded that there was “no way I lost Georgia,” claiming to have won by “hundreds of thousands of votes” despite certified results showing otherwise.

Weaponizing the Department of Justice

Trump attempted to install Jeffrey Clark, an environmental lawyer with no relevant experience, as acting Attorney General specifically because Clark was willing to use DOJ’s authority to overturn the election.   Clark drafted a letter falsely claiming the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election” in Georgia, which Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Deputy Richard Donoghue refused to sign. 

On January 3, 2021, Trump convened an Oval Office meeting where he told Rosen: “one thing we know is you, Rosen, you aren’t going to do anything. You don’t even agree with the claims of election fraud, and this other guy at least might do something.”  During that same conversation, Trump told DOJ officials: “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.” 

Trump backed down only when senior Justice Department officials threatened mass resignations, with Donoghue warning Trump he would lose his “entire department” and that Clark would be “left leading a graveyard.” 

Trump enacted systematic subversion—using fraudulent documents, threatening state officials, attempting to corrupt federal law enforcement, all to install himself in an office the American people had voted to deny him. Every democratic norm that stands between electoral defeat and authoritarian retention of power, Trump violated.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Upon reelection, Trump has systematically weaponized federal power against the constitutional order itself.

Purging the Professional Civil Service

On his first day back in office, January 20, 2025, Trump reinstated “Schedule F”—renamed “Schedule Policy/Career”—a classification designed to strip civil service protections from tens of thousands of career federal employees.   The administration estimates 50,000 positions will ultimately be converted to at-will employment, approximately 2% of the federal workforce, removing their due process rights and making them subject to immediate firing for “resistance to policy.” 

When the Office of Personnel Management proposed regulations in April 2025, 94% of public comments opposed the change.  The administration finalized the rule anyway. Critics warn the policy “allows the government to bypass existing civil service laws, strips employees of earned protections, and opens the door to politically motivated firings and hirings, which have already occurred since President Trump took office.”  Trump fired more than a dozen Justice Department officials who had worked on federal criminal investigations into him. 

This is Bermeo’s (2016) executive aggrandizement in action: using formal procedures to eliminate institutional constraints, ensuring that career professionals who might resist illegal orders can be removed at will.

Deploying State Violence Against Citizens

Federal immigration agents have shot at least 30 people since Trump took office on January 20, 2025, resulting in 8 deaths.  The Wall Street Journal identified at least 13 instances of officers “firing at or into civilian vehicles” since July 2025, and at least 5 of those shot were U.S. citizens. 

In Minneapolis, “Operation Metro Surge” deployed 3,000 federal agents, five times the size of the city’s police department, resulting in the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens: Renee Good on January 7, 2026, and Alex Pretti on January 24, 2026. 

After killing Pretti, Trump officials immediately claimed he had been “brandishing a firearm,” with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem saying he arrived “to inflict maximum damage” and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller calling him “a would-be assassin.” But frame-by-frame video analysis by The New York Times showed Pretti holding a phone, not a gun, and agents removing his holstered weapon one second before firing. 

These incidents represent systematic deployment of federal force—killing citizens, threatening governors who object, pre-declaring every use of force justified, stripping due process protections that might allow accountability. Trump is building precisely the infrastructure Ginsburg and Huq (2018) warned against: degrading elections, civil service purges, eliminating speech protections, threatened military deployment, and destroying the rule of law through immunity assertions and institutional capture.

The pattern extends even to how Trump treats Americans who dare to speak their conscience.

What Trump Actually Said

When Olympic skier Hunter Hess told reporters he had “mixed emotions” about representing the United States at the 2026 Winter Games, explaining “there’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of,” Trump responded with characteristic venom. He called Hess “a real Loser” and declared “it’s too bad he’s on it,” adding “Very hard to root for someone like this.” 

The pile-on was immediate and coordinated. Jake Paul, photographed with Vice President Vance at the games, wrote: “From all true Americans If you don’t want to represent this country go live somewhere else.”

Brett Favre, Rob Schneider, and Representative Byron Donalds—whom Trump has endorsed for Florida governor—joined the attack. Figure skater Amber Glenn, who expressed concern for the LGBTQ community, received “a scary amount of hate / threats” and the U.S. Olympic Committee had to report credible threats to law enforcement. 

What a Legitimate President Would Have Said

Democratic leadership has a basic obligation when citizens exercise free speech: protect it. A president who understood the office as public trust rather than personal dominion would have had three jobs in that moment.

Acknowledge that an Olympian who trains for years to represent the country has earned the right to speak honestly about it.

Recognize that criticism from citizens is diagnostic information, not betrayal.

And make clear — publicly, unambiguously — that no American should face threats for voicing dissent.

None of this is extraordinary. It is the minimum. It requires only that a president treat citizens as partners in self-governance rather than subjects who owe fealty, and that the president distinguish between loyalty to a country and loyalty to himself. Every democratic norm governing the relationship between a president and the people he serves demanded exactly this response.

A president mobilizing supporters to threaten citizens for exercising free speech. Demanding performative loyalty as the price of participation in national life. Treating dissent not as democracy but as betrayal. This is not a failure of temperament. It is the pattern Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) described: Using the tools of democratic life to hollow out the conditions that make democratic life possible.

The Cards Trump Holds

Right now, he holds all the cards.

He controls the executive branch and has systematically purged those who might constrain him. He has installed loyalists, gutted civil service protections, and made clear that “resistance to policy” justifies immediate termination. The Justice Department that should be investigating constitutional violations is led by officials who survived specifically because they would not investigate him.

He has deployed federal force against citizens and faced no institutional consequences. The courts that should restrain executive overreach have been packed with his appointees. The Congress that should check presidential abuse is controlled by a party that has repeatedly chosen him over constitutional duty.

He has demonstrated, across eight years, that he can attempt to overturn an election, orchestrate a scheme to submit fraudulent electoral certificates, pressure state officials to “find” votes, attempt to weaponize the Justice Department, incite violence at the Capitol, and face no accountability. Each time institutions failed to constrain him, the lesson was clear. The rules don’t apply.

The View from the Cheap Seats

Scholars from Harvard, from the University of Chicago, from Oxford are right. Democracies disappear when institutions refuse to call out and confront a leader who sends federal agents into private homes without a search warrant. We are watching it happen.

I understand the utter, bone-deep exhaustion. Like you, I am sick at heart and want it just to stop. That’s what authoritarianism counts on. The greatest threat we face is not Trump himself, a weak, ignorant man with a tortured mind and a cruel streak. Every time we withdraw and wait for others to speak up, we are complicit. Every time we see a betrayal and hold our tongue, we are complicit.

We must speak up even when it feels dangerous or pointless or exhausting, even when we think everybody already knows.

History will ask what we did when we knew; the answer cannot be that we knew and said nothing.