Reverse-engineering autocracy

Thinking like authoritarians can help defeat them

It’s not going to stop.

The Senate just confirmed Kash Patel as FBI Director — a MAGA loyalist who has repeatedly denigrated the law enforcement agency and referred to the prosecution of January 6 rioters as a “weaponization of justice.”

DOGE continued to sweep through the federal government, agency by agency, indiscriminately firing thousands of federal workers. (Our Dear Civil Servant series is tracking this closely).

And to wrap up his first month in office, the president made comments betraying Ukraine and alienating our European democratic allies.

It has been a lot.

So what should the opposition¹ be doing in the face of an unyielding assault on democracy and the rule of law?

Here’s our advice: Don’t think about the problem from start to finish. Don’t start today and ask “what should I do next?” Do the opposite. Start at the worst-case scenarios and work backwards.

That’s how authoritarianism thinks. It identifies an end goal — total concentration of power in one person’s hands — and methodically starts taking apart the obstacles in its way.

If the pro-democracy opposition is going to win, we need to learn to think the same way. We need to look far enough ahead, not just to thwart the authoritarian strategy of power concentration, but to start to run it in reverse.²

It’s a three-step process. Stay with us.

1. Understand how authoritarianism wins: by picking off competing power centers

First, we need to understand the logic behind Trump’s authoritarianism. It’s about identifying and eliminating competing centers of power. This is the general operating principle of autocrats everywhere — and it helps explain everything that’s happened these past several weeks.

Why is Trump throwing attack after attack at the civil service that he is supposed to lead? At this point, it’s pretty obvious it doesn’t have anything to do with budgets or efficiency or productivity. It’s because nonpartisan, professional, apolitical, rule-of-law-following civil servants are — in every country — a foundational bulwark against autocratic abuses and lawbreaking.

(If you know any federal government employees, again, encourage them to subscribe to our new Dear Civil Servant series for the latest updates and resources.)

Why is Trump firing the heads of certain independent agencies? It’s not just because he wants to advance a specific agenda through the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. It indicates he wants to bring all parts of the government, designed by Congress to be independent centers of power, under his direct control. (The ultimate target is likely the Federal Reserve.)

Why is Trump harassing and retaliating against the Associated Press for refusing to say “Gulf of America”? It’s not because he thinks the AP is spreading dangerous misinformation. He is showing the press what words they can or can’t use and intimidating independent media outlets into acting like a mouthpiece for his government and his agenda. The AP is being made an example of.

Why did Trump purge many inspectors general (including ones he appointed)? It’s not because they collectively deserved to be fired. He is making it clear to any watchdog whose role is to provide oversight and prevent abuse that, if they attempt to actually do their job, they will be fired. By design, he is replacing seasoned, Senate-confirmed IGs with temporary, less experienced replacements who are loyal to him, effectively hamstringing all the watchdog activity throughout the executive branch.

Why is he brazenly seeking to slash federal funding for state and local government, scientific research, and key social programs? Part of it may be ideological, but also consider that blue states and cities, universities, and civil society are among the most potent competing power centers remaining against the federal government.

Read more: Fedfreeze.org

Collectively, this is The Entrenchment Agenda — Trump’s plans to dig in, cement power, and crush competition. Everything is about identifying competing centers of power and taking them over. Or, if conquest is not possible, neutralizing, sidelining, or intimidating them into submission.

2. How authoritarianism loses: the other power centers refuse to be cowed

When the logic of authoritarianism is spelled out so clearly, it’s easier to see what needs to happen to stop an autocrat like Trump.

The opposition needs to prevent the authoritarian faction from taking over or neutralizing as many competing centers of power as possible. Each domino that falls, each power center that cedes its autonomy to Trump, makes it more likely that the next one will also go down — permanently.

So what other competing power centers will Trump target, and how can pro-democracy forces protect them? Here’s an incomplete run-through:

• The judiciary. This is a dangerous moment for the courts’ independence because many of them, above all SCOTUS, are relatively ideologically aligned with Trump. But the judicial branch remains, at least for now, a powerful competing actor. Litigators should design their strategies in a way that reorients cases away from ideological and policy questions (on which the courts may be inclined to side with Trump) and highlights the potential for interbranch power conflicts.

• Congress. While Congress is badly diminished relative to the other two branches, it’s still supposed to be the most powerful actor in the federal government. Maintaining and expanding Congress’s power and independence must be a top priority. Pro-democracy legislators need to get creative in making sure Congress’s power and autonomy is a central part of floor debate, whatever that debate happens to be.

• The civil service, law enforcement, and independent agencies. These are Trump’s first targets for a reason. If he can pack the government with henchmen, he can deploy them against everyone else on this list. Slowing the purges can’t stop them from happening, but it can delay the government's potential weaponization.

• Schools, universities, science, and independent research. We sometimes don’t think of these as competing centers of power, but they are. There’s a reason autocrats around the world (and at home) target education aggressively. The opposition must find ways to protect education, research, and inquiry — financially, legally, politically, and otherwise.

• Businesses and the media. Even though the process of “autocratic capture” is well underway, it’s far from complete. As the economic consequences of government meddling in the private sector become more clear, opposition leaders must be quick to support, coordinate with, and encourage collective action by business and media leaders who are currently keeping their heads down for fear of drawing the autocrat’s ire. And businesses in the U.S. have the advantage of capital, independence from the government, and, honestly, competitiveness its foreign peers don't necessarily have. That should make the sector more resilient.

• The internet. Often we focus on the downsides and risks of our interconnected attention economy. (Chris Hayes’ new book is an excellent distillation.) At the same time, the free and open internet is one of the most radically decentralizing power structures in world history. Frankly, we feel like the opposition needs to remember how to embrace the internet and fight for attention online (as awful as that place can feel sometimes).

• State and local governments. One of the biggest safeguards against tyranny in this country is written into our name: The United States. We are a federal system. State and local governments must vigorously, aggressively, defend their power even in the face of the potentially painful coercion attempts to come.

• Civil society. Religious groups, nonprofits, community associations, unions, trade groups, your local PTA. All of them are bulwarks against authoritarianism. The best way to protect civil society is to find more ways to get involved in it, whoever you are, wherever you live. (Some ideas here.) And stand up for each other. It’s the only way to defeat anticipatory obedience.

• Elections. By far most importantly, elections are the ultimate competing power center in our democracy. They distribute power over the country’s future to every single voter. This is going to seem like a backburner priority for a while (the next elections feel unfathomably far away), but ensuring future free and fair elections is as important as things can get.

• You. Finally, in moments like these, remember, silence snowballs. To thaw the chilling effects, absolutely everyone should flex their First Amendment rights — speak out, assemble, and express your opinions in whatever forum you find.

And the list surely goes on.

We know, the fact there are so many potential targets to defend can feel daunting — there are so many things the opposition needs to protect! — but it should also be reassuring. This is a very long “to-conquer” list for an autocrat.

There’s no guarantee, but we still think the odds are stacked in our favor.

3. How democracy wins: by building power outside the executive

Here’s the third thing: All of that, above, is just enough to stop authoritarianism from winning. At best, maintaining the independence of competing power centers buys us detente (maybe a four-year one?).

We are going to confess we don’t feel a ton of confidence about how we get out of this eternal cycle of intermittently arrested democratic backsliding. We know it’s possible because other countries have done it. But we don’t think anyone knows exactly how it can be done here.

Here’s one hypothesis. If we want democracy to win, we may have to run the process in reverse. We need to be building up power in all of those competing places.

What does building up competing power to the executive look like? Here are four examples:

What if we started to reform our electoral and party systems so that the barriers to diverse and pluralistic representation were lower? We often assume the winner-take-all design of our elections — two parties select one candidate each in a primary and they go head-to-head in an election — is the best (or, indeed, only) way to do things. But it’s not. Learn more about proportional representation and fusion voting.

What if we scaled up new, aggressively pro-democracy online and local media? There have been a number of successful examples of new, online media outlets in the last eight years. New ones keep popping up. But we need more. (In a way, this newsletter is part of that effort. We’ll always be free, but you can help support us by encouraging your network to subscribe.)

What if we re-invested in Congress as an institution? Our legislature has been in relative decline for most of the 20th and 21st centuries. That just so happens to be the period where we arbitrarily capped the size of the House and stopped building Congress to grow with the country. Learn about House expansion and what it would look to dramatically modernize the Capitol campus.

What if we built new policy agendas to make government work better from the bottom up? We bet lots of us have lots of ideas on how to make our city and states work better. Maybe if we all spend more time focusing on the things that are in front of us, we can break some of the cycles of discontent and anger that are fueling the authoritarian faction.

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This is a long list. We don’t so much need to walk and chew gum as we need to skip and chew toffee while juggling and humming the national anthem.

But there are a lot of us. We can divide and not be conquered. Don’t try to do everything on this list; rather, focus on the parts that you, personally, are best able to address.

After all, that’s kind of the promise of democracy: a little power in a lot of hands is better than a lot of power in only a few.

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What else we’re tracking:

• The Associated Press has a round up of how the loss of thousands of federal workers is shaking out across the country. From nuclear labs to employees handling the growing bird flu outbreak to national parks, it’s not just DC feeling the effects. More than 80% of the federal workforce lives and works outside Washington, DC.

• Ed Martin — former “Stop the Steal” organizer turned Trump-appointed interim U.S Attorney for the District of Columbia — is launching an investigation into Sen. Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) and Rep. Robert Garcia (D.-Calif.) over language the two Democratic lawmakers used to describe Elon Musk’s DOGE work. Garcia says he will not back down and wrote on X: “So if you criticize Elon Musk, Trump’s DOJ will send you this letter. Members of Congress must have the right to forcefully oppose the Trump Administration. I will not be silenced.” According to Reuters, Martin is calling his effort to target lawmakers who speak out against Musk “Operation Whirlwind.”

• Ezra Klein walks through what happens when politicians’ ambitions no longer check the president’s ambition. You get an NPC: a “nonplayer Congress.”

1. We want to be clear: By opposition we mean everyone who believes the United States should not become a more authoritarian form of government.

2. If you think about it, this is all what democracy is on its most fundamental level — it’s a system for spreading power out so that all of us have at least some power and no one person has too much.