Trump Will Fall

Trump's reckless authoritarian gambit is unsustainable.

“No Kings” protest, Chicago, June 14th, 2025. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops against peaceful protesters in Los Angeles last week marks a further step in a months-long power grab which has been stunning in its speed and breadth.

His administration is “much more aggressively authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of democratic backsliding,” notes Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky. “The long-term implications of the second Trump administration are sobering,” warns Thomas Pepinsky, a professor of government at Cornell. “Even critical observers underestimated the speed and scope of the Trumpist assault and overestimated [America’s] democratic resilience,” Thomas Zimmer, a historian at Georgetown, confirms.

Assessments like these could easily lend themselves to despair; if even the experts are shocked, is there any hope that America might emerge from its authoritarian abyss?

Lost amidst the gloom is a critical point: If no other modern-day autocrat has attacked so many democratic institutions so quickly, there is a good reason for that: It is stupid.

Dismantling democracy in one fell swoop runs the risk of backlash. This would be true anywhere. Trying it in the United States, of all places, is downright reckless. Compared to other countries that succumbed to authoritarianism, America’s civil society is unmatched in its capacity to resist.

Civil society refers to the various groups which represent the people in relation to the state. The labor unions, political parties, non-governmental organizations, and social movements that comprise civil society often act as a bulwark against authoritarianism by organizing resistance to executive overreach.

As a result, most aspiring autocrats tread carefully when forging their regimes. Leaders such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, India’s Narendra Modi, and Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan tended to attack opposing centers of power incrementally instead of all at once. This enabled them to keep their opponents divided while avoiding the brutal crackdowns that might galvanize civil society against them.

Trump has thrown such caution to the wind. He has seized Congressional authority, treated judicial rulings as if they are optional, and weaponized the state against businesses, universities, media outlets, state governments, Democratic officeholders, Democratic fundraising organs, former officials who investigated him, and law firms that worked for his opponents.

Trump and his allies have also intimidated and arrested judges, threatened critics with prosecution, subjected the LGBTQ+ community to administrative harassment, lawlessly deported people without due process, and detained immigrants, green card holders, citizens, and the lawyers representing them on speech grounds.

Now, in a sign of further escalation, he has unleashed troops against protesters in America's streets.

Other authoritarian leaders have undertaken similar measures. But few have attempted them all within a year of taking office, much less the first three months. This is not the 1930s, when leaders such as Hitler could suspend the constitution and abolish civil liberties in their first one hundred days. Today, there is a widespread expectation, supported by a global network of international law, organizations, and states, that governments will adhere to certain minimum democratic standards.

Trump pays such norms little heed. What’s more, because the institutionalists who reined him in during his first administration are gone, there are few internal constraints that can stop him from escalating his repression. But as his abuses mount, so will the potential for backlash.

The question, then, is not whether America can withstand this onslaught; it is whether Trump can sustain it. His rash authoritarianism will prove dangerous to the rest of us. But it will also create opportunities.

Consider Ukraine, where demonstrations erupted in November 2013 against the pro-Russian foreign policy of President Viktor Yanukovych. Instead of letting the protests fizzle out over the approaching winter, Yanukovych responded with indiscriminate violence. This turned what had been a limited movement in the capital into a nationwide revolt against his regime. Within months, he would abandon the country and flee to Russia.

Now, Trump seems poised to undertake a crackdown of his own. But it will likely backfire. As Yanukovych learned, unbridled repression often has the opposite of its intended effect, causing protests to spiral beyond the government’s control.

Civil society mobilization has helped spur the demise of autocrats the world over. In contexts as diverse as Bolivia, Brazil, the Maldives, Poland, Slovenia, South Korea, and Zambia, protest movements either directly ousted authoritarian strongmen or precipitated huge election victories by the opposition.

For Trump, the problem is especially dire. This is because the civil society he is up against is far stronger, denser, and well-resourced than that faced by any other modern-day autocrat. The Civil Society Participation Index compiled by the V-Dem Institute measures the robustness of civil society in every country in the world. Each country is rated on a scale from 0 to 1, with higher scores indicating a more vigorous civil society.

The year before their respective autocrats came to power, Russia, Belarus, and Turkey rated comparably low, in the range of 0.58 to 0.65. Others ranked higher, including Hungary (0.77), Venezuela (0.82), and India (0.84). Still, none came close to the U.S., which boasts a near-perfect score of 0.98.

The combination of Trump’s recklessness and civil society’s strength will eventually lead to a showdown, one that he is unlikely to win.

America’s civil society does have its skeptics. Some experts point to the readiness of its elite members, such as media owners, universities, and big corporations, to shrink in the face of Trump’s threats.

Among the grassroots, however, anger is mounting—and with it, resistance. The early months of Trump’s second term have featured nearly three times the number of protest events compared to the same period of his first, according to Harvard’s Crowd Consortium Project.

And that was before the “No Kings” demonstrations last weekend. According to an analysis by Strength In Numbers, Saturday’s protests were the largest in US history, with 4-6 million people, or 1.2-1.8 percent of the population, coming out. And yet, we are only a few months into Trump's term.

If “No Kings” proved anything, it is that there is a real potential for a sustained, nonviolent uprising.

But in order to succeed, this movement will require leadership. Fortunately, civil society elites are beginning to show some mettle. While many have tried to appease Trump, a growing number of universities, religious leaders, and law firms are banding together and fighting back.

Still, the ones best positioned to lead the resistance are the Democrats. With some notable exceptions, however, they have failed to meet the moment. As Trump’s assault on democracy gains steam, much of the party continues to prioritize pocketbook issues like healthcare and inflation in hopes of appealing to the broadest possible cross-section of voters.

This approach is predicated on the assumption that democracy will continue to function as always. It will not. America has transitioned to an authoritarian regime. This means that elections, while critical, are no longer enough to remove an incumbent GOP president—not unless they are accompanied by nonviolent, nationwide civil resistance.

From now on, the influence of the median voter will be outstripped by that of the median protester, an individual more likely to be motivated by the attack on rights than the price of eggs. The Democrats must tailor their strategy accordingly.

As Trump ratchets up the repression, the movement against his regime will grow. One way or another, it will find leaders. The Democrats can either get on board or get booed off the stage.

Countries like Bolivia, Brazil, Poland, and South Korea show how opposition parties that take charge of anti-authoritarian movements can make all the difference in defeating such regimes. Right now, America’s civil society is rising even in the absence of robust Democratic leadership. Imagine what it could do if the Democrats step up.

Far from despairing, we should see Trump for what he is: a weak, vulnerable autocrat who is hopelessly outmatched by the society he is trying to subdue. Americans have more than enough might to defeat him. The only question is whether they have the will.