Launched on 5 February 2025, this collection provides a gateway to key resources on understanding the threat to US democracy posed by the second Trump presidency.

This hub began with a central focus on Elon Musk’s involvement in government in early 2025 variously described as an ‘out of control power grab’, a ‘putsch’, or an ‘illegal takeover’. In mid-2025 leading analysts warned that pro-democracy actors’ responses “must come soon, be sustained, and be ready to weather worse times ahead.” By January 2026 the Century Foundation’s new democracy meter characterised the US as experiencing an ‘authoritarian turn’.

Page Editors:

Prof. Tomás Daly, Director, DEM-DEC

“In the first year of Trump 2.0, the United States went from being a passing if imperfect democracy to behaving like an authoritarian state: breaking the law, ignoring court rulings, engaging in grand corruption, targeting critics for persecution, and conducting a campaign against immigrants, in particular, that flagrantly violates civil rights. Crucially, elections are still free, providing for the time being an avenue to reverse the democratic decline.”

— Nate Schenkkan and Thanassis Cambanis, The Century Foundation (January 2026)

YEAR 1 OF TRUMP 2.0: A REVIEW

Despite the alarming developments during Trump’s second term, resistance has spread steadily since he entered office on 20 January 2025. Below we have gathered a number of useful pieces of short-form and long-form analysis and explainers to help Demoptimism users better understand not only the democracy-undermining measures taken during the first year of Trump’s second presidency, as well as the growing action taken by a range of actors to resist.

Nate SCHENKKAN and Thanassis CAMBANIS, ‘Century’s New Democracy Meter Shows America Took an Authoritarian Turn in 2025’ The Century Foundation (15 January 2026).
Kim WEHLE, ‘A year in review of Trump's America’ The Little Law Review Substack (1 January 2026)
Rosalind DIXON and David LANDAU, ‘The Democratic Minimum Core’ Democracy Project: NYU Law (2 December 2025).
Rebecca SOLNIT, ‘A year on from Trump’s victory, resistance is everywhere’ The Guardian (9 November 2025)
Aditya CHAKRABORTTY, ‘The Minneapolis revolt tells us this: even in Trump’s America, the people have power too’ The Guardian (29 January 2025)
‍Amy HOWE, ‘Trump v. Cook: an explainer’ SCOUS Blog (16 January 2025)
Franklin FOER, ‘The Purged’ The Atlantic (11 January 2026)
Barry SULLIVAN, ‘The Constitution does not enforce itself’ America Magazine (11 December 2025).
Richard PILDES, ‘We're Trying to Find a Line the Supreme Court Won't Cross’ The New York Times (11 December 2025)
Jemimah ROBERTS, ‘Constitutional law in the age of Trump 2.0: The Supreme Court’s 2024-25 term in review’ US Studies Centre (5 September 2025)
Thomas M. KECK, ‘Free speech, academic freedom, and democratic backsliding in the Trump-era United States’ (forthcoming, International Political Science Review: published online 29 December 2025)
Conor CLARKE and Daniel EPPS, ‘The Practice of Executive Constitutionalism’ 111 Virginia Law Revie 1531
McKenzie CARRIER and Thomas CAROTHERS, ‘U.S. Democratic Backsliding in Comparative Perspective’ Carnegie Endowment (25 August 2025)
An incomplete run-down of actors resisting the Trump administration includes:
Courts: As Ros Dixon and David Landau note, while the Supreme Court has largely enabled government measure to undermine US democracy, “the lower courts have largely resisted administration steps”. Follow Democracy Docket for insights into key cases.
Congress: While isolated congresspeople have pushed back, the general view appears to be that the opposition have not figured out how to resist or obstruct effectively, tending to support the January 2025 prediction that “it's likely the resistance will be outside the nation's capital.”—at least until the prospect of Democrats winning the House in the 2026 mid-terms.
Governors: Sitting Democratic Governors (including through the Democratic Governors Association) and even retired Republican governors have voiced opposition to Trump administration measures.
Mayors: Mayors have become increasingly vocal and collaborative in denouncing the excesses of the Trump regime.
Civil Protests:
Civil society and individual leaders have become increasingly vocal and organised as the year has progressed, including:
- 50501 Protests
- ‘Hands Off’ National Demonstrations
- ‘No Kings’ Protests
- ‘Good Trouble Lives On’ Demonstrations
- Anti-ICE protests

“When people tell me that there’s been no resistance to the Trump administration, I wonder if they’re expecting something that looks like a guerrilla revolution pushing out the government in one fell swoop or just aren’t paying attention, because there has, in fact, been a tremendous amount and variety of resistance and opposition and it’s mattered tremendously.”

— Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian (November 2025)

watch

'He's getting worse': Democracy Docket founder reacts to one year of second Trump admin (21 January 2026)

In a discussion to mark year one of Donald Trump’s second term, Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias joins MS NOW’s The Weeknight to break down the president’s actions and the administration’s impact on American democracy over the past year.

Comparing Trump's second term to autocracies around the world - PBS (20 February 2025)

PBS. President Donald Trump’s social media post over the weekend that implied he is above the law triggered alarm bells from experts who were already concerned about the legal and constitutional boundaries tested during his first few weeks in office. Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, joins Amna Nawaz to discuss for our new series, "On Democracy.

LISTEN

Trump’s American Takeover - Amicus with Dahlia Lithwick (1 February 2025)

Episode description: Donald J Trump’s second administration is materializing at frightening speed and recklessness and it is hard (and stressful) to keep up with it all. Kim Lane Scheppele, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International affairs at Princeton University, explains that the speed and viciousness of the legal orders in Trump 2.0 are evidence that America switched over to the fast track for autocracy on January 20th, 2025. An expert in the law of autocracy, Scheppele has seen firsthand what happened to constitutional courts and the democratic norms that governed them in Russia and Hungary and she joins Dahlia Lithwick on Amicus this week to explain how Trump’s executive orders on everything from government funding to transgender people in the military reveal a familiar global playbook that has chillingly familiar endpoints.

Is Elon Musk Staging a Coup? Unelected Billionaire Seizes Control at Treasury Dept. & Other Agencies - Democracy Now! (3 February 2025)

Abridged description: Elon Musk, the tech billionaire and unelected adviser to President Donald Trump, is asserting control over much of the federal bureaucracy and sensitive government computer systems despite lacking clear authority. "In any other situation, this would be called state capture, and people around the world would be condemning it," says Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid, who writes in a new blog post that "Elon Musk is staging a coup."

read

media analysis

“It seems like the plot of a political thriller. We are living through a new kind of coup in which Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has taken over the payment and other administration systems that allow the American government to function, and has locked out federal employees from computer systems. ”

— Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid Substack (February 2025)

EXPLAINERS

Balkinization Blog Digest

David SUPER, ‘Themes in the Administration's Executive Actions’ Balkinization (4 April 2025)

Evan D. BERNICK, ‘Cthulhu and the Constitution’ Balkinization (3 April 2025)

Mark TUSHNET, ‘Why I Signed the Harvard Law Professors Letter’ Balkinization (1 April 2025)

David POZEN, ‘The Tenth Demand?’ Balkinization (31 March 2025)

Gerard N. MAGLIOCCA, 'The Supreme Court is Becoming the ER’ Balkinization (30 March 2025)

Andrew COAN, ‘The Appellate Void’ Balkinization (24 March 2025)

Genevieve LAKIER, ‘Chilling effects, Trump’s Anti-DEI Executive Orders, and the Role of the Courts (or why the Fourth Circuit Decision in National Association of Diversity Officers v. Trump is wrong’ Balkinization (19 March 2025)

Jack BALKIN, ‘How to combat social media platform power’ Balkinization (18 March 2025)

Mark TUSHNET, ‘Comparative Reflections on Mahmoud Khalil's Case’ Balkinization (17 March 2025)

Kate ANDRIAS, Jessica BULMAN-POZEN, Jamal GREENE, Olatunde JOHNSON, Jeremy KESSLER, Gillian METZGER & David POZEN, ‘A Title VI Demand Letter That Itself Violates Title VI (and the Constitution)’ Balkinization (15 March 2025)

Richard PRIMUS, ‘A Thought about the Unitary Executive and the 22nd Amendment’ Balkinization (27 February 2025)

Andrew COAN, ‘How Important Is Presidential Immunity?’ Balinization (25 February 2025)

David SUPER, ‘Emerging Outlines of an Executive Power Grab’ Balkinization (20 February 2025)

Jonathan CHAUSOVSKY, ‘Institutional Vandalism’ Balkinization (11 February 2025)

Richard PRIMUS, ‘Trump Isn’t Going to be Impeached. Let’s Not Pretend That’s OK’ Balkinization (10 February 2025)

David SUPER, ‘Unlawful Funding Freeze Sows Chaos’ Balkinization (28 January 2025)

Additional

Virginia HEFFERNAN, ‘The Broligarchy Playbook: A conversation with Brooke Harrington’ Virginia Heffernan Substack (5 March 2025)

Aaron RUPAR, ‘Marcel Dirsus on the rise and fall of tyrants: "The tyrant usually tries to destroy as many institutions as possible because they’re constraints on his power" Public Notice (3 March 2025)

RESISTANCE TRACKER

IS PUSHBACK HAPPENING?

This select reading aims to give a flavour of the resistance happening across the USA to these measures. For a sense of what kinds of resistance to anti-democratic moves have happened in other countries, see our Resisting Threats focus area.

April 2025

Kira LERNER & Robert TAIT, ‘More than 1,000 ‘Hands Off’ anti-Trump protests hit cities across the US’ The Guardian (6 April 2025)

DEMOCRACY DOCKET, ‘Allison Riggs: ‘This Is a Fight for the Very Soul of Democracy’’ (5 April 2025)

Jonathan V. LAST, ‘Why Cory Booker’s Speech Matters’ Bulwark (3 April 2025)

TUFTS UNIVERSITY, ‘University Declaration for Rümeysa Öztürk’ (2 April 2025)

Jacob KNUTSEN, ‘Democrats Sue to Block Trump Bid to Control Elections’ Democracy Docket (31 March 2025)

Jonathan V, LAST, ‘How to Think (and Act) Like a Dissident Movement’ The Bulwark (25 March 2025)

J. Michael LUTTIG, ‘It’s Trump vs. the Courts, and It Won’t End Well for Trump’ The New York Times (23 March 2025)

Nick ROBINS-EARLY, ‘Elon Musk lashes out at US judges as they rule against Doge’ The Guardian (22 March 2025)

GUEST POST, ‘We Are Professors at Columbia. Here is How We Would Respond’ Drezner’s World (18 March 2025)

Molly JONG-FAST, ‘Trump’s Assault Demands a United Front’ Vaniuty Fair (17 March 2025)

David NOLL, ‘If the Marshals Go Rogue, Courts Have Other Ways to Enforce their Orders’ Democracy Docket (14 March 2025)

John HARWOOD, ‘'Crook, Liar, Racist': As a Veteran Reporter, I’m Not Afraid to Call Trump What He Is’ Zeteo (12 March 2025)

January-March 2025

Jacob KNUTSON, ‘Musk, Trump Allies Use Impeachment Threats to Intimidate Federal Judges — What You Need To Know’ Democracy Docket (4 March 2025)

AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION, Statement: ‘The ABA rejects efforts to undermine the courts and the legal profession’ American Bar Association (3 March 2025)

Carl HULSE, ‘Musk and Republican Lawmakers Pressure Judges with Impeachment Threats’ The New York Times (1 March 2025)

Michael M. GRYNBAUM, ‘White House Moves to Pick the Pool Reporters Who Cover Trump’ The New York Times (25 February 2025)

William PARTLETT, ‘Trump is ruling like a ‘king’, following the Putin model. How can he be stopped?’ The Conversation (21 February 2025)

BRAVE NEW WORLD, ‘Juan Cole: Ta-Nehisi Coates: If Democrats can’t draw the Line at Genocide, they can’t Draw the Line at Democracy’ (21 February 2025)

Paul KRUGMAN, ‘What the Musk is Happening?’ Paul Krugman Substack (4 February 2025)

VIDEO ‘We've had enough! Anti-Musk rally in DC demands change’ The Contrarian (6 February 2025)

Christian PAZ, ‘The anti-Trump opposition might finally be waking up’ Vox (6 February 2025)

Dahlia LITHWICK, ‘There’s Really Only One Way to Stop This Thing’ Slate (5 February 2025)

Arit JOHN, Fredreka SCHOUTEN & Arlette SAENZ, ‘Democrats mobilize to take on Musk after weeks of struggling to find a message’ CNN (5 February 2025)

Benjamin GUGGENHEIM, ‘Two Dem lawmakers barge into House speaker's office in backlash against Musk’ Politico (5 February 2025)

Daniella DIAZ, ‘House Democrats try, and fail, to subpoena Musk’ Politico (5 February 2025)

Maddie GANNON, ‘Congress' top Democrats announce 'Stop the Steal' bill to counter Trump’ Musk’ Spectrum News (4 February 2025)

Cybele MAYES-OSTERMAN, 'Fork off': Protesters gather outside OPM to condemn Elon Musk 'stealing' personal data’ USA Today (3 February 2025)

Jeet HEER, ‘Who Will Stop Elon Musk’s Coup?’ The Nation (3 February 2025)

EXPLORE THE RESISTING THREATS SECTION

CONSTITUTIONAL & POLITICAL CONTEXT

This select reading list sets out some key works that will help you understand the dynamics of what is unfolding in the USA:

Books

Oligarchy

Luke WINSLOW, Oligarchy in America: Power, Justice, and the Rule of the Few (University of Alabama Press, 2024)

Shelly GOTTFRIED, Contemporary Oligarchies in Developed Democracies · (Springer, 2019)

Luke MAYVILLE, John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy (Princeton University Press, 2018)

Jeffrey WINTERS, Oligarchy (Cambridge University Press, 2011)

Democratic Crisis

Suzanne METTLER & ‎Robert C. LIEBERMAN, Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy (MacMillan, 2020)

Mark Graber, Sanford Levinson & Mark Tushnet (eds), Constitutional Democracy in Crisis? (Oxford University Press, 2018)

Aziz Z. HUQ & Tom GINSBURG, How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (The University of Chicago Press, 2018)

Book chapters

Laurence D. HOULGATE, ‘Is the American Form of Government a Democracy? Signs of Systemic Oligarchy in a Constitutional Democracy’ in Gordon Albert Babst, Renée Nicole Souris & Joan McGregor (eds), Liberal Constitutionalism and its Contemporary Challenges (Springer, 2024).

Daniel KAUFMANN, ‘State capture matters: Considerations and empirics toward a worldwide measure’ in Susan Ackerman (ed), Public Sector Performance, Corruption and State Capture in a Globalized World (Routledge, 2024) 207-237

Journal Articles

Eli G. RAU & Susan STOKES, ‘Income inequality and the erosion of democracy in the twenty-first century’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) (published online: 30 December 2024)

Jean L. COHEN, ‘Cycles of Oligarchy, Democracy, and Authoritarianism: Lessons from the United States’ Constellations (published online: 7 December 2024)

Tom GINSBURG, Aziz HUQ & David LANDAU, ‘The Comparative Constitutional Law of Presidential Impeachment’ (2021) 88(1) University of Chicago Law Review 81

Stephen GARDBAUM, ‘The Counter-Playbook: Resisting the Populist Assault on Separation of Powers’ (2020) 59(1) Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 1

David M. DRIESEN, ‘President Trump’s Executive Orders and the Rule of Law’ (2019) 87 UMKC Law Review 489

Additional Comparative Analysis

Featured - open access book Bálint MAGYAR, Post-Communist Mafia State. The Case of Hungary (CEU Press, 2016)

Pregala PILLAY, Kudzai CHINTUNHU & Luckmore CHIVANDIRE, ‘State Capture in South Africa: Going Back to Basics’ (2023) 14(1) African Journal of Public Affairs 152.

Ivor CHIPKIN et al., Shadow State: The Politics of State Capture (NYU Press, 2018)

“The key tenet of the proposed amendment to our constitutional order is a presidential super-power to override and disregard any law governing the executive branch’s actions. This goal seems clear because the Administration keeps doing things in clear defiance of statutes that it could fairly easily do within existing law. ”

— David Super

MORE TO COME

We intend to add more to this page in due course, especially key research and policy publications for those seeking fuller analysis of this crisis, its context, and how lessons from the experiences of other states can help.

Images

Banner image: Maxine Waters (D-CA) speaking outside of the Treasury Building for anti-Musk anti-Trump. Photograph by SWinxy (4 February 2025). License. The colour of the image has been modified.

Oligarchy image: Photo by Morgan Housel on Unsplash. The colour of the image has been modified.

POWER GRAB IN THE USA