Donald Trump's second presidential term has been marked by what Ford School professor Don Moynihan describes as following a checklist for consolidating power and silencing dissent—both serious threats to democracy.
In an opinion for the Detroit News, Moynihan writes Trump has exerted unprecedented control over government bureaucracy, the military, internal security, the legal system, civil society, higher education, and the media in just eight months.
Moynihan observes that ideology-driven cuts to civil service, military deployments to blue cities, expansion of ICE activity, politicization of Department of Justice prosecution, and cuts to public media and universities all serve as signposts along the road to authoritarianism.
Next, Moynihan says, are elections.
Trump has already applied pressure to state elections by attempting to squeeze more Republican seats out of red states and suing to block blue states from using the same tactics. His success has been limited, but Moynihan cautions against underestimating growing threats to free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028, writing that "the nostalgia for the idea of American democracy can't blind us to its unwinding."
