American Democracy Is Disappearing As Dictatorial Trumpism Takes Hold

By Olivia Gauvin

Photos: Wikimedia Commons

Amidst yet another year of startling declines for democracies everywhere, Hungary has seemingly defied the odds. Despite being the poster boy of the far-right populist threat to European democracies, recent elections ousted Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party from 16 years of power, effectively shifting the tide on one of the starkest democratic erosions in the European Union. And yet, Orbán’s defeat does not necessarily guarantee democratic revival for his international friends and cronies, including President Donald Trump. Today, behind this celebration in Hungary lives the looming shadow of Trump’s executive overreach in the United States, with Orban’s friendship and autocratic legacy offering a roadmap to America’s sharp democratic regression.

According to the V-Dem Institute’s recently published Democracy Report, the United States is no longer considered a liberal democracy. The V-Dem Institute, an independent research organization that measures democratic growth and regression across 202 countries, now labels the U.S. as merely an “electoral democracy.” The report details that American democracy has “fallen back to the same level as in 1965,” primarily marked by executive branch overreach. For comparison, this single year of democratic erosion under the Trump administration “took Hungary’s Viktor Orbán over four years” and “Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić eight years.” For many Americans, the democratic institutions in 1965 were gained through grueling, consistent, and targeted civil rights activism. Such gains, according to V-Dem, have practically disappeared in America today.

These findings do not come as a surprise to many — at least they shouldn’t. V-Dem’s report emerges in the aftermath of one of the longest federal funding lapses in the Department of Homeland Security, as the United States and Israel continue to wage a deadly and costly war in Iran, while the President clamors to distract from the released FBI files that accuse him of sexually abusing trafficked minors for decades. And while free, fair, and recurring elections with universal suffrage still exist on paper, President Trump’s executive overreach has targeted “proof of citizenship for registration, federal reviewing of electronic voting machines, and restricted mail-in voting,” all without Congressional approval.

 These actions have triggered dire democratic erosion on federal and state levels. In fact, on March 3rd, just two weeks before V-Dem even published its report, hundreds of voters in Texas were left unable to vote when the state changed precinct-based primary election locations and closed certain polling locations early. Furthermore, congressional oversight has been repeatedly curtailed, as the President declared war on Iran and ordered a military operation to abduct Venezuela’s President, Nicolas Maduro — both times without prior Congressional approval. Alarming cases of violence against civilians have also gained national attention. In January 2026 alone, eight people died while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody nationwide. That same month in Minneapolis, two nonviolent U.S. citizens were publicly shot and killed by ICE agents in broad daylight. And all of this is only in the first three months of 2026.

It is difficult to defuse all the alarms currently blaring. As trans people in Kansas have their driver’s licenses revoked, and families are ripped apart during ICE raids, and postpartum patients in Texas are arrested for undergoing emergency abortion procedures, it’s clear that federal and state administrations are setting all these fires to weaken Americans. Moreover, it is necessary to recognize that such repression is strategic and targeted. For years, President Trump and autocratic affiliates have publicly touted their Project 2025, the political roadmap published by the Heritage Foundation that includes sweeping reforms to America’s political culture and institutions.

In its essence, Project 2025 seeks to overhaul the executive branch while dismantling legitimate oversight and authority between branches to consolidate power under the President. Rooted in far-right Christian conservatism and crafted by at least 140 current and former Trump staffers, Project 2025 is not an abstract ideology, but an active guide in accomplishing Trump’s authoritarian grab. If the Trump-backed SAVE Act in Congress or the Supreme Court hearing Trump’s case to end birthright citizenship tells us anything, it’s that the legislative and judicial branches risk becoming fully co-opted. And for anyone who has kept a watchful eye on the President’s executive overreach, this risk may seem a reality, as Project 2025 is already over 40 percent of the way to full implementation.

The solution to America’s rapid democratic decline cannot simply be that, in this deteriorating situation, America’s democracy will vote its way out of it. American elections are facing crises of low voter turnout and weak competition. The Cook Political Report recently shared with NPR that “more than 90% of congressional races will pretty much be decided during primary elections” in 2026. The Brennan Center for Justice reports that since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision to reverse campaign finance restrictions, political power and private wealth have increasingly fused together in U.S. elections. The Center found that “donors who gave at least $5 million to super PACs” in the 2024 presidential race “spent more than twice as much as they did in 2020.” Combined with targeted gerrymandering practices and geographic partisan sorting, both electoral competition and the political playing field are severely weakened.

Combating such authoritarian encroachment must go, as V-Dem recognizes, beyond the ballot box. Alongside robust societal action, responding to these dangerous threats to all facets of our democracy requires urgency and strong institutional safeguards. Now is the critical moment to join together with organizational supporters of global democracy, such as Democracy Without Borders USA and Citizens for Global Solutions, or even those in your local community, to proactively address institutional weaknesses. Simply upholding the democratic system as it exists today will not protect us from such encroachment; it will merely delay it. 

Olivia Gauvin is an MPhil graduate from the University of Oxford’s School of Global and Area Studies and currently serves as Vice Chair for Democracy Without Borders USA.