Donald Trump’s plan to convert our democracy to autocracy is real, and I want to talk through how he’s doing this in real time because the crisis is here now.

Trump is enacting an insidious coordinated attack on the institutions that keep our government accountable to the people, designed to crater democracy before next fall. MAGA has given up on democracy. I wish it weren't true, but it is. They would rather rule forever than run a fair election where a Democrat might win.

Ending democracy is required to get away with the thievery and corruption happening before us. A true democracy would hold Trump accountable for the mass-scale corruption — Trump’s crypto coin, the insider trading, Musk’s self-dealing, etc.

Some people are looking for some high-stakes confrontation between Trump and the Supreme Court. They think that will be the five-alarm fire moment, and some believe it’s here with Trump defying their ruling on the Abrego Garcia case. Don’t get me wrong — I’m furious about the disappearances, which I spoke out against early when the Columbia grad student was taken without due process. It’s what happens in tin-pot dictatorships.

But a confrontation with the Supreme Court is not the endgame. The modern, time-tested way to destroy a democracy is NOT a coup or burning down the Parliament or a public confrontation with the judiciary.

It's a slow, methodical campaign to weaken the structures of accountability necessary for the political opposition to win elections. That was the playbook for Putin in Russia, Orbán in Hungary, and Erdoğan in Turkey, and Trump is copying it before our eyes.

Here’s how it works:

ELEMENT 1: They legitimize political violence to keep critics silent. That's what the Jan. 6 pardons are about. This week, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski spoke publicly about her worries of "retaliation.” That is chilling.

ELEMENT 2: They silence the press. Trump does this in two ways. First, he co-opts the owners of the media and information ecosystems (Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk, etc.). Those who don’t fall in line get harassed. That’s what’s happening with the AP over their refusal to use "Gulf of America" or FCC investigations into broadcasters like CBS.

ELEMENT 3: They silence protectors of the rule of law. In free societies, lawyers guard our rights. Despots can more easily trample our rights if the lawyers are silenced. That's why Trump is forcing the big law firms to sign what amounts to loyalty oaths.

ELEMENT 4: They silence universities. Two things that threaten their power happen on university campuses: youth protest and the guarding of objective truth. Neither is allowed in an autocracy. Thus, Trump’s illegal campaign to force campuses to crush dissent or be punished.

ELEMENT 5: They silence the private sector. The tariffs are a means to force every business to get on Trump's good side and stop public dissent in exchange for relief from his regime. Withholding of federal funds from non-profits forces these orgs to stay quiet too.

ELEMENT 6: They cut off funding for the opposition. Autocrats like Orban allow the opposition to exist, but starve it. Trump is moving to shut down non-profits and donor collectives that oppose his policies. They’re also targeting ActBlue because they know a huge source of our opposition’s ability to compete with their billionaire and corporate funding comes from small-dollar donations from people like you.

This is all happening so fast that it's hard for the public to see it all as part of one plan. But it is.

The press, lawyers, colleges and opposition political groups don't have to be destroyed for this plan to work. They just have to be weakened enough so the tools of accountability don't work anymore. The press can't tell enough truth. The lawyers won't protect our rights. Campus protests disappear. Opposition funding dries up.

That’s how they can move us to fake elections, where the regime always wins.

I know that sounds like a lot of doom and gloom, but I still believe we can stop it, and here’s how:

First, we need solidarity. Each set of institutions can't let the regime pick them off from each other. The legal profession failed miserably at this, but universities can model a collective strategy to fight back and win. We see some people trying that now with the proposed Big Ten Academic Alliance.

Second, we need mass mobilization. When hundreds of thousands of people rally against this kind of assault on democracy, history shows it works. There is a strange, magic power to mass activation that makes supporters of the regime start to jump ship. The public pressure matters.

Third, political leaders need to take risks. No citizen will take the risk to mobilize if their leaders are playing it safe.

This means speaking daily truth to the regime and taking tactical risks — like voting against the Republican government funding bill or boycotting the State of the Union would have been had enough other leaders joined my efforts.

I believe those three steps, taken together, can arrest Trump's assault. But if it doesn't, then we’ll need civil disobedience. This conversation will need to happen sooner than many of us may be comfortable with.

The bottom line is we still have the power, but we probably have less time than most think.

Every best wish,

Chris Murphy

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