"Trump’s assault on US democracy is truly without precedent"

 

A report released on Tuesday by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden has found that President Donald Trump and his administration are dismantling democracy in the US at a speed that “is unprecedented in modern history.”

In its report, V-Dem categorizes the first year of Trump’s second term as “a rapid and aggressive concentration of powers in the presidency.” In fact, V-Dem says that the Trump administration has accomplished in just one year what most budding autocracies take a decade to achieve, adding that “the speed of decline is comparable to some coups d´état.”

Of particular concern is the failure of the legislative branch of the US government to apply any kind of oversight or check upon the executive branch, the report explains. “The Republican-controlled Congress seems to have abdicated its constitutional role in favor of the executive branch, ceding significant legislative, fiscal, and oversight powers during 2025,” the report says. “The Trump administration has de facto repeatedly taken over the Congressional ‘power of the purse’—enshrined in the Constitution and in the 1974 Impoundment Control Act—unilaterally cancelling or reallocating federal funding.”

The report also points fingers at the US Senate for repeatedly rolling over and confirming unqualified Trump nominees, which it says is tantamount to letting the White House “sideline” the upper chamber’s authority altogether.

V-Dem goes on to document the administration’s repeated assaults on the judicial branch and the rule of law in general during his second term, starting when Trump issued a mass pardon to more than 1,500 alleged or convicted criminals who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Since then, the administration has waged a pressure campaign against judges who rule against it consisting of “impeachment resolutions and misconduct complaints,” while also using executive orders to punish major law firms simply for representing the president’s political enemies in court.

The lone bright spot in US democracy, says V-Dem, is that the administration has not yet been able to attack states’ powers to administer their own elections, although not for lack of effort. “Actions taken in 2025 raise concerns regarding the integrity of the 2026 midterms,” the report warns. “This primarily concerns attempt to assert federal control over election processes, which must be decentralized and state-run, according to the Constitution.”

The report notes that Trump has issued an executive order that attempts to override states’ election laws by restricting mail-in voting and mandating voter IDs at polling places nationwide but adds that “many provisions of this order have been blocked, and others are still being challenged in federal court.”

In an interview with The Guardian, V-Dem founder Staffan Lindberg used historical context to explain why Trump’s assault on US democracy is truly without precedent. “Our data on the USA goes back to 1789,” he said. “What we’re seeing now is the most severe magnitude of democratic backsliding ever in the country.” He also said that other authoritarian leaders have taken much more time in ripping down their states’ democratic institutions than Trump has. “For Orbán in Hungary, it took about four years,” Lindberg said, “for Vučić in Serbia, it took eight years, and for Erdoğan in Turkey and Modi in India, it took about 10 years to accomplish the suppression of democratic institutions that Trump has achieved in only one year.”

-Brad Reed, Common Dreams