The Limits of Violent Authoritarianism

Trump’s authoritarian desires are boundless. But the past year proves that his ability to impose them on America is not. Even invoking the Insurrection Act would not magically change that.

By Thomas Zimmer, January 20, 2026

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It has been a bleak start to the new year. In the first few weeks of 2026, the Trumpist government has drastically escalated its assault: On the international order and the idea of national sovereignty, to the point where Western European NATO allies are deploying troops to Greenland to deter an impending U.S. invasion; on truth and history, publishing a regime-mandated propaganda version (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) of January 6 on the anniversary of the attack on the Capitol that presents the insurrectionists as martyrs and the Democratic opposition as evil traitors; on the foundations of the constitutional order, launching a paramilitary occupation of an American city and sending armed goons to spread state-sponsored violence against the local population.

One year since the man who campaigned on the promise of erecting a vindictive autocracy returned to the presidency. What would you have thought if someone had told you, twelve months ago, that this is what America would look like by January 2026?

What is the main takeaway from the first year of Trumpist rule? Under the impression of the latest developments, the intuitive reaction might be to describe the past year as a series of escalations that inexorably moved the country towards autocracy; a relentless authoritarian advancement and a pitiful retreat of the democratic system, pushing the Republic to the brink of obliteration.

However, I do not think this is the story of the past year - or an adequate assessment of where America stands.

Because it misses one key pattern: Several times over the past twelve months, the regime pushed the country right up to the edge of the kind of authoritarian escalation that would have taken America across the line into full-blown autocratic territory… but then failing and/or proving unwilling to actually go there. Several times the Trumpists seemed poised to vanquish the democratic opposition, break through whatever obstacles the constitutional order was still placing in their path, and wipe away the system entirely – but then were either unable or didn’t dare to force that next step.

This happened last spring, about two months into Trumpist rule, when the government announced it would henceforth ignore the courts entirely – but then didn’t; it happened in the early summer, when the deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles seemed to suggest the regime was ready to use emergency powers to quash the resistance in urban centers – but then pulled back from several major cities at the end of 2025; it happened after the murder of Charlie Kirk in September, when the Trumpists laid the pseudo-legal groundwork for a sweeping criminalization of all political and societal opposition – but then didn’t actually implement the type of comprehensive oppression the Right has been clamoring for.

These three moments crystallized a dynamic that stands in contrast to the idea of Trumpism’s steady, irresistible march towards consolidated authoritarian rule. And here I will try to preempt the criticism that I know I am guaranteed to encounter: Pointing out a pattern over the past twelve months is not the same as making a firm prediction of what might happen next. I am not trying to tell you that things are fine. The situation is acutely dangerous. The outcome of the current struggle against the authoritarian assault on democratic self-government remains undetermined. At the start of 2026, America is no longer a democracy. My goal is certainly not to diminish the damage the Trumpists have already caused, the harm they have done – and will continue to do! – to so many people, especially to the most vulnerable groups in American society.

What I am arguing is that being lawless, immoral, and violent does not make the Trumpists omnipotent. Their authoritarian desires are limitless, but their ability to impose them on the country is not. Let us not adopt and perpetuate the propagandistic assertion of inevitability. There remains a vast gulf between Trump’s authoritarian aspirations on the one hand and the realities of a complex modern state and society on the other. Obscuring that distinction is an act of defeatism that only serves the regime.

So, this is my assessment of the state of the Republic: Let us, first, look at those three moments when the Trumpists failed or did not dare to do what they threatened – when they encountered pushback they proved unable to overcome. Secondly, even though I am arguing that the violent spectacle the regime is staging is not an effective way towards consolidating authoritarian rule, we must also acknowledge how unpredictable the situation is and examine why the potential for a spiraling escalation is so high. Finally, I want to reflect on how this assessment of the state of American politics would change if Trump were to invoke the Insurrection Act, as he is (yet again) threatening to do: While it would undoubtedly constitute a dangerous escalation, the Insurrection Act is not some all-powerful cheat code that would instantly establish MAGA dictatorship. Part of what the Trumpists are trying to do is to break the will of the American people by asserting that resistance is futile. We must not let them.

2025 in review: Identifying the limits of the autocratic assault

Spring 2025: Trump vs the Courts

From the start, the Stephen Miller types were claiming the courts had no right to undermine Trump’s agenda because the MAGA president represented the “will of the people.” By late March, it seemed the government was ready to ignore the courts entirely.

At that point, the legal battles over the disappearing of Venezuelan migrants and the illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia were at the center of the escalating conflict between the Trump regime and the courts. In mid-March, the Trump administration had rounded up hundreds of migrants from Venezuela, declared them members of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization based on no credible evidence whatsoever, then declared Tren de Aragua a terrorist organization and invoked the Alien Enemies Act (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) to remove them all from the country without due process. They were flown out to El Salvador on March 15 and dumped in what is best described as a labor camp, to be incarcerated indefinitely in one of the most brutal, most inhumane environments imaginable, subjected to physical and mental torture. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was on one of those planes with them (although in his case, the administration did not invoke the Alien Enemies Act, specifically).

Publicly, the Trumpists had long adopted a maximally aggressive posture. Trump had called the presiding judge at a district court in Washington, DC a “radical left lunatic” (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and called for his impeachment. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson had even brought up the idea that maybe the Republican-led Congress should “eliminate” (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) those federal courts that proved unruly. And hardly a day went by without Deputy White House Chief of Staff, Homeland Security Advisor, and MAGA nativist zealot Stephen Miller ranting against the “tyranny” (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) those “rogue Marxist judges” (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) were imposing on America, and his desire to quash what he called a “far-left judicial riot.” (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)

But in court, the government’s lawyers had, in the first two months after Trump’s return to the White House, pursued a different strategy, oscillating between open acts of defiance on the one hand and an attitude of obscuring and evading without openly defying on the other. This incoherence was the result of different MAGA factions pushing competing ideas for how to handle the courts: Some wanted to preserve plausible deniability and preferred a strategy of autocratic legalism, remaining within the confines of the law, at least nominally; others, like Miller, desired to properly go to war with the courts.

In late March, it seemed pretty clear that the overall trajectory pointed towards escalation. Even in court filings, the Department of Justice increasingly adopted an aggressive language towards judges. And on March 24, the DoJ informed the district court in Washington, DC that the government would not provide any further information regarding the deportation of the Venezuelan migrants and instead declared that the regime’s authority, because it derived from the “mandate of the electorate,” (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) superseded and nullified any right of the court to intervene.

Had they actually gone through with that and started ignoring the courts entirely, we would be in a very different situation today. But they did not.

For instance, the Department of Justice did return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States on June 6. Twice the regime detained him afterwards – twice a court ordered him released. And release him they did. What he and the Venezuelan migrants who suffered torture in CECOT had to endure has certainly nothing to do with justice. But it is also not the case that the Trumpists went ahead and abolished the whole “liberal” court system, much to the frustration of extremist agitators on the Right like Curtis Yarvin (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

And this is where we are right now: No matter how many times Stephen Miller may declare all dissident judges to be insurrectionists (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and domestic terrorists: The federal courts continue to act as the most effective bulwark in defense of democratic self-government and the rule of law. Hundreds of lawsuits (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) have been filed against the administration, and in the vast majority of those, federal district courts have sided against the government, with federal judges issuing injunctions or restrictions that have undoubtedly slowed down the authoritarian assault. And the administration is still participating in the judicial system. They are still sending lawyers to argue in court, they are appealing to the Supreme Court, thereby acknowledging some legitimacy of the process. Despite all the posturing, the threats, the authoritarian propaganda about the “will of the people” forbidding the courts from intervening: They haven’t really pulled the trigger.

Summer 2025: The National Guard

In June, when Trump deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles, the path towards autocracy seemed clear: The regime would use the aggressive immigration raids conducted by ICE and Border Patrol to provoke violent confrontations in blue urban centers, then use that state-induced violence as a pretext to declare an emergency, invoke the Insurrection Act, start deploying regular troops…

But so far, that hasn’t happened. Instead, the regime’s strategy of deploying the National Guard quickly reached an impasse. After Trump sent the National Guard to Washington, DC in August, Portland and Chicago were supposed to be next. But yet again, the courts intervened – and the regime begrudgingly complied. In October, a district court blocked the deployment to Chicago. The administration wanted the Supreme Court to step in and overrule. But shortly before Christmas, the Roberts Court sided against Trump. While National Guard troops are still deployed to Memphis, New Orleans, and DC, Trump ended the year by announcing (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) he would no longer be attempting to send them into Chicago and Portland.

Fall 2025: The aftermath of the Charlie Kirk murder

I know I keep harping on this moment and have written about it frequently – but I really think it is crucial to remember the vast gap between the regime’s proclamations and its actions in the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk in September.

On the Right, the calls to classify the Democratic Party as a “domestic terrorist organization (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)” erupted immediately: All “leftist” organizations, the rightwing activist scene demanded, should be criminalized, all their members arrested (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). The Trumpist government quickly tried to seize the moment. Just days after the murder, they used all channels to declare their intention to crack down on liberal America and anyone they consider to be a leftist enemy. Hosting Charlie Kirk’s talk radio show on September 15, for instance, Vice President JD Vance (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) vowed to “go after the NGO networks,” and Stephen Miller promised to use the power of the state to “uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks” (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and bring down the “vast domestic terror movement” (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) that was the American Left.

A week later, the Trumpists attempted to lay the pseudo-legal groundwork for their crackdown.

On September 22, Trump signed an executive order (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) designating “Antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organization,” wanting to use “Antifa” as a master signifier for everything and everyone who dares to dissent. Just three days later, on September 25, Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) (NSPM-7) on “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” instructing the entire machinery of the federal government to employ an incredibly expansive definition of “domestic terrorism” to go after any organization or individual associated with leftist “anti-fascism.” These documents were obviously intended to function as flexible instruments to go after the “enemy within.” They opened the door for virtually anyone in the United States – certainly anyone who is critical of Trump – to be harassed by the state as a domestic terrorist. 

This is terrifying stuff. But as important as it is to recognize the threat, we must also remember that the regime has so far been either unwilling or unable to actually start implementing such comprehensive oppression. In fact, the American people responded to the regime’s bloodlust with some of the largest protests in modern U.S. history.

On October 18, the second No Kings protests brought about six to seven million people out into the streets, united in opposition to Donald Trump, in thousands of demonstrations across the country. The protests came after several weeks of the Trumpist government engaging in an all-out propaganda campaign to declare all dissent illegitimate and demonize all those on the “Left,” defined vaguely as anyone not on board with MAGA, as domestic terrorists or at least terrorism-adjacent. Yet when the day came, the authoritarian movement that controls the levers of state power and had preemptively declared the No Kings protests illegitimate and unacceptable… did nothing.

In September, the idea that the murder of Charlie Kirk was the “American Reichstag fire (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)” quickly made the rounds in rightwing online circles. On February 27, 1933, just weeks after the Nazis had come to power, the German Reichstag, the seat of parliament, was set on fire. The Nazis used this event as pretext to nullify civil liberties and conduct mass arrests of political opponents – a key step in destroying whatever was left of the formerly democratic Weimar Republic and towards erecting dictatorship. That is also what rightwing radicals envisioned for America. Four months have since passed. Yet again, the regime has so far proved unwilling and/or unable to fulfill the fever dreams of its most extreme supporters.

The occupation of Minneapolis

To start the year 2026, the federal government is laying siege to an American city. Trump has sent a violent goon squad of masked agents to Minneapolis. They serve as the paramilitary arm of the regime, harassing and terrorizing the local population. This is not law enforcement. It is an occupation.

But in Minneapolis, as in every other urban center these masked goons descend upon, the local community is rallying in solidarity. Not only are ICE and Border Patrol failing to meet their quota of detentions. Minneapolis is a mid-sized city. And even though ICE is withdrawing agents from other parts of the country, focusing much of its resources on the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, they are proving incapable of establishing the type of control they desire. ICE wants to terrify people into submission and compliance so that they can operate with impunity, unimpeded, in semi-secrecy. It is not working. The violent spectacle the regime is producing may get them the applause of the rightwing online scene. But what the regime is doing in Minneapolis is extremely unpopular (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). Public support for ICE has plummeted. Even the most staunchly authoritarian regime must care about its public standing. America still has competitive elections. And more generally, in a complex modern society, the government – no matter the regime type – inevitably depends on millions of people following along to some degree. They depend on some measure of consent from institutions and individuals alike. They could, potentially, ramp up oppression dramatically in the face of popular discontent; but the Trumpists do not have the apparatus to do that, certainly not yet, and such a strategy also has inherent limits: The regime still needs millions to comply in order to keep the machine going.

Laying siege to an American city is not an effective way to consolidate authoritarian control over a country that is roughly the size of continental Europe.

So, is Trump losing? It’s the wrong question to ask.

Towards the end of 2025, there was a flurry of “Trump is losing” (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) assessments. They all (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) pointed to crucial developments (Öffnet in neuem Fenster): Trump’s hold over the Right and the Republican Party had been weakening since the fall; all the infighting on the Trumpist Right – the much-discussed “MAGA civil war” (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) – was an indication that Trump’s coalition was disintegrating; societal resistance had been hardening, and the regime evidently struggled to come up with strategies for how to overcome it.

While I share the general assessment that the MAGA assault has been running into trouble, I maintain that binary categories of Trump “winning vs losing” are not particularly helpful. They tend to reproduce mood swings more than they help generate plausible analysis. Every Trumpian embarrassment is destined to cause a new round of “Trump is weak, he is losing” pieces; every authoritarian escalation is accompanied by a chorus of “Democracy is dead, MAGA won” post-mortems. As unsatisfactory as that may feel, we should allow ourselves to grapple with the murkiness of what is a highly ambiguous, even contradictory moment in U.S. history.

One particular issue I have with the “Trump is losing” framework is that it tends to underestimate how quickly things could get out of hand. I don’t just mean that in a “Something bad could always happen” kind of way – everyone acknowledges that sort of general contingency. I am more concerned with how ideology and ineptitude may conspire to make escalation almost inevitable. MAGA is ideologically and psycho-politically incapable of moderating: It is a hysterical movement that exists in a constant state of imagined emergency: Under siege, enemies everywhere – there is no room for compromise or restraint. Every crisis, every defeat only heightens their sense of being under siege, legitimizing and amplifying calls to hit harder, more aggressively. That is the Stephen Miller mindset. Add on top of that the fact that the Trumpists came into power convinced they would quickly overwhelm what they thought to be a liberal system so rotten that it would offer little resistance. That initial strategy failed, and MAGA has no coherent idea of how to get from where we are now to consolidated autocracy. In that situation, Stephen Miller keeps yelling to escalate – as it is what he desires to do and also, within the narrow universe of pathways MAGA is willing to consider, the only option they are left with.

There are also structural reasons why the escalation has taken the form of a paramilitary occupation on the domestic front and quasi-imperialist invasions internationally. As the courts keep stalling MAGA’s domestic agenda and frustration over societal resistance mounts, it becomes more attractive to the regime to focus on areas where their desire to dominate, plunder, and punish is more easily put into practice. Trump has an instrument of personal grievance in the Department of Justice, and so he uses it to go after his enemies and critics. The regime has built ICE into a quasi-paramilitary arm, and so they are sending them out into the streets. The president’s power is a lot harder to restrain in matters of foreign policy, and so he revels in fantasies of global conquest. This certainly isn’t the first authoritarian regime that, when faced with frustrations and public pressure, ramps up the demonization of vulnerable groups at home and throws itself into military “adventures” abroad.

Things are bound to escalate further. And even if it is the case, as I have argued, that the Trumpists are falling short of their own ambitions, Trumpism in power has still caused – and will continue to cause – massive damage not only to the lives of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people, but also to the system and its institutions. While this government may not succeed at erecting a Trump dictatorship, they will keep trying. And by the time they are finally removed from power, America will be left with the rubble.

What the Insurrection Act would do to America

As I am writing this, Trump has ramped up the threat to invoke the Insurrection Act. Wouldn’t that make everything I have outlined here, about the Trumpists running into obstacles they have been unable to overcome, obsolete? I do not think so.

There’s no point in making firm predictions. Trump has been talking about invoking the Insurrection Act for years; he brought it up repeatedly (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) during the 2024 campaign. Since returning to the White House, he has often claimed that he has the power “to enact a certain act” (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) whenever he wants to.

The Insurrection Act basically creates an exception from the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), which bars federal troops from being deployed domestically for law enforcement purposes. It allows the president to, as the Brennan Center puts it in a very helpful explainer (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), “suppress rebellion or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations.” What situations? Well, this is where it gets tricky. Unfortunately, the president has quite a bit of leeway over when and why to invoke the Insurrection Act. According to the Brennan Center: “In theory, the Insurrection Act should be used only in a crisis that is truly beyond the capacity of civilian authorities to manage. However, the Insurrection Act fails to adequately define or limit when it may be used and instead gives the president significant power to decide when and where to deploy U.S. military forces domestically.” Throughout U.S. history, it has been invoked about 30 times – most recently when President George H.W. Bush sent federal troops to Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots in the spring of 1992, at the request of both the governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles.

It is obvious why the Insurrection Act appeals to Trump: He undoubtedly imagines it as a kind of cheat code that would give him “unquestioned power” (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) – including to suppress protests, to “just shoot them,” (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) as he believes he should have been able to order the military to do during the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020.

But here it is imperative we push back against such notions that present the Insurrection Act as the ultimate weapon in the hands of the authoritarian regime. Leave aside, for a moment, the question of how the courts would react (and how the regime would react to a court intervening, which would almost definitely happen): While this step would undoubtedly constitute a major escalation – one Trump has so far been reluctant to force, despite all the bluster and unhinged rhetoric –, invoking the Insurrection Act is not akin to waving a magic wand that vanquishes all opposition.

In an immediate sense, the Insurrection Act would allow Trump to militarize the conflict even further, to put more people with guns in the streets of Minneapolis. It could potentially establish an extremely dangerous precedent, eroding the barriers against using the Insurrection Act as a vehicle to suppress protest. But the Insurrection Act, as much as Trump wants us to believe otherwise, does not suspend the constitution and civil liberties, it does not establish martial law or a military dictatorship. Federal troops patrolling the streets would still be constrained by the law, restricted to regular law enforcement powers.

I hesitate to write this, but isn’t it reasonable, at this point, to expect federal troops to be more restrained than the bottom-of-the-barrel goon squad that is ICE? Might we not assume that the officers who command those troops feel more constrained by the law than the masked paramilitaries who know they have been sent to Minneapolis to terrorize the people?

Do not misconstrue what I am trying to say here: I am not telling you not to worry. I hope you do. There is ample reason to be alarmed. The fact that we even have to entertain such questions is powerful evidence for how far down the path to autocracy the country already is. But right now, a key part of the struggle against encroaching authoritarianism is to reject rather than perpetuate the Trumpist assertions of absolute power, to push back against the notion that resistance is futile. The government is trying to break the will of the people in Minneapolis, hoping it will serve as a warning to rest of the nation. But if the resistance prevails, the paramilitary occupation of this city will become something else: A reminder of democratic freedom and solidarity.