Kate Standford

For over a century, the U.S. has been the foremost democracy in the world, frequently advocating for freedom and justice beyond its borders. Since the ratification of the constitution, no president has taken actions blatantly damaging the democracy of the country without repercussions. This pattern was broken by President Donald Trump during his second term in office. As a result of many of Trump’s recent executive decisions, the Varieties of Democracies Project based in the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, has made a strong argument that the U.S. is autocratizing at an alarming rate. 

V-Dem’s statements in its 2025 democracy report should be a wake-up call to all Americans regarding the lasting damage that is being done to the American democratic system.

V-Dem is a project founded by Staffan Lindberg to provide a comprehensive and multidimensional analysis of world democracies. The 2025 V-Dem report systematically analyzed the effect Trump’s presidencies have had on American democracy and stated that Trump’s actions leading up to and during his second term “undermine the judicial constraints on executive power,” further describing his 2024 campaign as authoritarian. 

The report cites many examples for these claims, all of which show the damage Trump is doing to the U.S. democracy. In a section titled “Attacks on the rule of law,” the report explains how his pardoning of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and his refusal to follow court orders have unjustly weakened the judiciary and, in so doing, increased his executive power. The report also classifies Trump as an autocratizer based on his replacement of civil servants with personal loyalists, also drawing attention to the fact that many politicians are remaining silent for fear of retribution by the president, which is a concerning sign of his authoritarianism. 

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The V-Dem report continues discussing more specific examples of what Trump is doing to transform the U.S. into an autocracy, but it does not go into detail about how he has weakened Congress. As soon as Trump entered office in January, he began issuing executive orders. While issuing these orders was within his power as president, many of them implemented policies that would have normally required congressional approval. 

The U.S. government operates this way to ensure that power held by the president is balanced against the power held by the legislative and judicial branches of government, but by using executive orders in this manner, Trump was able to subvert this balance. Perhaps the most dangerous is Trump’s expression of interest in serving a third term in The White House which has not been seen since the passing of the 22nd amendment in 1951.

On Jan. 27, Trump initiated a freeze on federal funding, which infringed on Congress’s constitutionally given power of the purse. The power of the purse allows Congress to control U.S. spending and taxation, and although Trump’s effort was blocked by a federal judge, it is representative of the fact that he is trying to disrupt the balance of power between the branches of government. 

It is difficult to view Trump’s presidential actions as anything less than damaging to American democracy. The 2025 V-Dem report lists numerous cases of such actions, but it is ultimately incumbent on the American people to take action as individuals to preserve and repair the democracy that affords them the freedom the U.S. is famous for.