Core to the Authoritarian Playbook: Politicize Institutions, Weaken the Rule of Law, & Erode Civil Liberties
This administration has systematically, ruthlessly, and successfully eliminated, with one exception, all internal legal resistance. It is simply not acceptable to offer an opinion contrary to the one that the president, who is not a lawyer, wants to push. It really is an extraordinary thing.
Jack Goldsmith, a conservative legal professor and former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administrationBottom Line Upfront
1. The Authoritarian Blueprint
Authoritarianism rarely arrives all at once; it advances through the steady corrosion of norms. The Trump administration’s daily maneuvers—dismissing independent officials, rewriting laws by decree, and punishing dissent—reveal a deliberate effort to politicize institutions, weaken the rule of law, and erode civil liberties. What once would have been isolated scandals now form a coherent strategy of control.
2. Capturing Independent Institutions
Inspectors general, labor statisticians, Federal Reserve governors, and prosecutors have all faced purges or threats for producing facts or decisions that run counter to presidential preferences. Once nonpartisan agencies are being staffed with loyalists or hollowed out entirely, erasing professional independence and replacing evidence with obedience. The result: a government less accountable to truth and more beholden to political will.
3. The Unraveling of the Rule of Law
The rule of law—the idea that no one is above it—has been methodically undermined. Executive orders defy courts, watchdogs lose authority, and political loyalty now outweighs legal expertise. Media organizations, universities, and civil servants are punished for perceived disloyalty. Through selective enforcement and defiance of oversight, the administration recasts justice as a weapon rather than a shield.
4. Criminalizing Dissent and Weaponizing Power
From investigating political opponents to suing the press, the administration turns prosecution into persecution. Journalists and public officials face retaliatory lawsuits; National Guard troops are deployed to political targets; and even federal judges are sued for unfavorable rulings. Loyalty, not legality, dictates who is safe. The pattern mirrors classic autocratic playbooks—punish the critics, protect the loyal.
5. The Quiet Dismantling of Civil Liberties
Freedoms of speech, privacy, and due process have been whittled away under the guise of security and efficiency. Civil rights offices have been gutted, diversity efforts banned, asylum rights extinguished, and protections for students, workers, and the disabled erased. Executive orders redefine discrimination and dissent as threats, while constitutional safeguards—like habeas corpus—teeter on suspension. What’s “legal” is being re-engineered to serve the powerful.
6. Defending Democracy’s Core
The slide toward authoritarianism is not destiny but neglect. Democracy depends on institutions strong enough to resist capture and citizens vigilant enough to defend them. Congress must restore guardrails for inspectors general, courts must enforce accountability, and the press must remain unbowed. The rule of law survives only if we insist that truth, not loyalty, governs power—and that liberty belongs to the governed, not the ruler.
Introduction
When you look at what the Trump administration is doing day to day, it is hard to discern which tenet of authoritarianism a particular action falls under.
So far, I’ve focused on the administration’s expansion and concentration of executive power, and on the administration’s and the Republican Party’s commitment to undermining elections.
This week, I’m aiming to examine three interconnected aspects of authoritarianism:
Politicizing democratic and independent institutions
Weakening the rule of law
Eroding civil liberties
Let me first define each element, then show how they’re connected, and finally provide a wealth of examples of all three from the last 10 months.
Democratic institutions are a fundamental component of democracy. Examples include our electoral system, our legislative and judicial branches, and the nation’s independent media.
Independent institutions include our civil service, the nation’s intelligence agencies, the Federal Reserve, independent and nonprofit colleges and universities, and our election commissions. All are designed to be nonpartisan and free from political pressure.
Politicizing these institutions means subverting their non-partisan purpose by staffing independent agencies with loyalists, weaponizing agencies to target political opponents, and discrediting institutions when their findings are unfavorable to the president.[1]
The rule of law is the principle that all people and institutions, including government officials, are accountable to and protected by a publicly known, fairly enforced set of laws. It requires that no one is above the law, that laws are applied equally and justly, and that those who attack or undermine democracy are held accountable.
The politicization of independent and democratic institutions is a key strategy for weakening the rule of law, in which leaders use their influence over these bodies to advance their political interests rather than the public good.[2]
Weakening the rule of law refers to actions that make the legal system less fair, predictable, and impartial. [3]
The range of civil liberties in America spans from fundamental freedoms such as speech, religion, and assembly to protections against government overreach, including freedom from unreasonable searches, the right to due process, and protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
The erosion of civil liberties is often a consequence of a weakened rule of law. When the legal protections for individual rights fade, those rights become more vulnerable to infringement. This process can be subtle and often occurs over time through legislation, executive actions, or judicial decisions that compromise freedoms like due process, privacy, and freedom of speech.[4]
An authoritarian regime can use the legal system to formalize the erosion of liberties, creating a system in which abusive actions are technically “legal” by, for example, ignoring court rulings or legitimate laws, or applying the law selectively to benefit political allies or punish opponents.
In a nutshell:
How Trump is Politicizing Democratic and Independent Institutions
Firing 20+ Inspectors General
In the first half of 2025, Trump has dismissed over 20 inspectors general (IGs) across the federal government. IGs offer independent oversight of government agencies. They perform audits, investigations, and inspections to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. Considering the supposed mission of DOGE, you would reasonably expect full alignment (if not duplication) of their goals. However, that hasn’t been the case. The result across agencies is a loss of oversight in any agency.
“In the 2024 fiscal year, the government’s watchdogs recovered nearly $15 billion through investigations, with another $35 billion in potential savings if agencies follow their recommendations.”[5]
Firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner
This action received widespread national press coverage. After the bureau released a report showing disappointing job numbers for July and revised lower figures for May and June, Trump pressured the Labor Secretary to fire the BLS commissioner. The bureau is a highly respected, nonpartisan agency, and the commissioner oversees more than 2,000 career staff who compile data from over 100,000 businesses each month.
Downward revisions are common in the bureau; several occurred during President Biden’s tenure as well. Now, there are increasing concerns about whether the bureau will continue its traditional performance or be pressured to inflate data to improve job reports. Of course, this could undermine trust in this type of government data and be reckless for the nation’s economic future.
Trump’s Attempt to Fire a Federal Reserve Governor
In August, Trump went even further by attacking the character of the first Black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve Board, Lisa Cook, and threatening to dismiss her. Congress established the “Fed,” mind you, decades ago to be independent of the executive branch and its control.
Again, her position is protected by law from arbitrary removal. Fed Board members serve 14-year terms. Although Trump accused Dr. Cook of a fraudulent mortgage application, Trump’s apparent reason for trying to remove her is that she was one of five Fed board members in July who voted against lowering interest rates. In recent months, he’s also hinted at removing Federal Reserve Board chair Jerome Powell.
Fired Dozens of Prosecutors from the Department of Justice (DOJ)
Often without warning and without cause, the DOJ fired 40 prosecutors between January and July. This number doesn’t include dozens (possibly hundreds) of DOJ employees from the FBI and the ATF. Prosecutors fired included those who had been or are working on the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Sean Combs, and the January 6th insurrectionists.
Max Stier, president of a national nonprofit focused on strengthening the federal workforce, says these moves are not just unusual but “unheard of.”[6]
A former DOJ prosecutor, Michael Gordon, who was fired this spring while preparing for a trial on a Friday at 5:00pm, said he was given a memo informing him of his firing without any explanation. He was working on January 6th cases. Two days before his dismissal, he received an outstanding performance review.
Gordon and two other former DOJ employees have filed a lawsuit claiming their dismissals violated the Civil Service Protection Act.
Jack Goldsmith, a conservative legal professor and former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administration said recently: “this administration has systematically and ruthlessly and successfully eliminated, with one exception, all internal legal resistance. It is simply not acceptable to offer an opinion contrary to the one that the president, who is not a lawyer, wants to push. It really is an extraordinary thing.”[7]
The Firing of Top Intelligence and Cybersecurity Officials
This spring, Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, fired top intelligence staff for providing an assessment of Venezuela’s gang network, Tren de Aragua, that contradicted Trump’s desire to operate under the assumption that the gang functioned under the authority of the Venezuelan government. His assumption allowed him to expel supposed Venezuelan gang members from the U.S. without due process.
Gabbard also fired two veteran intelligence officers who produced an assessment of Trump’s June airstrike on Iranian nuclear facilities, indicating that the attack only set those facilities back a few months rather than, according to Trump, being ‘completely and totally obliterated.’[8]
Recently, Trump fired a former director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency from her position as senior faculty at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point because she was a Biden-era “mole.” She was “outed” as a mole by Trump’s favorite conspiracy theorist, Laura Loomer.[9]
Targeting the General Accountability Office
Trump has singled out the General Accountability Office (GAO), an agency that helps Congress track federal spending, after it conducted “dozens of investigations to determine if President Trump and his top aides have illegally withheld billions of dollars in congressional-approved funds. The GAO is following a 50-year-old law that “prohibits the president from defying congressional instructions on spending.”[10]
Its investigations into illegally withheld funds include federal funds for foreign aid, the Ukraine war, climate investments in solar and wind energy, among others.
House Republicans now aim to cut the agency’s budget in half and remove the authority that allows oversight of spending.
The Firing of the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Chief Data Officer
Charles Borgesof the SSA filed a whistleblower complaint to Congress earlier this summer warning that the U.S. DOGE Service had “copied a mainframe database containing the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans, including names, birthdays, addresses, and more,”[11] with little oversight, leaving the data highly vulnerable to hackers.
Firing Members of Independent Labor and Consumer Product Commissions
The Supreme Court has permitted President Trump to fire three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, at least temporarily (as of July 2025). This followed earlier decisions this year by the Court allowing Trump to dismiss a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board and a member of the National Labor Relations Board, all independent agencies or bodies. Prior to this year, there was a nearly century-old precedent that allowed Congress to “shield the leaders of independent agencies from politics by making it hard to fire them.”[12]
Traditionally, the president can only remove personnel for neglect of duty or malfeasance. He provided no explanations for the removals.
Deregulating Labor and the Workplace
This year, Trump’s administration has repealed 60 workplace regulations that primarily impact low-wage workers, including protections on overtime, joint-employer accountability, and hazardous working conditions. It also limited the authority of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, declaring all these regulations outdated.[13]
I could write dozens more pages with twenty additional examples of politicizing institutions and positions in the federal government, but this already gives you more than enough of an idea of how the president and his administration are boosting their political interests while weakening our federal labor force and risking the execution of constitutional duties by thousands of federal workers because of fear of reprisal.
Throughout 2025, the administration has sought to disband or defund dozens of agencies and programs, all originally authorized by Congress, and all now eliminated without its explicit approval.
All this makes our nation less fair, less safe, and weakens the rule of law.
How Trump is Weakening the Rule of Law
Often, in nations heading toward authoritarianism, it happens gradually over several years and can occur subtly, as I mentioned above, through a series of legislative acts, executive actions, or judicial decisions that undermine a nation’s constitution or infringe on its citizens’ rights. In the U.S., however, the slide seems to be happening much faster.
Here’s a strategic sampling of how he’s already looked to weaken the rule of law:
1. Trump has already had scores of executive orders challenged in court.
2. As you saw above, he has dramatically eroded prosecutorial independence.
3. In dozens of instances, federal judges have found that the executive branch has failed to act in “good faith” in a wide range of cases brought before them.
4. In July, he issued an executive order to prioritize political loyalty over expertise in federal hiring. This will profoundly weaken the federal civil service for years.
5. He has ordered executive actions and made public threats against numerous universities for alleged antisemitism or espousing anti-American values. In turn, he has ordered civil rights investigations of prominent academic institutions and threatened the tax-exempt status of many of them.
6. He settled a lawsuit he filed against CBS and Paramount, with CBS agreeing to pay his presidential library $16 million. He filed the lawsuit against the company’s 60 Minutes program, accusing it of manipulating the edit of an interview with Kamala Harris to interfere with the 2024 election by making her appear and sound better than she actually was.
7. This lawsuit is not his only attack on press freedom. This summer, he filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and cut more than $1 billion in funding for NPR and PBS.
8. He has banned the Associated Press from the White House press pool. The Pentagon has removed offices for media outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Politico in favor of newer media outlets that lean rightward.
9. He has sued the Des Moines Register and its pollster for predicting that Kamala Harris would win the presidency and threatened to sue the New York Times and CNN for their coverage of the strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
10. In March, he targeted elite law firms that either represented previous political opponents, i.e., Hillary Clinton, or were involved in litigating January 6 cases against accused insurrectionists.
11. He has also taken steps to deploy National Guard troops to Democratic-led cities to tackle supposed high crime rates (although they have decreased in every major city over the past three years), with several of those deployments now delayed in federal court.
12. He has sought to end birthright citizenship in direct opposition to the 14th Amendment.
13. Trump has sued all 15 federal judges in Maryland over “an order blocking the immediate deportation of migrants challenging their removals”[14] in what U.S. District Thomas J. Pullen, a Trump appointee, called “a potentially calamitous litigation,” criticizing the administration for even attempting to sue judges.[15]
14. When Charlie Kirk was assassinated in September, he threatened to unleash retribution against “the radical left” (meaning anything left of center).
15. In October, he canceled more than 300 energy projects to the tune of $7.5 billion, nearly all of which were in Blue states that voted for Kamala Harris. This follows a disturbing pattern from throughout the year of illegally impounding congressionally appropriated funds of a large number of federal agencies.
Pursuing Political Enemies
He is now pursuing indictments against several individuals he considers his political enemies: James Comey (former FBI director), Leticia James (New York Attorney General), and John Bolton (former National Security Advisor).
Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated Trump, is under investigation for alleged Hatch Act violations.
California Senator Adam Schiff, who led Trump’s second impeachment in Congress, is under federal investigation for alleged mortgage fraud, along with Lisa Cook, a governor of the Federal Reserve. Biden’s former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, is also being investigated.
The Anonymity of Masked Officers
The administration has deployed countless officers from various security agencies to operate anonymously—wearing masks, plainclothes, and without any visible name tags or badges. In other words, they are functioning as an “armed masked secret police,” as William Young, a federal judge, described in a case brought before him this fall. By the way, Young is a Reagan appointee.[16]
Threatening the Insurrection Act
Throughout this summer and fall, Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to justify sending the military to cities like Chicago, Portland, and San Francisco. His administration has “repeatedly used the term ‘insurrection’ and ‘insurrectionists’ to describe protesters resisting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. … the law gives extraordinary discretion to the president alone to declare a domestic insurrection is underway and deploy U.S. military forces against the American people,”[17]
Waging War on Boats in the Caribbean
Finally, for this section, the Department of War/Defense has destroyed at least 10 boats in the Caribbean and one in the Pacific over the past six weeks, killing dozens of people. Trump justifies the strikes because he has “designated drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.”[18] His administration has provided no information to Congress or the public about the attacks, but it seems not to make “a distinction between killing people suspected of smuggling drugs and actual combatants threatening the United States.”[19]
Again, this list could also go on for pages, but you get the point. The rule of law has been profoundly weakened in the past ten months, wreaking havoc in every direction. And, intentionally eroding our many civil liberties.
How Trump is Eroding Civil Liberties
Turning military forces into civil policing can lead to risks of politicization, as deploying the Guard has become a loyalty test for governors. This weakens checks and balances that protect our freedoms. Trump alleges crime, mayhem, and violence against immigration officers. Federal law states that other states can send troops across state lines only for traditional Guard functions, such as disaster relief.
The administration has all but ended civil rights in public schools and in postsecondary education, arguing that students of color and transgender students are given unfair advantages. The Civil Rights Office at the Department of Education has dismissed 90% of the cases it has received this year from educational systems and institutions. Yet, it has also “launched 27 directed investigations—probes that are opened without an outside complaint.”[20]
It has also fired or forced out more than 500 staff from the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Education.
Trump issued an executive order in April requiring agencies to restrict the use of “disparate impact” claims. Disparate impact has been used for fifty years to reveal systemic discrimination (even if unintentional) against protected groups in housing, education, and employment.
More than 350 employees from the DOJ’s civil rights division have either been fired, resigned, or taken deferred retirement this year, including approximately 250 lawyers.
He issued an order banning publicly-funded universities and federal contractors from practicing diversity, equity, and inclusion through alleged race-based discrimination (i.e., reverse discrimination).
The administration has banned transgender people from serving in the military while also banning accurate passport documents for trans people, only allowing two sexes, male and female.
He eliminated the legal process for asylum seekers at our southern border, leaving tens of thousands of people stranded without any way to seek asylum, while also rescinding legal protections and due process for immigrants already here. He has regularly deported or attempted to deport hundreds of individuals — most of them without African heritage — to third countries on the African continent, including Uganda, South Sudan, Rwanda, and Eswatini.
His administration cut over $10 billion in public health funding intended for emergencies while trying to change rules that “would remove civil rights protections for people with disabilities in federally funded programs,” undoing the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. .
The Defense Department has banned books and changed curriculum on issues of race, Black history, and sexuality that the administration deems offensive.
The ACLU reports that the DOJ has targeted immigration lawyers who have challenged its policies.
His administration has threatened to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, which gives anyone detained here the right to see a judge, challenge evidence, and defend themselves. According to Ilya Somin, the Simon Chair of Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, “habeas corpus can only be suspended under the Constitution in times of invasion or insurrection. … And it can only be done by Congress, not the president acting on his own.”[21]
These examples, among many others, don’t even cover actions the administration has taken to restrict citizens’ access to voting and the possible illegal surveillance of political opponents and protesters.
Conclusion
The drift toward authoritarianism doesn’t happen by accident; it moves forward through a steady corrosion of norms, laws, and institutions until citizens begin to mistake illegality for leadership and impunity for strength. What we are witnessing is not a series of disconnected scandals but a coherent pattern: the politicization of independent institutions, the subversion of the rule of law, and the calculated erosion of civil liberties. Together, these maneuvers reverse the democratic covenant.[22]
In the months and years ahead, if we want to prevent a further slide into authoritarianism, Congress and the courts must strengthen protections for inspectors general, agency watchdogs, and civil servants against political dismissal.[23]
As a society, we must modernize our transparency and accountability systems to ensure that executive orders, emergency powers, and prosecutorial discretion are subject to independent review. It also involves strengthening protections for a free and independent press and rebuilding the federal workforce as a professional, nonpartisan public service.[24]
The rule of law depends on our collective willingness to uphold it. If we don’t oppose the politicization of justice and the erosion of rights now, we may wake up too late to find that the framework of democracy has already been quietly taken apart around us.
Footnotes
[1] “The Authoritarian Playbook,” Protect Democracy, June 15, 2022, https://protectdemocracy.org/work/the-authoritarian-playbook/.
[2] “Authoritarianism, explained,” Protect Democracy, August 12, 2024, https://protectdemocracy.org/work/authoritarianism-explained/.
[3] Scott Cummings, “Using the law to weaken the rule of law,” Cosmos, June 24, 2025, https://cosmos.sns.it/news/using-the-law-to-weaken-the-rule-of-law/.
[4] Hadeel S. Abu Hussein, Antoine Buyse, Katharine Fortin, “Exploring Linkages Between Rule of Law Backsliding and Human Rights,” November 18, 2024, https://utrechtlawreview.org/articles/10.36633/ulr.1138.
[5] Luke Broadwater, “In the Trump Administration, Watchdogs are Watching Their Backs, The New York Times, July 17, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/us/politics/inspectors-general-trump.html.
[6][6] Marley, et al., “Trump’s DOJ has fired dozens of prosecutors, upending decades-old norm,” The Washington Post, July 19, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/07/19/justice-career-prosecutors-staff-firings-trump/.
[7] David French, “Trump Has Dropped an ‘Atomic Bomb’ on the Department of Justice,” The New York Times, August 28, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/opinion/trump-justice-bolton-cook.html.
[8] Richard K. Betts, “The Intelligence Community’s Politicization: Dueling to Discredit,” Council on Foreign Relations, August 21, 2025, https://www.cfr.org/article/intelligence-communitys-politicization-dueling-discredit.
[9] Thomas L. Friedman, “The America We Knew is Rapidly Slipping Away,” The New York Times, August 4, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/opinion/columnists/friedman-trump-labor-firing.html.
[10] Tony Romm, “White House Leads Push to Block Watchdog’s Inquiries Into Spending Cuts,” The New York Times, July 22, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/us/politics/trump-spending-government-accountability-office.html.
[11] Meryl Kornfield and Hannah Natanson, “He accused DOGE of risking Social Security data. It cost him his career.” The Washington Post, October 20, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/10/20/social-security-data-doge-whistleblower/.
[12] Adam Liptak and Zach Montague, “Supreme Court Lets Trump Fire Consumer Product Safety Regulators,” The New York Times, July 23, 2025,
[13] Patriotic Millionaires email, July 24, 2025.
[14] “Trump administration sues all of Maryland’s federal judges over deportation order,” NPR, June 26, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5445843/justice-department-maryland-judges-deportation.
[15] Amber Phillips, “The 5-Minute Fix: Democracy’s recent wins in court,” The Washington Post, September 2, 2025.
[16] David Wallace-Wells, “ ‘ICE Goes Masked for a Single Reason’,” The New York Times, October 8, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/opinion/ice-masks-immigration.html.
[17] Natasha Lennard, “The Sinister Reason Trump is Itching to Invoke the Insurrection Act,” The Intercept, October 7, 2025, https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/trump-insurrection-act/.
[18] Amber Phillips, “The 5-Minute Fix: Why experts say Trump’s boat strikes are concerning,” The New York Times, October 20, 2025.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Laura Meckler, “Under Trump, the Education Dept. has flipped its civil rights mission,” The Washington Post, August 18, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/08/18/trump-education-department-civil-rights/.
[21] David Rhode, “Trump admin’s threat to suspend core U.S. legal right sparks outcry and alarm,” NBC News, May 11, 2025, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/legal-experts-habeas-corpus-stephen-miller-rcna206130.
[22] Congressional Research Service, Inspectors General: Issues and Congressional Considerations, R47652 (Washington, DC: CRS, April 2024).
[23] Brennan Center for Justice, Reining in Presidential Emergency Powers, Policy Report (New York: Brennan Center for Justice, 2022).
[24] Partnership for Public Service, Building the Next Generation Federal Workforce (Washington, DC: Partnership for Public Service, 2024).