Autocratization in action

Arrests of lawmakers, investigations of political opponents, and the Trump admin's statements about habeas corpus are signs of autocratization. But there's a good chance we can reverse the course.

May 23, 2025

A photo of a diagram illustrating the stages of autocratization from a recent lecture by political scientist Petr Kopecky.

Thanks for subscribing to American Doom. This month, the Texas-based writer and journalist Steven Monacelli is behind the wheel and keeping tabs on things for us. Having great contributors like Steven is only possible with the support of our paid subscribers. If you’d like to join these ranks, you can do so for as little as $6 a month. And just a reminder to current subscribers that you can get a discount on subscriptions by referring readers our way. Now, I’ll let Steven take it from here. - jg

—

Last week, I wrote about how the federal government, in the course of pursuing its aggressive deportation policy, arrested a mayor in New Jersey and a judge in Wisconsin, and singled out a city councilperson in Massachusetts who participated in a protest of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrest.

This week, the charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed stormed into the privately run detention center at Delaney Hall in Newark, were dropped. When Baraka was arrested, he was with Congresswoman McIver and two other Congresspersons, who were there to tour the Newark immigration detention center. Although none of the Congresspersons were arrested during the incident, a DHS spokesperson told the media at the time that more arrests could be on the way.

Now, Alina Habba, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey who was appointed by Trump in February, has followed through on that promise.

In the very same statement where Habba announced the decision to drop charges against Baraka, new charges were brought against Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver, who is accused of “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement.”

Regarding the choice to charge McIver, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem issued a statement saying the decision came after "a thorough review of the video footage of Delaney Hall."

Congresswoman McIver, who had been invited to tour the detention center, rebuked the charges in a statement of her own.

"Earlier this month, I joined my colleagues to inspect the treatment of ICE detainees at Delaney Hall in my district,” the congresswoman said in a statement. “We were fulfilling our lawful oversight responsibilities, as members of Congress have done many times before, and our visit should have been peaceful and short. Instead, ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation when they chose to arrest Mayor Baraka. The charges against me are purely political, they mischaracterize and distort my actions, and are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight. This administration will never stop me from working for the people in our district and standing up for what is right. I am thankful for the outpouring of support I have received and I look forward to the truth being laid out clearly in court."

After Habba dropped the charges against Mayor Baraka, she personally invited him to tour the facility — the very thing that Baraka was trying to do before he was arrested. "The government has nothing to hide at this facility," Habba said.

In other words, the federal government chose to escalate the situation outside Delaney Hall with the arrest of Mayor Baraka and is now backtracking, but only in part. The decision to charge Congresswoman McIver is a clear escalation, one that allows the Trump administration to continue to flex its muscles as it continues to pursue its aggressive deportation policy.

Hanging over all of this is a fundamental question of whether those in power in the Trump administration have an understanding of the basic legal principles that form the bedrock of our judicial system. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s recent performance at a Senate hearing is a particularly illustrative example of why this question is important — and why the answer is likely “no.”

During the hearing, Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire asked Noem a straightforward question: what is habeas corpus?

Noem’s answer was appallingly incorrect. “Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country,” she said.

In response, Hassan set the record straight.

“Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people,” she said. “If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason. ... Habeas corpus is the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.”

During the hearing, Noem also falsely argued that President Trump has the authority to suspend habeas corpus, but could not correctly answer which part of the Constitution includes a provision for habeas corpus. (The answer: Article I).

If Noem is not being willfully misleading in her statements, her ignorance demonstrates borderline criminal negligence that would in normal times deem her unfit for office. But we are not in normal times.

Earlier this month, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters that White House officials are “actively looking” at suspending the writ of habeas corpus. This would mean that the federal government could arrest and lock up people without charges and that prisoners would be unable to contest their imprisonment — for citizens and immigrants alike.

Such a development would signify an even deeper descent into authoritarianism and would effectively mean that the federal government can disappear anyone they want without interference — perhaps even a Congressperson. We’ve already seen numerous instances of the federal government violating due process. Federal judges have issued injunctions requiring people who are being deported to one other than that of their origin to receive due process, and the Trump administration has repeatedly violated them. Just this week, the Trump administration began the process of deporting people from Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan, spurring a series of emergency judicial actions and a finding that the Trump administration violated prior court orders.

As I wrote in my last post, I believe we are already living under a sort of competitive authoritarianism that yearns for neo-fascism. And thanks to a handy diagram, we can understand where we are in the process of democratic decline.

Petr Kopecky, a political scientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, recently gave a lecture at the European Consortium for Political Research, on the subject of political patronage and the process of autocratization — when democracies decline and are supplanted by hybrid regimes and close autocracies. During his lecture, Kopecky displayed a diagram illustrating five steps of autocratization.

The Trump administration’s proven disdain for external judicial checks on power, their attempts to eliminate internal checks like habeas corpus, their use of the state to target and arrest political opponents, and their repeated diversion of state resources to politically connected allies in the pattern of a patrimonialist system of patronage demonstrate that we are in the fourth stage of this process, if not further. A recent post from Sam Stein over at The Bulwark details some of the higher profile examples of the weaponization of government power.

What’s going on in the United States is a part of a broader wave of autocratization across the world. But there is some reason for hope. A comprehensive study of autocratization and resistance to it reveals that 48% of autocratization episodes between 1900 and 2022 were beaten back by democratic turnarounds, with 70% of such episodes over the last 30 years resulting in democratic turnarounds within five years of the beginning of autocratization.

The authors of the study note that there are differences in the pathways for states that make their way out of autocratization and experience a democratic turnaround, and there is still research to be done in this area. We may not know exactly how we get out of this mess, but the odds are good: Out of the 44 cases where autocratization started in a democracy, democracy broke down for a short period in 39 cases before the turnaround, but almost all of them became democracies again.

“In other words, a democratic breakdown does not necessarily prevent a swift return of democracy, especially if autocratization is halted and reversed relatively swiftly– the average turnaround happens around 5 years after the start of autocratization,” the study reads.

Refer a friend

Autocratization in action

Arrests of lawmakers, investigations of political opponents, and the Trump admin's statements about habeas corpus are signs of autocratization. But there's a good chance we can reverse the course.

Discussion about this post