An unintended consequence of Trumpian authoritarianism is a massive awakening of citizens to the values and benefits of American democracy, and a determination to protect it. In June, under the banner of “No Kings,” more than 5 million people, in more than 2,000 cities and towns, in all 50 states, participated in one of the largest protests in U.S. history. Every week since, protests have continued with thousands of participants in small and large cities, blue and red states, across the nation. On October 18 an even larger nationwide mobilization is being planned under the banner: “No thrones. No crowns. No kings.”
It turns out that Americans value their constitutional rights and will act to protect them. These include respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, the rule of law, free and fair elections, equality before the law, freedom of speech and expression, and freedom of association and assembly. Americans don’t like being threatened by their own military. They don’t like seeing their neighbors treated cruelly and denied due process. They’re appalled by masked agents who force people into unmarked vehicles and disappear them to prisons here and abroad.
The resistance to Trumpian authoritarianism is rooted in defending democratic principles and institutions contained in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. As this administration flaunts the law and elevates the executive branch above the Congress and the Supreme Court, protesters call for reaffirmation of the rule of law, the separation of powers, the centrality of the judiciary, and the significance of due process. Signs being carried by anti-Trump protesters emphasize these core values: “No kings since 1776,” “Defend Democracy,” “No one is above the law,” “Due process is the law.”
Americans also value government programs and institutions gained over the years to provide a basic social safety net to support the health and well-being of families, and to secure liberty, justice, and safety for its citizens. They don’t want to lose the basic social safety net that government programs provide, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food and welfare programs for families and children.
Americans worry that defunding regulatory agencies will open the door for corporations to foul our water and air and delay the transition to a clean energy future. They fear that defunding science and medical research will lead to disease and ignorance and leave us unprepared for public health emergencies.
According to polling, President Trump’s policies are wildly unpopular. On immigration, apparently the issue that won Donald Trump the presidency, the cruelty and violence of masked, Gestapo-like immigration enforcers, has drastically changed citizens’ views.
A Gallup poll released July 11 found only 35 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, with 62 percent disapproving and 45 percent strongly disapproving, and a record-high 79 percent of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country.
Most Americans disapprove of President Trump’s tariff policies. An August 2025 Pew Research Center poll found that 61 percent of Americans disapprove, while 38 percent approve.
A CBS News poll found only 36 percent approve of his handling of inflation, and only 25 percent of voters believe the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” Trump recently signed will do anything to help them, while 47 percent think it will hurt them.
“We’ve slid into some form of authoritarianism,” says Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard, and co-author of How Democracies Die. “It is certainly reversible, but we are no longer living in a liberal democracy.”
Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton sociologist who has spent years tracking political changes in Hungary, says, “We are on a very fast slide into what’s called competitive authoritarianism.”
In a competitive authoritarian system, a leader comes to power democratically through elections but once in power erodes the system of checks and balances. Civil service workers and key appointments — including the prosecutor’s office and judiciary — are filled with loyalists. Then the leader attacks the media, universities and nongovernmental organizations to stifle public criticism and promote the ruling party’s agenda.
How do we protect our democracy from authoritarianism? Ordinarily, we’d expect business leaders, university presidents or major law firms to lead the resistance but many of these leaders have capitulated. Because Democrats are in the minority in Congress they have little power. Republican members of Congress, fearful of losing their seats or afraid of retribution from the President, refuse to act.
American history includes many struggles by citizens for justice and democracy, such as anti-abolitionist campaigns, labor union actions, and the Civil Rights Movement. The Black freedom struggle, this country’s leading democracy movement, has in turn inspired nearly every peaceful, people-powered movement around the world since. There is a lineage of strategic nonviolent action that we can draw upon.
Today, actions to protect our democracy are focused on lawsuits, mass protests, and voting, but some are advocating more aggressive tactics. We should disrupt unjust systems, like disabled people in wheelchairs blocking Congressional hearings to cut Medicaid, or neighbors standing between immigrants and ICE agents. We should de-legitimize authoritarian creep, like creating broad-based coalitions to counter and expose anti-democratic tactics. We should support defectors willing to go on record for what is right, like Governor Newsom countering gerrymandering in Texas, Harvard University resisting government coercion, and Governor Pritzker vowing to oppose military troops being sent to Illinois.
We should encourage everyday people and organizations to use their voice to name what they stand for in this moment. Movements in the Jim Crow South prevailed under conditions far worse than those we face today. We can study the record of resistance that changed the world and use it for these modern times.
Ultimately, it’s important that citizens be offered a positive alternative vision. If we manage to defeat and replace Trumpian authoritarianism, we can’t simply go back to the obscene inequalities and injustices in our society that prompted it. We must propose something better — democratic alternatives that are ready to go if we can awaken from this nightmare.
