Opinion | In Trump’s America, Are We Losing Our Democracy? - The New York Times

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“The United States is not an autocracy but has started down an anti-democratic path. The 12 benchmarks in this editorial offer a way to understand and measure how much further the country will go in the coming years.

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The clearest sign that a democracy has died is that a leader and his party make it impossible for their opponents to win an election and hold power. Once that stage is reached, however, the change is extremely difficult to reverse. And aspiring authoritarians use other excesses, like a cowed legislature and judiciary, to lock in their power.

The United States is not an autocracy today. It still has a mostly free press and independent judiciary, and millions of Americans recently attended the “No Kings” protests. But it has started down an anti-democratic path, and many Americans — including people in positions of power — remain far too complacent about the threat.

The 12 benchmarks in this editorial offer a way to understand and measure how much further Mr. Trump goes in the months and years ahead. We plan to update this index in 2026.

Methodology: In the scales above, the points on the left indicate roughly where the United States, flawed though it was, had been before Mr. Trump took office. Moving even one notch toward autocracy on these scales is a worrisome sign.“