US Democratic Decline During Trump 2nd Term

For­eign Affairs has pub­lished a major analy­sis of the US demo­c­ra­t­ic decline dur­ing Trump’s sec­ond term. On 11 Decem­ber 2025, For­eign Affairs report­ed that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion weaponized the Jus­tice Depart­ment and the FBI, launch­ing inves­ti­ga­tions into dozens of polit­i­cal oppo­nents while trans­form­ing the US into a com­pet­i­tive author­i­tar­i­an sys­tem. The arti­cle begins:

When Don­ald Trump won reelec­tion in Novem­ber 2024, much of the Amer­i­can estab­lish­ment respond­ed with a shrug. After all, Trump had been demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed, even win­ning the pop­u­lar vote. And democ­ra­cy had sur­vived the chaos of his first term, includ­ing the shock­ing events at the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6, 2021. Sure­ly, then, it would sur­vive a sec­ond Trump pres­i­den­cy. That was not the case. In Trump’s sec­ond term, the Unit­ed States has descend­ed into com­pet­i­tive authoritarianism—a sys­tem in which par­ties com­pete in elec­tions but incum­bents rou­tine­ly abuse their pow­er to pun­ish crit­ics and tilt the play­ing field against their opposition.

Read more: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/american-authoritarianism-levitsky-way-ziblatt

Key Points

• The Trump admin­is­tra­tion removed pro­fes­sion­al civ­il ser­vants from the Jus­tice Depart­ment and the FBI, putting loy­al­ists in charge, launch­ing inves­ti­ga­tions into dozens of polit­i­cal oppo­nents, includ­ing Leti­tia James, Adam Schiff, Jack Smith, George Soros, Media Mat­ters, and for­mer offi­cials James Comey, John Bolton, Christo­pher Krebs, and Miles Taylor.
• Admin­is­tra­tion sued Wall Street Jour­nal and New York Times, with FCC open­ing inves­ti­ga­tions into ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR, and Com­cast, while attack­ing uni­ver­si­ties by launch­ing inves­ti­ga­tions into dozens and ille­gal­ly freez­ing bil­lions of dol­lars in con­gres­sion­al­ly approved research funding.
• Fear of ret­ri­bu­tion led to media self-cen­sor­ship, with the Wash­ing­ton Post alter­ing its edi­to­r­i­al line, shift­ing marked­ly to the right, CBS can­cel­ing Stephen Col­bert’s show, and Dis­ney CEO Bob Iger telling The View hosts to tone down their rhetoric about the pres­i­dent, accord­ing to a Dai­ly Beast report.
• Sky­dance Medi­a’s acqui­si­tion of Para­mount, green­light­ed by the FCC, gave the pro-Trump Elli­son fam­i­ly con­trol of CBS, which sub­se­quent­ly shift­ed pro­gram­ming right, with the Ellisons seek­ing to acquire the US ver­sion of Tik­Tok and Warn­er Bros Dis­cov­ery own­ing CNN, poten­tial­ly plac­ing a con­sid­er­able share of lega­cy and social media in the hands of pro-Trump billionaires.

Democratic Decline Under the National Conservative Alliance

The Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA) rep­re­sents a transna­tion­al polit­i­cal move­ment that unites right-wing fac­tions world­wide under prin­ci­ples of nation­al sov­er­eign­ty and oppo­si­tion to glob­al gov­er­nance, with Hun­gary emerg­ing as the oper­a­tional cen­ter bridg­ing Euro­pean and Amer­i­can nation­al­ist forces. Vik­tor Orbán’s gov­ern­ment has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly trans­formed Hun­gary from a lib­er­al democ­ra­cy into what he open­ly terms an “illib­er­al state,” using con­sti­tu­tion­al changes, media cap­ture, and leg­isla­tive manip­u­la­tion to con­sol­i­date state con­trol over civ­il soci­ety in ways that align with Krem­lin tac­tics. The Euro­pean Par­lia­ment declared in 2022 that Hun­gary had become “a hybrid regime of elec­toral autoc­ra­cy,” while Free­dom House­’s 2025 report clas­si­fied Hun­gary as “part­ly free”—the only EU coun­try with­out a “free” designation.

Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion has adopt­ed Orbán’s play­book domes­ti­cal­ly, with FCC Chair­man Bren­dan Carr weaponiz­ing reg­u­la­to­ry threats against media com­pa­nies crit­i­cal of the pres­i­dent. ABC’s indef­i­nite sus­pen­sion of Jim­my Kim­mel fol­low­ing Car­r’s threat­ened action against Dis­ney’s broad­cast license exem­pli­fies cor­po­rate capit­u­la­tion to gov­ern­ment pressure—tactics schol­ars who wit­nessed Hun­gary’s demo­c­ra­t­ic back­slid­ing imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized. White House offi­cials have dis­cussed CNN pro­gram­ming changes with poten­tial acquir­ers, includ­ing float­ing replace­ment names for hosts Trump loathes, while democ­ra­cy schol­ars doc­u­ment Amer­i­ca’s pre­cip­i­tous decline from 67 to 55 points—the biggest drop since track­ing began.

The insti­tu­tion­al archi­tec­ture con­nect­ing these move­ments includes CPAC con­fer­ences held in Budapest where fig­ures like Tuck­er Carl­son, Steve Ban­non, and Euro­pean lead­ers exchange tac­tics for insti­tu­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s Decem­ber 2025 Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Strat­e­gy explic­it­ly sup­ports Euro­pean far-right nation­al­ist par­ties and claims Europe faces “civil­i­sa­tion­al era­sure” requir­ing Wash­ing­ton to “cul­ti­vate resis­tance” with­in the continent.

Exter­nal References:

• Trump’s Anti-Media Blitz Is Straight From the Orbán Play­book — CNN
• Hun­gary’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Back­slid­ing Threat­ens the Trans-Atlantic Secu­ri­ty Order — Cen­ter for Amer­i­can Progress
• MEPs: Hun­gary Can No Longer Be Con­sid­ered a Full Democ­ra­cy — Euro­pean Parliament

Dis­claimer: The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.