A new report reveals the speed of autocratisation in the United States and how Trump is acting increasing without Congressional approval.

It is arguable that the US has never been a democracy in the normal sense of the word. From slavery to restrictions on voting, people have been disenfranchised – often by violence. And Donald Trump is working hard to keep it that way.

The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) produces the largest global dataset on democracy, with more than 32 million data points for 202 countries and territories from 1789 to 2025. Its latest report – Unraveling The Democratic Era, which includes a chapter on autocratisation in the United States – says the speed with which American democracy is currently being dismantled is unprecedented in modern history.

It says that under Trump presidency the level of democracy has fallen back to the same level as in 1965 and that the derailment of democracy is marked by executive overreach, which undermines the rule of law, and that civil rights and equality before the law are also rapidly declining, falling to late 1960s levels.

Most analysts and historians see 1965 as the point at which US democracy became more robust thanks to the end of the vicious disenfranchisement of African Americans and the suppression of civil........

© Pearls and Irritations