If this were happening somewhere else \u2013 in Latin America, say \u2013 how might it be reported? Having secured his grip on the capital, the president is now set to send troops to several rebel-held cities, claiming he is wanted there to restore order. The move follows raids on the homes of leading dissidents and comes as armed men seen as loyal to the president, many of them masked, continue to pluck people off the streets \u2026<\/p>\n
Except this is happening in the United States of America and so we don\u2019t quite talk about it that way. That\u2019s not the only reason. It\u2019s also because Donald Trump\u2019s march towards authoritarianism is so steady, taking another step or two every day, that it\u2019s easy to become inured to it: you can\u2019t be in a state of shock permanently. And, besides, sober-minded people are wary of sounding hyperbolic or hysterical: their instinct is to play down rather than scream at the top of their voice.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s something else, too. Trump\u2019s dictator-like behaviour is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. It\u2019s like being woken in the night by a burglar wearing a striped shirt and carrying a bag marked \u201cSwag\u201d: we would assume it was a joke or a stunt or otherwise unreal, rather than a genuine danger. So it is with Trump. We cannot quite believe what we are seeing.<\/p>\n
But here is what we are seeing. Trump has deployed the national guard on the streets of Washington DC, so that there are now 2,000 troops, heavily armed, patrolling the capital. The pretext is fighting crime, but violent crime in DC was at a 30-year low<\/a> when he made his move. The president has warned that Chicago will be next<\/a>, perhaps Baltimore too<\/a>. In June he sent the national guard and the marines into Los Angeles to put down protests<\/a> against his immigration policies, protests which the administration said amounted to an \u201cinsurrection\u201d. Demonstrators were complaining about the masked men of Ice, the immigration agency that, thanks to Trump, now has a budget to match that of the world\u2019s largest armies<\/a>, snatching people from street corners or hauling them from their cars.<\/p>\n Those cities are all run by Democrats and, not coincidentally, have large Black populations. They are potential centres of opposition to Trump\u2019s rule and he wants them under his control. The constitution\u2019s insistence that states have powers of their own and that the reach of the federal government should be limited \u2013 a principle that until recently was sacred to Republicans<\/a> \u2013 can go hang.<\/p>\n Control is the goal, amassing power in the hands of the president and removing or neutering any institution or person that could stand in his way. That is the guiding logic that explains Trump\u2019s every action, large and small, including his wars on the media, the courts, the universities and the civil servants of the federal government. It helps explain why FBI agents last week mounted a 7am raid on the home and office of John Bolton<\/a>, once Trump\u2019s national security adviser and now one of his most vocal critics. And why the president hinted darkly that the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie is in his sights<\/a>.<\/p>\n Members of the national guard patrol near the White House in Washington DC, 29 August 2025. Photograph: Shawn Thew\/EPA<\/p>\n It\u2019s why he has broken all convention, and possibly US law, by attempting to remove Lisa Cook<\/a> as a member of the board of the Federal Reserve on unproven charges of mortgage fraud. Those charges are based on information helpfully supplied by the Trump loyalist installed as federal housing director and who, according to the New York Times<\/a>, has repeatedly leveraged \u201cthe powers of his office \u2026 to investigate or attack Mr Trump\u2019s most recognisable political enemies\u201d. The pattern is clear: Trump is using the institutions of government to hound his foes in a manner that recalls the worst of Richard Nixon \u2013 though where Nixon skulked in the shadows, Trump\u2019s abuses are in plain sight.<\/p>\n And all in the pursuit of ever more power. Take the firing of Cook. <\/strong>With falling poll numbers, especially on his handling of the economy<\/a>, he craves the sugar rush of an interest rate cut. The independent central bank won\u2019t give it to him, so he wants to push the Fed out of the way and grab the power to set interest rates himself. Note the justification offered by JD Vance<\/a> this week, that Trump is \u201cmuch better able to make those determinations\u201d than \u201cunelected bureaucrats\u201d because he embodies the will of the people. The reasoning is pure authoritarianism, arguing that a core principle of the US constitution, the separation of powers, should be swept aside, because all legitimate authority resides in one man alone.<\/p>\n Of course, the greatest check on Trump would come from the opposition winning power in a democratic election, specifically Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives in November 2026. Trump is working hard to make that impossible: witness this month\u2019s unabashed gerrymander in Texas<\/a>, where at Trump\u2019s command, Republicans redrew congressional boundaries to give themselves five more safe seats in the House. Trump wants more states to follow Texas\u2019s lead, because a Democratic-controlled House would have powers of scrutiny that he rightly fears.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, apparently prompted by his meeting with Vladimir Putin, he is once again at war against postal voting<\/a>, baselessly decrying it as fraudulent, while also demanding a new census that would exclude undocumented migrants \u2013 moves that will either help Republicans win in 2026 or else enable him to argue that a Democratic victory was illegitimate and should be overturned.<\/p>\n In that same spirit, the Trump White House now argues that, in effect, only one party should be allowed to exercise power in the US. How else to read the words of key Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who this week told Fox News<\/a> that \u201cThe Democrat party is not a political party; it is a domestic extremist organisation.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s the same picture on every front, whether it\u2019s plans for a new military parade in Trump\u2019s honour<\/a> or the firing of health officials<\/a> who insist on putting science ahead of political loyalty. He is bent on amassing power to himself and being seen to amass power to himself, even if that means departing from economic conservative orthodoxy to have the federal government take a stake in hitherto private companies<\/a>. He wants to rule over every aspect of US life. As Trump himself said this week<\/a>, \u201cA lot of people are saying, \u2018Maybe we\u2019d like a dictator.\u2019\u201d The former Obama adviser David Axelrod is not alone when he says<\/a>, \u201cWe have gone from zero to Hungary faster than I ever imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n