EBOOK
About
Democracy is at risk in America today. The Founders strove to create a republic based
on representative democracy principles, distributing power across three branches:
legislative, executive, and judicial. However, since the presidency of Franklin D. Rosevelt,
the executive branch has gradually become disproportionately more powerful than
the other two branches, thus drifting slowly toward autocracy.
In prior periods-such as the Civil War era, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights
era-our democracy has nearly fractured. We have managed to overcome those perils,
but this time may be di erent. In recent years, we have seen other democracies slide into
autocracy-Hungary, Turkey, and India, for example. In 2025, we observed the second
Trump administration entering with concrete plans to replace our democracy with
an autocratic regime. Unfortunately, many of those plans have already been realized.
To pull back from this slide, it is urgent that we recognize the factors that are pushing us
towards autocratic rule so that we can work together to reverse this trend. We undertook
a systematic analysis of exactly where gaps exist between our current reality and what
is needed for a stable and productive American government. We identi ed ninety-one
such gaps; then we classi ed each gap as a legal or societal threat and clustered them
into ve categories: i.e., facets. For example:
Facet #1: Electoral
Gerrymandering and manipulation of elections
Foreign election interference
Facet #2: Egalitarian
Growing economic inequality
White supremacy and misogyny are resurgent
Facet #3: Civil Liberties
Abuses of emergency/war/prosecution powers
Congress and Supreme Court no longer protect our rights
Facet #4: Communal
Con ation of money/speech and bribery/gifts
Corporate takeover of free press and social media
Facet #5: Existential
Unitary executive theory concentrates power in presidents' hands
Anti-democratic ideologies and religious movements
on representative democracy principles, distributing power across three branches:
legislative, executive, and judicial. However, since the presidency of Franklin D. Rosevelt,
the executive branch has gradually become disproportionately more powerful than
the other two branches, thus drifting slowly toward autocracy.
In prior periods-such as the Civil War era, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights
era-our democracy has nearly fractured. We have managed to overcome those perils,
but this time may be di erent. In recent years, we have seen other democracies slide into
autocracy-Hungary, Turkey, and India, for example. In 2025, we observed the second
Trump administration entering with concrete plans to replace our democracy with
an autocratic regime. Unfortunately, many of those plans have already been realized.
To pull back from this slide, it is urgent that we recognize the factors that are pushing us
towards autocratic rule so that we can work together to reverse this trend. We undertook
a systematic analysis of exactly where gaps exist between our current reality and what
is needed for a stable and productive American government. We identi ed ninety-one
such gaps; then we classi ed each gap as a legal or societal threat and clustered them
into ve categories: i.e., facets. For example:
Facet #1: Electoral
Gerrymandering and manipulation of elections
Foreign election interference
Facet #2: Egalitarian
Growing economic inequality
White supremacy and misogyny are resurgent
Facet #3: Civil Liberties
Abuses of emergency/war/prosecution powers
Congress and Supreme Court no longer protect our rights
Facet #4: Communal
Con ation of money/speech and bribery/gifts
Corporate takeover of free press and social media
Facet #5: Existential
Unitary executive theory concentrates power in presidents' hands
Anti-democratic ideologies and religious movements