Who controls who gets to vote, how districts are drawn, and whether results are accepted
Democrats also gerrymander when they control state legislatures. The Brennan Center explicitly notes that after the 2020 census, "both Republican- and Democratic-controlled states [engaged] in a series of unprecedented mid-decade map revisions." Maryland's 6th Congressional District and Illinois's congressional maps are among the most frequently cited Democratic gerrymanders.
Democratic senators voted to end the filibuster for judicial nominees in 2013 — a structural power shift. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid invoked the "nuclear option" in 2013, eliminating the 60-vote threshold for executive branch and judicial nominations (except Supreme Court). Multiple Democratic senators who supported it later expressed public regret, acknowledging it shifted institutional power in ways they didn't anticipate.
Democratic leaders advocated eliminating the legislative filibuster entirely to pass party priorities. President Biden, Senate Majority Leader Schumer, and former President Obama all publicly called for eliminating the legislative filibuster — a procedural protection for the minority party that has existed since the early 19th century — when it blocked Democratic priorities in 2021.
FDR's court-packing plan (1937) is the most aggressive attempt in U.S. history to capture the judiciary. President Franklin Roosevelt proposed expanding the Supreme Court from 9 to 15 justices to overcome rulings against his New Deal — a plan his own Democratic Congress rejected. Political scientists cite it as a canonical example of executive attempts to capture the judiciary.
Brennan Center: 2024 maps had a net 16 fewer Democratic-leaning districts than neutral maps would produce. When Republicans controlled redistricting after the 2020 census, they used their advantage aggressively. Florida and Texas maps were especially skewed. North Carolina Republicans redrew maps mid-decade to further consolidate advantage. By Brennan Center estimates, neutral maps would have produced 16 more Democratic-leaning districts.
30+ states enacted 70+ restrictive voting laws between 2020 and 2024 under Republican legislatures. Following the 2020 election, Republican-controlled legislatures passed an unprecedented wave of voting restrictions. The Brennan Center documented at least 30 states enacting over 70 restrictive voting laws by 2024, including stricter ID requirements, reduced early voting, and voter roll purges.
Trump and 147 congressional Republicans voted to reject 2020 Electoral College certification on January 6. On January 6–7, 2021, 147 Republican members of Congress voted to reject certified Electoral College results from Pennsylvania and/or Arizona — the first such mass objection in American history — following President Trump's public pressure campaign on Vice President Pence to refuse certification.
McConnell extended the Supreme Court nuclear option to include SCOTUS nominees in 2017. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell extended Reid's 2013 nuclear option to cover Supreme Court nominations, allowing Neil Gorsuch's confirmation by simple majority. Political scientists describe this as a direct escalation of the 2013 Democratic rule change, permanently lowering the confirmation threshold for all federal judges.
Unilateral use of presidential authority beyond or against congressional intent
Obama used executive orders on DACA and DAPA after Congress declined to pass immigration reform. President Obama's 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and 2014 Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) were explicitly justified as workarounds after Congress failed to pass the DREAM Act. Federal courts blocked DAPA; legal scholars across the political spectrum debated whether DACA exceeded executive authority.
Biden's student loan cancellation was struck down unanimously by the Supreme Court as executive overreach. President Biden's plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt per borrower was struck down 6–3 by the Supreme Court in Biden v. Nebraska (2023), which held that the executive branch had exceeded its statutory authority under the HEROES Act — a rare unanimous liberal-conservative finding of executive overreach.
Obama signed indefinite detention provisions in the 2012 NDAA, allowing military detention of U.S. citizens. The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Obama, included Section 1021, which authorized indefinite military detention of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism without trial. The ACLU called it "a catastrophic blow to civil liberties." Obama issued a signing statement expressing reservations but signed the bill.
Obama expanded the drone strike program to include targeted killings of U.S. citizens abroad without trial. The Obama administration authorized the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, via drone strike in Yemen in 2011 — without judicial process. The Justice Department produced a secret memo arguing the executive branch had the right to kill citizens deemed operational threats. Civil liberties organizations called it an unprecedented claim of executive power.
Trump declared the executive branch an "extension of his own person" via EO on Feb. 18, 2025. A February 18, 2025 executive order stated that only the President and the Attorney General had final interpretive authority over all executive branch law — a claim legal scholars described as an unprecedented assertion of unitary executive theory that effectively removed independence from federal agencies.
Trump invoked emergency tariff powers via IEEPA in ways courts found constitutionally questionable. Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose sweeping global tariffs without congressional approval was challenged in federal courts in 2025. The Court of International Trade initially blocked the tariffs, finding the emergency declaration exceeded statutory authority — a ruling stayed pending appeal.
Trump pardoned all ~1,600 January 6 defendants on Day 1, including those convicted of violent assault on police. President Trump's January 20, 2025 blanket pardon covered virtually all January 6 defendants, including individuals convicted of assaulting police officers with flagpoles, chemical sprays, and shields. The FBI Agents Association called it "a campaign of erratic and arbitrary retribution" against the officers involved.
Trump deployed the National Guard to D.C. and Los Angeles over objections of local governments in 2025. Despite violent crime being at a 30-year low, Trump deployed National Guard troops to Washington D.C. and to Los Angeles to suppress protests in 2025 — over the objection of state and local authorities. The Center for American Progress compared the deployments to authoritarian domestic military use in South Korea and Turkey.
George W. Bush's post-9/11 surveillance and detention programs operated outside any legal framework for years. The NSA's warrantless wiretapping program (2001–2007), "enhanced interrogation" (torture) program, and indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay all operated without statutory authorization or meaningful congressional oversight for years — before being exposed by journalists and partially constrained by Congress.
Using intelligence and law enforcement tools against domestic political opponents or citizens
COINTELPRO — the FBI's systematic destruction of political movements — ran under Democratic presidents. COINTELPRO (1956–1971) operated almost entirely under Democratic presidents (Eisenhower aside), most extensively under LBJ and including the early Nixon years. The program used illegal surveillance, mail opening, infiltration, and what the Church Committee called "politically motivated assassinations" — including orchestrating the police killing of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in 1969.
Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all previous presidents combined. PolitiFact rated it TRUE: The Obama administration used the Espionage Act to prosecute leakers and whistleblowers more times than all prior administrations combined — including Chelsea Manning (35-year sentence), John Kiriakou, Thomas Drake, and others. CNN's Jake Tapper called it "the most aggressive press crackdown in American history."
Most Democrats voted to extend FISA Section 702 warrantless surveillance in 2024 — then reversed once Trump took power. In April 2024, most Democrats voted to reauthorize FISA Section 702 warrantless surveillance with minimal reforms. After Trump took office in 2025, Democrats shifted to opposing a clean extension of the same surveillance authority they had recently supported — a reversal critics from both sides called nakedly partisan.
FBI under Obama surveilled Black Lives Matter activists using tactics "reminiscent of COINTELPRO." The Intercept documented that in 2014, the FBI tracked a Black Lives Matter activist using covert surveillance techniques. The civil liberties group Defending Rights & Dissent cataloged that the FBI devoted "disproportionate resources to spy on peaceful left-leaning civil society groups" including Occupy Wall Street and environmental activists during the Obama years.
Trump administration is building citizen profiles combining tax, health, voter, and police data — per House Judiciary Democrats. House Judiciary Committee Democrats documented in December 2025 that the Trump administration, through DOGE and allied agencies, is "building profiles on American citizens" by combining data from separate federal agencies — tax returns, health records, police interactions — with commercially purchased data. Legal experts call it unprecedented domestic surveillance.
Nixon's COINTELPRO expansion and Watergate were arguably the most extensive domestic political surveillance in U.S. history. President Nixon expanded COINTELPRO, ran the White House Plumbers unit to spy on political enemies, used the IRS to harass political opponents, and authorized the Watergate break-in to spy on the Democratic National Committee — resulting in his resignation and the conviction of 40 administration officials.
PATRIOT Act (2001, Bush) gave intelligence agencies warrantless access to library records, phone metadata, and financial data. The USA PATRIOT Act, signed by President Bush six weeks after 9/11, dramatically expanded government surveillance authority — including Section 215, which the NSA used to collect bulk phone metadata on all Americans. The program was later found to be illegal by a federal appeals court.
Trump DOJ subpoenaed names and addresses of every 2020 Fulton County election worker in 2025. In May 2025, the DOJ subpoenaed the personal contact information of every election worker in Fulton County, Georgia — the county that processed Atlanta's 2020 ballots. Legal experts described it as a targeted intimidation campaign against nonpartisan election administrators and their families.
Weakening courts, congressional oversight, the civil service, and other institutional guardrails
Democrats seriously proposed expanding the Supreme Court to 13 justices in 2021. After Republicans confirmed Amy Coney Barrett days before the 2020 election, House Democrats introduced the Judiciary Act of 2021 to expand the Supreme Court from 9 to 13 justices. President Biden convened a commission to study it. Legal scholars across the spectrum warned it would end the Court's independence as a co-equal branch.
FDR's Japanese American internment (Executive Order 9066) is cited as one of the most authoritarian acts in U.S. peacetime history. President Roosevelt's order to intern approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans — two-thirds of them U.S. citizens — without charges, trial, or evidence of disloyalty, was upheld at the time by a Democratic Supreme Court but formally repudiated by Congress in 1988 as a "grave injustice" based on "race prejudice."
Senate Democrats blocked Republican judicial nominees for years via filibuster, prompting the 2013 rules crisis. Prior to Reid's nuclear option, Democrats in the Senate minority had filibustered a record number of Obama-era circuit court nominees — then, when in the majority, faced unprecedented Republican obstruction of Obama's nominees. Both sides cite the other as escalating first; Congressional Research Service data supports both claims.
Trump fired career DOJ officials and FBI agents who investigated him, replacing them with loyalists. In early 2025, the Trump administration purged career DOJ officials and FBI agents who had worked on January 6 prosecutions or Trump-related investigations — replacing them with political loyalists. The FBI Agents Association described it as "a campaign of erratic and arbitrary retribution." An NPR analysis found Trump used 11 federal agencies in his first 100 days to retaliate against opponents.
McConnell held Merrick Garland's Supreme Court seat open for 11 months in an unprecedented refusal to hold hearings. In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to schedule a hearing or vote for President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland for the final 11 months of Obama's term — the longest such blockade in Senate history. He then confirmed Amy Coney Barrett days before the 2020 election under different reasoning.
Trump issued large posters of his own face for federal buildings; Democratic lawmakers compared it to Communist propaganda. Throughout 2025, large posters bearing President Trump's image were installed on numerous federal buildings — including the Frances Perkins Building and the Jamie L. Whitten Building. Democratic lawmakers formally compared the imagery to authoritarian cult-of-personality propaganda.
Hundreds of political scientists signed a statement calling Trump's second-term actions an "authoritarian" threat to democracy. By mid-2025, hundreds of political scientists and legal experts had signed public statements describing the Trump administration's actions as authoritarian and contributing to democratic backsliding — the largest such coordinated academic warning in modern U.S. political history.
Government actions that restrict journalism, dissent, or political expression
Obama's Justice Department secretly obtained AP reporters' phone records in a sweeping national security leak investigation. In 2013, it emerged that the Obama DOJ had secretly subpoenaed two months of phone records from the Associated Press — over 20 separate phone lines, covering reporters, editors, and AP office numbers — in a leak investigation. The AP's president called it a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into newsgathering.
Obama DOJ named Fox News reporter James Rosen as a criminal "co-conspirator" for receiving leaked information. In 2013, the Obama Justice Department named Fox News reporter James Rosen as a potential criminal co-conspirator under the Espionage Act for receiving leaked State Department information — the first time the government had applied the law to a reporter. The Committee to Protect Journalists said the Obama administration was "the most aggressive press crackdown since Nixon."
Wilson administration's Sedition Act of 1918 (Democrat) was the most sweeping speech suppression in U.S. history. President Woodrow Wilson's Sedition Act of 1918 made it a federal crime to use "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the U.S. government, Constitution, or military. Over 2,000 people were prosecuted. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who initially upheld it, later called his concurrence a mistake.
Trump's FCC threatened to revoke ABC affiliate licenses after a host criticized his response to a political death. In September 2025, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened ABC's affiliate broadcast licenses after Jimmy Kimmel criticized Trump's response to Charlie Kirk's death. ABC suspended Kimmel — a decision reversed after public outcry. Human Rights First documented this as part of a pattern of targeted attacks on press freedom.
Trump administration indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on April 21, 2026 — citing its use of informants identical to FBI practice. The Trump DOJ indicted the SPLC on wire and bank fraud charges rooted in its use of paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups — the same technique the FBI uses routinely. House Judiciary Democrats launched a formal inquiry citing whistleblower disclosures of internal DOJ concerns about the weakness of the case.
By July 2025, Trump had extracted $1.2 billion in settlements from institutions in a "cultural crackdown." By July 2025, the Trump administration had extracted over $1.2 billion in settlements from universities, law firms, media companies, and civil society organizations that largely chose to settle rather than fight federal enforcement actions — what legal experts described as using government power to coerce ideological compliance.
Nixon's enemies list and "plumbers" unit specifically targeted journalists and political opponents for surveillance. The Nixon administration maintained a formal "Enemies List" of political opponents, used the IRS to audit them, and had a secret White House unit (the "Plumbers") that conducted illegal surveillance, break-ins, and "dirty tricks" operations against journalists and Democrats — crimes that ended his presidency.
Weaponizing government agencies, tax authorities, or federal contracts against political enemies
IRS targeting scandal: Tea Party and conservative groups faced disproportionate scrutiny under Obama (2010–2013). An Inspector General investigation confirmed that IRS officials applied heightened scrutiny to applications for tax-exempt status from groups with "Tea Party," "Patriot," or "9/12" in their names. The Treasury IG found this constituted "inappropriate criteria." The DOJ investigated but found no criminal intent; conservative groups received settlements worth $3.5 million.
Clinton administration's "Travelgate" involved firing the entire White House Travel Office to install political allies. In 1993, the Clinton White House fired all seven employees of the nonpartisan White House Travel Office to install loyalists — then triggered a criminal investigation of the head of the office to justify the firings. A subsequent Inspector General report found Hillary Clinton's "input" was a "precipitating cause" and that the staff had been treated unfairly.
LBJ used the FBI and IRS against political opponents, a direct precursor to Nixon's identical behavior. Historians have documented that President Lyndon Johnson used the FBI for personal political surveillance — including wiretapping the 1964 Republican National Convention — and directed the IRS against political enemies. This behavior is documented in Robert Caro's multi-volume LBJ biography and declassified FBI files.
Trump's DOJ investigated former President Biden, former FBI Director Comey, and former CIA Director Brennan for political dissent. The Trump DOJ opened investigations into Biden's executive actions, former FBI Director James Comey (for publishing a photo of himself at Comey's beach), and John Kelly — launching a second investigation after Comey resisted the first. Protect Democracy's tracker documented that these actions were timed to punish public criticism of Trump.
Trump used federal contracts and grant awards as leverage against universities and law firms that opposed him. The Trump administration revoked federal contracts and threatened grant funding from Harvard, Columbia, and other universities over curriculum and diversity policies — and issued executive orders against law firms that had represented his political opponents. Legal experts described these as uses of federal procurement power to enforce political compliance.
Nixon used the IRS, FBI, and CIA against political opponents in the most documented executive coercion of the modern era. The Senate Watergate Committee documented 40+ criminal convictions stemming from Nixon's use of government agencies against political opponents: IRS audits of enemies, CIA involvement in domestic surveillance, FBI wiretaps of journalists and staffers, and Watergate itself. It remains the most exhaustively documented case of presidential political coercion in U.S. history.
Trump administration deployed IRS and immigration enforcement together — sharing tax data with ICE to facilitate deportations. In 2025, the Trump administration shared IRS tax data with ICE to identify undocumented immigrants for deportation — breaking a decades-old firewall between tax compliance and law enforcement. Legal experts warned it would deter migrants from filing taxes and represented a fundamental breach of IRS confidentiality norms.