From Executive Order to Tragedy: The Escalation That Killed Renee Good
On January 7, 2026, ICE agent Jonathan Ross fired three bullets through the driver’s side windshield of a beige SUV on Portland Avenue in Minneapolis, killing Renee Nicole Good—a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, mother of three, substitute teacher, and poet who had just dropped her six-year-old son at school. Her death occurred exactly 353 days after President Trump signed his first immigration enforcement executive orders. This timeline documents the incremental escalation from policy announcement to lethal force, examines historical patterns of authoritarian escalation, and assesses vulnerabilities in the 2026 electoral system.
The trajectory from inauguration day executive orders to a citizen’s death in a Minneapolis street follows documented patterns of authoritarian escalation. Historical analysis of the Third Reich demonstrates how legal discrimination became physical violence became mass atrocity through incremental normalization. Putin’s Russia provides a contemporary template for consolidating power through election manipulation, media control, and elimination of opposition. Democracy monitoring organizations now classify the United States as an “electoral autocracy” for the first time.
The 353-Day Escalation: From Executive Orders to Operation Metro Surge
January 20, 2025: The Foundation is Laid
On Inauguration Day, Trump signed a cascade of immigration-related executive orders that established the legal framework for everything that followed. The “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” order revoked Biden-era enforcement priorities and directed DHS to pursue “all inadmissible and removable aliens.” The “Securing Our Borders” order declared a national emergency at the southern border. A separate order attempted to end birthright citizenship—later blocked by courts, but signaling the administration’s maximalist intent.
By January 29, Trump had signed the Laken Riley Act mandating detention of undocumented immigrants accused of certain crimes, and ordered Guantanamo Bay prepared to house migrants. The first mass arrests began January 23 in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Miami, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Washington D.C.—538 people detained on the first day alone.
Spring and Summer 2025: The Enforcement Apparatus Expands
The expansion accelerated dramatically through the spring. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem deputized agents from DEA, ATF, U.S. Marshals, FBI, the State Department, and even the IRS to conduct immigration enforcement. ICE’s budget tripled to $28.7 billion. In May, DHS requested 20,000 National Guard troops for operations including “night operations and rural interdiction” and “guard duty and riot control” at detention facilities.
The first major confrontation with state authority came in Los Angeles in June 2025. When Governor Gavin Newsom refused to deploy California’s National Guard for immigration enforcement, Trump federalized 2,000 California Guard troops—the first such action over a governor’s objection since President Johnson deployed troops to Selma in 1965. By June 10, 4,000 Guard troops and 700 Marines were operating in Los Angeles. Protests erupted. The administration had demonstrated it would use military force domestically.
September 2025: Chicago as Proving Ground
“Operation Midway Blitz” began September 6-8 in Chicago, providing the operational template later deployed in Minneapolis. Named for a woman killed by an undocumented driver, the operation used Naval Air Station Great Lakes as a staging area. Agents wore masks and face coverings, used unmarked vehicles, conducted raids at workplaces and apartment complexes, and deployed helicopters—one operation involved landing on an apartment building roof.
The results revealed the indiscriminate nature of enforcement. Of approximately 1,900 people arrested in the operation’s first weeks, two-thirds had no criminal convictions or pending charges. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings ruled that ICE had illegally arrested 22 people without warrants, violating a standing consent decree. U.S. citizens were caught in the dragnet: “Angel” was grabbed off a South Chicago street by Border Patrol agents (captured on a Ring camera), Hanover Park police officer Radule Bojovic was detained despite being legally authorized to work, and Dayanne Figueroa, a U.S. citizen, was pulled from her SUV and detained.
When Governor J.B. Pritzker refused to deploy the Illinois National Guard, Trump attempted to federalize them anyway and brought Texas National Guard troops to Illinois. Tear gas, pepper balls, and rubber bullets were used against protesters at the Broadview ICE facility. On October 18, approximately 250,000 people participated in the “No Kings” demonstration at Grant Park.
December 2025: Minneapolis Becomes the Target
Operation Metro Surge began December 1, 2025, explicitly targeting the Twin Cities area. Trump had made inflammatory remarks about the Somali community, calling them “garbage” and claiming they had “destroyed Minnesota.” DHS linked the operation to fraud investigations involving federal nutrition and pandemic aid programs.
The operation escalated rapidly. Initial deployment of approximately 100 ICE agents expanded to over 2,000 federal agents by January 6, 2026—which DHS announced as the “largest immigration enforcement operation ever.” By mid-December, over 400 people had been arrested; by early January, that number exceeded 1,500.
Community resistance emerged. Residents used whistles to alert neighbors, established rapid response networks, and placed AirTags to track agent vehicles. Confrontations with protesters resulted in pepper spray and pepper pellet deployment. On December 17, 2025, the ACLU of Minnesota filed suit against Secretary Noem challenging ICE violence against protesters exercising First Amendment rights.
Then came December 23: in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court blocked National Guard deployment in Illinois, ruling Trump “failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws.” The dissent came from Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch. The administration had encountered a limit—but by then, thousands of federal agents were already operating in Minneapolis.
January 7, 2026: The Killing
At approximately 9:30 AM, Renee Good had just dropped her six-year-old son at school. An ICE vehicle had become stuck in snow on Portland Avenue near East 34th Street during enforcement operations. Agents approached Good’s SUV; Agent Jonathan Ross was filming her with his phone. After agents pulled her door handle, Good began driving. Ross fired three shots through the driver’s side windshield, killing her.
The official narrative collapsed quickly. DHS and the Trump administration claimed Good had tried to “weaponize her vehicle” and run over Ross, labeling her death “domestic terrorism.” But ABC News analysis of video evidence showed Good was turning her steering wheel away from Ross just over one second before the shots were fired. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, after viewing the video, stated publicly: “Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly that is bullshit.”
The aftermath: Governor Tim Walz proclaimed January 9 “Renee Good Day.” Thousands marched in protest on January 10. On January 12, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison joined the Minneapolis and St. Paul mayors in filing suit against federal authorities. On January 13, six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned over DOJ’s push to investigate Good’s widower rather than Agent Ross. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche declared there was “no basis for criminal civil rights investigation.” Minneapolis Public Schools cancelled classes over safety concerns. At Roosevelt High School, ICE agents reportedly deployed pepper spray against students; two staff members were handcuffed.
Good’s family received over **375,000 by January 12—a stark illustration of the polarization surrounding her death.
The Broader Death Toll: 32 Died in ICE Custody in 2025
Renee Good’s death was not isolated. Thirty-two people died in ICE custody in 2025—the deadliest year since 2004. December 2025 was the deadliest month: seven deaths, including four in a single four-day span. Causes included tuberculosis, strokes, respiratory failure, and at least three apparent suicides. Two detained people were killed by a gunman at an ICE facility in Dallas.
The detention population had exploded: 68,440 people were detained as of mid-December 2025—a 78% increase from 2024. Meanwhile, detention facility inspection reports decreased by 36.25%. The infrastructure designed for mass detention was operating beyond capacity with diminishing oversight.
State Resistance and the Constitutional Collision
Not all states complied. The federal-state conflicts that emerged in 2025 represent the most significant confrontation between state and federal authority over domestic law enforcement since the civil rights era.
California saw its National Guard federalized over Governor Newsom’s objection. In September 2025, Newsom signed laws restricting ICE access to schools and hospitals and requiring agent identification. Illinois under Governor Pritzker refused to deploy its National Guard; in December 2025, Pritzker signed HB 1312 barring immigration enforcement within 1,000 feet of courthouses and allowing civil lawsuits against agents violating constitutional rights. The DOJ sued Illinois on December 22, 2025, challenging the law. Minnesota under Governor Walz called for ICE to leave Minneapolis after Good’s killing.
The legal challenges were extensive: ACLU suits challenging ICE violence, birthright citizenship challenges from 24 states and two cities, Alien Enemies Act challenges resulting in restraining orders, and the Illinois/Chicago lawsuits that ultimately reached the Supreme Court. The December 23 Supreme Court ruling represented a significant check—but one delivered after enforcement had already been implemented at scale.
The Third Reich Parallel: How Incremental Escalation Normalizes Atrocity
The escalation from legal policy to lethal force in 353 days follows patterns extensively documented by Holocaust historians studying Nazi Germany’s trajectory from 1933 to 1945.
From Citizenship to Crematoria: The Phases of Persecution
Nazi persecution began with legal exclusion. The April 7, 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service excluded Jews from government employment, establishing the “Aryan Paragraph” requiring proof of racial descent. Within months, laws restricted Jewish students to 1.5% quotas in schools, banned Jews from journalism, revoked citizenship of “undesirables,” and prohibited Jewish ownership of farmland. Over 400 decrees and regulations were enacted in the first six years—each building on previous acceptance.
The September 1935 Nuremberg Laws codified racial ideology into citizenship itself. The Reich Citizenship Law restricted full citizenship to those of “German or related blood.” Jews became mere “state subjects” without political rights, unable to vote, hold passports, or obtain visas. The Law for the Protection of German Blood criminalized marriages and sexual relations between Jews and “Aryans” as “race defilement.” For the first time in history, Jews faced systematic persecution for ancestry rather than belief.
Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938 marked the transition from legal persecution to organized physical violence. Over 1,400 synagogues burned. More than 7,500 Jewish businesses were vandalized. Ninety-one Jews were murdered; 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Despite Nazi propaganda portraying it as “spontaneous national rage,” Joseph Goebbels had coordinated the violence from Munich; SS, SA, and Hitler Youth received telephone orders to attack; police were ordered not to intervene.
The victims were then punished for their victimization: Jews were forced to pay 1 billion Reichsmarks as an “atonement fine,” required to clean up the rubble from their destroyed synagogues, and had their insurance claims confiscated by the Reich.
From Kristallnacht, the progression accelerated: ghettoization (85,000 crammed into Łódź alone), the Einsatzgruppen mobile killing squads (900,000 Soviet Jews murdered by shooting by end of 1941), and finally the systematized death camps. The Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942—a 90-minute meeting where 15 officials coordinated the “Final Solution” targeting 11 million Jews—produced no objections from any attendee. Euphemisms like “evacuation to the east” disguised murder. Bureaucratic distance enabled mass participation in unprecedented evil.
How Ordinary Germans Acclimated
Holocaust historian Mary Fulbrook argues in her 2023 work Bystander Society that the wrong question is “what did Germans know?” The right question is “How did they interpret and act—or fail to act—upon what they knew?”
Her analysis identifies key mechanisms of normalization: incremental escalation where each step built on previous acceptance; material complicity through acquiring Jewish property at below-market prices; social conformity where risk assessment favored going along; and professional participation where civil servants, teachers, lawyers, and doctors enforced anti-Jewish measures as “normal work.”
The role of dehumanizing language was essential. Research published in PLOS ONE analyzing Nazi propaganda found progressive denial of Jews’ capacity for human emotions preceding physical violence. Jews were compared to vermin, parasites, disease infecting the “national body.” Terms like “sub-humans” (Untermenschen) and “life unworthy of living” stripped targets of moral consideration. Children’s books like Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom) taught identification and fear from early age.
The Banality That Enables Atrocity
Hannah Arendt’s coverage of Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial for The New Yorker produced her famous formulation: “the banality of evil.” Eichmann was not a monster but an ordinary bureaucrat—“terrifyingly normal,” neither perverted nor sadistic, claiming only that he was “following orders” and “doing his job.”
Arendt wrote: “The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic—that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.” Evil came from thoughtlessness—an absence of moral reflection within bureaucratic systems that distributed responsibility so widely no individual felt culpable.
The “boiling frog” pattern describes how gradual escalation leads to acceptance of what would have been unthinkable if implemented all at once. Each step seemed manageable; each accommodation made the next easier. Historian Marion Kaplan noted how Germans became “progressively passive” about non-Aryans’ fate, how “more Germans became complicit in Nazi crimes and, during World War II, German, Austrian, and Baltic ‘bystanders’ eagerly engaged in violence, participating in genocide.”
Putin’s Playbook: A Contemporary Template for Authoritarian Consolidation
Vladimir Putin’s methods for consolidating power in Russia over the past 25 years provide a modern template that scholars have compared to developments in other democracies experiencing backsliding.
Election Manipulation as Foundation
The December 2011 State Duma elections sparked Russia’s largest protests since the 1990s—the “Snow Revolution”—with 85,000 to 150,000 protesters in Moscow over widespread fraud allegations including ballot stuffing, carousel voting (voters bussed between stations to vote multiple times), and vote manipulation. The crackdown that followed established the pattern: the “Bolotnaya Square case” resulted in hundreds of arrests; 2012 laws imposed fines of 300,000 rubles ($9,000+) for unauthorized protests; 2014 laws raised penalties to potential five-year prison terms.
The 2024 presidential election demonstrated the system’s evolution. The “Shpilkin method” (mathematical analysis of vote patterns) revealed an estimated 22-31.6 million fraudulent votes for Putin—approximately 50% of his total. Election watchdog Golos called the entire election an “imitation.” Opposition candidates are systematically barred through signature invalidation, criminal charges, or bureaucratic obstacles; Boris Nadezhdin, who gathered over 100,000 signatures opposing the Ukraine war, was excluded from the 2024 ballot.
Media Capture and Information Control
Putin’s first major act as president was reasserting Kremlin control over mainstream media. Oligarchs Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky were forced to flee Russia after tax raids and seizure of their outlets. NTV, Russia’s first independent TV station, was taken over by state-controlled Gazprom in 2001.
The 2022 Ukraine invasion accelerated total capture. Radio Echo of Moscow, Russia’s leading independent radio station, was shut down March 3, 2022. TV Rain (Dozhd), the last independent television station, ceased broadcasting. Novaya Gazeta—whose editor Dmitry Muratov received the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize—suspended operations. A March 4, 2022 law criminalized “false information” about the military with penalties up to 15 years; the word “war” itself was prohibited in favor of “special military operation.”
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram were blocked. At least 300 journalists fled Russia between February and October 2022. Over 1.2 million websites were blocked as of September 2022. The 2019 “Sovereign Internet” law required ISPs to install deep packet inspection equipment enabling traffic filtering and regional shutdowns.
Eliminating Opposition Through Law and Violence
The trajectory of Alexei Navalny illustrates the methods. In April 2017, he was attacked with green dye, losing 80% vision in his right eye. In August 2020, he was poisoned with Novichok nerve agent—confirmed by German, French, Swedish laboratories and the OPCW. A Bellingcat investigation identified the FSB assassination team that had followed Navalny for years. In December 2020, Navalny released a recording appearing to trick an FSB agent into confessing he had placed poison in Navalny’s underwear.
Navalny’s January 2021 return to Russia triggered the largest protests in years; his subsequent imprisonment accumulated to 19 years on fabricated extremism charges. In December 2023, he was transferred to “Polar Wolf” penal colony above the Arctic Circle. In October 2023, his three lawyers were detained to “completely isolate” him. On February 16, 2024, Navalny died in prison at age 47. According to his widow Yulia Navalnaya, two independent laboratories concluded he was poisoned again before death.
Other opposition figures faced similar fates. Boris Nemtsov was shot near the Kremlin in February 2015, hours before an anti-war rally. Vladimir Kara-Murza survived two suspected poisonings in 2015 and 2017 before receiving a 25-year sentence—the harshest yet for war criticism. OVD-Info reports over 1,000 political prisoners in Russia as of 2024.
The “Foreign Agent” Architecture
Russia’s 2012 “Foreign Agent Law” required NGOs receiving foreign funding and engaging in “political activity” to register as “foreign agents”—explicitly invoking the stigma of collaboration with foreign powers. The 2015 “Undesirable Organizations Law” allowed prosecutors to designate foreign NGOs as threats to state security with violations carrying up to six years imprisonment. The laws expanded to include media and journalists (2017), individuals (2019), and virtually anyone expressing opinions on Russian policies (2022).
The European Court of Human Rights ruled the law violates fundamental rights and bears “hallmarks of a totalitarian regime.” Memorial, Russia’s most important human rights organization founded in 1989, was liquidated in December 2021. The Moscow Helsinki Group was forced to dissolve.
Constitutional Manipulation to Extend Rule
Putin’s 2020 constitutional amendments, approved in a vote showing 78% support, reset his previous terms, allowing him to run for two more six-year terms—potentially remaining in power until 2036. The Venice Commission concluded the amendments “disproportionately strengthened” the president while removing checks and balances, calling the ad hominem exemption “contradictory to the very logic” of term limits.
The 2026 Election: Documented Vulnerabilities and Concerns
Democracy monitoring organizations have issued unprecedented warnings about the 2026 U.S. midterm elections based on documented actions already taken.
V-Dem’s Historic Downgrade
The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute at the University of Gothenburg—one of the world’s leading democracy measurement projects—classified the United States as an “electoral autocracy” in late 2025. V-Dem Director Staffan Lindberg stated he expects future U.S. elections not to be free and fair and described the situation as “the most rapidly moving attacks on democracy by a sitting head of executive in recent history.”
The assessment: “USA could become the fastest autocratizing country in contemporary history that does not involve a coup d’état.”
Freedom House’s Decline Trajectory
Freedom House, which has measured global democracy since 1941, now scores the United States at 83/100—down from the low 90s in 2014-2016. The U.S. now ranks below Argentina and ties with Romania and Panama, placing it in what analysts describe as the “very low-quality democracy range.” The 11-point decline over 13 years reflects political violence, threats against politicians, the January 6 attack, and refusal to accept the 2020 election results.
DOJ’s Reversal on Voting Rights
The Department of Justice has gutted Voting Rights Act enforcement while pivoting to actions that election officials view as potential interference. DOJ dismissed its challenge to Georgia’s SB 202 voting restrictions in March 2025, dropped Louisiana redistricting challenges, and abandoned the Houston County at-large elections case filed January 16, 2025.
Simultaneously, DOJ has sued 22 states demanding full voter registration lists with sensitive personal data including driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. States sued include California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Georgia. Attorney General Pamela Bondi framed these actions as “election integrity” enforcement.
A former DOJ official observed: “Once small cases were dismissed, it became clear they weren’t just shutting down controversial cases; they were shutting down Voting Rights Act enforcement.”
CISA’s Election Security Capacity Gutted
Approximately one-third of CISA staff left the agency by early June 2025. CISA froze election security work pending review; results have not been publicly released. The administration cut funding for federal-state-local information-sharing collaboration; Trump’s 2026 budget proposal calls for further cuts. The Brennan Center warns CISA “may even become a source of misinformation on election security.”
Election Worker Exodus
Surveys reveal significant concern among election administrators:
- 33% of local election officials knew colleagues who resigned due to fear or threats
- 21% stated they were unlikely to continue serving for the 2026 midterms
- 59% reported fear of political interference (2025)
- 46% were concerned about politically motivated investigations
Schedule F and the Politicized Bureaucracy
Schedule F—now called “Schedule Policy/Career”—was reinstated on Inauguration Day 2025. OPM regulations promulgated in November 2025 cite “accountability to the president” as grounds for stripping civil service protections. OPM describes post-Nixon civil service protections as “unconstitutional overcorrections.”
Federal agencies submitted lists of positions for conversion by April 20, 2025. Commerce Department’s NOAA began notifying workers of reclassification. The scope potentially affects tens of thousands of federal employees in “policy-related” positions, converting career civil servants to at-will employees. Former Project 2025 leader Paul Dans told Politico that Trump’s implementation is “beyond his wildest dreams.”
Historical Patterns of Democratic Backsliding
The global experience with democratic erosion—particularly in Hungary, Turkey, and Poland—provides documented templates for how consolidated democracies decline.
Hungary: The Laboratory of Illiberalism
Hungary under Viktor Orbán demonstrates what political scientist Nancy Bermeo calls “executive aggrandizement”—using legal mechanisms to concentrate power without coups. After Fidesz won a supermajority in 2010 (53% of votes, 68% of seats due to district design), Orbán enacted a new constitution unilaterally in 2011—a “constitutional coup.” That same year, forced early retirement of judges over 62 created vacancies filled with loyalists. The Constitutional Court was expanded from 11 to 15 judges, packed with Fidesz allies.
Electoral districts were redrawn; runoff elections were eliminated. A “winner compensation” voting mechanism tallies votes from losing parties for the winner. By 2017, Fidesz and allies controlled over 90% of Hungarian media. In 2019, V-Dem downgraded Hungary to “electoral autocracy”—the first EU member so classified.
Turkey: The Tram to Autocracy
Erdoğan’s famous mid-1990s statement crystallizes the approach: “Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.”
Turkey’s trajectory accelerated after the 2013 Gezi Park protests, when government crackdown marked a turning point. The 2016 failed coup attempt provided pretext for massive purges. The 2017 constitutional referendum shifted to a presidential system concentrating power. Government and allies now own approximately 90% of media; in the 2023 election, Erdoğan received 32 hours of television coverage versus 32 minutes for his opponent.
Over 180 media outlets were closed after 2016; 120+ journalists were imprisoned. More than 30,000 civil cases for “insulting the president” were filed in 2020 alone. In March 2025, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu—the leading opposition figure—was arrested, triggering mass protests.
Poland: The Difficulty of Reversal
Poland’s experience under the Law and Justice party (PiS) from 2015-2023 demonstrates both backsliding patterns and the extraordinary difficulty of restoration. PiS captured the Constitutional Tribunal in 2015, systematically attacked judicial independence, weaponized media for propaganda, created the “Lex Tusk” commission to target opposition under the guise of investigating “Russian influence,” and declared LGBTQ+ “ideology-free zones.”
The October 2023 opposition victory brought Donald Tusk to power—but restoration has proven arduous. Thousands of “neo-judges” appointed through politicized processes remain on the bench. The PiS-aligned presidency retained veto power until August 2025. Polarization makes every reform contested.
The Centre for European Reform concluded: “Democratic restoration is a long, difficult and messy process. It is much better to prevent backsliding in the first place than to have to clean up the mess afterwards.”
What the Pattern Predicts: Expansion of Targets and Emergency Powers
Historical and contemporary authoritarian consolidation follows documented sequences that scholars use to identify warning signs.
Expansion of “Enemy” Categories
Regimes begin with politically expedient targets—often immigrants or minorities—then expand to opposition politicians, journalists, civil society organizations, and eventually any critics. The “foreign agent” framework developed in Russia provides a legal architecture for stigmatizing and ultimately criminalizing dissent.
Erosion of Judicial Independence
Documented methods include court-packing (expanding courts to add loyalists), forced retirements (age limits creating vacancies), appointment politicization (controlling judicial selection bodies), disciplinary systems (threatening judges who rule against government), jurisdiction stripping (removing courts’ authority over certain matters), and simply ignoring adverse rulings.
Indefinite Emergency Powers
Hungary has renewed its “emergency response to terrorism” every six months since 2015. Turkey’s post-coup emergency was extended indefinitely. The pattern: declared emergencies justify bypassing normal legislative processes and are never allowed to expire.
Steven Levitsky’s Assessment
Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die, describes the first months of Trump’s second administration as “the most aggressively and openly authoritarian case of democratic backsliding” he has observed. His particular concern: “attacks on the courts.” His conclusion: “We are no longer living in a democratic regime.”
Conclusion: The Pattern is the Warning
Renee Good’s death on January 7, 2026, was not an isolated incident but the foreseeable consequence of a documented escalation pattern. From executive orders to mass deployment to lethal force, each step prepared the ground for the next.
The Nazi precedent demonstrates that atrocity proceeds through incremental normalization—legal discrimination becoming social exclusion becoming physical violence becoming industrialized murder, with sufficient acquiescence at each stage enabling the next. The Putin playbook shows how modern autocrats consolidate power through election manipulation, media capture, elimination of opposition, and constitutional manipulation. The Hungarian, Turkish, and Polish experiences reveal how quickly democratic institutions can erode through legal mechanisms rather than coups.
The warning signs identified by democracy scholars are present: rejection of democratic rules (refusing to accept election results), denial of opponents’ legitimacy (describing them as enemies and traitors), toleration and encouragement of violence (pardoning January 6 participants), willingness to curtail civil liberties (targeting press, protesters, critics), executive aggrandizement (expanding power through legal mechanisms), and erosion of horizontal accountability (weakening courts and legislature).
V-Dem’s classification of the United States as an “electoral autocracy” represents a historic threshold. The 2026 midterms will test whether meaningful electoral competition remains possible—or whether the escalation that killed Renee Good represents a point of no return.
The trajectory from policy to tragedy took 353 days. The question now is what the next 353 days will bring.