Charles M. Reigeluth / James A. Pershing / Michael H. Molenda
Librería Samer Atenea
Kálamo Books
Librería Elías (Asturias)
Librería Kolima (Madrid)
Librería Proteo (Málaga)
Democracy is at risk in America today. The Founders strove to create a republic basedon 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 thanthe other two branches, thus drifting slowly toward autocracy.In prior periods-such as the Civil War era, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rightsera-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 intoautocracy-Hungary, Turkey, and India, for example. In 2025, we observed the secondTrump administration entering with concrete plans to replace our democracy withan 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 ustowards autocratic rule so that we can work together to reverse this trend. We undertooka systematic analysis of exactly where gaps exist between our current reality and whatis needed for a stable and productive American government. We identi ed ninety-onesuch gaps; then we classi ed each gap as a legal or societal threat and clustered theminto ve categories: i.e., facets. For example:Facet #1: Electoral Gerrymandering and manipulation of elections Foreign election interferenceFacet #2: Egalitarian Growing economic inequality White supremacy and misogyny are resurgentFacet #3: Civil Liberties Abuses of emergency/war/prosecution powers Congress and Supreme Court no longer protect our rightsFacet #4: Communal Con ation of money/speech and bribery/gifts Corporate takeover of free press and social mediaFacet #5: Existential Unitary executive theory concentrates power in presidents’ hands Anti-democratic ideologies and religious movements
