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Autocrats need to weaken competing powers — you can’t be first if others are equal. Even the strongest executive can be slowed down or stopped if Congress resists or if the courts enforce the law. That’s why Step 3 is so critical: capture the other branches. Neutralize judges, co-opt legislators, and strip away the independence of agencies. Once those institutions bend to the will of the executive, the system of checks and balances collapses into a system of enablers.
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This step is different from simply expanding executive power. Step 2 is about testing boundaries and daring the system to say no. Step 3 is about making sure the system can’t say no at all. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán rewrote the constitution, changed election rules, and packed courts so that no future government could easily undo his grip. In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez turned legislatures into rubber stamps and created new assemblies to bypass dissent. In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan purged judges, prosecutors, and civil servants so the law itself would serve him.
The same instincts are visible in the United States. A president can’t fully consolidate power without help from Congress and the courts. With Congress abdicating its power of the purse, we’ve already seen how partisan loyalty can outweigh institutional duty. Judges are confirmed based on blatant ideology rather than the obligation of independence. Lawmakers treat oversight as political theater rather than a constitutional responsibility. The combination means that they are mutually reinforcing, ceding more and more power to the executive. Thus, when those two branches stop resisting, executive overreach ceases to look like abuse and starts looking like regular, every day governance.
Project 2025 takes this to another level. As we’ve learned, at its core, the scheme is about expanding executive authority, ensuring that the presidency no longer has to negotiate with independent institutions. Their America envisions agencies stripped of autonomy, watchdogs removed, and courts and legislatures aligned to carry out — not check — executive orders without question. Step 2 is the grab for more power. Step 3 is making sure no one is left to pull it back.
We’ve seen the judiciary suborn tyranny in real time. At the close of the last Supreme Court term, I invited Assembly Required guests to parse out the Court’s most consequential decisions. To the surprise of no one, they noted how the Court has bullishly reshaped our democracy and eviscerated civil rights. The human costs of their abandonment of democracy has been devastatingly clear: in Georgia, Adriana Smith, a nurse and young mother, was forcibly kept on life support against her family’s wishes because of the state’s extreme abortion bans. She died three years after Roe v. Wade was overturned, another casualty of a judiciary that has abandoned its role as protector of rights. This is what Step 3 looks like when courts are captured: the law no longer shields the vulnerable. It avidly enforces the autocrat’s cruelty.
Perhaps the most dangerous part of this step is its durability. Presidents come and go. Congress, ostensibly, can be remade every 2 years; but legislative decisions often outlast a single party’s control. Federal judges serve for life — and they can only be removed for serious infractions, by the Congressional leaders who are complicit in their behavior. Therefore, once captured, formerly democratic institutions don’t easily revert back to independence. That’s why authoritarians focus their efforts here: changing the rules of the game so the next election — or the next leader — can’t undo what’s been done.
Our response to this assault has to match the stakes. Two of the 10 steps to freedom and power are engagement and election. Citizens must demand honesty from elected legislators and insist on transparent, fair judicial appointments. Journalists and watchdog groups must expose efforts to politicize oversight and rewrite rules. Legislators must defend their independence, even when the pressure to conform is overwhelming. And all of us must see these moves for what they are: not politics as usual, but Step 3 of the 10 Steps to Autocracy and Authoritarianism— the quiet capture of the very institutions designed to protect our democracy.
Invite your friends and earn rewards
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