How to stop a dictator

Just over a year into President Donald Trump’s first term, there had been roughly 10,000 protests nationwide during the first Trump presidency. By the same point in Trump’s second term — January 31, 2026 — there had been more than 40,000.

Key takeaways

• After months of research, I’ve come to conclude that democratic survival in the face of threats like Trump is determined in large part by how obvious the threat to democracy is. The more people recognize that an elected leader is trying to destroy democracy from within...