Threats to the American
Democratic Republic

(Narrative Discussion of the Grid)

Michael H. Molenda, in collaboration with Phil Harris, James Pershing, and Charles Reigeluth

March 21, 2026

Introduction

An Urgent Problem …

Since the second inauguration of Donald Trump in January 2025, Americans have found themselves witnessing a fast and furious race to replace their democracy with an authoritarian regime. Some even view Trump’s actions as “the self-immolation of a superpower” (Graff 2026). Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash (2025) predicts that the mid-term elections of 2026 represent the last chance to head off this assault.

… And a Perennial Problem

Of course, American democracy has been under stress since the days of the Founders. In the early days that stress revolved around the issues of a strong central government versus the rights of sovereign states. A complex system of self-government by the people was not easy to create; nor has it proved easy to maintain. Indeed, it often threatens to come apart at the seams.

The drafting of the Constitution itself was drenched in tension, with frequent threats to quit and go home, which would have left the hopelessly inadequate Articles of Confederation as the law of the land. That prospect was enough to drive delegates back to the bargaining table. Tough compromises had to be made—counting slaves as three-fifths of a person when counting a state’s population, establishing the Electoral College for choosing a President, and granting each state two senators, regardless of population size. While such compromises, deemed necessary in the beginning to bring our present democracy into being, fall short of advancing any ideals other than postponing the inevitable conflict until a later date.

Tensions have broken into conflict, sometimes deadly, in several historical eras—the secession of states in the Civil War, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan afterward, the blatant purchasing and wanton abuse of political power in the Gilded Age, the widespread loss of faith in democracy during the Great Depression, physical attack by fascist armies during World War II, and the deep regional conflicts of the Civil Rights era. Somehow, the republic has survived so far. The faults exposed in those struggles continue to weaken the Republic, but now other powerful adversaries, foreign and domestic, have struck hard at the very foundations of the Republic—the rule of law, the sanctity of the ballot, the commitment to peaceful transfer of power, even the acceptance of reality over fantasy. The very existence of the American democratic republic is at risk.

Identifying the Threats to the American Democratic Republic

Given the seriousness and imminence of the challenges before us, the authors believed it useful to compile a comprehensive, candid catalog of the forces threatening the various elements that comprise the American democratic republic. Many others have examined one or more of the threats, but none has attempted a comprehensive catalog. Our project began by identifying the threats and classifying them into five categories—electoral, egalitarian, civil liberties, communal, and existential—referring to the various aspects or “facets” of democracy that are under threat. Our facets are adapted from the indices used by the Varieties of Democracy [V-Dem] Institute based at the University of Gothenburg for its annual “democracy score card,” which rates whether nations are democratizing or “autocratizing.”

We then divided each facet into two categories: factors that are encoded into the legal system—the US Constitution as amended, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, and as codified into specific laws—and factors that are rooted in socioeconomic and other societal factors, such as the practices of special interest groups or other social and economic forces operating within society. The result is a Grid consisting of ten cells. Our search for causative factors was systematic in the sense that we were guided by the ten categories of the Grid. We analyzed American history and current events with these categories in mind, seeking specific factors that threatened or undermined specific aspects of democratic governmental functioning. Each factor was given a unique label, with the agent or causative force as clearly named as possible, yielding a Grid populated by over a hundred factors. We regard these findings as tentative; we expect to revise them as events continue to unfold.

Compiling the Grid was the first stage of our project. This paper is the second. In this paper we describe in greater detail each of the 112 threats listed in our Grid. We examine each facet in turn, discussing both the legal and societal threats in each facet.

Proposing Remedies to Each Threat

Trump, the man, will pass from the scene one day. But will Trumpism also fade away? Whether the MAGA movement speeds up, slows down, or changes direction, most of the vulnerabilities we have identified will continue to threaten the vitality of the American Democratic Republic. It’s not too early to consider possible remedies to these vulnerabilities. So, in the next phase of this project, we will add a brief discussion of remedies required to ameliorate each category of threat immediately after the description of each category.

Threats to the Electoral Facet, Legal [Grid Cell 1a]

The Electoral facet includes such issues as free and fair elections and opportunities for citizens to vote and participate in civic affairs. In the Legal category the focus is on those factors that are rooted in the legal system—the Constitution, the decisions of the courts, and laws passed by legislatures.

Constitutional Flaws [Item #1] and [Item #2]

The main inhibitors of free and fair elections are two flaws in the US Constitution. The first is in Article I, which grants to states the power to make the rules for elections. Article I, Section 4 only says “The Times, Places, and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations…” Of course, at the time of the ratification of the Constitution there were no elections held for any national office. The only national office named was the President, and Article 2 specifies that the President be elected by the Electoral College—and the electors were chosen at the state level.

The second flaw is something absent from the Constitution: that voting is not stipulated as a right and is thus susceptible to infringement by the states. By its silence on the subject, the Constitution leaves open the question of who has what rights regarding voting.

The 14th Amendment ratified in 1868, primarily guarantees citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S., including formerly enslaved people, and prohibits states from abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens. The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibits the denial or abridgement of the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Neither amendment guarantees the right to vote itself or addresses other forms of limiting voting rights.

As noted above, Article 1 states that “Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations…” and the most significant of such alterations is the Voting Rights Act. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement on August 6, 1965. It aimed to combat racial discrimination in voting and protect the rights of racial minorities. It outlawed literacy tests and other discriminatory practices and empowered the federal government to oversee voter registration in areas with a history of voter suppression. The Act also included in Section 4(b) a requirement for Federal preclearance of voting changes in covered jurisdictions. While the Voting Rights Act remained in effect, more minority voters registered and voted; consequently, minority representation increased at the local, state, and national levels. However, since then the efficacy of the Voting Rights Act has been consistently reduced by Congressional and Supreme court actions.

For example, several key provisions of the Voting Rights Act expired in 2007 due to Congressional failure to renew various requirements: a) which jurisdictions fall under the force of the Act, b) requiring that ballots be printed in the languages spoken in the covered jurisdictions, and c) the assignment of federal monitors to ensure compliance. In 2013, Section 5, which required certain jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to obtain federal approval before changing their voting laws, expired. Also in 2013, the Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder, the conservative majority ruled that Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional because the coverage formula was based on data over 40 years old, making it no longer responsive to current needs and therefore an impermissible burden on the constitutional principles of federalism and equal sovereignty of the states. Because there is no other federal oversight over elections, and no federal election agency, the states were free once more to go their own way in deciding who may vote and under what conditions, making the US the only democratic country that allows partisan control of voting [2].

Indeed, over the several years, a number of states with conservative majorities (Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming) have pushed through extreme measures to suppress the votes of citizens who are not part of their voting bloc. Among the voter suppression restrictions imposed by such states in recent years are:

requiring state-issued IDs and/or requiring onerous citizenship tests (not required in the US constitution)
limiting absentee and mail-in voting
reducing the days of early voting
purging voter lists, making maintaining one’s registration difficult
allowing intrusive poll-watching
harassing and prosecuting individuals who may have voted in error, to instill fear of committing a voting “crime,” thereby reducing participation by marginalized groups
imposing hardships on voters by shortage of printed ballots, reduced number of voting venues, prohibiting support of voters waiting in line, etc.

Voter suppression methods such as these can be consequential for the outcome of elections. For example, in 2000, George W. Bush won the presidency by just 537 votes in Florida, after the state’s Republican secretary of state purged tens of thousands of Black voters’ names because they were purportedly felons, ineligible to vote; investigations showed that none of the names purged were indeed ineligible.

The end result of allowing unrestricted state control of voting rules is unequal voting privileges to the detriment of Blacks, women, the poor, the elderly, and the disabled.

Gerrymandering [Item #3]

Another major source of unfairness in the electoral process is the partisan manipulation of boundaries of electoral districts for unfair political advantage—gerrymandering. This label combines the name of Elbridge Gerry and the shape of a salamander. Gerry was governor of Massachusetts in 1812 when the state’s electoral map was redrawn to benefit his party, creating contorted districts, a couple of which resembled salamanders. The “gerrymander” label was meant to lampoon this naked abuse of authority.

The legality of gerrymandering has been the subject of numerous Supreme Court decisions ever since the days of Elbridge Gerry, none of which laid out clear standards for “fairness” in drawing boundaries. Most recently, in 2019, the Supreme Court, in Rucho v. Common Cause, disabled any further constitutional challenges to district maps on the basis that no objective test of “fairness” is possible. Since then, naked and aggressive partisanship has led to grossly unfair advantages to the party in power when maps are drawn.

In 2025, Republicans anticipated losing control of the House of Representatives in the 2026 mid-term elections. This prompted key states, including Texas, North Carolina, and Missouri to engage in aggressive mid-decade redistricting. Ohio and Indiana also faced severe pressure from President Trump to do likewise. Some Democratic-controlled legislatures reciprocated. By March 2026, six states had completed drawing new district maps, and nine others were attempting to do so.

A major purpose of gerrymandering is to create “safe districts,” which turns out to have the side effect of encouraging voter apathy (“my vote doesn’t count because of the composition of my district”), contributing to low turnout. “Safe districts” also tend to favor more extreme candidates, those that appeal to the party’s “base,” people with strong commitments who also are more likely to show up on primary election day.

The end results of gerrymandering are: voter apathy, hence lower turnout rates; selection of more extreme candidates; and greatly unfair (unrepresentative) advantage to the party that is in control of district map drawing.

Partisan Manipulation of Election Procedures…State Level [Item #4]

In addition to the limitations on voting rights discussed in Items 1, 2, and 3 above, there are also partisan attempts to seize control of the election machinery at the state level. Historically, most states have taken care that chief election officers and election boards be kept as non-partisan as possible, for example, requiring that election board membership represent a balance between major parties. However, sixteen states currently allow partisan control of election boards.

The trend, since 2020, has been for Republican state legislatures to seek to alter election procedures in the name of “election integrity.” North Carolina provides the most recent example:

“For nearly a century, North Carolina’s governor has had the exclusive power to appoint a majority of the state board of elections from the governor’s own party and to appoint a majority of members of county election boards. As 2024 ended, the lame-duck legislature — over gubernatorial veto — transferred that appointment power from the governor, currently a Democrat, to the state auditor, currently a Republican.” (Lam 2025).

The North Carolina example is just one of five different types of interventions that are most popular:

Seek to exert control over election results; that is, giving the legislature or a state official direct control over election outcomes.
Require unorthodox audits or reviews of election results; that is, post-election review schemes outside the professional standards, with the aim of overturning or placing results into doubt.
Shift control of election procedures away from non-partisan officials toward partisans in the legislature.
Create burdensome procedures aimed at increasing confusion and delay, enabling claims of “irregularities.”
Create or expand penalties for election officials in the ordinary execution of their jobs, including criminalizing inadvertent mistakes.

Between 2021 and 2023, Republican-controlled state legislatures had introduced 600 of such bills, and 62 had become law in 28 states (Protect Democracy 2023).

Items 1-2