By Robert P. Jones, White Too Long
“Autocratization in the USA.”
That’s the title of the section describing America in the new 10th annual Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) report that was just released this month.
In my forthcoming book, Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation after the Christian Turn Against Democracy, I wrestle with these challenging questions: Where are we exactly as a nation? And what is our responsibility in such a time?
Even with the daily headlines documenting the diminishment of our nation as a pluralistic democracy, I still have conversations with well-informed people who continue to doubt—to hope against hope—that things are really not as bad as they seem, that the guardrails will hold, that the pendulum will magically swing back. The new V-Dem report provides an evidence-based reality check that should banish any remaining naiveté that the U.S. can any longer be considered a functioning pluralistic democracy.
Here’s a selection of the devastating findings from the report’s executive summary—any one of which in normal times would set off alarm bells:
- Under Trump’s presidency, the level of democracy in the USA has fallen back to the same level as in 1965.
- Yet the situation is fundamentally different than during the Civil Rights era. In 2025, the derailment of democracy is marked by executive overreach undermining the rule of law, along with far reaching suppression and intimidation of media and dissenting voices.
- The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history.
- Legislative Constraints – the worst affected aspect of democracy – is losing one-third of its value in 2025 and reaching its lowest point in over 100 years.
- Civil Rights and Equality before the Law are also rapidly declining, falling to late 1960s levels.
- Freedom of Expression is now at its lowest level since the end of WWII.
The figure below shows the departure of the U.S. on the Liberal Democracy Index (LDI) from the path of other countries in North America and western Europe. It also shows how dramatically U.S. democracy has declined in just one year under the Trump regime: from 0.79 in 2023 to 0.57 in 2025. The V-Dem report concludes: “With such a sharp drop on the LDI, the level of democracy at the end of 2025 is back to the 1965 level. Symbolically, that is the year that most analysts consider the USA began its transition to a real democracy. Democracy in the USA is now at its worst in 60 years.”
If we’re collectively experiencing vertigo amid the authoritarian whirlwind, that’s normal.
- The 2025 plunge is the largest one-year drop in the LDI score in American history—going back to 1789 when the Constitution was ratified and became effective.
This drop is directly attributable to the takeover of the Republican Party by the white Christian nationalist MAGA movement under Donald Trump. In PRRI surveys, we have consistently found a strong positive correlation between support for Christian nationalism and support for right-wing authoritarianism. Nearly 8 in 10 Christian Nationalism Adherents score high or very high on the Right-Wing Authoritarian scale, compared to only 1 in 10 Christian Nationalism Rejecters. (See PRRI’s full report here for methodology and detailed findings).
- The V-Dem report also notes this remarkable finding that puts the U.S. democratic backsliding into international context: “The dramatic decline under Donald Trump took Hungary’s Viktor Orbán over four years, Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić eight years, and both India’s Narendra Modi and Türkiye’s Rečep Tayyip Erdoğan about a decade.”
These results are daunting: We’ve never seen such rapid democratic backsliding in either American history or the modern world.
The V-Dem report does illuminate a narrow lane of hope. It notes that worldwide 70% of the recent autocratizations in the world have been reversed. But it also stresses that we likely only have a small window in which to act. The report concludes:
Research shows that there is no unique recipe for making a U-turn but a combination of three key factors seem to be important: (i) strong institutional safeguards acting as the “brakes” of autocratization: electoral integrity, judiciary constraints, and legislative constrains; (ii) robust societal action serving as the “engine” of democratic revival: unified opposition, robust and active civil society, independent media, and sustained non-violent mass pro-democracy protests; and (iii) acting early since most U-turns happen around the end of the first electoral cycle.
Among the institutional safeguards, the courts and the legislative branch have largely abondoned their safeguarding roles. That leaves only electoral integrity. For us, the work of protecting the midterm elections over the next seven months against overt subversion by the Trump administration will be critical. I’m encouraging everyone to volunteer to be a poll worker or observer and to support organizations such as the Carter Center or the Brennan Center who are on the front lines protecting our elections.
Ordinary citizens have more direct influence in creating “robust societal action” that can fuel democratic resilience. In these days, we need to support independent media (including independent writers on platforms like Substack) and protests such as the “No Kings” rallies that will take place this weekend on March 28. Thanks to all of you who are organizing through churches, synagogues, mosques, and other organizations to bring religious voices to the work of protecting democracy.
Finally, the V-Dem report notes the urgency of the moment. If we aren’t able to apply the brakes to America’s democratic backsliding this year, it will be much harder to turn the country around in the future.
This sense of lament, urgency, and hope is at the heart of my new book, Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation after the Christian Turn Against Democracy. In the conclusion of the book, I write, “We must shoulder the terrifying realization that it is we who will determine which Christianity, and which America, becomes a reality in this world.” What we do with the remainder of 2026 will be decisive for our future.
Robert P. Jones, Ph.D.
President and Founder, Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI)
Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation after the Christian Turn Against Democracy (forthcoming 09/08/2026 from St. Martin’s Press)
The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future, a New York Times bestseller
White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, winner of a 2021 American Book Award
The End of White Christian America, winner of the 2019 Grawemeyer Award in Religion
Writing weekly at RedeemingDemocracy.net
