In 2024, the Democrats ran on the catchphrase “We are not going back.” Even after the party’s resounding defeat, the refrain may have been more prophetic than they imagined. New research shows that once a country begins a descent into authoritarianism it’s extremely difficult to reverse. And the first vector of attack is often the free press.
The findings come from the “Democracy Report 2025,” just out from the V-Dem Institute, a global democracy research project run out of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden whose dataset is considered the gold standard. For the first time in more than 20 years, by the study’s estimate, the world now has more autocracies (91) than democracies (88), with liberal democracies (29) now the least common regime type. Twenty-seven countries have transitioned from democracies to autocracies since 2005. “If autocratization starts in a democracy, the probability of surviving is very low,” the authors note. “The favorite weapon of autocratizers is media censorship.”
As for the United States, V-Dem researchers recorded a precipitous decline in the democracy index during the first term of Donald Trump and a partial recovery under President Joe Biden. In the first few months of Trump 2.0, the backsliding is accelerating rapidly. “The enabling silence among critics fearful of retribution is already prevalent,” the report notes.
While V-Dem still classifies the US as a liberal democracy, two leading democracy scholars, Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, believe America is on the cusp of a transition to an authoritarian system. “Authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order,” they write in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs. “What lies ahead is not a fascist or single-party dictatorship, but competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition.”
V-Dem’s research indicates that a free press is a key bulwark against authoritarian consolidation and suggests the possible stakes in the battle over US press freedom. The media assault has already been well-documented. Anticipatory obedience is rife—from The Washington Post, which has gutted its opinion section, to ABC News, which chose to settle a libel suit filed by Trump rather than fight it. The Associated Press remains locked out of the White House press pool because it refuses to adopt the Trumpian denomination for the Gulf of Mexico. Pro-Trump influencers are displacing traditional media from the White House to the Pentagon. And Trump’s lawsuits are grinding ahead. In an action against CBS News, Trump has objected to the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris; CBS News refutes the charge. Trump claims The Des Moines Register committed fraud when it published a preelection poll showing Harris in the lead (though it is hard to argue for damages since Trump won Iowa—and the election); the Register and its parent company, Gannett, have described Trump’s case against them as meritless. The president has also gone after the Pulitzer Prize Board, saying it libeled him—libeled him?—when it defended its decision to honor The New York Times and Washington Post for reporting on Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US elections.
Another media assault has been less visible but more immediately consequential in terms of the consolidation of autocratic power: the takedown of Voice of America. The authors of Project 2025’s nearly 900-page “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” offered Trump very specific guidance on what he should do with VOA and the other US media outlets funded by US taxpayers. The president, the report advised, should reform the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the agency that oversees those outlets, curtail its independence, trim its costs, and bring it under the direct control of the executive branch in order to “tell America’s story and promote freedom and democracy around the world.” In December, Trump announced that one of his staunch acolytes, election denier Kari Lake, was his choice to serve as director of VOA.
Journalists I spoke to at VOA assumed that Lake, who had a long career as a TV reporter before launching unsuccessful campaigns for Arizona governor and senator, would try to turn Voice of America into the Voice of Trump, despite her claims to the contrary. They were alarmed because VOA’s mission as established in 1942 is to promote American soft power by showcasing the value of independent journalism, often in places where a free press does not exist. But they were not prepared for what happened next.
While Lake’s official appointment as VOA director awaited the Senate confirmation of the next CEO of the USAGM, in early February, Elon Musk called for the broadcaster to be shut down altogether. Weeks later, Lake was named special adviser to the USAGM and sworn in on March 3. Soon thereafter, she reportedly showed up at VOA headquarters with several DOGE staffers in tow. On March 15, following an executive order from the president seeking to dismantle the USAGM, virtually the entire VOA staff, more than 1,300 people, were put on administrative leave, and full-time contractors had their contracts terminated. The legality of the whole undertaking is being challenged in a lawsuit filed March 21 that names Lake as a defendant.
