Step 1: Win an election—often the last truly democratic one. Step 2: Expand executive power beyond legal bounds. Step 3: Co-opt Congress and neutralize the judiciary. Step 4: Fire competent civil servants, weakening the state. Step 5: Replace officials with loyalists to weaponize government agencies. Step 6: Discredit the media and replace it with propaganda. Step 7: Blame vulnerable groups—DEI efforts, the poor, minorities—for national woes. Step 8: Dismantle support systems, suing pro bono firms and attacking higher education. Step 9: Encourage state-sanctioned or private violence to stifle dissent. Step 10: Cancel future elections through fear, poverty, and complicity. Stacey Abrams

"Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do." - Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twenieth Century

"When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come." - Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twenieth Century

"The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents. So support the multiple-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections. Vote in local and state elections while you can. Consider running for office." - Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twenieth Century

"Be alert to use of the words "extremism" and "terrorism." Be alive to the fatal notions of "emergency" and "exception." Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary." - Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twenieth Century

"Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it." - Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twenieth Century