These familiar steps show how Trump is walking us into autocracy

By Konstantin Zhukov, Assistant Professor of Economics, Indiana University; Institute for Humane Studies.

The FBI search of a Washington Post reporter’s home on Jan. 14, 2026, was a rare and intimidating move by an administration focused on repressing criticismand dissent.

In his story about the search at Hannah Natanson’s home, at which FBI agents said they were searching for materials related to a federal government contractor, Post reporter Perry Stein wrote that “it is highly unusual and aggressive for law enforcement to conduct a search on a reporter’s home.”

And Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told the New York Times the raid was “intensely concerning,” and could have a chilling effect “on legitimate journalistic activity.”

Free speech and independent media play a vital role in holding governments accountable by informing the public about government wrongdoing.

This is precisely why autocrats like Russia’s Vladimir Putin have worked to silence independent media, eliminating checks on their power and extending their rule. In Russia, for example, public ignorance about Putin’s responsibility for military failures in the war on Ukraine has allowed state propaganda to shift blame to senior military officials instead.

While the United States remains institutionally far removed from countries like Russia, the Trump administration has taken troubling early steps toward autocracy by threatening — and in some cases implementing — restrictions on free speech and independent media.

Public ignorance, free speech and independent media

Ignorance about what public officials do exists in every political system.

In democracies, citizens often remain uninformed because learning about politics takes time and effort, while one vote rarely changes an election. American economist Anthony Downs called this “rational ignorance,” and it is made worse by complex laws and bureaucracy that few people fully understand.

As a result, voters often lack the information needed to monitor politicians or hold them accountable, giving officials more room to act in their own interest.

Free speech and independent media are essential for breaking this cycle. They allow citizens, journalists and opposition leaders to expose corruption and criticize those in power.

Open debate helps people share grievances and organize collective action, from protests to campaigns.

Independent media also act as watchdogs, investigating wrongdoing and raising the political cost of abuse – making it harder for leaders to get away with corruption or incompetence.

Public ignorance in autocracies

Autocrats strengthen their grip on power by undermining the institutions meant to keep them in check.

When free speech and independent journalism disappear, citizens are less likely to learn about government corruption or failures. Ignorance becomes the regime’s ally — it keeps people isolated and uninformed. By censoring information, autocrats create an information vacuum that prevents citizens from making informed choices or organizing protests.

This lack of reliable information also allows autocrats to spread propaganda and shape public opinion on major political and social issues.

Most modern autocrats have worked to silence free speech and crush independent media. When Putin came to power, he gradually shut down independent TV networks and censored opposition outlets. Journalists who exposed government corruption or brutality were harassed, prosecuted or even killed. New laws restricted protests and public criticism, while “foreign agent” rules made it nearly impossible for the few remaining independent media to operate.

At the same time, the Kremlin built a vast propaganda machine to shape public opinion. This control over information helped protect the regime during crises. As I noted in a recent article, many Russians were unaware of Putin’s responsibility for military failures in 2022. State media used propaganda to shift blame to the military leadership — preserving Putin’s popularity even as the war faltered.

Threat to independent media in the US

While the United States remains far from an autocracy, the Trump administration has taken steps that echo the behavior of authoritarian regimes.

Consider the use of lawsuits to intimidate journalists. In Singapore, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, routinely used civil defamation suits to silence reporters who exposed government repression or corruption. These tactics discouraged criticism and encouraged self-censorship.

President Donald Trump has taken a similar approach, seeking US$15 billion from the New York Times for publication of several allegedly “malicious” articles, and $10 billion from the Wall Street Journal. The latter suit concerns a story about a letter Trump reportedly signed in Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book.

A court dismissed the lawsuit against the Times; that’s likely to happen with the Journal suit as well. But such lawsuits could deter reporting on government misconduct, reporting on the actions and statements of Trump’s political opponents, and the kind of criticism of an administration inherent in opinion journalism such as columns and editorials.

This problem is compounded by the fact that after ABC's Jimmy Kimmel was suspended following a threat from the Trump-aligned chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the president suggested revoking the broadcast licenses of networks that air negative commentary about him.

Although Kimmel was later reinstated, the episode revealed how the administration could use the autocratic technique of bureaucratic pressure to suppress speech it disagreed with. Combined with efforts to prosecute the president’s perceived enemies through the Justice Department, such actions inevitably encourage media self-censorship and deepen public ignorance.

Threat to free speech

Autocrats often invoke “national security” to pass laws restricting free speech. Russia’s “foreign agents” law, passed in 2012, forced nongovernmental organizations with foreign funding to label themselves as such, becoming a tool for silencing dissenting advocacy groups. Its 2022 revision broadened the definition, letting the Kremlin target anyone who criticized the government.

Similar laws have appeared in Hungary, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. Russia also uses vague “terrorist” and “extremist” designations to punish those who protest and dissent, all under the guise of “national security.”

After Charlie Kirk’s murder, the Trump administration took steps threatening free speech. It used the pretext of the “violence-inciting radical left” to call for a crackdown on what it designated as “hate speech,” threaten liberal groups, and designate antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.

The latter move is especially troubling, pushing the United States closer to the behavior characteristic of autocratic governments. The vagueness of the designation threatens to suppress free expression and opposition to the Trump administration.

Antifa is not an organization but a “decentralized collection of individual activists,” as scholar Stanislav Vysotsky describes it. The scope of those falling under the antifa label is widened by its identification with broad ideas, described in a national security memorandum issued by the Trump administration in the fall of 2025, like anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity. This gives the government leeway to prosecute an unprecedented number of individuals for their speech.

As scholar Melinda Haas writes, the memorandum “pushes the limits of presidential authority by targeting individuals and groups as potential domestic terrorists based on their beliefs rather than their actions.”