Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension — the direct result of an FCC threat to pull the licenses of networks that aired him — has shown us how authoritarianism can come to America.

I mean this literally. The specific threats that Federal Communications Commission head Brendan Carr made against networks, involving a little-used doctrine called “news distortion,” show how easy it is to weaponize vaguely worded statutes and the executive’s discretionary powers against the president’s enemies. Such tools can also be used to reward friends — to provide regulatory favors, like merger approvals and exemptions from tariffs — who toe a politically correct line.

This is how authoritarianism has taken root in other democracies, most notably Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. And from the get-go, President Donald Trump’s second term had been moving the United States down this road. But for much of the time his efforts appeared too haphazard and poorly planned to produce a consolidated authoritarian regime — meaning one that could durably compromise the basic ability of its opponents to contest elections under reasonably fair conditions.

But in the past few weeks, a series of developments — most notably, but not exclusively, the authoritarian energies unleashed after Charlie Kirk’s death — have revealed a disturbingly credible policy pathway to power consolidation. We can now see how American Orbánism could take full root before the 2028 elections. We now know what a Trump-led authoritarian state in America would look like — and how we would get there from here.

Such a future would unfold in roughly four parts.

First, using hiring and firing powers to purge career civil servants from key agencies, like the Justice Department, and erode the traditional barriers preventing undue political influence on law enforcement and regulatory decisions. We saw this in the DOGE cuts, in the appointment of political hacks like Carr and Pam Bondi to top positions, and (most recently) Trump’s move to fire a federal prosecutor who refused to file politically motivated charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Second, using the power of these newly Trumpified agencies to target dissent in civil society — a broadening of the assaults on Ivy League universities. This would include following through on threats to use racketeering charges against liberal NGOs and going after other prominent critics the way they went after Kimmel.

Third, bullying and bribing large corporations until significant economic power is concentrated in the hands of regime allies dependent on the president’s goodwill for their survival. To a degree, this is already happening — see Trump’s habits of granted tariff exemptions to connected companies or using the threat of antitrust enforcement to bend CBS to its will. In an authoritarian America, such politicization would be expanded and deepened to the point where any corporation that crossed the White House would expect to pay a crippling financial cost.

Fourth, turn this accumulated power against the political opposition — turning elections into facially free contests where, in fact, Democrats face enormously unfair hurdles (and would likely be unable to govern even if they managed to succeed). This began with a nationwide push for mid-cycle redistricting, but would require further steps (like turning the Justice Department investigation into the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue into actual criminal charges).

At this point in the Trump administration, only the first has been accomplished to any significant degree. The efforts in other areas have been of limited effectiveness, stymied both by the courts and the Trump team’s incompetence.

But recently, and especially in the immediate wake of Kirk’s death, the administration has taken startling new swings in........

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