U.S. President Donald Trump gestures after speaking during a meeting of senior military leaders convened by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Quantico, Virginia, U.S., September 30, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

The Steady State, a network of nearly 350 former U.S. Intelligence Community officials, says its members have applied the tools of their professions to determine that the United States is headed toward authoritarian rule. Calling its overall findings “sobering,” the group points to President Donald Trump’s executive branch overreach as the “primary” cause, and warns that, without organized resistance, that rule could become permanent.

In the executive summary of their newly-published, 29-page report, “Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline,” The Steady State “concludes—with moderate to high confidence—that the cumulative effect of multiple reinforcing dynamics is placing the nation on a trajectory toward competitive authoritarianism,” which they define as “a system in which elections, courts, and other democratic institutions persist in form but are systematically manipulated to entrench executive control.”

They warn of five trends, including “Executive overreach,” which is “being consolidated through governance by decree and weaponization of the state.”

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Also, “Erosion of judicial independence” that has “advanced not only through partisan appointments, but through strategic reliance on the Supreme Court’s ‘shadow docket;'” “Legislative weakness and abdication” that have “diminished Congress’s capacity to serve as a coequal branch;” and a re-shaping of the electoral system.

Finally, they add that “the undermining of public trust, knowledge, and civil society through attacks on the press, academia, watchdog institutions, and dissenting voices has weakened democratic culture and civic resilience.”

In a scathing rebuke, they write that “the primary driver of the U.S.’s increasing authoritarianism is the increased frequency of Executive Branch overreach. President Donald J. Trump has leveraged emergency powers, executive orders, federalized military forces, and bureaucratic politicization to consolidate control and weaken checks and balances.”

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Without “organized resistance by institutions, civil society, and the public,” the group warns, “the United States is likely to continue along a path of accelerating democratic erosion, risking further consolidation of executive dominance and a loss of credibility as a model of democracy abroad.”

The Steady State says its members include former officers of the CIA, NSA, DIA, State Department, and other national-security agencies.

They said they wrote the report “because the same tools we once used to assess foreign risks now show unmistakable warning signs at home.”

In a video announcing their report, the group’s executive director Steven Cash said that “America is facing an existential threat of growing autocracy here in the United States.”

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