THIS IS MORE THAN AUTOCRACY: WHAT CAN WE DO? GET UP, GET INVOLVED, KNOW THAT YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

The danger extends beyond Washington. The immediate challenge is protecting the machinery of the 2026 election—and giving citizens somewhere to turn.

Americans who fear interference with the 2026 election should not sit helplessly on the sidelines. Organizations are already building election-protection networks; what is missing is a broadly understood connection between those efforts and the millions of citizens looking for a constructive way to help.

Don’t fool yourselves into thinking that a creeping autocracy can be managed or contained by a Democratic House of Representatives or even a Senate with a very small majority of a few seats. The American people are subjected to an unrelenting seizure of the government at the hands of Donald Trump, his vice president, JD Vance, and several of his key cabinet secretaries: Justice’s Blanche, Treasury’s Bessent, Defense’s Hegseth, Commerce’s Lutnick, DHS’ Mullins and the fellow who seems to always ‘go along,’ State’s Rubio. Others who are helping in the compromise of our rights, including the leaders of Health and Human Services (Kennedy), the Environmental Protection Agency (Zeldin), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (which is a part of DHS) (Hamilton) are routinely destroying essential protective mechanisms upon which the American people depend. We are not likely to have large enough majorities between now and the 2028 elections to impeach Trump, so we will be in for more hostile assaults aimed at dissolving our democracy and the rights that we enjoyed until Trump came along.

This is not just growing autocracy, as so many call it, a description that is far too polite and which includes none of the emotional sting that we should be feeling. We are losing democracy here: two years of back-to-back Democratic led committee investigations of Trump’s corruption (another polite phrase that conceals the harsh reality of his toxicity) will not produce the relief we want, nor will it be more than an irritation or inconvenience to Trump. What we need to do for our democracy to survive is to get him out and under a new administration consider carefully, following the rule of law, who among the cronies who betrayed their duty should be investigated once they are private citizens.

Meanwhile, we must all keep in mind that there is not a single word or statement from the Trump administration that can be accepted at face value; literally every pronouncement is either a lie or an unrecognizable and twisted version of the truth.

The for Now part: The threat posed by Trump’s goals is medium-term, and runs through 2028, and perhaps beyond. The more immediate threat we need to protect against is the danger Trump poses to the 2026 election process; we must guarantee that the 2026 election process is not tampered with. There are a number of civil organizations, such as Common Cause and the ACLU, working on a nationwide effort to protect the vote. They have organized offices in 50 states to prepare resistance to the possibility of federal interventions at the polls across the country. So far, these activities are underway and incomplete. On the positive side, they demonstrate an awareness that public participation is a valid option to sustain the independence of the vote and that people are prepared to act. The number of such gatherings is also increasing as we approach November. The downside is that, because elections are run by each state, there is not one large, cohesive national election-protection operation calling for and engineering mass demonstrations at polling places.

To put the challenge another way: there are millions of Americans worried about government intervention in our elections, who are seeking ways to prepare for it, but who do not know how to do so. Admittedly, this is complicated by our unwritten, hands-off history regarding our polling places, so any gatherings to guarantee the sanctity of the vote must take place far enough away from the polling places to avoid conflicting with law enforcement. This further complicates any way of designing, announcing, recruiting, and systematizing a powerful public presence to deter Trump’s possible federal interference.

All of this leaves worried, frustrated Americans still in need of an answer to the question of how to help; there are tens of thousands of people across the width and breadth of the United States yearning for that answer, so we can build our strength, reenergize our purpose, and use the remaining time to construct a new and broad coalition, instead of crying into our pillows. By definition and by the way our elections work, all of our efforts will be fragmented across state lines, but there are groups – the ACLU, Common Cause, No Kings, and many others – working to provide strategies to blunt Trump’s anti-democratic goals and actions in each state and across the country. It may not feel like enough, and it may feel scattered, but it can work. This has to be a state-by-state effort. So, contact any of the organizations listed above (or any others) and get involved in your state. Do what you can in your state. With whatever tools you have in your state. If we can blunt the Trump efforts in each state, we can stop him across the country.

William R. Piekney served as a U.S. Naval officer for four years and served in the CIA for 30 years in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He was under deep cover early in his career and later was station chief numerous times, including Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. As a member of the Senior Executive Service, he directed the Agency’s African operations and then East Asia operations, traveling extensively to those regions to maintain and develop relations with host intelligence and security services. Overall, he has spent nearly fifty years in the U.S. Intelligence Community and in related national security affairs. He is a member of The Steady State.