It may be familiarswerte gaming, but this refrain bears repeating: American democracy and governance now face an extended period of maximum danger. Donald Trump has refused to pledge a peaceful transition of power were he to lose the election and has signaled his intention to govern as a vindictive hyperpartisan were he to win, describing Democrats as “the enemy from within” and “radical left lunatics” on whom he could unleash the National Guard.

A Trump victory could produce considerable civil mayhem, in part because of Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court’s decision granting Mr. Trump broad immunity for official presidential acts.

Equipped with that decision, he has telegraphed his determination to govern by fiat and persecute his perceived enemies. The United States, now a tense democracy, could lurch from being an illiberal republic to a dictatorship by any other name.

In a second term, Mr. Trump would be subject to few, if any, of the bureaucratic constraints that barely contained the authoritarian impulses that he displayed during his first term and few of the judicial, political or legislative ones. How he would re-engineer the federal government’s security apparatus to visit or facilitate reprisals has become plain. Mr. Trump has vowed to eviscerate the professional, nonpartisan civil service and staff the government with loyalists. His campaign’s Agenda47 echoes the concept, and Project 2025, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, provides the blueprint.

One telling indication of his intent to steamroller normal personnel procedures is a recently reported internal proposal to expedite security clearances for political appointees through private security firms, bypassing the F.B.I.’s customarily probing background checks. A radical reorientation of federal governance along those lines could leave its law-enforcement and counterterrorism apparatus — already hobbled by some conservatives’ reluctance to impugn right-wing extremists — in the hands of zealous partisans.

In his first term, Mr. Trump showcased his eagerness to use presidential power coercively. His response to the protests following the killing of George Floyd in 2020 provides an illustrative example. When Pentagon officials balked at his preferred resort to the military (which is excluded from domestic law enforcement under the Posse Comitatus Act except when authorized by law), he turned to a narrow statute empowering the Department of Homeland Security to protect federal property and employees, and repurposed it as authorization to muster a militia for repelling protesters from federal agencies. Homeland Security dispatched hundreds of personnel ordinarily assigned far different duties to suppress protests in predominantly Democratic cities, some in unmarked vehicles wearing combat fatigues and not clearly identifiable as federal law-enforcement officers, many untutored in riot control or handling mass demonstrations and a few failing to follow constitutionally required arrest and detention procedures.

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