Ten years ago, this story would have sounded absurd.

Even during Trump’s first term, it would have felt extreme.

A sitting president attempting to indict six members of the opposition party — not for corruption, not for violence — but for speech.

Free speech.

The reason you haven’t heard more about it?

He failed.

Grand juries balked. Judges pushed back. Some cases collapsed before they ever gained traction.

That’s the green on the chart.

But failure is not exoneration.

It just means the effort was so aggressive — so constitutionally strained — that parts of the system still held.

What connects the names on that screen isn’t geography. Not race. Not ideology.

It’s this:

They crossed Donald Trump.

A former cabinet member.
A Federal Reserve chair.
Journalists.
A congressional candidate most Americans couldn’t pick out of a lineup.

Different backgrounds. Same pattern.

Opposition equals investigation.

Opposition equals pressure.

Opposition equals potential indictment.

And this isn’t unfolding in isolation.

There’s the raid of a Georgia election office — under the shadow of relitigating 2020, an election Trump lost and left office over. Joe Biden served four years. That is not in dispute.

Yet armed agents re-enter that space, raising the question: Is this about evidence? Or about precedent?

There’s the militarized presence on American streets — framed as deportation enforcement — while critics note the absence of similar surges in states with large undocumented populations like Florida or Texas.

There’s the use of the IRS.

The Justice Department.

Administrative levers that, in the wrong hands, become pressure tools.

Critics argue this is not improvisation.

It’s a playbook.

And if you’ve studied other countries, you recognize it.

Which brings us to novelist Gary Shteyngart — born in the Soviet Union, longtime critic of Vladimir Putin — who says the pattern is familiar.

Authoritarian playbooks are not infinite, he notes. There are only so many moves.

And they repeat.

Paramilitary forces operating in cities under broad mandates.
Legal systems bent toward intimidation rather than justice.
Public figures targeted not necessarily to convict — but to chill.

Putin took more than a decade to consolidate control over Russia.

Shteyngart argues Trump is moving faster.

ICE, he says, resembles the Russian National Guard — a force ostensibly tasked with public safety, but functionally loyal to one man.

In Russia, dissent can end with imprisonment — or worse.

In America, we are not there.

But, he warns, the direction matters.

Look at the target list.

Jerome Powell — elite banker.
Don Lemon — media personality.
A local House candidate.
Former officials.

What do they share?

They are reminders.

Reminders that no one is too established to be named.
No one too credentialed to be investigated.
No one too obscure to be made an example.

That is how intimidation works.

Not always through conviction.

Through uncertainty.

Through self-censorship.

Through the quiet thought: “Maybe I should stay out of this.”

History shows elites often comply early. Universities. Law firms. Corporations.

Privileges are easier to protect than principles.

It’s not new.

It happened in Berlin in the 1930s.
It happened in Moscow.
It happened in Ankara.

And yes — some authoritarians present themselves as clowns. Mussolini performed theatrics. Others cultivated spectacle.

The show distracts.

The machinery moves quietly underneath.

And here’s the hard truth historians acknowledge:

Intimidation works in the short run.

People retreat.
Institutions hedge.
Critics hesitate.

In the long run, systems either harden — or break.

The question now isn’t whether America is a dictatorship.

It isn’t.

The question is whether democratic guardrails remain strong enough — and whether enough people are willing to stand in front of them.

Because once intimidation becomes normalized, it no longer feels shocking.

It just feels political.

And that’s when the real shift begins.