Monthly Update: 10/13/2025

Over the past month, following Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the MAGA movement has become increasingly explicit about its desire to eliminate political opposition. They describe larger and larger swaths of political opponents, including “democrats” and the hundreds of thousands or millions of people expected to participate in the upcoming No Kings protests, as “domestic terrorists” who "hate America.” Criminal prosecutions have begun against individuals on the president’s personal enemies list. The administration has used drone strikes to execute alleged drug traffickers in international waters without legal process. In Chicago, under the pretense of deporting disfavored migrants, federal agents conducted a military-style raid on an apartment complex, shot a woman apparently engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience, and killed a man attempting to flee arrest. The president and senior officials are publicly discussing the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act, which, for practical purposes, means declaring martial law.

These developments are grave. Nevertheless, the Threat Index remains unchanged. The current conditions are consistent with the stage the Index already describes: an authoritarian movement has captured the instruments of power but has not yet overcome the institutions and individuals that continue to resist it.

This tension defines the present moment. The administration is acting in ways that increasingly disregard democratic norms and legal authority, but not yet on a scale that would signify the end of democracy in the United States. Officials who refuse unlawful orders are removed, but often only after internal conflict and public protest. Laws are strained but not discarded. The Constitution is violated but not repudiated. The nation exists in a gray zone between constitutional democracy and consolidated authoritarianism, where both forces remain active at the same time.

For now, this balance keeps the Index steady. The authoritarian project continues to advance, but it advances within a system and a population that still impose limits. That means there is danger of both sudden collapse but also the gradual erosion of resistance, as the abnormal becomes accepted as normal. Should that occur, it may be difficult to detect precisely when the Index’s measures shift upward. But at present, we are confident that point has not been reached.

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Postscript: We were happy to discover the Index’s framework was recently included in Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal’s resistance lab. Readers are welcome to use and share the material published here. Please let us know if you do. It helps us understand how the Index is being used and how we can make it more useful. For questions or collaboration, write to us at threatindex@pjlawcenter.org.