Stacey Abrams claimed that America is on the verge of authoritarianism in an event on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus on Tuesday. Abrams, the two-time failed Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee, spoke during the second night of the Cap Times Idea Fest at Memorial Union.
Abrams listed what she viewed as the ten steps necessary for an authoritarian takeover. She then claimed that the Trump administration qualifies as authoritarian.
She said authoritarianism begins with a free election, but the authoritarian intends it to be the last one. There is then an expansion of executive power, a weakening of competing powers (such as Congress), and a breakdown of government functionality, which erodes trust in democracy.
She said loyalists are installed in key positions, the media is attacked, and vulnerable groups are scapegoated for the chaos. “It's why transgender children have become scapegoats for every ill in society, because if you can blame black people, and brown people, and women, and the LGBTQ communities, when you can go after DEI, you basically pit people against one another,” Abrams said.
She then said the suppression of civil society (such as higher education) and militarizing law enforcement are further steps toward an authoritarian takeover. Abrams believes that the Trump administration has met almost every necessary condition for her definition of authoritarianism, and it will soon undermine elections.
Abrams, who notably refused to concede in her 2018 election defeat, spoke at length about election-related issues. She said, “The moment we are in right now, I don't know that we will have elections that are worth the paper they are written on in 2026.”
The moderator of the conversation, Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post, claimed that Georgia has seen “strange things happening with the election machinery.” Abrams said people “should be worried everywhere” about the integrity of future elections.
“Yes, we should be looking at what they are doing with the machines, but we also have to look at whether or not they're going to finance the election officials who should be doing this work.” She said, “If you can't do your job, then you can't make certain that our elections are actually happening.”
Abrams also discussed voter ID laws. She said conservatives “are going to try to push voter ID laws that are designed not to prove who you are but to prove you don't deserve to be.” She also claimed, “No one has ever disagreed with voter ID. It has never been a question of should you prove who you are. It's how hard should it be to prove that your citizenship is real and valid and true in this country.” Abrams has previously called various forms of voter ID legislation racist.
At one point, Abrams accused White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller of being “the person who's architecting the rise of Christian nationalism and the restoration of what he considers the necessary white homeland of America.” Miller is Jewish.
She noted that “some people have been complaining about the fact that I won't go away.” She said that even though she is not in office, political activism is still her responsibility. “My position is an American who refuses to allow my nation to be stolen from out from under me by someone who does not care about the people in it.”
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