After Trump: Three Paths for America

Choose your Adventure: Authoritarianism, Democratic Struggle, or Populist Fragmentation?

The post-Trump era won’t look like the past. It might be more democratic—or less. Or it could be something far stranger: a populist realignment that fractures the republic while keeping the Constitution intact.

The Trump era—and whatever follows—has already reshaped American democracy in lasting ways. Whether MAGA remains a simmering undercurrent or returns with full force, the idea of going back to “normal” may be neither possible nor wise. Damage to institutions, shifts in civic culture, and deep social fractures have altered the nation's trajectory. So, what lies ahead?

While no crystal ball can offer certainty, three broad paths seem plausible:

• A continued effort to sustain democracy and pluralism amid division;

• An authoritarian regime with a clearly defined economic and cultural agenda;

• Or a non-authoritarian populist realignment—one that reimagines American life politically, socially, and economically, challenging the old order without fully abandoning democratic ideals.

If you appreciate thought experiments, consider the third. If you don’t like thought experiments, this might be a good place to stop.

Picture a future shaped not by authoritarianism, but by a charismatic populist leader who channels widespread frustration into a decentralized vision of America—built on economic nationalism, local control, and renewed state sovereignty. In this scenario, states aggressively reassert their authority—legislatively, judicially, and culturally. Meanwhile, originalism and textualism dominate the federal judiciary, narrowing interpretations of federal power and reinforcing a shift toward state-centered governance.

This is not purely hypothetical. In recent years, many states have moved to reclaim control over key areas of public life—particularly around culture, education, and civil rights—often with the tacit or explicit support of the Supreme Court. Issues once governed by federal norms have become battlegrounds of state-level policy.

These trends, increasingly upheld—or left unchecked—by a Supreme Court favoring a narrower reading of federal power, point to a growing federalist structure in which states drive their own legal, social, and cultural agendas, while the federal government recedes from much of domestic life.

In this reimagined framework, government roles would divide more clearly. The federal government would oversee interstate and international economic policy, national defense, immigration, and foreign affairs. States would assume primary responsibility for criminal law, education, healthcare, environmental regulation, and the articulation of public values. State constitutions would guide residents’ rights, interpreted by state courts. The federal judiciary’s role would be to ensure both federal and state actors remain within their constitutional bounds.

But as state autonomy grows, national coherence may erode. The country could begin to resemble a loose federation of cultural and ideological enclaves—linked by commerce and military defense, yet divided in law and civic life. Red, blue, and the various shades of purple states might pursue fundamentally incompatible visions of justice, identity, and truth.

This raises questions: Can a nation endure when its internal differences outweigh its unifying principles? Can pluralism survive when mutual tolerance wears thin? The result may not be tyranny, but fragmentation—an increasingly unstable democracy strained by competing sovereignties and irreconcilable values.

The Articles of Confederation failed. Would this new populist balancing act fare any better? We may be witnessing the slow-motion balkanization of the United States.