section_path: Twenty-first century/Reactions
section_name: Reactions
paragraph_text: Reactions
  
  In March 2025, historian Christopher R. Browning found 'considerable' democratic backsliding. Adrienne LaFrance wrote in April 2025 that 'backsliding' may not be a strong enough word given the speed with which she believes U.S. democracy is declining under the second Trump administration.
  
  In September 2023, thirteen presidential centers dating from Herbert Hoover to Barack Obama released an unprecedented joint message warning of the fragile state of American democracy. The statement called for a recommitment to the rule of law and civility in political discourse, as well as respect for democratic institutions and secure and accessible elections.
  
  President Joe Biden warned of threats to democracy during addresses in 2022 and 2023. At a fundraiser in August 2022, Biden said Donald Trump's MAGA philosophy was "like semi-fascism." In September 2023, weeks after Trump had been indicted on federal and state charges related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, and as most Republicans still refused to accept Trump's 2020 election loss, Biden said:
  
  There's something dangerous happening in America now. There's an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy: The MAGA movement. There's no question that today's Republican Party is driven and intimidated by MAGA Republican extremists. Their extreme agenda, if carried out, would fundamentally alter the institutions of American democracy as we know it.
  
  Hillary Clinton, whom Trump defeated in 2016, said in October 2023 that Trump was likely to be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee and if elected "will wreck our democracy," likening his MAGA supporters to a "cult."