Steven Cash... a former state prosecutor and senior adviser to the undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence & Analysis... now serves as executive director of The Steady State, a pro-democracy organization of more than 360 former senior U.S. government officials. The collective careers of the group’s members span decades of service across Republican and Democratic administrations in all three branches of government — as senior Defense Department officials, ambassadors, foreign service officers, intelligence officers, policy advisors, oversight officials, congressional staffers and prosecutors.

In a recent conversation, Cash told me that Steady State members are deeply worried about the weakening condition of American democracy — and the findings of the organization’s new report that the U.S. now shares most of the traits of foreign countries that have fallen to autocratic regimes. Their conversations are focused on contingency planning. Trump’s opportunities for mortally wounding American democracy, he said, remain wide open.

Some observers have asked whether [the] elections mark the closing of Donald Trump’s “window” to consolidate autocratic power. The answer is no — the window is not closing, nor even narrowing. But the election did reveal something essential: We now know where the window is, and how to close it. The electorate’s resistance and the visible unease among Trump-aligned lawmakers suggest that the balance of fear may be shifting. Trump’s semi-supporters in Congress sense vulnerability — an opening to reclaim institutional integrity if they choose to take it.