What are the threats of today's political climate in the US?

Based on current analysis and reporting, several major threats to the US political climate stand out today:

1. Political Violence and Extremism

There's been a marked escalation in violence risk. The past year saw a dangerous escalation in the political violence risk environment in the United States, including a series of high-profile assassinations and aggressive federal immigration operations. Already in 2026, the risk landscape has continued to intensify with fatal shootings by federal agents in Minnesota, the administration's consideration of the Insurrection Act, and an FBI raid of a Georgia election facility ahead of the midterms.

2. Election Integrity and Voter Suppression Concerns

Heading into the 2026 midterms, President Trump has continued, without basis or evidence, to attack the integrity of elections, and he has demanded solutions, including federal ones, that do not respond to actual problems. There are also concerns about intimidation: there is considerable fear that federal law enforcement officers, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or the National Guard, or nongovernmental armed groups could disrupt the elections or intimidate potential voters.

3. Executive Power and Checks on Government

Analysts flag concentration of executive authority as a top global risk. What began as tactical norm-breaking has become a system-level transformation: President Donald Trump's attempt to systematically dismantle the checks on his power, capture the machinery of government, and weaponize it against his domestic enemies. Related concerns include using the Justice Department to harass political adversaries with baseless prosecutions, militarizing the domestic environment by superseding local police and judicial authorities, and defaming judges and encouraging threats of violence against them.

4. Severe Partisan Polarization

Polarization itself is widely cited as corrosive to democratic function. As polarization has ratcheted up from significant to severe in recent decades, it has become a harshly corrosive dynamic, fueling congressional blockage and dysfunction, eroding public faith in the neutrality of the courts, pervading the media space, spurring gerrymandering, and spreading throughout society to the point where large majorities of voters regard those on the other side as a fundamental threat to the country itself. This is reflected in public opinion: 80% of partisans believe that the other party "poses a threat that if not stopped will destroy America as we know it," and 77% of voters believe that Americans who strongly support the other side are "a clear and present danger" to America.

5. Foreign Interference

With reduced federal safeguards, foreign influence is a persistent threat to U.S. elections, with China, Iran, and Russia poised to attempt to influence the 2026 midterms, while the Trump administration has degraded the federal infrastructure for detecting and countering these threats, leaving states largely on their own for the first time since 2016. Compounding this, rapid advances in artificial intelligence tools have increased both the capabilities of existing actors and made influence campaigns more believable.

6. Redistricting and Structural Manipulation

The redistricting arms race is accelerating, with mid-decade redistricting battles playing out in multiple states. Common Cause is pushing states to adopt independent redistricting commissions, and urging Congress to pass the Redistricting Reform Act of 2025, which would ban mid-decade redistricting and partisan gerrymandering nationwide.

7. AI-Driven Disinformation

Emerging technology poses new risks to information integrity: bad actors now have the power to spoof an entire county elections website and fill it with bad information, create false video of an elections official "caught on tape" saying that voting machines aren't secure, or generate a robocall in the president's voice telling millions of Americans their voting site has changed.

8. Public Trust and Civil War Fears

Perhaps most striking is how deeply these threats have penetrated public consciousness: 71% believe American democracy is now threatened, and 67% perceive "a serious threat to our democracy." Even more alarming, 61% of Americans say they are concerned that the U.S. could be on the verge of another Civil War, and 50% at least somewhat agree that "in the next few years, there will be civil war in the United States."

Together, these threats reflect a political system under significant strain—where institutional norms, electoral trust, and basic civic tolerance are all being tested simultaneously ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.