Expand and snap

When this administration first started, it used a "flood the zone strategy". This means they tried to pass as much legislation as possible in an overwhelming way, to prevent resistance.

That changed around the beginning of April.

What they are now showing is an expand + snap strategy.

Think of a bunch of seething people, standing together in a big jumble. Around them, stand the people in our institutions, with their hands interlocked, in a big, containing circle.

They represent constraints.

What the administration has been doing since the beginning of April is what I call expand and snap, in which everyone in the center of the circle runs at the constraints simultaneously, pulling and stretching the lines containing them (essentially, pressure testing the institutions). Then, they run back to the center, and repeat. Each time, they push the edges of the circle a little bit farther, straining the system.

Eventually, after several weeks of this, the institutional lines will weakened, and on a large expansion, the barriers to authoritarian consolidation will snap, and it becomes winner take all.

This has already started to happen with the administration overriding the courts - and DOGE has been digging in from the outside trying to create holes in the barrier from the other side - so you should think of the current institutional barriers as weak, brittle, and trampled on.

Not completely fallen, but soon. We're closer to "snap" than people realize.