From Thomas Edsall at the NYT (read the whole thing to get the full list of authoritarian behaviors) (all that follows is quoted from his article):

President Trump has unleashed new weaponry in his war against Democrats, liberals and the left. Over the past four weeks, he has initiated what amounts to a unique form of partisan civil war designed to amass power in a nominal democracy and defang, decimate and defund the opposition.

Trump’s assault on the left combines the use of the available tools of violent conflict — the military, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE in particular — with the prosecution of critics (and people he just doesn’t like), cuts of essential funds for liberal institutions, the use of regulation to threaten businesses with bankruptcy, the criminalization of free speech and the blackmailing of corporate America into obedience.

Two days after the assassination of Charlie Kirk last month, Stephen Miller, Trump’s top domestic policy adviser, went on Sean Hannity’s Fox News Show to describe in great detail how the administration plans to deal with its domestic opponents: “We will not live in fear, but you will live in exile, because the power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and if you have broken the law, to take away your freedom”….

Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard, emailed me in response to my inquiries about the rapid series of developments after Kirk’s death:

There is no doubt about what Trump is doing in the wake of Kirk’s killing. His attacks on his political opponents are purely authoritarian, and he sees the killing of Kirk as an opportunity to accomplish what he has been talking about since he entered politics: using the power of the state to punish those who defy him….

On Thursday, Sam Fellman, deputy editor of Business Insider’s military and defense team, published a long article describing the climate of fear and paranoia resulting from a “broad crusade against so-called ‘woke’ ideology in the military. Active-duty troops stationed at bases across the country say the effort has helped unleash a free-for-all of leaks and accusations, feeding an atmosphere of intense suspicion.”….

“I can’t pretend to know what the Trump administration is intending or planning behind the scenes,” Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins, wrote by email.

But I can say that taking advantage of a violent event to advance the oppression of a disliked group is a classic technique of aspiring autocrats. In my own research with Nathan Kalmoe, we have found that leaders are uniquely capable of calming violent attitudes in the public, and as this administration does the opposite, it is certainly possible that they are throwing matches on dry kindling.

Theda Skocpol, a professor of government and sociology at Harvard who has been closely tracking movements on both the left and the right, showed no hesitation in declaring that Trump and his allies “are trying to provoke protests and demonstrations that they can call ‘violent’ even if there are fewer destructive elements than after the usual big football victory or loss.”

Cities, she continued,

have long been demonized on the G.O.P. Tea Party to MAGA right. I heard demonizing characterizing statements about cities and their residents in my field interviews with even otherwise reality-based right-wingers from 2011 through 2018, and Fox News, etc., has fed a steady stream of the same pictures of urban property attacks for years. By now, Trump himself, many in Congress and many in their voter followings live in a virtual world where cities are aflame and “leftists” are demons.

I noted that Trump and his allies moved with striking speed to capitalize on the Kirk killing and asked whether that suggested advance planning that quickly geared up to build momentum immediately.

Skocpol replied: “Of course this has all been planned for a long time, not always by erratic Trump himself, but by Stephen Miller and others around the president.” The strategy, she added, that underlies “Trump’s militaristic posturing and rhetoric is to lay the basis for sending in federal forces to scare away voters in 2026″….

Trump’s goal, in [historian Sean] Wilentz’s view: “eliminate all political opponents, as, by definition, enemies of the state. This includes, above all, the Democratic Party, described by Miller even before Kirk’s murder as ‘a domestic extremist organization.’ ”