During his first term in office, President Donald Trump bridled under various Watergate-era mechanisms passed to provide oversight of the executive branch. The second time around, Trump has successfully dismantled them. This includes firing nearly every “independent” inspector general with the acquiescence, if not outright support, of a Republican Party that is in lockstep with virtually everything he proposes or does.

Of course, Trump is hardly the first American chief executive to use the federal government’s power to pursue political enemies, real or imagined.

As I note in my new book, “The Triumph of Fear: Political Repression from McKinley through Eisenhower,” most of the history of the 20th century in America is that of successive presidents misusing their power to target individuals or entire groups for surveillance, lawfare and, in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s case, the roundup and incarceration without charge of more than 100,000 innocent and loyal Japanese Americans in the aftermath of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

Along the way, Trump’s predecessors often received at least the acquiescence, if not the outright support, of Congress and federal courts for their facially illegal or unconstitutional acts. In 1954, Congress passed, and President Eisenhower signed, the so-called Communist Control Act, a bill that banned the Communist Party of the United States. Over 70 years later, that law is still on the books.

The difference between our current moment and those earlier episodes is that, at least briefly, there was a period of reckoning and reform in response to presidential overreach, congressional acquiescence and judicial complicity.

Between 1971 and 1978, dozens of hearings in multiple House and Senate committees exposed political repression programs like the FBI’s COINTELPRO and President Richard Nixon’s similar “dirty tricks” campaign against national Democrats, including, of course, the Watergate break-in and its aftermath. At that time, there was still a sense of congressional institutionalism, as shown by the bipartisan action in the House Judiciary Committee to approve impeachment articles against Nixon. This event sealed his political fate and prompted his resignation.

During this same decade, Congress passed major reform legislation on a bipartisan basis to prevent warrantless mass surveillance (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) and increase executive branch oversight (via the Inspector General Act and creating permanent House and Senate intelligence committees). For nearly 40 years after these changes were implemented, presidents of both political parties generally honored the limits on their power that these laws and oversight mechanisms imposed.

But unlike his predecessors, Trump is demonstrating that he will not allow federal courts to restrain him in any meaningful, much less enforceable, way.

The wrongful, due process-free rendition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a dangerous prison in El Salvador is the most egregious example, with Trump’s Justice Department continuing to defy a federal judge’s demands for details on what steps, if any, Trump has taken to get Garcia back to the United States.

Trump’s extortionist tactics and retaliatory acts against disfavored major law firms and universities are other clear manifestations of his authoritarian acts, as is his targeting of former Department of Homeland Security employees who challenged Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” or “stolen.” In these ways, Trump’s despotic acts are indeed without precedent in American history.

If Trump does defy at-scale federal court rulings against him (which seems increasingly likely), he will have exposed the fatal flaw in the founders’ constitutional design: A determined autocrat with total control over federal police and a subservient Congress can defy federal courts with impunity, a situation that, left unchecked, would mark the end of the republic and trigger the creation of an American autocracy.

Democratic governors with friendly state legislatures could change this political dynamic by taking two steps.

First, they should sever all ties between their states’ law enforcement organizations and those at the federal level as an initial step in protecting their own institutions and inhabitants from federal repression under Trump. They should also refuse to allow their National Guard units to be used for unconstitutional missions or other actions that would violate constitutional rights or due process under the law.

Second, one or more governors with friendly state legislatures could pass a constitutional amendment that would make three critical changes to the republic’s governing document.

First, their state should move to amend Article II of the U.S. Constitution, maintaining the president’s authority as commander in chief of the armed forces and head of state for purposes of foreign relations only. However, the president would only have border control law enforcement capabilities under their command and no role in or power to control or otherwise direct domestic law enforcement activity via executive action.

The amendment should also transfer the Department of Justice from executive branch control, placing it within and under the federal judiciary’s jurisdiction. It should further designate the attorney general as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, answerable not to the president but to Congress, the federal courts and ultimately the Supreme Court.

Finally, the amendment should include language making it clear that no government official, including the president, is immune from prosecution for violating the Constitution or other federal statutes, whether during or after their tenure in office.

Amending the Constitution would not happen overnight, but starting the process would most definitely put the spotlight on Trump and the outrageous historical precedents set by those who came before him, which have helped to make our current national crisis not only possible but perhaps inevitable. Doing so would also change the national conversation for the better as it would provide a lawful, peaceful pathway out of this mess. The sooner we get started with restoring a functioning republic, the better.

As a friend recently observed to me, “This is our Articles of Confederation moment,” meaning that the flaws in our core governing document are now so obvious and so dangerous to our liberty that radical action is needed to correct the problem. I absolutely agree.

Former CIA analyst and ex-House senior policy advisor Patrick G. Eddington is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.