During his first six weeks in office, President Donald Trump has embarked on a dizzying teardown of the federal government and attacks on long-standing institutions in an attempt to increase his own authority.

He has pardoned those who attacked the U.S. Capitol to overturn his 2020 election loss, placed loyalists atop the FBI and military, and purged the Department of Justice, which dropped investigations against Trump allies. He declared control over independent agencies such as the Federal Election Commission, punished media outlets for coverage he dislikes and his allies suggested he could defy court orders.

Those who monitor democracy across the globe had warned that a second Trump term could endanger America’s 240-year experiment with democracy. His opening weeks in office have done nothing to dispel those concerns.

“Trump is using the classic elected authoritarian playbook,” said Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College, who joined more than 800 other political scientists in signing a letter warning that Trump is undermining the rule of law and the basic constitutional principle of checks and balances. “It’s almost embarrassing how crude it is.”

Nyhan said some of Trump’s moves echo those made by others who won democratic elections and then moved to centralize control, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban. Those who have resisted authoritarians in other countries say they are alarmed by what is happening in the United States.

“I feel like I’m living through this twice,” said Maria Ressa, a journalist who won a Nobel Prize after being prosecuted by the government of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in 2019, on a recent call about the threat of Trump to democracy.

“What you’re seeing is exactly that — think about it as death by a thousand cuts,” she said. “You’re bleeding so much that, at some point, the body politic dies.”

Trump has certainly embraced the image of a strongman.

The president declared, “we are the federal law” and posted on his social media site that “He who saves his country does not violate any law” — a quote often attributed to Napolean Bonaparte. The official White House account posted on the social media site X an image of a smiling, crowned Trump with the words “LONG LIVE THE KING.”

Trump’s supporters say he actually is trying to preserve American democracy by giving voters what they want — a strong president. How strong Trump can become is in question. Courts have paused several of his executive orders, including ones seeking to eliminate agencies created by Congress and ending birthright citizenship for the children of parents who are in the U.S. illegally.

Trump campaigned last year promising to dismantle what he contends is a corrupt government bureaucracy, which he blames for failures during his first term and his subsequent prosecution. On his first day in office, the new president told reporters his goal was to “give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy and indeed their freedom.”

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office in February, billionaire Elon Musk, who Trump tapped to spearhead cuts to the federal government, claimed he is the one trying to “restore democracy.” Some of the lawsuits seeking to stop Musk’s actions have been unsuccessful, allowing him to proceed.

“The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get,” Musk told reporters. “That’s what democracy is all about.”

But many who track democracy warn that Musk’s conception is incomplete.

“The power you gain through the ballot box is not unlimited power. That’s the essence of liberal democracy,” said Kevin Casas-Zamora, secretary general of the Stockholm-based pro-democracy group International IDEA.

On the world stage, Trump and his administration have alarmed longtime allies in Europe over whether the U.S. remains committed to NATO and his siding with Russia in talks to end the war in Ukraine, a country the Kremlin invaded three years ago, and at the United Nations last month.

On Friday, Trump berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. Russian officials and many Trump allies expressed glee; European nations reacted in horror.

The common theme throughout Trump’s moves is about expanding his personal power, said Josh Chafetz, a Georgetown law professor.