This is what a coup looks like

In films—and too often in history—a coup d'état has been accompanied by the sound of explosions and gunfire. Military forces make their way through a capital city. The bearded colonel at the head of some new junta or rebel faction announces that he's now in charge.

That's a coup.

But it's not the only variety of coup. A coup can also come in the form of a "putsch," where the followers of a failed politician attempt to impose their candidate on the nation by force. The United States experienced one of those on January 6, 2021, when supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol.

There is also a type of coup known as an "autocoup" or a "self coup." That's what's happening in the United States right now. Right. Now.

In a self coup, the government isn't displaced by some new faction or overturned by rebellion. Instead, the people already in charge of the government expand their power. That can come in the form of refusing to leave after losing an election, refusing to hold new elections, or simply usurping powers that should belong to other portions of the government and putting them under the control of the coup leaders.

Take this for example...

Musk and his team are not only violating laws protecting the privacy of workers and citizens, they are interfering with the operation of programs and agencies authorized, not by executive order, but by law. Their actions are illegal.

As Wired reports, Musk has attempted to not only access the personal information of millions of Americans, he has also attempted to alter systems vital to the operation of agencies and replace them with "a suite of new AI software ... recreating the [GSA] in X's image."

Musk's actions are clearly an enormous overreach of a vaguely defined authority handed to him by Trump when he renamed an office created to assist in maintaining government websites. But Musk has since created at least one new site for his faux department. That site contains only a single line: "The people voted for major reform." Now that Musk is in the door, he wants it all.

This may not be what the people voted for, but it's certainly what they are getting—intrusion and interference from a man whose personal philosophy is that if you break things long enough, eventually they will work. If you want a preview of what is going to happen to every government agency as Musk literally locks out the people in charge and inserts his team of hastily assembled hackers, all you have to do is look to the skies.

Musk's actions are horrendous, unacceptable, and illegal. But they are only part of a larger action that was described by the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 and enacted by Trump's flurry of executive orders over the last two weeks — the seizing of the American government by a white nationalist oligarchy. From Trump's disastrous efforts to shut down all government spending, to the purge of the FBI and military, this is a coup.

This is what a coup looks like. We are in a coup.

Fighting against a coup by an outside force is difficult and costly. Should that new regime manage to take power, those who opposed El Comandante are often the first against the wall.

Resisting a self coup is even more difficult. The people who are violating the law and grasping for ever more power are the ones who already hold the capital, already control the military, and already have friends and allies in the legislature.

At this point in the self coup of the American government, Trump has already announced he is constructing a concentration camp in a conveniently out-of-sight location, he has already made it clear he wants to vastly expand the death penalty, he has already moved to punish news organizations he doesn't find sufficiently supportive, he has already acted to purge those who followed the law rather than demonstrating personal loyalty, and he has already removed government watchdogs in direct violation of the law. That included sending federal agents to physically remove the head of the USDA from her office when she refused to follow an illegal order.

Standing up to Trump in the face of these actions requires bravery from politicians and others who understand that doing so may mean more than merely losing positions of power or sacrificing wealth. It may mean losing their freedom. It may mean losing their life.

We are already there.

So far, that bravery has been singularly lacking. Maybe that will change as time wears on and the effect of Trump's coup becomes more apparent. However, that's not the experience of other nations in the past. Time only cements a despot in power. Surrounded by cronies and with every lever in the hands of supporters, attempts to check their actions or remove them from control become ever more difficult.

The best time to halt a coup is before it starts. America missed that opportunity in November. But the second-best time is while it's still in progress.

To that end, Democratic leaders should be calling for the arrest of Elon Musk and the removal of his team from government offices; drafting articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; and blocking all Senate votes until action has been taken to restore the executive to its lawful functions. All of that represents a huge risk. But none of it carries the price of refusing to act.