Destroyed democracies litter history from Ancient Rome to modern Russia. They fell into deeply polarized times, when slim majorities elected a political leader who used the military to suppress his opposition. Since 2016, coups have destroyed five democracies, and in the past year, 42 percent of the world’s democracies have lost their democratic rights. The Constitution gives Americans powerful tools to save us from this fate. Congressstate governments and people must activate these protections now.

Trump has considered declaring martial law and sending in the National Guard to seize voting machines, claiming his power is “total.” He tried to replace nonpartisan military officials with “his generals.” On January 6, 2021, Trump tried to stay in power illegally, and his supporters stormed the capital. The former president’s inaction delayed the defense of Congress and the peaceful transfer of power. Trump claims his bogus claim of a stolen election “justifies the end of all rules and regulations, even those found in the Constitution…” If elected, he has vowed to be “dictator on day one.” He declared his political opponents “living like vermin” and vowed “revenge” against them. He said undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our nation” and vowed to use the military to round them up in camps and deport them. Project 2025 is a fully articulated plan to achieve all this.

The cadres studied history carefully. They created the Constitution as a bulwark against an ambitious elected political leader at the head of a cynical faction that would use the military to seize power and suppress his political opposition. To guard against this, the Framers made it difficult for one person, or even a small group, to lead the military, especially when deployed within the US. They divided military power between the branches of the Federal Government and the states, creating the federal army and state militias.

This distribution gave the president command of the military once deployed by Congress. The Founders empowered Congress to control military funding, approve presidential appointments of high-level officers, and regulate when the president could use the military. Worried that a tyrant would seize control of the federal government and use the standing army to “oppress the states,” the cadres also gave state governors command of their militias except in well-defined national emergencies. At its inception, the law required judicial approval of a president’s domestic military deployment.

Since its inception, repeated emergencies have led Congress to continually expand the president’s military powers, most notably through the Insurrection Act Amendments of 1861, which gave the president unchecked authority to use the military within the United States. In addition, the militias were renamed the National Guard and unconstitutionally transformed from a check on federal power to a second standing federal army.

The Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the domestic use of federal troops unless required by a clear constitutional or statutory command, was intended to protect against domestic presidential military abuses. However, courts have given the Insurrection Act broad authority to abrogate its protections, and Congress has not corrected that mistake. Moreover, the supreme courthis decision in Trump vs. the United States gives the president presumptive immunity from prosecution for domestic abuse of power over the military.

Congress must subordinate the Insurrection Act to the Posse Comitatus Act, restore judicial review of domestic military deployments, and create a legal framework for the military protection of Congress from mobsters and dictatorial presidents. Congress must also return primary control of state National Guards to governors, except in well-defined emergencies.

While these major reforms likely require a more unified government in a less polarized time, there are things we can do now.

The willing governors should meet and issue a statement of constitutional principles asserting their reserved powers under the Militia Clauses and the Posse Comitatus Act and denying National Guard troops all but the most necessary domestic deployments. This could be bipartisan, as governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) recently asserted such border powers.

State legislatures should meet to pass resolutions warning the public about the potential for military abuse and asking Congress for reform. States should also pass laws asserting more control over National Guardsmen.

chairman Joe Biden should issue an executive order prohibiting the use of the military against Congress or other elected officials.

Polarization is destroying this nation, our norms and traditions are weakening, and constitutional reverence is fading. Congress, the states, and the people must act to protect their civil rights and the Constitution itself. These proposed actions are not a challenge to the bullet ballot, nor an exercise in civil disobedience. They are legal and necessary steps a free people must take to preserve the Constitution and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

William Orfield is the author of Violence of Faction and Factional Violence: The Historical Erosion of American Constitutional Protections from the Threat of Military Dictatorship. Louise Erdrich is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and civil rights activist, and June Carbone is the Robina Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writers.