Based on polls, election results, and the markets, Americans seem to be awakening, if only slowly, to the magnitude and nature of the threat they face. President Donald Trump and his allies in power are trying to erect an authoritarian Mafia state like the one Vladimir Putin and his cronies established in Russia. The American opposition talks of “undermining democracy” and “constitutional crisis”—but for the most part, its legislators, activists, and political strategists are pursuing politics as usual. They shouldn’t be.

If this sounds alarmist, forgive me for not caring. Exactly 20 years ago, I retired from professional chess to help Russia resist Putin’s budding dictatorship. People were slow to grasp what was happening there too: Putin’s bad, but surely he’ll stop short of—and you can fill in the blank with a dozen things he did to destroy Russia’s fragile democracy and civil society, many of which Trump is doing or attempting to do in America today.

Attacking the press as fake news and the enemy of the state? Check. Delegitimizing the judiciary, the last constitutional brake when the legislature is co-opted and feckless? Check. Expanding influence over the economy by threatening businesses and using tariffs to introduce a crisis and a spoils system? Check. Creating a culture of fear by persecuting unpopular individuals and groups? Been there, done all of that.

Putin is still in the Kremlin, and I’m writing this from New York City—my family has made its home there, as well as in Croatia, since we were forced to leave Russia in 2013. America’s institutions and democratic sentiment are far stronger than in the flawed, fragile state Putin took over from Boris Yeltsin 25 years ago. Russia was a mere eight years removed from Soviet totalitarianism when it elected a KGB lieutenant colonel who restored the Soviet anthem and called the fall of the U.S.S.R. the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.

[Read: The simple explanation for why Trump turned against Ukraine]

Americans, by contrast, have a well-stocked toolbox with which to defend their democratic institutions, if only they would use it. The press is still free; its only limitations are self-imposed. The economy is strong, even though Trump is working hard to put a stop to that. (People who feel economically insecure, or who depend on the government for their daily bread, don’t often rise up against it. Instilling a feeling of helplessness, a lack of control, is a key ingredient of authoritarianism. For example, the uncertainty created by Trump’s tariff flip-flops are anathema to consumer and business confidence, but uncertain citizens are more likely to follow a strongman.) American federalism and the separation of powers are not trivial for a would-be autocrat to overcome. Political pressure must be brought to bear—through the courts, the press, and the states, but also applied to legislators while they still have any power left.

The American opposition should spend less time criticizing the content of the administration’s executive actions—eliciting sympathy for a deported individual, say, or decrying the impact of Trump’s tariffs on 401(k) plans—than focusing on its suspect methods. The real crisis is the lack of due process in the deportations, to take the first example, and the president’s assumption of Congress’s power to levy taxes, to take the second. Sure, Trump loves tariffs, in other words—but he mostly loves exercising power, and his slate of arbitrary levies, unilaterally imposed by the executive, isa power grab.

Never lose sight of the fact that the Trump administration’s aim is to weaken and devalue the machinery of government, on one hand, and privatize the levers of power on the other. It is accomplishing all of this at a breakneck pace. Supporting a would-be autocrat because you like his policies (say, on DEI or transgender athletes) is a terrible trap, because soon enough, your opinions and support won’t matter at all. But making opposition to the policies the centerpiece of resistance also risks missing the point. America is hurtling toward the loss of its democratic institutions and the establishment of an authoritarian state where there will be no civil discussion of these issues at all: That’s what a principled opposition must fight with its full might.

Spelling out these stakes every day, like Senator Cory Booker did in his record-breaking 25-hour speech at the beginning of the month, is vital. Call hearings, press conferences, protests—everything that can be done to draw attention to the attacks on institutions. Explain due process, and contrast it with illegal or incorrect deportations, as families are torn apart. Don’t let Elon Musk and his vandals pretend that what they are doing is about efficiency when their actions are a rounding error at best in the budget.

[Read: Cory Booker, endurance athlete]

Here is another tactic that makes sense for political give-and-take within a democracy, but not as a means of fighting for democracy’s life: picking your battles. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer may have thought he was doing exactly that when he caved to Republican pressure to pass the budget. He had a legal means of countering Trump’s autocratic agenda—rallying his party to refuse to advance the Republican spending bill—but he declined to use it. In regular democratic politics, passing on one battle to fight again another day is normal. But when fighting for democracy, you never know if there will be another day. Fight everywhere you can, always, or you will soon be as irrelevant as the Russian Duma became under Putin’s centralized executive authority.

Another recommendation: Attacking Trump’s character, however abhorrent critics may find it, is futile. The president is not acting alone. In contrast to his bumbling first term, he now has a professional script, stage managers, and a plan. Project 2025 is the product of political machinery that has sprung up around Trump that seeks to tear out the roots of American democracy and then salt the ground. To accomplish this, the Trump administration, much like Putin’s team in Russia, focuses on fear and enemies, not on constructing a brighter future. It will never be tempted to reconcile or coaxed by bipartisan outreach. So set aside the specifics of Trump’s agenda and your distaste for him as a person. Resist on every level, at every opportunity, instead of picking this or that battle. Shout from the rooftops about the attacks on process and democracy, not just the policy content.

Since Trump’s inauguration, Americans have filed numerous legal complaints challenging specific cuts or orders that Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency have made. After all, what authority does Musk, as a private individual, have to collect government data, decide which federal officials to fire, or allocate resources as he sees fit? Musk and Trump have turned their fire on judges who reject the legality of their actions.

Taking DOGE to court is necessary work—by all means, throw sand in the gears at every opportunity—but it’s not sufficient. That’s because Musk, like Russian oligarchs, has proximity to power, but he doesn’t actually have legal authority. To eject his influence means bringing the fight not just to him, but to the elected offices where power still resides.

Americans had probably better get used to learning Russian, so I’ll offer a political term from our lexicon: понятие, ponyatie (pon-YAH-tee-yeh), which doesn’t quite have an English equivalent but can be translated roughly as “an understanding.” The understanding of most citizens is that proximity to power is itself a form of power, that “we all know who is really calling the shots.” What we are seeing with DOGE is an example of this phenomenon—the ponyatie that Musk, as a rich man who exercises great influence over Trump, wields tremendous governmental authority despite not having an official title or a constitutional role. The ponyatie that state power can be marshaled against his critics and rivals, while he is immune to it himself. Acquiescence to that kind of thinking must be stopped before it is allowed to permeate the American political system.

[Read: Putin won]

To that end, Americans should invest their time and money fighting in the arena where political power still lies: with the American people and in Washington, D.C., with the handful of Republican representatives who could put a stop to the power grab. Go after the weakest links and call them out. Promise to support them against Musk’s threats to fund primary challenges if they defy him—and to raise millions against them if they don’t. Don’t give up on the levers of political power prematurely. Use them, or they will disappear, and marching in the street will be the only recourse—one that I can tell you from painful personal experience doesn’t always work out.

The Trump administration has been cunning in choosing its first targets. Deporting supposed gang members and Hamas supporters without due process may violate any number of statutes, but forcing oppositionists to defend these people’s rights allows the administration to paint them as defending their ideas. Not every battle will be as favorable as standing up for cancer research or veterans’ benefits.

This is why the resistance must center the principles at stake. Does America have rule of law or not? The first line in defense of an incipient police state is: “You don’t have anything to fear if you’ve done nothing wrong.” This fallacy is soon replaced by: “It could happen to anybody,” as the regime sees the value of using arbitrary persecution to spread fear. Again, fear is the autocrat’s goal, as is simply doing many things every day. Even if you don’t like him or his policies, the longer he is there, doing things, the more the autocrat starts to feel inevitable, like the sun rising each morning.

In politics, as in physics, force is mass times acceleration. The administration is mounting a barrage of attacks, with great urgency, to break through the resistance of American legal structures, sometimes by using legal and relatively popular policies (deporting convicted criminals, for example) as cover for likely illegal and relatively unpopular policies (deporting immigrants without due process). The fabricated urgency is a tell: No war, no terrible crisis, compels the president to violate the Constitution. But the administration is breaking down norms and setting precedents faster than judges can stop it. Of course, ignoring judges is also part of the plan.

To fight this onslaught means staying focused. Skip the culture wars, where the ground can easily tilt to favor the MAGA faithful. Concentrate instead on defending American rights and values against billionaires and autocrats who want to take them away. Just because you can’t compete with Trump on populism doesn’t mean you can’t be popular, and polls already suggest that the public believes the president should obey court orders and give Ukraine more aid.

The opposition needs to proudly defend the value system and ingenious framework that made this country great. This may sound corny to cynical Americans who have taken democracy for granted for most of their lives, but it matters. The leaders of the resistance, if such can be found, must serve as spokespeople and examples of these values and institutions if they are to provide a genuine counter to Trumpism.

[Read: The new authoritarianism]

Rallying to the defense of American constitutional democracy has become alarmingly difficult after years of insistence, from both the far left and the far right, that the system is irreparably broken. The good news is that Trump and Musk may be reminding Americans about what they stand to lose, and to whom, as was evident in the gloating response of Democrats to the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which Musk’s preferred candidate lost.

Americans can just look to their leaders’ avowed models should they wonder whether things could be worse. The GOP has moved so far to the right that it’s ideologically aligned with Turkey and Russia. The Trump administration’s refusal to criticize Putin may well owe to its hopes to emulate him, much as Putin’s rehabilitation of Stalin’s legacy tracked with policies that duplicated the Soviet dictator’s. And Musk has expressed admiration for Xi Jinping’s China, a repressive one-party state where he has business interests.

Four votes in the Senate. Three votes in the House. That’s all it takes. Find the weakest links. Go after them, democratically. Fundraise for them if they stand up, or against them if they don’t. The two-party system in America right now is Traitors versus Losers. Playing to win means asking every red-state legislator if they are fine with being in the Traitor Caucus.