About
Who We Are
This project is led by Professor Christina Pagel, a UK-based health services researcher and science communicator. She created and maintains the dataset underlying the tracker, drawing on her background in data analysis and evidence-based policy to monitor and document how the trajectory of Trump’s presidency is aligned with the authoritarian playbook. She started the project in February 2025, at first to help herself make sense of the actions of the Trump administration and then later to share with others. Her German parents were born in 1937 and 1941 and grew up in a post-war Germany coming to terms with what it had done. Understanding how quickly democratic norms can be lost - to devastating effect - motivated Christina to start this work.
Prof Pagel writes about the Trump administration on her Substack and Bluesky. She introduced the five domains of authoritarianism in her analysis of the first three weeks of the presidency, which she later expanded into ten domains. She has further written about the attacks of the administration on DEI, science, universities and democratic norms.
The glossary explains in more detail what sorts of actions are included within each of the ten domains.
She is supported by a small team of brilliant volunteers who help make this work!
Sandy Laping is a science communicator and is helping to track the actions and maintain the underlying spreadsheet.
Pete Duncanson is a software developer and built the original version of this website in his spare time to help him sleep a little more soundly at night with the knowledge that he was at least doing "something" in this moment of democratic danger.
Sheila Brookes, PhD, has vast experience in the field of child and family sciences having taught at the university level, provided training and technical assistance to many local, state, regional, and national organizations; and led numerous research and policy projects as a Senior Research and Policy Analyst. She carefully went over entries for the first few months of the administration and updated their descriptions to be more informative.
We also want to acknowledge the support of other volunteers who wish to remain anonymous. Their help has also been crucial in getting to this stage, and for continued improvements to the technical side of the website.
Website refresh March 2026
In March 2026, the website received a comprehensive re-design and refresh by Clearleft. We are very grateful for their work, which was funded by a kind donor who wishes to remain anonymous.
How to Help (Prof Christina Pagel)
In an ideal world, we would receive some sort of funding to allow dedicated, paid-for, person time to help track, explain, and analyse the actions; create novel visualisations of the data and trends; and maintain and update the website. I have plenty of ideas for new analyses using this data, but I can't manage any more volunteers at the moment.
Sharing the website far and wide would also be much appreciated - we’ve created this resource for the public good and so the more people who see it and potentially use it, the better.
If you are in a position to help disseminate, help fund, or have a specific idea for e.g. new ways of visualising the data, then please do get in touch!