Authoritarianism-- American Style (and on fast forward)

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In December 2025, three of the most careful scholars of democratic backsliding—Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, and Daniel Ziblatt—finally said out loud, in Foreign Affairs, what many of us had been saying for months, and thinking about for years: the United States no longer qualifies as a functioning democracy. We live in what they call a “competitive authoritarian” regime: elections still happen, but the party in power is systematically bending the machinery of the state to punish opponents and tilt the playing field.

The venue matters. This is not a Substack screed. Foreign Affairs is where the Cold War foreign‑policy consensus was hammered out, where Kennan published the “X” article, where Kissinger and Brzezinski argued about détente. When that journal publishes “The Price of American Authoritarianism,” the conversation has shifted. The establishment is talking to itself about regime change.

On the core diagnosis, I think Levitsky and his co‑authors have it essentially right. Where I am less sanguine is their sense of how much time and how many guardrails we still have. Their piece leans on courts, elections, and a still‑resilient media landscape as remaining lines of defense. The past year—and especially the Minnesota crisis and election‑related moves of late January and early February—suggests those lines are thinner, and the timetable shorter, than their article allows.

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1. The Silent Judicial Coup

For generations, the basic emergency brake in the U.S. system worked like this: if a president rolled out an obviously unlawful policy, any federal judge could issue a nationwide injunction—temporarily freezing that policy for everyone while the case wound its way up on appeal. One lawsuit, one order, and the deportation program or travel ban stopped while the courts did their work.

In June 2025, in Trump v. CASA, the Supreme Court removed that brake. Lower courts, the majority held, had overstepped by issuing “universal” relief. From now on, they could still decide whether a policy was unconstitutional, but their orders would ordinarily protect only the named plaintiffs or a carefully certified class. Everyone else remains exposed while dozens of fragmented cases proceed at different speeds in different districts.

We’ve already seen what that abstraction means in human terms. When lawyers discovered that at least 327 unaccompanied Guatemalan children were about to be placed on planes over Labor Day weekend and dumped in Guatemala without the hearings Congress requires, they filed suit in the middle of the night. A federal judge in D.C. stopped the deportations—for ten named children, and then for a narrowly defined class of others in the same procedural posture. Some kids were literally pulled off planes because of that order. But nothing in the post‑Casa framework allowed the judge to simply say: “This kind of secret weekend airlift is unlawful for any unaccompanied child, so you must stop doing it, full stop.”

Minnesota, this January, brought the point home even more starkly. By then, ICE’s “Operation Metro Surge” had already produced two citizen killings in three weeks on Minneapolis streets, both captured on video and then carefully reconstructed by CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Renee Good’s SUV is turning away as the agent shoots her. Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, is killed days later under the same banner.

The state went to court. On January 31, Judge Katherine Menendez issued her ruling. She acknowledged that the operation “has had, and will likely continue to have, profound and even heartbreaking consequences.” She summarized evidence of racial profiling, excessive force, and other serious harms, noted that the federal defendants “do nothing to refute” much of it—and then denied the request to halt the operation. The surge stayed in place.

This is what I mean by a silent judicial coup. The forms are intact: opinions are written, constitutional violations are recognized, phrases like “profound and heartbreaking” appear in the Federal Reporter. But the function has been hollowed out. The Supreme Court has quietly stripped lower courts of their main tool for stopping unlawful programs in real time, and then used unsigned “emergency” orders on its shadow docket to keep the most contested Trump policies in effect while appeals grind on. In Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, executives spent years packing and purging courts in public view. In the United States, the Court largely did the work to itself, in doctrinal language most non‑lawyers never see.

A judiciary that can describe lawlessness and “heartbreaking” harm but structurally cannot stop it is not the bulwark Levitsky’s comparative story presupposes. It looks like a court. It does not act like a brake.

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2. Media Capture, Fragmentation, and the “Deal” That Wasn’t

Levitsky and his co‑authors rightly highlight media capture as central to competitive authoritarianism. What the past year demonstrates is how efficiently that capture can proceed through ownership, lawsuits, and access worries, without a single censorship law on the books.

In just over a year, we have seen:

• The Ellison family take control of CBS through the Skydance–Paramount merger, put Bari Weiss in charge of the news division, and position themselves to run TikTok’s U.S. algorithm while bidding for Warner Bros. Discovery (and with it, CNN).

• Jeff Bezos fire roughly a third of the Washington Post’s newsroom, shut down desks, and push out internal critics, even as Amazon spends upward of $75 million on a Melania Trump biopic that functions as a glossy tribute.

• Elon Musk retool X as a Trump‑aligned platform, while the administration batters legacy outlets with multi‑billion‑dollar defamation suits and regulatory threats.

These ownership changes and legal pressures are not background noise. They help explain how the Minnesota week was narrated.

Between January 23 and February 1, the country witnessed something we have not seen in decades: a nationwide strike, coordinated across cities and sectors, explicitly framed as resistance to federal killings of citizens. Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, gave an interview to The Atlantic warning that this felt like a “Fort Sumter moment”—an armed federal force testing whether it could act with impunity against his constituents. He set a deadline for ICE to withdraw, or at least share evidence with state investigators. Then he announced that he would never run for office again.

If you followed only the main headlines, you saw a different story. On January 29, national outlets ran pieces like “Democratic Governors Promise Accountability After Minneapolis,” featuring governors from New York, Illinois, and California—but not Walz. Two days later, the New York Times framed a phone call between Trump and Chuck Schumer as a “deal”: a two‑week pause in DHS spending and vague talk of “Phase 2” reforms. The impression was reassuring: protests had shifted the dynamics, Democrats had gained “leverage,” the system was working.

What didn’t make it into that “compromise” frame? Menendez’s ruling, on the very same day, denying relief and leaving the surge in place. The earlier Bondi letter conditioning any discussion of ICE withdrawal on Minnesota turning over its voter rolls and Medicaid/SNAP data. The Lyons memo, quietly circulated months before, authorizing warrantless home entry based on internal ICE paperwork. Trump’s own same‑day post calling protesters “insurrectionists” and promising that federal forces would continue to guard federal buildings “very powerfully.”

Each audience got a slice: lawyers read the ruling, Hill obsessives read about the Schumer call, the base saw Trump’s “insurrectionists” post, the general public saw clips of marches and the word “deal.” No one was forced, by coverage, to confront the integrated picture: two citizens killed on camera; zero operational change; expanded home‑entry authority; coercive demands for voter and welfare data; and a president explicitly signaling no retreat.

Authoritarian media capture in the United States does not look like a single state broadcaster marching in lockstep. It looks like lawsuits hanging over every major outlet, owners with business before the administration, Pentagon access denied to reporters who refuse to sign prior‑review pledges, and a professional culture that prefers “breakthrough” and “de‑escalation” narratives to admitting that a line has been crossed and not crossed back. The facts are often reported. They are rarely allowed to cohere.

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3. Elections Under Pressure: Data, ICE, and “Nationalizing” the Vote

Levitsky, Way, and Ziblatt are correct that elections remain the main arena where this regime can still be challenged. The question, nine months before the 2026 midterms, is what kind of contest that will be.

Three developments since late January are especially telling.

1. The Bondi “ransom note.” On January 24—one day after Alex Pretti was killed—Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Governor Walz that ought to be taught in every future course on competitive authoritarianism. Before the administration would even consider altering ICE operations in Minnesota, she demanded three things:

• Complete, unredacted voter registration rolls, including partial Social Security and driver’s license data.

• All Medicaid and SNAP recipient records.

• An end to sanctuary policies and full cooperation with ICE detainers.

None of those first two demands has anything to do with whether armed federal agents should stop shooting people on Minneapolis streets. They have everything to do with building a centralized, federally held file linking names, addresses, citizenship and immigration status, welfare usage, and voting records — exactly the raw material needed for algorithmic purges and targeted intimidation in a close election.

Minnesota’s Secretary of State called it what it was: a ransom note. Other states, however, have already complied in whole or in part, and DOJ is suing many of the rest. Minnesota was not an outlier; it was a pilot.

2. “Nationalizing” elections. Against that backdrop, Trump’s early‑February comments are not free‑floating rhetoric. On friendly platforms he has argued that Republicans should “take over” elections in at least 15 states and that the federal government should “nationalize” voting. He has said, explicitly, that states are “merely an agent” of federal power when it comes to counting ballots, and he has joked—only half joking—about canceling the 2026 midterms altogether because “when you think about it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”

In 2020, this would have been dismissed as bluster. In 2026, when the same administration is already seizing 2020 ballots in Fulton County, demanding full voter files from dozens of states, and threatening to pull ICE back only if Minnesota hands over its data, the words and the deeds line up.

3. The ICE‑at‑the‑polls threat. Finally, there is the exchange that should have been front‑page news for days. Asked about Steve Bannon’s proposal that ICE “surround the polls” in November to prevent the election being “stolen,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said it was not something she had heard Trump consider—and then added, “I can’t guarantee that an ICE agent won’t be around a polling location in November.”

Given what we have just watched ICE do, that sentence is not neutral. In the last year alone, ICE and CBP agents have shot at least 25 people, killing six, including two citizens in Minneapolis whose deaths were captured on video and then forensically reconstructed by mainstream outlets. No agent has been criminally charged. In case after case, body‑camera footage is suppressed or turned on only after the shots are fired. Prosecutors quietly drop charges against survivors once it becomes clear they cannot win at trial. Text messages show agents joking about “another round of **** around and find out” and their “15 minutes of fame.”

Against that record, a White House statement that it “can’t guarantee” ICE will not be at or near polling locations is not an abstract observation. It is the state signaling that the same masked, heavily armed agents we have just seen maim and kill people may be present, in some fashion, on Election Day.

I felt the effect myself. I am a citizen, an academic, and someone who has spent years studying authoritarianism. After watching the Good and Pretti footage on loop, reading the court transcripts, and then hearing Leavitt’s line from the podium, I caught myself thinking: maybe I will vote by mail. Why risk running into those men just to stand in a line?

If that is my reflex, it is not hard to imagine the calculation in mixed‑status families or recently naturalized households. The law does not require ICE to literally stand inside polling places for intimidation to occur. The threat broadcast from the White House, in the shadow of a year of unpunished shootings, is itself a form of intimidation. People hear it. They adjust.

Taken together, Bondi’s ransom letter, Trump’s “nationalize elections” talk, and Leavitt’s refusal to rule out an ICE presence are not disconnected incidents. They are three faces of the same strategy: use immigration enforcement as a data‑gathering arm, a symbol of fear, and a lever to pry open state‑held voter files. Elections will still be held. The pool of people who feel safe participating, and the integrity of the infrastructure they rely on, are what is being quietly altered now, months before anyone casts a ballot.

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4. What Follows From Naming the Regime

Levitsky, Way, and Ziblatt urge Americans to avoid two opposite mistakes: pretending that Trump’s second term is just unusually sharp‑elbowed democracy, and throwing up our hands in fatalism. They are right on both counts. We live under a competitive authoritarian regime. At the same time, 2025’s off‑year elections showed that opposition victories are still possible under those conditions.

Where I part company is on the question of which tools we still actually have, and how much time they buy. In 2020, federal courts could still issue nationwide injunctions against unlawful executive orders. In 2020, video evidence of George Floyd’s killing sparked a national uprising and led to a murder conviction. In 2020, it was still at least plausible to think that if something unconstitutional happened, the courts and the press would force a correction.

In 2026, we have a Supreme Court that has disabled the lower courts’ main emergency brake, a shadow docket that routinely green‑lights Trump policies without explanation, a media system under concentrated ownership and legal pressure, and a president openly promising to “nationalize” elections while his press secretary declines to rule out ICE near the polls. Under those conditions, waiting passively for “the courts” or “the midterms” to save us is not realism. It is misrecognition.

That does not mean there is nothing to be done. It does mean we have to act as if we are already inside the kind of regime Levitsky describes, not the one some of his readers still imagine. That means:

• Protecting local election infrastructure and officials from both legal and physical intimidation.

• Building networks that document abuses in real time, even if they do not trigger accountability immediately.

• Supporting what remains of independent media, and pushing back hard against feel‑good “deal” narratives that obscure the underlying continuity.

• Speaking plainly—in classrooms, churches, union halls, professional associations—about the fact that the regime has already changed type, rather than treating each outrage as an isolated “controversy.”

Levitsky and his co‑authors have used their position to move the establishment conversation to where it needed to be: willing to say the word “authoritarian.” The task now is to update the prognosis with what the last year has shown about courts, media, and elections, and to adjust our strategies to a reality in which the old guardrails are weaker and the timeline is shorter than most people still want to admit.

Bibliography/References:  

Regime diagnosis and democratic backsliding

• Levitsky, Steven, Lucan A. Way, and Daniel Ziblatt. “The Price of American Authoritarianism.” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2026 (published December 11, 2025). [Anchors the “competitive authoritarianism” diagnosis and discussion of weaponized state, media pressure, attacks on civil society.]

• Levitsky, Steven, Daniel Ziblatt, et al. “How Bad Is It?: Three Political Scientists Say America Is No Longer a Democracy.” New Yorker Political Scene podcast, December 11, 2025. [Reiterates that the U.S. no longer qualifies as a democracy.]

• Walter, Barbara F. “Stop Waiting for the Midterms to Save Us.” Here Be Dragons: Warning Signs from the Edges of Democracy (Substack), January 14, 2026. [Warns that the most dangerous period is the 6–12 months before a potentially threatening election, when autocrats move most aggressively to rig the system.]

• Human Rights Watch. World Report 2026 – United States. February 2, 2026. [Documents broad assault on press freedom, judicial independence, and use of state power against opponents.]

Courts, Trump v. CASA, and the “silent judicial coup”

• Trump v. CASA, Inc., No. 24A884 (June 27, 2025). U.S. Supreme Court slip opinion. [Ends universal/nationwide injunctions by lower courts.]

• Congressional Research Service. “Trump v. CASA, Inc. and Nationwide Injunctions During the Second Trump Administration.” CRS Legal Sidebar, July 15, 2025. [Explains how Casa limits lower courts to plaintiff‑specific or class‑specific relief.]

• “CASA’s Complete Relief Paradox.” Harvard Law Review, Vol. 139, December 9, 2025. [Analyzes how Casa turns emergency relief into narrow triage rather than broad brakes.]

• “Reining in Relief: Trump v. CASA and the Judicial Retreat from Nationwide Injunctions.” Columbia Law Review Online, January 2, 2026. [Discusses practical consequences for constitutional litigation.]

• Sohoni, Mila. “What Trump v. CASA Means for the Future of Universal Relief in Administrative Law.” Yale Journal on Regulation (Notice & Comment), July 14, 2025. [Explains shift in remedial power and tempo.]

• Brennan Center for Justice. “Supreme Court Shadow Docket Tracker — Challenges to Trump Administration Actions,” 2025–26. [Catalogues unsigned emergency orders allowing contested Trump policies to continue.]

• L.G.M.L. et al. v. Kristi Noem et al. (Guatemalan children litigation). Case documents via National Center for Youth Law, National Immigration Law Center, Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, and Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. [Illustrates post‑Casa limits: children protected as named/class plaintiffs while policy can be replicated for others.]

• Trump v. Illinois, No. 25A443 (December 23, 2025). U.S. Supreme Court emergency order. [Finds likely Posse Comitatus violations in National Guard deployments, followed by redeployments under new labels.]

• Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, No. 25A169 (September 8, 2025). U.S. Supreme Court opinion. [Allows broader immigration stops, effectively licensing profiling in immigration enforcement.]

ICE shootings, Minnesota, and state‑sanctioned violence

• “List of shootings by U.S. immigration agents in the second Trump administration.” Wikipedia (continuously updated). [Baseline numbers for 25 shootings and 6 deaths since January 2025.]

• Wang, Philip. “‘I’m Embarrassed’: ICE Agents Speak About the Shooting in Minneapolis.” TIME, January 14, 2026. [Agent reactions to Renee Good killing, internal concerns.]

• CNN. “How the ICE Shooting Unfolded, Step by Step” / “New Video Reveals ICE Agent’s POV on MN Shooting.” January 10, 2026. [Multi‑angle forensic reconstruction of the Good shooting.]

• New York Times. “Videos Contradict Trump Administration Account of ICE Shooting in Minneapolis.” Video analysis, January 7, 2026. [Shows agent not being run over; shots fired as Good turned away.]

• New York Times. “Video Analysis of ICE Shooting Sheds Light on Contested Moments.” January 15, 2026. [Further forensic detail on Good case.]

• Washington Post. “Video Shows ICE Agent in Minneapolis Fired at Driver as Vehicle Moved Away.” January 8, 2026. [Corroborates that the vehicle was turning away.]

• ABC News. “‘A Beautiful Light’: Renee Good’s Family Mourns Her Death Amid Push for Answers.” January 14, 2026. [Family context, public response.]

• New York Times. “Six Prosecutors Quit Over Push to Investigate ICE Shooting Victim’s Widow.” January 13, 2026. [Documents retaliatory investigation into Good’s widow, resignations in protest.]

• Democracy Docket. “After Minneapolis, Trump Ushers in Death of Independent Federal Law Enforcement.” January 15, 2026. [Analyzes federal interference with local investigations.]

• Fox 32 Chicago. “Marimar Martinez Update: Bodycam Video Ordered Withheld in Border Patrol Agent Shooting Case.” December 19, 2025. [Chicago case where charges against victim are dropped, footage suppressed.]

• Court testimony re Agent Charles Exum’s text messages (“Cool, I’m up for another round…”, “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book, boys.”). November 2025 hearing transcripts. [Shows agent gloating after shooting Martinez.]

• Los Angeles Times. “Second Man Says Homeland Security Blinded Him at Anti‑ICE Rally.” January 16, 2026. [Santa Ana protest blinding.]

• Fox LA. “Anti‑ICE Protester Claims He’s Blind in One Eye After Federal Officer Shot Him With Non‑Lethal Weapon in Santa Ana.” January 12, 2026. [Same incident; details on injuries.]

• The American Prospect. “ICE Agents Can Be Charged With Murder.” January 6, 2026. [Legal framework; confirms agents can be prosecuted under state law.]

• The Trace. “Immigration Agents Are Shooting People. Is It Legal?” January 11, 2026. [Overview of prosecution failures.]

• Connecticut Public Radio. “What If an ICE Shooting Happened in Connecticut? A Legal Expert Explains.” January 15, 2026. [State authority to prosecute.]

Minnesota crisis (January 23 – February 1, 2026) and voter‑roll demands

• “How the Trump Administration Survived the Backlash Against Citizen Shootings—And Advanced Authoritarian Consolidation: January 23–February 1, 2026: Nine Days of Peak Resistance That Ended With the Administration Stronger.” Books & Ideas blog (PD), February 3, 2026. [Full reconstruction of the 9‑day sequence, including Bondi letter, Menendez ruling, media framing.]​

• PBS NewsHour. “Federal Judge Says She Won’t Halt the Immigration Enforcement Surge in Minnesota as a Lawsuit Proceeds.” January 31, 2026. [Summarizes Menendez’s denial of injunction.]

• New York Times. “Federal Judge Denies Request to Temporarily Block ICE Surge in Minnesota.” January 31, 2026. [Details of ruling; quotes about “profound and heartbreaking” consequences.]

• Lawfare. “Minnesota v. Noem: A Hearing Diary for Jan. 26.” January 26, 2026. [Describes Menendez’s questions about coercion and voter‑data demands.]

• The Atlantic. “Tim Walz Fears a Fort Sumter Moment in Minneapolis.” January 28, 2026. [Governor Walz’s warning and “Fort Sumter” comparison.]

• Reuters. “Minnesota Governor Walz Rules Out Running for Elective Office, Saying ‘Never Again.’” January 29, 2026. [Walz’s exit from electoral politics.]

• Fox News (PDF). Pam Bondi letter to Governor Walz demanding voter rolls and welfare data as precondition for considering ICE changes. January 24, 2026. [Original “ransom note.”]

• Democracy Docket. “Democratic Senators Accuse Trump DOJ of ‘Apparent Ransom’ in Push to Seize State Voter Rolls.” January 2026. [Broader context around voter‑roll demands.]

Voter‑roll lawsuits, “nationalizing” elections, ICE at polls

• New York Times. “Why Trump’s Calls to ‘Nationalize’ Voting Have Raised Midterm Fears.” February 7, 2026. [Explains Trump’s “nationalize elections” rhetoric and related moves.]​

• Politico. “Trump Says Republicans Should ‘Nationalize’ Elections.” February 2, 2026. [Initial coverage of Trump’s call to “take over” voting in 15 states.]​

• New York Times. “Judge Rules US Justice Department Filed a Lawsuit Over Georgia Voter Data in the Wrong Court.” January 22, 2026. [Example of DOJ suits to compel voter‑roll access.]​

• Democracy Docket. “Georgia DOJ Voter Data Access Challenge.” January 29, 2026. [Litigation over DOJ demands for full voter files.]​

• Minnesota Secretary of State. “Statement from Secretary Simon.” January 24, 2026. [Rejects Bondi’s demands; calls them a “ransom note.”]​

• Padilla, Alex et al. Follow‑up letter to DOJ regarding voter‑roll requests. January 28, 2026 (PDF). [Questions linkage between ICE operations and voter‑data demands.]​

• Rahman, Khaleda. “Karoline Leavitt Refuses To Rule Out Using ICE Agents in Midterm Elections.” Newsweek, February 6, 2026. [Leavitt quote that she “can’t guarantee that an ICE agent won’t be around a polling location in November”; Bannon’s “surround the polls” comments.]​

• Brennan Center for Justice. “Voter Intimidation: Federal Law.” [Explains 18 U.S.C. § 594 and federal prohibitions on voter intimidation.]

Media capture, ownership, and self‑censorship

• New York Times. “Bari Weiss Urges CBS News to Think Like a ‘Start‑Up’.” January 27, 2026. [Weiss’s approach at Ellison‑controlled CBS.]​

• CBS News. “Bari Weiss Named Editor‑in‑Chief of CBS News as Paramount Restructures News Division.” October 5, 2025. [Official announcement of her appointment and Skydance/Paramount context.]​

• Business Insider. “Leaked Audio: Bari Weiss Tells Staff CBS News Is….” January 27, 2026. [Weiss’s internal vision for CBS News.]​

• Reuters. “What Mystery Company Offered To Buy CNN From Warner Bros.?” December 17, 2025. [Reports on large takeover bid widely attributed to Ellison interests.]​

• New York Times. “Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post Guts Staff, Shrinks News Coverage.” February 4, 2026. [Layoffs and section closures at the Post.]​

• NPR. “Bezos Orders Deep Job Cuts at ‘Washington Post’.” February 4, 2026. [Additional detail on scale and scope of layoffs.]​

• New Yorker. “How Jeff Bezos Brought Down the Washington Post.” February 4, 2026. [Describes ideological constraints and Bezos‑era shifts.]​

• New Yorker Daily Newsletter. “Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight.” February 8, 2026. [David Remnick’s essay on WaPo’s destruction.]​

Gaza, NAS, and Title VI/IHRA machinery

• International Association of Genocide Scholars. “Resolution on the Situation in Gaza.” August 31, 2025. [States that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide.]

• International Court of Justice. Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel), Order on Provisional Measures, January 26, 2024. [Finds genocide claims “plausible.”]

• Schabas, William. Interviews with European Center for Populism Studies and Middle East Eye, 2025. [Warns third‑party states, including the U.S., risk complicity in genocide.]

• Bartov, Omer. “Gaza and the Threat of Genocide.” The New York Review of Books, November 2024.

• Goldberg, Amos. “A Genocide in Gaza.” Haaretz, December 2024.

• U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. Letter from Secretary Miguel Cardona on antisemitism and Title VI. May 3, 2024. [Encourages universities to treat certain pro‑Palestine speech as potential Title VI violations.]

• American Association of University Professors. “Discriminating Against Dissent: Restrictions on Campus Protest in the Gaza War Era.” November 2025. [Documents campus crackdowns tied to Gaza protests.]

• House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Staff report and hearings on “campus antisemitism,” 2024–25. [Interrogations of Harvard, Penn, MIT presidents.]

• International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. “Working Definition of Antisemitism.” 2016. [Widely cited NAS framework later used as enforcement template.]