Like knowing the names of lots of federal judges, widespread familiarity with specific theories of authoritarian rule is not generally a hallmark of a healthy society. But as the United States’ vital signs get more dire, Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way’s concept of “competitive authoritarianism” feels unsettlingly relevant.

The idea came to mind again when federal officers manhandled and then handcuffed Senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, yesterday as he tried to ask a question of Kristi Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security, at a press conference in Los Angeles.

Because it took place at a media event, the incident was recorded clearly on video, and it’s shocking. Nearly as disturbing as the footage is the fact that even though the incident is on tape, the Trump administration attempted to lie baldly about what happened. Officials said Padilla never identified himself as a senator and that security personnel thought he was an attacker; video shows him audibly identifying himself and wearing a U.S. Senate shirt. They said he lunged at Noem; video shows nothing of the sort. (If only Noem’s security detail had been so vigilant when her purse was stolen in April.)

The most that can be said is that Padilla’s question disrupted Noem’s spiel at the press conference. According to the senator’s explanation, the Department of Homeland Security had refused to adequately answer questions from his office for weeks, and when he realized that Noem was holding a press conference at the same federal building where he was receiving a briefing, he decided to attend. He was not arrested, and later spoke with Noem. As clips of the moment spread, Democrats erupted in outrage, and so did Republicans—in a sense. Speaker Mike Johnson called on the Senate to censure Padilla, though for what was unclear. Daring to challenge a Trump-administration official?

That’s where competitive authoritarianism comes in. Levitsky explained the idea in an Atlantic essay in February: Whereas traditional authoritarians aim for total control, competitive authoritarians maintain the trappings of democracy, such as an opposition party. They just make it nearly impossible for the opposition to win.

“Unlike in a full-scale dictatorship, in competitive-authoritarian regimes, opposition forces are legal and aboveground, and they often seriously vie for power,” he wrote. “Elections may be fiercely contested. But incumbents deploy the machinery of government to punish, harass, co-opt, or sideline their opponents.” One advantage of this model, from the standpoint of power, is that it doesn’t require trashing the Constitution. Instead, the ruler burrows into and subverts existing institutions.

The Padilla incident should be understood as more than just an overheated encounter between partisan opponents; it’s part of a pattern of harassment of Democrats. On Tuesday, Representative LaMonica McIver was indicted on three counts of forcibly impeding and interfering with federal law-enforcement officers for an incident last month when she and other Democrats visited an ICE facility in New Jersey. A scrum occurred when officers arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka; Alina Habba, the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, dropped a charge against him and received a fierce scolding from a judge, but she brought charges against McIver, despite dubious evidence in videos of the event. McIver has said that she will plead not guilty. Late last month, DHS officers handcuffed a staffer for Representative Jerry Nadler, a prominent Democrat—ostensibly because the staffer had objected to officers entering the office, and because DHS was concerned (ironically) for the staff’s safety.

Padilla’s detention comes amid protests in California and elsewhere over ICE raids. Noem told Fox News yesterday, “I’m so sick of the politics … This is literally people’s lives.” DHS accused Padilla of “disrespectful political theater.” Given that the department is currently engaged in an elaborate production of its own, featuring draconian raids and unprecedented military deployments, Noem deserves some kind of award for lack of self-awareness. The Trump administration has embarked on a needless, inappropriate, and, according to one federal judge, illegal use of the National Guard. Senator Josh Hawley, a Trump ally, sent a letter earlier this week that seems to be an attempt to intimidate groups involved in the Los Angeles protests. Trump has also threatened further military deployments in other cities.

“When citizens must think twice about criticizing or opposing the government because they could credibly face government retribution, they no longer live in a full democracy,” Levitsky, Way, and the political scientist Daniel Ziblatt wrote in The New York Times last month. That may not yet be the case, but the path is too clear and too short for comfort.

When Levitsky and Way first developed the concept of competitive authoritarianism, at the start of the century, they were looking at countries such as Slobodan Milošević’s Serbia, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and Alberto Fujimori’s Peru. The bad news is that a framework developed to describe poor, repressive regimes has now become useful for understanding the United States, as Levitsky wrote in his Atlantic essay. The good news is that more than two decades of study have provided some lessons on how to resist the danger.

“Civil society must act collectively,” the political scientists wrote in the Times, identifying a common interest among corporate leaders, law firms, universities, leaders in both parties, and the press. “When organizations work together and commit to a collective defense of democratic principles, they share the costs of defiance. The government cannot attack everyone all at once. When the costs of defiance are shared, they become easier for individuals to bear.”

Seen from this point of view, peaceful protests in Los Angeles and elsewhere are an important start (though violence undermines the cause). Although Democratic members of Congress shouldn’t have needed to see one of their colleagues manhandled to get angry, their outrage is appropriate. So is the response of levelheaded Republicans such as Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who watched a clip of the detention and said, “It’s horrible. It is shocking at every level. It’s not the America I know.” But unless critics of Trump’s power grab can work together and find effective ways of resisting, they’ll be consigning themselves to a permanent existence as nothing more than a nominal opposition—never quite extinguished, but not relevant either.