Reactionary winds are blowing through the United States. They are driven by a minority of radical conservatives, that now imposes its views on a disagreeing majority. For decades, this minority has been methodically weaponizing a political and judicial system that works to its advantage. The recent series of regressive decisions rendered by the Supreme Court on abortion, notably, but also on gun control or climate change – against the will of society – is the culmination of this effort so far. This outcome has been made possible by the country’s institutional architecture, decrypted in detail by Ludivine Gilli. The author shows how the very design of the institutions, through representation in Congress, the electoral college, electoral redistricting, or the appointment of federal judges, has come to favor Republicans and how they have been using it in a growingly questionable way over the last decades, betraying democratic principles. As a result, democracy is currently in peril in the United States, and national harmony along with it. Ludivine Gilli is Director of the North America Observatory at the Fondation Jean Jaurès. A specialist of American history and politics, she has a PhD in American history from the Sorbonne and is a graduate of Sciences Po, the Paris Institute of Political Studies.