Good news (depending on your framework): this shit is rapidly hitting the point where even moderate Americans are in favor of Trump completely ignoring the judiciary and just doing what he wants. It's a VERY short leap from that to an autocracy. Would such a thing hold? Would it be beneficial in the long term? Would it spark mass unrest? Unclear. But it's fucking something, and it's coming fast.
It really depends on if Trump even cares to keep running it as an autocracy if such a jump happens. There's absolutely nothing in such a scenario stopping him from telling the Judiciary to pound sand in regards to deportations, and then still obeying the system elsewhere.
Its a common refrain to assume that its like a switch is flipped and suddenly all the checks and balances are forever out the window, but what's far more plausible is that Trump ignores the attempts to stop him on the things he has overwhelming support behind, and continues to play by the rules for the things he's either less aggressively resisted on, less supported on, or otherwise believes the process is just as important as the result in. His crime crackdowns with the nat guard are on a similar book, its got that razor edge of stepping towards something that makes people uncomfortable, but he's only using it as such in the area he arguably has the most authority to do so in, and to a controlled degree that's showing stellar results to the average person. The moment he expanded it outside of DC, he did so much more in line with the rules, tossing out a few hundred troops strictly in support roles to places willing to accept the help. Again, potentially dubious, but again the thing people actively want him to do in those areas, so whether its perfectly permitted or not only matters to seething fools on the outside.
That said, this is exactly how autocratic action ends up being accepted by normal folks, when the system built by those in charge is built in such a way to prevent the citizens who empower them from getting the results they want. The average person sees the rules as being asinine and counter productive, as the inherent deadlock prone nature of the system is now being used to keep painful issues open, rather than prevent them from ever being opened in the first place. And when they don't respect the rules, they'll cheer for the person who ignores them to give them what they actually want. Worse, the side opposing such action will then be encouraged to take the rules that are still being respected, and twist them even harder to stop more things from changing. Today Trump is being cheered for ignoring retarded two bit judges who think they can overrule the entire executive branch, but who's to say that tomorrow he's not cheered on just as well for ignoring the legislative branch trying to do something retarded.
If people have the choice between hoping for a benevolent dictator, or being guaranteed a malicious representative, its not hard to see why they're leaning the way they are.
