Since Donald Trump entered the White House, American democracy has sometimes been described as dangerously fragile, but that isn’t necessarily true. Having survived for two hundred and forty-two years, American democracy is more like a stoutly built ocean liner, with a maniac at the helm who seems intent on capsizing it. Every so often, he takes a violent tug at the tiller, causing the vessel to list alarmingly. So far, some members of the ship’s crew—judges, public servants, and the odd elected official—have managed to rush in, jag the tiller back, and keep the ship afloat. But, as the captain’s behavior grows more erratic, the danger facing the ship and its passengers increases.

In the past forty-eight hours, Trump has demanded that the Justice Department open an investigation into its own investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. The Justice Department has already—partially, at least—acceded to his wishes. It feels as though an important threshold has been crossed.

If this were a one-off instance of Trump trying to bully the Justice Department, the fact that Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, emerged from a meeting at the White House on Monday without having agreed to all of Trump’s demands would be more reassuring. But this wasn’t an isolated case. As the Robert Mueller investigation closes in on the President, Trump and his allies have launched a multi-pronged effort to discredit and end it. Rosenstein’s concessions may well encourage Trump to step up his efforts, regardless of historical norms involving the exercise of Presidential power.

That is not to criticize Rosenstein or Christopher Wray, the director of the F.B.I., who were left in an unenviable position by the President’s weekend barrage of tweets, in which he called the Russia investigation a “Witch Hunt” and a “scam,” and then said he would officially demand on Monday “that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes - and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

Trump has been railing against the Mueller investigation for months now, of course. But this demand, which followed the revelation that the F.B.I., in the summer of 2016, used a former Cambridge University professor named Stefan Halpern to approach three people connected to the Trump campaign who were suspected of having communicated with Russians, represented a significant escalation. Not only was Trump violating the rule that Presidents don’t get involved in individual criminal investigations, he was targeting a probe that involved him, several of his family members, and many of his closest colleagues.

A question immediately arose: Would Rosenstein and Wray go along with Trump’s demands, or would they resign? On Sunday afternoon, Rosenstein sought to deëscalate the situation by saying he would refer the matter to the Justice Department’s inspector general, who was already reviewing the steps that the F.B.I. took in 2016 to obtain a court warrant to eavesdrop on Carter Page, one of the Trump campaign aides who was suspected of collaborating with Russian officials. “If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a Presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action,” Rosenstein said in a statement.

This was clearly an effort to meet the President halfway. Given the fact the Rosenstein’s continued presence in office is essential to the safeguarding of the Mueller probe, it was defensible on pragmatic grounds. But on Monday Rosenstein was forced into making another concession. After his meeting with Trump, the White House announced that John Kelly, the President’s chief of staff, would “immediately set up a meeting with the FBI, DOJ, and DNI together with Congressional Leaders to review highly classified and other information they have requested.” This information is believed to relate directly to the activities of Halpern on the F.B.I.’s behalf.

“The President may, in effect, be ordering the disclosure of an F.B.I. confidential source,” Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School who served in the George W. Bush Administration, noted on a Lawfare podcast. “That really crosses F.B.I. lines. They really care a lot about protecting their sources both for their credibility with that source and future sources.”

The irony, of course, is that Trump and his supporters in Congress, such as Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Mark Meadows, the head of the Freedom Caucus, are attacking an institution—the F.B.I.—that went to great lengths in 2016 not to publicize the fact that it was investigating the Trump campaign. In reportedly enlisting Halpern to approach Page, George Papadopoulos, and Sam Clovis, who were all foreign-policy advisers to the campaign, the F.B.I. was following the standard practice of counterintelligence investigations, and not a word of its activities leaked before Election Day.

Trump knows this, of course. But all that concerns him is discrediting the Russia investigation and saving his own skin. To this end, he will do practically anything he can get away with. And, judging by the deathly silence from the Republican leadership over the past couple of days, he won’t receive any resistance from that quarter. To repeat, the danger is increasing.