Powers that went largely unchallenged during the Obama administration are now in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump—and that’s a frightening prospect.

From expanding mass surveillance to justifying drone kill lists, President Barack Obama “not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them,” as commentator and law professor Jonathan Turley wrote in 2011.

And despite outcry from civil liberties groups, Democrats let it happen. “Even though many Democrats admit in private that they are shocked by Obama’s position on civil liberties, they are incapable of opposing him,” Turley wrote at the time. “Some insist that they are simply motivated by realism: A Republican would be worse. However, realism alone cannot explain the utter absence of a push for an alternative Democratic candidate or organized opposition to Obama’s policies on civil liberties in Congress during his term. It looks more like a cult of personality. Obama’s policies have become secondary to his persona.”

The president-elect, of course, has a different persona.

“The nightmare that civil libertarians have warned of for years has now tragically come true: instead of dismantling the surveillance state and war machine, the Obama administration and Democrats institutionalized it—and it will soon be in the hands of a maniac,” wrote Trevor Timm at the Guardian on Wednesday, citing Obama-enshrined policies on torture, Guantánamo prison, government secrecy, surveillance, and drones. 

“What horrors are in store for us during the reign of President Trump is anyone’s guess, but he will have all the tools at his disposal to wreak havoc on our rights here at home and countless lives of those abroad,” Timm continued. “We should have seen this coming, and we should have put in place the safeguards to limit the damage.”

Conor Friedersdorf similarly argued at The Atlantic: