It's not about "illiberal". It's about making decisions outside of the established process. Like the big hole next to the White House. You mentioned tariffs struck down...the Felon has reinstated them anyway.

And he hasn't been able to fill the big hole next to the White House, because the new construction is being enjoined and he hasn't (yet) been able to get Congress to authorize new construction. Because he's constrained by the "established process." He hasn't reinstated his tariffs - he tried to impose new and different ones (again, because he's constrained by the court decisions). And those new tariffs were just struck down. Meanwhile, the Administration is about to write about $160 billion worth of checks they don't want to write, but are doing so for no reason other than a court told them to.

Not exactly authoritarian.

What people are finally waking up to is the fact that the "established process" gives the President a shirt-ton of power, with very few guardrails. This has been done through ordinary legislation, from both parties, because Congress basically assumed a certain type of behavior from Presidents. Namely, that they would be constrained by ordinary political forces - that they would want to be able to get things through Congress, that they would listen to their party if they were doing things that were highly damaging to the party, etc. Trump doesn't care about any of that (or, as I've mentioned before, he's bad at Presidenting so he doesn't recognize the need or benefit to doing that). So he just goes ahead and does the thing that most Presidents wouldn't do.

The President seems like he's getting a lot done, and he seems authoritarian...but in some ways it's an illusion. The President has plenary authority over the government itself, and he has a ton of authority over the law enforcement and immigration and national security apparatuses - so he has been able to do a lot of very visible things in those areas. And those things can read very authoritarian, because they involve a lot of very visible harsh actions towards people that the "established process" subordinates to the President's authority - federal workers, people here unlawfully, folks from other countries. But that involves the exercise of power the President lawfully has...and when we get outside those areas, the President really hasn't done very much at all, because Trump doesn't know how to get anything done if he can't just command it be done.