The US is trending towards a Russian style oligarchy and these latest moves are just one of a wider pattern of trying to suppress academia, freedom of speech, personal freedoms.
As a Russian national: no, the USA is not yet at nearly the same level of corruption.
The main bulwark against Russianification is not the Congress or the SCOTUS, it's the true federative nature of the US. States have a lot of very real autonomy and they limit the amount of corrupt overreach.
States absolutely have autonomy. And not just on paper. And a lot of it is just in the amount of friction that the federal government can get.
E.g. Trump sent ICE goons to MN and now he's embroiled in dozens of lawsuits because of that. Yes, he probably will win most of them eventually, but they all take time and energy. With a lot of negative PR along the way.
> The US is trending towards a Russian style oligarchy
There's a step after that.
There's an article in the current Economist about how the Russian oligarchs are being crushed by Putin's cronies and losing their assets.
FTFY. From the outside, people can easily see it.