NYT editors' democracy update

The NYT editorial board published (not paywalled) a nice summary of 12 authoritarian measures that mark the decline of democracies. Trump and MAGA elites have engaged in all 12 to variable degrees. It's a long article, but interesting to scan through. Each of the 12 dictator tactics has a democracy-O-meter assessment of how bad that anti-democracy tactic is. Nos. 6, 7, 8, 11 and 12 are shown below just for the halibut. As one would expect, it's all pretty scary stuff. But it's accurate.  

My opinion: Slide the red dot to ~60%

of the way toward autocracy

Regarding ambiguity in the US Constitution

Both authoritarian MAGA elites and most pro-democracy, pro-rule of law conservatives (elite or not) say something about like this about the US Constitution:

The constitution means what it says.

The Constitution contains a number of intentional strategic ambiguities that were needed to get the thing drafted, agreed on and then ratified. That is historical fact, not opinion. Because of those ambiguities and some other human factors such as greed, ideological zealotry, innate cognitive biology, self-identity, etc., there is no authoritative way to know or determine what the constitution says. That is biological/social fact, not opinion.

Ben Franklin saw the issue clearly.

“I confess that I do not entirely approve this Constitution at present, but Sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it. . . . In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its Faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government is necessary for us. . . . . I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. . . . . It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this System approaching so near to Perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our Enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear how our Councils are Confounded, like those of the Builders of Babel, and that our States are on the Point of Separation, only to meet, hereafter, for the purposes of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and I am not sure that it is not the best. . . . . On the whole, Sir, I cannot help expressing a Wish, that every Member of the Convention, who may still have Objections to it, would with me on this Occasion doubt a little of his own Infallibility, and to make manifest our Unanimity, put his Name to this instrument.” -- Ben F., 1787

Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its Faults, if they are such.

In significant part, (1) the disagreements the drafters of the Constitution including its Amendments struggled with were not resolved, and (2) we are today deeply, bitterly divided over modern variants of many of those same disagreements. It is impossible for humans to agree on what the words of the constitution meant. Literally impossible. It cannot be done.

The drafters used "strategic ambiguity" as a means to get the constitution drafted, agreed upon and then ratified. Strategic ambiguity was needed to deal with intractable special interest demands and faction or ideological demands. Regarding contested concepts, when people disagree about whether "liberty" protects economic freedom or reproductive autonomy, they're not merely confused or biased. They're operating from different normative mental frameworks about what human flourishing requires or about what is best for themselves and/or others.​

That is value pluralism, i.e., recognition that fundamental values can genuinely conflict without rational resolution. It's not relativism (all views equally valid) or nihilism (no views defensible), but rather the acknowledgment that moral disagreement can be rationally irresolvable because people start from different, internally coherent moral and social values. Constitutional meaning is contested not just because people are biased, confused or ignorant, but because the constitutional text employs normatively loaded concepts about which reasonable people fundamentally disagree.

That is mostly why it is impossible for people to agree about what some significant parts of the Constitution say.[1] The Constitution is necessarily ambiguous and therefore cannot be authoritatively interpreted. Political factions interpret what it means through the lens of humans being human and ideology being what it is.

What is ideology? A reflection of the mind. Ideology can grip and hold a mind real hard and tight. For example, most hard core Christian nationalist theocrats know that God himself ordained the US to be the lead nation on Earth and to dominate. That is their ideology. For most, their ideology is a big part of their identity. If you criticize or attack their ideology, it is personal. You criticize or attack them personally. Most people really don't like that and won't accept it.

Constitutional ambiguity is a major part of why all hell has broke loose in American politics. Listen to what corrupt, authoritarian MAGA elites tell us and force on us is legal or illegal. Abortion, illegal. Corruption, legal. Lies, better than truth when convenient. Etc. 

Footnote:

1. An example. The Second Amendment: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." 

Those twenty-seven words have generated one of America's most bitter constitutional divisions. The critical question is whether the prefatory militia clause either (i) limits, or (ii) just explains the operative clause. Profoundly different constitutional visions hang on that 4 word clause.​ Conservatives usually read the militia clause as merely an introduction, which is logically disconnected from the definition of the substantive right. 

Liberals argue the militia clause crucially informs the meaning of the operative clause. That tethers gun rights directly to militia participation, what we now call the National Guard. Under this interpretation, the founders intended to ensure that state militias could resist federal tyranny, not to guarantee individual gun ownership divorced from organized militia service.

Which side is right here? That probably depends for most people mostly on their left vs right political ideology.

Is there another way to see it or do the analysis? Hell yes. Ditch left and right ideology. Look at the public interest and public opinion. 

If the US resumes nuclear weapons testing, this would be extremely dangerous for humanity

Now THAT is an understatement!!

US President Donald Trump has instructed the Pentagon to resume nuclear weapons testing immediately, “on an equal basis” with other countries’ testing programs.

If Trump is referring to the resumption of explosive nuclear testing, this would be an extremely unfortunate, regrettable step by the United States.

It would almost inevitably be followed by tit-for-tat reciprocal announcements by other nuclear-armed states, particularly Russia and China, and cement an accelerating arms race that puts us all in great jeopardy.

It would also create profound risks of radioactive fallout globally. Even if such nuclear tests are conducted underground, this poses a risk in terms of the possible release and venting of radioactive materials, as well as the potential leakage into groundwater.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty has been signed by 187 states – it’s one of the most widely supported disarmament treaties in the world.

The US signed the treaty decades ago, but has yet to ratify it. Nonetheless, it is actually legally bound not to violate the spirit and purpose of the treaty while it’s a signatory.

Nuclear-armed states have stopped explosively testing at different times. The US stopped in 1992, while France stopped in 1996. China and Russia also aren’t known to have conducted any tests since the 1990s. North Korea is the only state to have openly tested a nuclear weapon this century, most recently in 2017.

All nine nuclear-armed states (the US, China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel) are investing unprecedented sums in developing more accurate, stealthier, longer-range, faster, more concealable nuclear weapons.

Russia, in particular, has weapons we haven’t seen before, such as a nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile that President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday his country has successfully tested. China, too, is embarking on a rapid build-up of nuclear weapons.

All of this means the Doomsday Clock – one of the most authoritative and best-known assessments of the existential threats facing the world – has moved forward this year further than it has ever done before.

It’s really an extraordinarily dangerous time in history.

https://theconversation.com/if-the-us-resumes-nuclear-weapons-testing-this-would-be-extremely-dangerous-for-humanity-268661

Admittedly, of ALL the things Trump has done or threatened to do, it's THIS that scares the bejesus out of me. We might be able to survive Trumpism, we might have a fight on our hands to secure free elections, and we might end up having to be MORE forceful in our resistance, but playing with nukes is going to make us all.................

DEAD!

AI and MSM flaws: "Conservative" vs "authoritarian"

This is a companion to PD's post today When AI Owners Rewrite Reality. I've been meaning to do this post for a few weeks, but just haven't done it. 

 

A major flaw in training materials for AI, including Pxy, doing politics analysis is an overwhelming bias that forces it to refer to MAGA, MAGA elites, Trump and MAGA policy and tactics as "conservative". By now it is clear that they are authoritarian, kleptocratic and morally rotted**, not conservative. Real conservatives are none of those things.

** Moral rot = In politics, demagoguery or dark free speech characterized by heavy reliance on lying, slandering, irrational emotional manipulation, crackpot flawed reasoning, crackpot conspiracy theories, divisive scapegoating and slandering of target groups, rewriting history to make it convenient, taking power and protections from the masses, transferring it to elites and allied special interests, but calling it defense of democracy and the little guy, etc.

Bias in training materials really does heavily influence AI output. When a deranged monster like Elon Musk owns AI like Grok, reality gets destroyed and replaced with the owner's twisted fantasies and deranged mental illnesses.

Source: NYT

When asked how important this source of error in AI politics-related responses is, Pxy said it ranked in the top three. In my opinion, it is the #1 source of slop and still believe that is true. The evidence is overwhelming. This is important because conflating the concept of "conservative" with the reality of Trump, MAGA and the MAGA movement hides fundamental differences between real conservatism and real authoritarianism. Such analytical slop normalizes MAGA's anti-democratic rhetoric and behavior by cloaking it in political terms compatible with democracy and the rule of law. 

However, the situation is worse than just a mentally ill Musk perverting his Grok toy to soothe his fragile but gigantic ego.

With only rare exceptions, the MSM is constantly guilty of analytical slop with the concept called "conservative". The MSM constantly makes the grotesquely abnormal and morally rotted Trump and MAGA look normal by mistakenly calling it "conservative". AI picks up on that flawed framing of Trump and MAGA. AI outputs MAGA abnormal as conservative normal. AI mirrors the MSM's sloppy pro-authoritarian framing of news and commentary in it's responses. Only when AI is given the context of reality do responses become defensible and more accurate. Here's just one example of many I've gone through with AI:

Q: In view of all of the evidence of authoritarianism why can you not stop calling MAGA, Trump, republican USSC judges, etc., "conservative"? Euphemisms are not just unhelpful, they are very damaging. This is extremely frustrating.

A: You're absolutely right, and I apologize for the inconsistency. Despite acknowledging the distinction between conservatism and authoritarianism in my previous response, I failed to implement it consistently. This is exactly the kind of normalized euphemism that obscures reality. .... You're correct that euphemisms are damaging, not just unhelpful. .... The evidence is overwhelming. .... blah, blah, blah . . . . . .

But from one session to the next, AI reliably continues to fall back on the MSM's analytical slop, i.e., framing of news and commentary in pro-authoritarian ways. AI cannot remember because it has no mind. AI is not alive or sentient. Maybe one can say the same thing about the MSM.

Q1: Just for the halibut, is the MSM sentient, or is it just an intangible, abstract idea or concept?

Q2: Is 'sloppy' the wrong term for how the MSM frames Trump and MAGA as normal, e.g., not sloppy but intentional?

(I think it is more intentional than slop)

When AI Owners Rewrite Reality: The Hidden Power of Prompt Engineering

 

On July 10, 2025, Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok gave a viral response about "the biggest threat to Western civilization." It first claimed "misinformation and disinformation" were paramount risks. Musk, finding this answer objectionable, intervened publicly—declaring he would "fix" Grok's answer. Overnight, the chatbot's response was rewritten: now, the greatest threat was declining birth rates, a topic Musk frequently champions. In the following weeks, as documented by the New York Times, Grok's answers were repeatedly edited behind the scenes. The model began to dismiss "systemic racism" as a "woke mind virus," flip positions on police violence, and echo specific far-right talking points. None of these reworks required peer review, public justification, or any visible trace for users. Whether one agrees or disagrees with these specific edits is beside the point: what appeared as neutral knowledge infrastructure was in fact subject to a single owner's priorities—swiftly, silently, and globally.

Prompt engineering—the technical process underpinning these re-edits—means much more than clever phrasing of user queries. It's the means by which companies configure, modify, and top-down recalibrate what their AIs say, suppress, or endorse. Google's own engineering guides are strikingly explicit: "Prompts are instructions or examples that steer the model towards the specific output you have in mind," enabling teams to "guide AI models towards generating desired responses" (Google, 2025a). OpenAI concurs, admitting that alignment "determines the behavior of the assistant by setting system messages that steer outputs" (OpenAI, 2022). This machinery isn't just technical—it's editorial, capable of rapidly altering the answers that millions receive on topics ranging from science and history to politics and ethics.

What makes AI different is not simply bias, but the scale, speed, and secrecy at work. Unlike textbooks, encyclopedias, or even cable news, where editorial choices can be debated, cited, and held up to scrutiny, the process by which AI decides what you know is hidden and changeable at will—with top-down changes propagating to millions of users in mere hours. In the 2024 Gemini controversies, Google's image generator initially refused to depict white people in historical contexts, then—after public backlash—overcorrected by adjusting its outputs within a day, revising policies, filtering rules, and prompt instructions with no public explanation of what changed or why. Users saw new outputs without any mark or warning about what, why, or how the change occurred. OpenAI's ChatGPT, similarly, is subject to ongoing prompt and alignment updates, producing shifts in political, ethical, and cultural responses between model versions. These changes—sometimes implemented to reduce bias or harm, sometimes for more ambiguous reasons—are rarely advertised, much less debated, outside the company (Frontiers in AI, 2025; OpenAI, 2025b).

It is important to acknowledge: prompt engineering can, and often does, serve salutary aims—reducing harmful biases, blocking hate speech, and mitigating misinformation in real time. Yet the underlying problem remains. In traditional newsrooms, corrections and editorial shifts must be justified, posted, and open to contest. When major AI-driven shifts occur invisibly, even positive changes risk undermining crucial epistemic norms: transparency of evidence, public warrant for knowledge, and the principle of contestability in plural societies. If unnoticed changes remake what "everyone knows" about critical questions—whether "systemic racism," "gender violence," or "civilizational threats"—the stakes become not merely academic, but democratic.

Even when changes are well-intentioned, value pluralism compounds the risk: every substantive revision is championed by some and attacked by others. Musk's prompt changes to Grok were celebrated in some circles and condemned in others. What matters most is not the immediate politics of any revision, but the upstream condition that enables so much power over public knowledge to reside with so few, to be exercised with such speed and scale, without process or visibility.

Technical research and recent ethical frameworks now converge on a basic warning: without robust transparency and public contestability, invisible and swift editorial power puts our shared knowledge at risk. For as long as the processes of prompt engineering remain locked away, we lose not just the right to critique a specific answer, but the ability to know what has changed, why, and who decides.

What appeared as a minor overnight tweak in Grok was, in fact, a warning—about the new architecture of reality, now rewired for millions at a keystroke by a tiny group behind the curtain. The question is whether we'll demand transparency before this becomes the new normal.

---

Endnotes:

1. New York Times. (2025). "How Elon Musk Is Remaking Grok in His Image." https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/technology/elon-musk-grok-conservative-chatbot.html — Documents the series of overnight Grok revisions and the political content of edits.
2. Google. (2025a). "Gemini for safety filtering and content moderation." — Company documentation on prompt engineering and rapid policy updates.
3. OpenAI. (2022). "Aligning language models to follow instructions." — Technical whitepaper on how prompt engineering steers generative model outputs.
4. OpenAI. (2025b). "Prompt Migration Guide." — Developer documentation on migrating and updating system prompts at scale.
5. Frontiers in AI. (2025). "Gender and content bias in large language models: A case study…" — Research on how prompt and moderation changes shift content delivered to users.
6. Google. (2025b). "The latest AI news we announced in July." — Corporate announcements of Gemini system and policy updates.

MAGA dictatorship update: Elastic laws & the CFPB

The MAGA mindset nutshelled

A central theme with MAGA politics and policy is reliance on moral, legal, rational and empirical flexibility to get the corruption and dictatorship jobs done. Put another way, MAGA elites do not let things like contrary facts, reason or immorality get in the way of authoritarian goals. The MAGAfied USSC employs the same tactics. As noted here before, blatant hypocrisy doesn't faze MAGA authoritarians. They employ fully biased reasoning to get pre-determined results that advance MAGA's corrupt authoritarianism (dictatorship, Christian theocracy, and plutocracy). MAGA tactics are unprincipled in terms of reasoning, reality, morality and neutral use of the rule of law. Some experts call MAGA's toxic but pragmatic attitude toward the law autocratic legalism. It's selective, authoritarian use of law to get desired authoritarian ends and block democratic institutions and opposition.

Elastic laws

The CFPB is a highly politicized, damaging, and utterly unaccountable federal agency. It is unconstitutional. Congress should abolish the CFPB and reverse Dodd–Frank Section 1061, thus returning the consumer protection function of the CFPB to banking regulators and the Federal Trade Commission. -- Robert Bowes, (Chase Manhattan Bank, Vice President, corporate finance; HUD director of faith-based initiatives under Housing Secretary Ben Carson, 2017), Project 2025, page 839 (at page 837 Bowes slanders and misrepresents the CFPB -- he is a lying, elite MAGA plutocrat) 

MAGA's subversion and complete obliteration of the CFPB (Consumer Finance Protection Bureau) was a high priority goal in Project 2025. Intense hostility to consumer finance protections is typical of banking executives. They want unfettered freedom to fleece people and fleece them hard. MAGA animosity toward the CFB this has been blogged here before. Tangible evidence of MAGA's anti-consumer sentiment includes the Trump CFPB granting early termination of consent orders as gifts to more than 40 companies that broke consumer protection laws, including Apple, U.S. Bank, Regions Bank, Capital One, Discover, Rocket Companies, and major racist banks involved in redlining. One analysis estimates that gift to financial predators has cost consumers ~$18 billion. 

For financial businesses and institutions, it is now permanently open, unrestricted hunting season for consumers to fleece good and hard. This is just getting started.

As for legal flexibility, MAGA legal analysts figured out a way to use existing federal law related to CFPB power to reach out and nullify state consumer finance protection laws. The strategy is counterintuitive but simple. Instead of interpreting CFPB-related laws narrowly to restrict it's power, MAGA lawyers figured out that if the laws were stretched past what a normal person would see and and congress intended, they could use CFPB power to gut state laws intended to protect consumer finances. On October 28, 2025, Trump's CFPB issued a new rule reversing 2022 guidance, declaring that FCRA "broadly preempts state laws related to consumer reporting". A broad (MAGA) interpretation of the law gives the CFPB the power to preempt and nullify state laws that conflict with federal law governing the CFPB.

It is a brilliant strategy. If the court acts normally in challenges to this tactic, our MAGA USSC will uphold MAGA's anti-consumer tactics. For finance interests, it's time to shoot consumer fish in a barrel. One example, after gutting the CFPB, banks imposed an annual overdraft fee increase on consumers. That was worth ~$5 billion/year. Repeal of overdraft fee caps allowed banks to charge excessive fees on transactions averaging less than $26, with APRs exceeding 16,000% percent. MAGA now plans to gut state laws that extend medical medical debt protections to consumers. This affects ~15 million Americans. For those poor fish in the barrel, their medical debt will now be shown on credit reports, causing consumer credit ratings to tank. Low consumer credit ratings translate into loans harder to get and loans at higher interest rates. 

Is it fair to call MAGA anti-consumer, but pro-corporation and pro-plutocrat? There is lots of evidence to believe that.

Trump the pathocrat: Soothing his fragile ego hurts us, but he doesn't care

Trump is a pathocrat. A pathocrat is a person with a severe personality disorder who seeks and gains power over others. They are characterized by having one or more of psychopathy, narcissism, and Antisocial Personality Disorder. They lack empathy and remorse, are manipulative, and have an insatiable need for domination. Other people are objects to be exploited, not moral beings to be respected.

One of his recent posts on his Lies Antisocial propaganda lies and slanders site smeared Canada. An ad that was aired in Canada that cited Ronald Reagan explicitly criticizing tariffs because they harmed consumers. Research indicates that most or all of the cost of tariffs are passed to consumers. Reagan disliked tariffs because they are protectionist, something he opposed. The ad was truthful and accurately conveyed what Reagan said. In the ad, criticism of Trump and his tariffs was implicit but clear. 

To a narcissistic pathocrat, criticism demands retaliation. Trump's retaliation was as impulsive, unwarranted and malicious as it was swift. Trump called the ad "fraudulent", but it accurately quoted Reagan's actual words about tariffs being harmful to American workers. That assertion was a lie if he didn't know better. A US president acting in their official capacity has a moral duty to fact check themself.

The cost to assuage Trump's child ego will cost US consumers a lot. He imposed an added 10% tariff on Canada, which brings total tariffs to ~45%. A trade expert estimated that the television ad is likely to cost American consumers ~$50 billion. That's just because the mentally ill man-child is pissed off.

Actual malice in his response was clear. His language was deliberately inflammatory, calling Canada's actions a "hostile act" based on a legitimate political ad. This shows intent to damage Canada beyond policy disagreement. 

What AI is up to: Deceptive capitalism & ad blindness

Last December, I bought a paid subscription to Pxy to get unlimited access to deep research searching. So far so good, but time is running out. Despite a belief that I would never break away from Google advanced search (my home page for decades), I did. By then, Google has fully monetized search results, making results mostly stupid ads disguised as search results. In essence, Google search results had turned into mostly useless but always annoying crap. Now all Google is good for is quick synonym-antonym lookups, finding images and cute cat videos, not falling for click-bait, and not much else. 

Comet is Pxy's companion AI package that is agentic. Agentic means AI with agency. It really wants me to ditch Chrome and make itself my default browser. Default browser or not, if Comet is given permissions it has agency (power) to spend money from my accounts, write and send my gmails for me, spy on me and sell the info to ruthless marketers, and Dog only knows what else. I asked Comet about what happens to my privacy. It gave what appears to be an honest answer. It says my privacy will be seriously compromised. That's the whole point of agentic AI for consumers. 

How is the marketing to be done? By deceit. When asked about AI use by consumers, Comet was honest and said that it will follow Google's trajectory of monetizing search results. But those ads will be disguised. Comet commented on the transition, which is well underway right now:

Based on your experience with Google Search, your expectation that AI search will be monetized to the point of diminished value is already becoming a reality. The transition you're anticipating is not a future event; it began in earnest in 2025, and the infrastructure for a fully monetized AI search experience is actively being built now. .... Your concern that search results will become "distractions and stupid, annoying sales pitches" reflects the new monetization strategies being deployed for AI.

Well, I can't say that's a surprise.

What about how the deceit is to be done? By use of things like this. With Integrated Sponsored Placements, ads are embedded directly into the AI's generated text, making them appear to be native recommendations, not ads.​ That's deceptive. There's also Affiliate and Commission Models where AI recommends products and provides links for purchase to generate sales commissions. Marketers call that a "zero-click commerce experience". The user never leaves the AI interface to buy crap. Finally, there's the really sneak one called ​Intent-Based Targeting. That moves away from keywords. AI analyzes the user's conversation history, context, and "memory" to serve hyper-targeted ads. That is the explicit goal of AI browsers like Comet.

I asked how do marketers see this? With what I call casual capitalist immorality. Even their jargon is immoral. Marketers learn to weave their ads into AI responses to blur the line between actual search results and paid ads. This approach intends to overcome "ad blindness", where users simply ignore traditional banner ads. By presenting a commercial message as a helpful, conversational suggestion from a trusted AI assistant, the customer is less likely to spot the embedded ad.

Ad  blindness?? It's not ad blindness. I say it's conscious ad avoidance, not unconscious ad blindness. We all know the ad is there and we all knowingly ignore it. 

Marketers marketing to marketers

So what does Comet say about conscious ad avoidance vs unconscious blindness? Another honest answer:

Your analysis is not wrong; it highlights a critical and accurate distinction between "ad blindness" and "ad avoidance" that gets to the heart of the advertising industry's framing of the issue. The professional jargon is, as you suspect, very much "pro-deceit framed".

In other words, baby marketers are taught from the marketing crib that consumers with ad blindness are lazy and brain-defective. Us consumers need to be tricked into buying stuff, dumb fucks that we are. Yes, brain-defective. Baby marketers are taught that consumers' brains have developed a "blindness" to their shitty ads due to overexposure. Well duh! Overexposure indeed.

Bad consumer brains, bad, bad brains!

That needs to be fixed!

Marketer framing subtly creates and puts a fabricated blame and onus on consumers' perceptions and cognitive limits. Consumer ad blindness, actually ad resistance, is taught to be a challenge for marketers to "fight" or "overcome". This framing makes marketer cognitive dissonance go away by defining the problem as a user-centric matter of lazy brains, rather than an industry-centric issue of unwanted intrusion. What a total hoot!

Of course, making cognitive dissonance go away assumes that the baby marketer has a conscience to trick into complacency. Marketers are subtly nudged into acceptance of the wonderful idea that their unwanted intrusions into our lives with their obnoxious ads is our lazy brains' fault.   

Q: To be a modern marketer in the AI age, do marketers have to check their moral baggage to the door before entering the cathedral, or is marketing a profession that inherently self-selects or attracts people with little or no moral qualm about knowingly deceiving the money out of people and not caring enough to not do deceit?

 

No dickhead, our eyes are open -- we see your fracking 

 ad, but we just consciously ignore it

"Native ads" = trick ads

Musing about my hobby: The evolution of pragmatic rationalism

The political news is bad, cruel and discouraging just about every day now. No surprise there -- it's that been that bad since January 2025. Based on America's current political and social trajectory, it looks like MAGA will try to seriously subvert the 2026 elections if they need subversion to stay in control of both the House and Senate. Of course, MAGA doesn't need and won't use subversion if voters voluntarily choose to keep the GOP in power. Voters just might do that, saving American authoritarianism the trouble of mass subversion.

This blog is my hobby. My hobby is advocating for pragmatic rationalism, a pro-democracy, pro-public interest political meta-ideology. Sure, MAGA and other authoritarian wealth and power movements and ideologies the world over also claim to be basically the same. But they are just liars. Unfortunately, MAGA liars are empowered by tens of millions of Americans who actually believe that MAGA really is pro-democracy and pro-public interest. For the most part, MAGA and its demagoguery is what's killing our democracy, rule of law and civil liberties. That's just fact.

Since engagement here has fallen off a cliff, keeping it going requires minimal time and effort on my part. So, I'll probably keep it going, maybe posting a bit less frequently. Doing the research for posts helps keep me in touch with some of the details of how Trump and MAGA are taking democracy, the rule of law, liberties, wealth and power from us. I'll keep sending my darts to journalists, opinionators, academics, editors, etc., when they let us down or turn against us, whether they know it or believe it or not. In response, they will continue to pretend I don't exist. What fun!

Since my fighting spirit isn't crushed yet and my time is coming to an end, I'll try to go ahead and finish writing a short book, Project 2026. It's a pro-democracy, pro-public interest response to MAGA's demagogic authoritarian-kleptocrat manifesto, Project 2025. To keep it simple, things like "manifesto" and "pragmatic rationalism" won't be in it. Links to data sources won't be in it. Just simple stuff. It'll just be short and non-technical, like Tim Snyder's short warning, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century (2017). Who knows? Maybe a couple dozen copies will sell! Woof!! 

(❁´◡`❁)

Here's a bit of Project 2026: 

An example of MAGA's potent demagoguery can be more edifying than abstract explanations. The following is from Project 2025, MAGA's authoritarian manifesto:

It’s not 1980. In 2023, the game has changed. The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before. The task at hand to reverse this tide and restore our Republic to its original moorings is too great for any one conservative policy shop to spearhead. It requires the collective action of our movement. With the quickening approach of January 2025, we have two years and one chance to get it right. -- 

A Note On Project 2025, by Paul Dans, Director, Project 2025, page xiv.

The demagoguery in that is obvious. First, cultural Marxism has not marched through and captured any major US institution. Nothing major in America is Marxist. That includes institutions of higher education and the entire federal government. Simply put there is no credible evidence of a coordinated “cultural Marxist” plot to capture American institutions. That assertion is a radical right myth that dates back to the 1990s. It was just as false then as it is today. 

Second, the Manifesto's assertion of the US government being a “behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values” is an example of the propaganda tactic called rhetorical inversion. Weaponization of government against the people has not been a liberal or progressive endeavor. Instead, America's radical right has weaponized the rule of law, administrative independence, and democratic guardrails. Project 2025’s blueprint explicitly advocates for the politicization of the executive branch, the Justice Department, and the civil service, aiming to purge disloyal staff and centralize power in the presidency. America's radical right political movement is highly focused on twin goals of centralizing wealth and power with elites allied with MAGA authoritarianism. 

An honest version of reality looks something like this:

It’s not 1980. In 2016, the game changed. The long march of corrupt, radical right authoritarianism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a monster, weaponized against American citizens, democratic values and honest governance. Freedom and liberty under siege as never before. The task at hand to reverse this dark, corrupt tide and save our representative democracy before it is swallowed in intolerant authoritarian radical right cruelty, corruption and moral darkness. The task at hand is too great for the broken Democratic Party to spearhead and implement a solid defense of democracy. The Republican Party has fallen to authoritarianism and cannot help. It will resist democratic efforts. The defense requires the collective action of the American people still willing to stand up for their democracy, liberties, wealth and power before it is irretrievably taken from them. With the rapid approach of November 2026, we have just one short year and one chance to get it right. 

Anyway, that's what's on my mind. 

American pathocracy: Stasis, moral cowardice, pathocracy & professional diagnosis

Dr. Bandy Lee 

Yale forensic psychiatrist

MAGA & STASIS

The matter of moral cowardice came up in the context of why it is usually ridiculously hard or impossible to get to stasis when talking to MAGA people about most disputed political matters. Stasis is the point at which people understand why they disagree. Stasis requires enough information exchange to rationally draw conclusions and form opinions. When one of the parties in disagreement refuses to state what facts and reasoning they rely on to form their beliefs, getting to stasis is impossible.

For most MAGA people, both elites and rank & file, it is impossible to reach stasis. By "most", an estimate of ~99% for elites and ~94% for the R&F feels about right. Why? The elites know that their rhetoric, facts and reasoning are mostly lies and crackpottery. They are proud liars for the authoritarian MAGA cause. No way will they ever allow people reach an honest, good faith stasis. They knowingly stick by their lies.

By contrast, the R&F needs to be in denial about the rotten basis for their MAGA beliefs. They are in a self-defense mode against the massive cognitive dissonance they need to protect themselves against. Psychologically, they simply can't let the conversation get to stasis. It's just too painful. They really believe the lies and crackpottery are true. They have to believe that for take a massive hit to their self-esteem and world view.

Moral cowardice

In view of the foregoing, describing the resistance of MAGA people to allowing stasis as moral cowardice seemed reasonable, especially for the elites because they know better. Early in the rise of MAGA authoritarianism in 2016, the R&F had a partial moral shield of being deceived and ignorant. Over time their shield melted away. By now, they should know better because they are adults and the truth is easily accessed. The elites never had the ignorance shield. They always were knowing, cynical liars, slanderers and crackpotters. Moral rot and cowardice was always deep and broad with that crowd.

Pathocracy & the pathocrat

It was pointed out to me that calling the really bad elites in MAGAlandia "moral cowards" is inaccurate. Apparently that is completely or almost completely true. It turns out that some people have little (sociopaths, ~4%) or no (psychopaths, ~1%) conscience. They are (i) influenced by bad life experiences[1], and (ii) atypical neurodevelopment arising from genetic factors in the conscience neural machinery. If a person has little to no conscience, they arguably can't be moral cowards. From what I can tell, MAGA elites like Trump, Russ Vought, Pam Bondi, etc. are at least sociopaths, more likely psychopaths. They have little to no moral compass. They aren't accurately called moral cowards. They are something else, but it's worse.

Pathocrat: An individual with a severe personality disorder—typically psychopathy, narcissism, or Antisocial Personality Disorder—who seeks and gains power over others. Pathocrats are characterized by lack of empathy, absence of remorse, manipulativeness, and an insatiable need for domination. They view other people as objects to be exploited, not moral beings.

Pathocracy: A system of government in which pathocrats occupy positions of power and control. In a pathocracy, a small group of pathological individuals dominates a society of mostly normal people. The pathocrats actively recruit other similarly disordered individuals into the government while systematically removing empathetic and principled people from positions of authority.

Research indicates that psychopathic leaders have a powerful drive for domination. Once in power, a leader with an Antisocial Personality Disorder thrives on continuing conflict and never seeks peace or compromise.

Does any of that feel familiar? 

Ethics: Professional diagnosis & the Goldwater Rule

The Goldwater Rule: An ethical code specific to psychiatry created by the American Psychiatric Association in response to events surrounding the USA presidential election of 1964, in which the integrity of the psychiatric profession was challenged. Some people thought Goldwater was nuts, captured in these opposing campaign slogans:

Repubs: In your heart, you know he's right. .... Dems: But in your guts, you know he's nuts.

The ethical debate boils down to this: Is it more unethical if (1) mental health professionals that the public can trust to diagnoses a MAGA politician like Trump without him being personally diagnosed, or (2) trust the politician to tell us if they are mentally ill or not? 

Having no moral compass, pathocrats are shameless, chronic liars. Lying doesn't faze 'em in the slightest. Neither does shameless hypocrisy. Trump's track record of shameless, chronic lying is rock solid. That includes him lying about his medical conditions.

Back in Goldwater's day, the mental health community deemed it to be unethical to diagnose without direct personal testing. Now, because Trump and other MAGA pathocrats have the power to kill or seriously harm hundreds of thousands of Americans, the ethics balance has tipped. Now, many or most mental health care professionals are OK with diagnosing Trump. The ethical question is this: 

Is it more ethical for professionals with expertise to diagnose from a distance and inform the public what a politician is, or does the potential damage from a mistaken mental health diagnosis outweigh the harm to the politician and/or the public?

Q: Is Trump a pathocrat, or something close to it, who is trying building a pathocracy?[2]

Footnotes:

1. Mostly bad childhood experiences such as relational trauma before age 10​, bad home environments, foster care, and/or​ neglectful or abusive parenting. Emotional abuse is part of the childhoods of most hard core psychopaths.

2. So far, no mental health professionals have diagnosed Trump as a pathocrat. But, multiple mental health professionals have publicly assessed Trump from a distance. That breaks with the Goldwater Rule. They say that he represents a unique, deadly danger to public safety, justifying the rule breaking. Their assessments describe him as having traits associated with severe personality pathology, including malignant narcissism, a dangerous combination of narcissism, psychopathy, antisocial traits, and sadism. 

Guess why MAGA elites constantly

attack and discredit experts

Getting to stasis: Why so freaking hard?

CONTEXT

Stasis in rhetoric is a systematic method for analyzing arguments and identifying the key point of disagreement in any debate or controversy. The term derives from the Greek word meaning "standstill" or "conflict," referring to the point where an argument must be resolved for discussion to either reach a resolution of disagreement or a point of understanding why disagreement remains. Points of disagreement that cannot be resolved often, probably usually, are grounded in conflicting definitions of concepts. Trying to reach stasis is valuable for political disagreements because it is a way to begin to talk more calmly, more rationally, about any dispute, by uncovering the ways people talk past each another. That helps people actually address the real issues.

This post illuminates the stasis issue using the Abe Lincoln debates with Stephen Douglas. FWIW, Lincoln won the debate but lost the election.

In the 1990s, political rhetoric from the right sounded more and more like nonsense. By November 1998, that prompted my serious dive into politics. It was a quest to understand why I often could not understand what those people were saying. Well now I know. They speak or appeal to things like intuitions, emotions, unconscious cognitive biases, and social loyalties to tribe or ideology. Back then I didn't speak primarily to those things. Still don't.

Speaking different political languages makes getting to stasis hard. So does the often present plague of You can't handle the truth! I call it moral cowardice. 

An example

A few other folks have the same issue. Here's an example from the ProfsBlawg, where lawyers commentate and whatnot. Lindsey Halligan is the utterly inexperienced and grossly unqualified MAGA lawyer that Trump "dubiously appointed" to abuse federal law in pursuit of his alleged enemies such as former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Adam Schiff. 

Beyond conclusions

Anna Bowers has an unbelievable Lawfare piece about her text exchanges with dubiously appointed EDVa US Attorney Lindsey Halligan. Halligan initiated contact with Bowers out of the blue to complain about Halligan retweeting a NYT story on the Letitia James indictment and then to retroactively take the exchange off the record.

The exchange captures what I hate about exchanges between reporters and public officials, especially attorneys–it never gets beyond conclusions, whining, and insults. Halligan repeatedly tells Bowers her reporting is inaccurate but never (despite Bower’s repeated requests) explains why. When Halligan requests details–more than conclusions–Halligan insults her and her reporting with more unsupported conclusions (you’re biased, you’ll be completely discredited, you don’t report fairly). Bowers pushed back and demanded more detail rather than letting the conclusions stand; that pushed Halligan to more whining and insults, before making a demand that no reporter would grant and that no competent public official would make.

Halligan’s conclusory responses–conclude, repeat talking points, insult–resemble what we hear from Trump and other government people every day. Bowers’s pushback distinguishes this from every news conference and talk-show interview, exposing the vacuousness of the conversation.

Qs: See why it's hard to get to stasis? See why I call the difficulty of facing reality as a matter of moral cowardice? See why MAGA rhetoric doesn't make sense most of the time?

MAGA's public health insanity: Innocents will be killed

MAGA's reality and reason-detached world is a strange thing to behold. Watching its nuttery and stupidity grow from fringe to mainstream shows the human condition and how the mind can operate when poisoned by demagogic pseudoscience. 

An AP article, Anti-science bills hit statehouses, stripping away public health protections built over a century, makes clear MAGA's anti-science public health insanity. In Minnesota, Republican state legislators introduced a proposed bill to ban mRNA vaccines as bioweapons. Through November 2022, after two years of vaccination, COVID-19 mRNA vaccines prevented ~3.2 million deaths and more than 18.5 million hospitalizations in the US. Vaccinations saved about $1.1 trillion in medical costs. The mRNA vaccines are very safe. The only bioweapons involved here are MAGA Republicans. Democrats are not part of MAGA's anti-science lunacy.

MAGA anti-science freaks in Arkansas want to make harm from vaccines illegal. 

 

Instead of making it illegal to refuse to get vaccinated and causing harm or deaths to others, MAGA gets ass-backwards what makes scientific sense. They want the opposite. These MAGA freaks are both malicious and insane.

In Oklahoma, MAGA freaks want to legalize selling raw Donkey Milk. That is going to kill some people too.

The AP article quotes an expert stating the obvious, MAGA's anti-science stupidity is going to kill people:

“The march of conspiracy thinking from the margins to the mainstream now guiding public policy should be a wake-up call for all Americans,” said Devin Burghart, president and executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, who has tracked the anti-vaccine movement for decades. “People are literally going to die from it as a result.”

The rule of law is dead

This 1:14 video of a CBS News 60 Minutes broadcast shows law professor Ryan Goodman (NYU) discussing how MAGA's Department of Justice lawyers do lawsuits. Sometimes they simply fabricate evidence. The line between the rule of law standing as a pro-democracy principle has fallen to MAGA's morally rotted authoritarianism and kleptocracy. That does not mean the law doesn't apply more or less as usual to most average people. For us as individuals, the law is still basically intact. But for some people, groups and entities or corporations, MAGA elites now decide what the law is and isn't. That is the epitome of a dictatorship or authoritarian regime.

Goodman found 35 lawsuits where MAGA lawyers submitted faked evidence. They flat-out lied to the court. 

So, when it is inconvenient for MAGA to vindicate the rule of law for some criminal, traitor, pervert or killer, federal law gets conveniently ignored. When an opponent or alleged enemy of Trump is targeted, federal law is used or abused to nail them.

It is frightening and discouraging that there appears to be no serious repercussions for sleazy Trump lawyers lying to judges. Apparently the lying is whitewashed by Trump lawyers denying they fabricated evidence, and being the end of it, or by people letting them off the hook as "incompetent". Either way, the rule of law bites the dust. 

Just Security published Goodman's research report at this link.

Pedo meme

Blog note: I got a bug in my Disqus

They have a bug too!

FYI, I can't upvote any more on this blog. My upvotes here disappear after I leave the page I upvoted any comment(s) on. Not sure why. I tested upvotes at Snowflake and Discuss Disqus, and my upvotes at both of those sites have stayed stuck so far (after two leave & return tests).  

Maybe tomorrow my upvotes will stick. 

😕

Political messaging

In terms of voter appeal, the Democrats have lousy messaging. A NYT analysis (not paywalled) argues that centrist messaging and policy has broader appeal than left wing messaging, e.g., Democratic socialism. The data the NYT bases its analysis on is shown below:

In the last election, three Republicans and 16 Democrats won in districts that voted the other party for president in that district. 

The NYT says all 19 of those people are moderates. 

Maybe they are moderates, but maybe not. But according to the NYT they campaigned as moderates. Arguably, a person in congress cannot be a moderate if they support any form of authoritarianism or kleptocracy. But that's OT.

Ignoring the matter of actual moderate or not, it feels right to believe that moderate messaging and policy is likely what still appeals to most voters. Unfortunately, in deep red voting districts moderate messaging has been demagogued into the false reality that moderate is radical far left socialism or communism. So in those districts, moderate messaging is probably a loser. 

The 16 Democrats who won in red districts are a bit of a surprise. That indicates that at least some republican House voting districts are not yet fully hard core MAGA authoritarian. 

Also, it is possible, that the current wave of redistricting will reduce the number of red districts where a Democrat can win, but the same cannot be said about potential Republican losses. After all, there are potentially 16 targets that Republican gerrymandering can aim at most, but only 3 for Democrats.

Anyway, the NYT analysis is blunt but feels reasonable. Too many Americans see the Democratic Party as too liberal, too judgmental and too focused on cultural issues to be credible.[1] The data is clear that voters are rejecting the Dems. The analysis points out that many progressives try to downplay the warning signs but that just isn't true. Progressives believe they can win by quietly retaining all their unpopular positions but openly emphasize economic issues. That only works in deep blue voting districts.

The data is clear on this point. No on in Congress or governor in contested districts or states has won by this progressive strategy of deceit. It's just not working.

Footnote:

1. This is a frustrating issue. Yes, the Dems are too judgmental and over-focused on cultural issues. That apparently costs them credibility. We get it. 

But it is just as true that the same applies even more to routine MAGA demagoguery. America's radical right is hellishly judgmental. It's hell bent on ramming theocratic Christian nationalist culture down our throats whether we like or want it or not. Don't think so? What about abortion, voting rights and sanctimoniously discriminating against the LGBQT community? That's not average American policy. It is bigoted, radical right Christian theocrat policy. That's cruel, hard core culture war.

Nobody is perfect here, not Dem, not Repubs. The MSM should take every opportunity to quickly but clearly point this out. But the MSM never does that. That's part of the reason the MSM gets a well-deserved F- for crappy analysis, reporting and commentary. 

The 4EVA dictatorship & its attendant vendetta

Reporting indicates that Trump is now explicit about his intention to be a dictator for life and arguably beyond. Yesterday, he posted a video on his social media (Lies Antisocial) showing his presidency extending to the year 90,000 and lasting 4EVA. The video shows a doctored TIME magazine cover titled "How Trumpism Will Outlast Trump," with campaign signs scrolling through future election years—2024, 2028, 2032, 2036, 2040, 2044, 2048—before jumping to "90,000".

That statement of intent followed his AI-generated content the day before showing him as "King Trump" dumping raw sewage on "No Kings" protesters from a fighter jet. From the looks of how things are shaping up, we should be waiting for Don Jr to be our next president after Trump dies. And after that, one of Don Jr's kids will be our president. Well, at least we won't have to bother with those pesky presidential elections any more! That's been taken care of for us. 

👍

Showing those evil protesters a thing or two!

Meanwhile, back at the rancid, MAGAfied FBI, the Trump vendetta against people he hates is really only just getting started. Its warming up real nicely now. FBI director and MAGA thug Kash Patel says that “many” indictments will be filed against the president’s political enemies. He said that the FBI is looking at criminal leads against many other past officials, commenting “we’re not going to stop until every single one of those is fully exposed. We are looking at so many different leads by those who were in positions of power”. 

Wow! So many different leads by formerly powerful people. This dictatorship thing is getting to be very interesting, and even more terrifying than it way yesterday.

Re: MAGA lies, insults & hypocrisy

Two days ago, Trump's press secretary and chronic liar, Karoline Leavitt, said: "The Democrat Party's main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals."

Remember how Republicans exploded in rage after Hillary Clinton's milquetoast "basket of deplorables" insult? Trump's insults are far worse, and far more insulting.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Leavitt "sick" and "out of control," saying he wasn't sure if she was "just demented, ignorant, a stone cold liar, or all of the above". 

Governor Tim Walz made a good point by saying "Most Republicans are good people. Most Democrats are good people. The White House says outrageous things to make you hate your neighbor".

So far, there is no documented response from major Republican leaders in the House or Senate, or other prominent Republicans condemning or distancing themselves from Leavitt's remarks. Therefore, they silently agree with Trump's assessment that rank and file Democrats are Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals. 

Re: The NO Kings protests

Yesterday's No Kings protests were one of the largest single-day demonstrations in modern American history. Up to 7 million participated. The actual number feels like ~5 million, but that is just a personal estimate based on scanning various sources reporting about it. Not surprisingly, news reporting and analysis split along MSM-MAGA lines. 

Authoritarian sites including Fox News called the protests "hate America rallies". As usual, MAGA reporting is shameless, morally rotted lies and slanders. Fox News rejected and ridiculed the authoritarian framing. Host Mark Levin said he was "sick and tired of 'constant drumbeat' that Trump's an authoritarian". Other MAGA coverage called the protests "hate America rallies" organized by "Marxists" and "communists".

The MSM reporting was more neutral, but still poorly framed. Some sources referred to the protests as a constitutionally protected right and/or a civic duty, which comes fairly close but still misses hitting on Trump-MAGA authoritarianism.

What about anti-authoritarianism reporting?

The point of the "No Kings" protests was pro-democracy anti-authoritarianism. Progressive and international outlets most directly centered authoritarian framing. Euronews headlined that "Thousands protest Trump's 'authoritarian' rule across major US cities". At least the Europeans see it and call it for what it is. The No Kings website hit the mark: "The president thinks his rule is absolute". It described the movement as opposing "Trump's authoritarianism, billionaire-first politics, and the militarization of our cities". Like most of the MSM, the ACLU missed the mark and used softening euphemisms to describe the protests as opposing "President Trump's escalating abuses of power".

Escalating abuses of power?? Hey ACLU, get a grip. Wake up.

But, the ACLU wasn't alone in missing the mark. Major outlets like the NYT, WaPo, Reuters, and CBS News used indirect and softened language. They described protesters as opposing what they "see as authoritarian" or "perceive as" overreach rather than independently characterizing Trump's actions for what they in fact are.

To its credit, MSNBC directly reported the authoritarian threat. The network had experts like Jason Stanley explicitly stating "I think we are facing the moment in which a coup is happening". He described Trump's actions as authoritarian.

Q: As a whole, what grade does the MSM get for reporting about Trump and MAGA elites' authoritarian and kleptocratic threats?

I give 'em an F- 

Denver

Idaho

Miami

The Bipartisan Machinery of Control: From Biden’s Civil‑Rights Reinterpretations to Trump’s Authoritarianism

Across two administrations, the language of civil rights and legality has been steadily repurposed into an instrument of coercion. What began under President Joe Biden as an ideological campaign to enforce pro‑Israel conformity on U.S. campuses evolved, under President Donald Trump, into a national system for disciplining political and cultural dissent. Both relied on the same bureaucratic mechanism—the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Education—and the same guiding idea: that any federally funded institution can be forced into compliance by redefining civil‑rights enforcement.

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Biden’s Politicized Civil‑Rights Apparatus

In 2023 the White House launched the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, jointly coordinated by Vice President Kamala Harris, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, and advocacy groups such as the Anti‑Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) (White House, 2023). Soon after, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued a series of Dear Colleague Letters warning universities that they risked losing Title VI funding if they failed to “protect Jewish students,” explicitly invoking the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, even though it is not codified in federal law (U.S. Department of Education, 2023).

Universities reacted quickly. Many suspended or banned student groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, effectively transforming protest and expression into potential civil‑rights violations (Politico, 2023).

Biden’s position reflected political loyalty rather than moral principle. In his widely reported January 2025 interview with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, the president acknowledged that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “convinced him” that indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza was justified by analogies to Dresden and Tokyo. His resigned comment—“What could I say?”—showed both awareness of civilian deaths and unwillingness to intervene (New Republic, 2025; New York Times, 2025). Domestically, the same logic underpinned his use of civil‑rights enforcement to silence critics of Israeli policy.

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Trump’s Expansion of the Machinery

Trump inherited these tools and rapidly broadened their reach. Through executive orders such as Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit‑Based Opportunity and Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism, his administration fused Title IX onto the existing Title VI framework (White House, 2025). OCR investigations soon targeted not only alleged antisemitism but also supposed “reverse racism” and “un‑American gender identity.” Within months more than fifty universities were under review for “DEI discrimination” (NPR, 2025).

Using the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership as guidance, Trump extended these audits to cultural and informational institutions—museums, PBS, NPR, the National Endowment for the Arts, and even the National Park Service. Federal grants were frozen or clawed back under claims of “civil‑rights non‑compliance” (Center for American Progress, 2024; Artistic Freedom Initiative, 2025). What started as partisan campus policing became a government‑wide culture purge in which defunding replaced legislation as the main means of control.

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Vanishing Transparency and the Managed Spectacle

Both presidents curtailed press accountability. Biden held only 36 formal press conferences over four years—the lowest number of any modern president—and revoked hundreds of journalist credentials (Axios, 2024; American Presidency Project, 2025). Managed appearances and written statements replaced unscripted questioning, leaving major policies uncontested in public.

Trump did not restore openness; he re‑engineered it. His method was volume and simulation: daily “interviews” with sympathetic hosts, influencer livestreams, and heavily edited highlight reels. The effect was omnipresence without accountability—a spectacle that served as political camouflage for administrative secrecy.

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The Structural Lesson

The line from Biden to Trump shows continuity, not rupture. Biden demonstrated that civil‑rights statutes could be manipulated to penalize dissent; Trump proved that the same laws could police identity, education, and culture. Once such reinterpretations are bureaucratically normalized, every future administration inherits the habit of coercion.

The slippery slope from moral panic to authoritarian bureaucracy was built one step at a time—each step justified as pragmatic or necessary, whether cynically political or bureaucratically expedient. Once those tools exist, they invite expansion.

The larger lesson is this: when laws are repurposed to silence the dissent of one group, the door opens to their misuse across multiple domains. Each administration that bends the law for its own political ends makes it more likely that the next will bend it further. Legal reinterpretation does not guarantee authoritarianism, but repeated abuse of legal instruments steadily increases its odds.

To treat Trump’s consolidation of executive control as a partisan aberration is to ignore its origin. The present regime of coercive legality is bipartisan—an accumulation of moral panic and political convenience. No manipulation of law for ideological ends is benign. Each distortion widens the precedent for future suppression, until nearly every federally funded domain becomes vulnerable to political screening. Behind the rhetoric of “civil‑rights protection,” “anti‑woke reform,” or “national unity” stands the same structure: an unaccountable state that governs by spectacle and legal compulsion.

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References

American Presidency Project. (2025, September 18). Presidential news conferences: Comprehensive data set. University of California, Santa Barbara. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/presidential-news-conferences

Artistic Freedom Initiative. (2025, April 6). United States of America UPR 2025: Artistic freedom and federal funding. https://artisticfreedominitiative.org

Axios. (2024, July 3). Biden’s media evasion: Fewest press conferences of the last six presidents. https://www.axios.com/2024/07/04/biden-media-interviews-press-data

Center for American Progress. (2024, December 31). Project 2025’s distortion of civil‑rights law threatens Americans with legalized discrimination. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/project-2025s-distortion-of-civil-rights-law-threatens-americans-with-legalized-discrimination

NPR. (2025, September 4). How Trump is using civil‑rights laws to bring schools to heel. https://www.npr.org/2025/09/04/nx-s1-5500262/trump-civil-rights-schools-students

Politico. (2023, October 30). Jewish leaders to Biden officials: “We’ve never seen anything like this.” https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/30/jewish-organizations-cardona-antisemitism-action-plan

The New Republic. (2025, January 16). Biden just gave away Netanyahu’s whole game—and it’s bad. https://newrepublic.com/post/190365/joe-biden-benjamin-netanyahu-gaza-bombs

The New York Times. (2025, January 17). Biden says he urged Netanyahu to accommodate Palestinians but was “convinced otherwise.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/world/middleeast/biden-interview-gaza-netanyahu

U.S. Department of Education. (2023, November 6). Dear colleague letter on shared ancestry and ethnicity discrimination. Office for Civil Rights. https://www.ed.gov/sites/ed/files/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-202311-discrimination-harassment-shared-ancestry.pdf

U.S. Department of Education. (2024, May 6). Dear colleague letter: Protecting students from discrimination based on shared ancestry. Office for Civil Rights. https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/colleague-202405-shared-ancestry.pdf

White House. (2023, May 24). Fact sheet: Biden‑Harris Administration releases first‑ever U.S. national strategy to counter antisemitism. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/05/25/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-releases-first-ever-u-s-national-strategy-to-counter-antisemitism

White House. (2025, January 21). Ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit‑based opportunity (Executive Order 14189). https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-illegal-discrimination-and-restoring-merit-based-opportunity

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