Powerful politicians subverting the rule of law and democracy

Yesterday's Rachael Maddow news show highlighted a serious weakness in the American system of justice. That weakness is the possibility of powerful politicians attacking and subverting the federal Department of Justice when it investigates serious crimes against those politicians. In the process of subverting the rule of law, criminal politicians attack and utterly destroy the careers and reputations of the investigators who try to defend the rule of law by prosecuting the powerful criminals.

In the past powerful politicians in the federal government have successfully blocked investigation and prosecution of crimes by powerful politicians who have committed serious crimes. The example Maddow explained at the beginning of the 34 minute video below described powerful Nazi collaborators in the American congress who successfully blocked prosecution of their treason and other treason and crimes. As part of their self-defense, those traitors viciously destroyed the careers and reputations of DoJ prosecutors who investigated the treason and moved to indict the guilty politicians. The traitors were never prosecuted.

The same is happening today. The Republican Party in congress and the state of Georgia are doing their very best to slander, neuter and destroy the prosecution of Trump for election interference by Fulton County District Attorney Fanni Willis. What the modern Republican traitors, e.g., Jim Jordan, are doing is no different from what the Nazi traitors in congress got away with in the 1940s.

At ~21:20 of the video, Maddow interviews Willis and gets her take of what radical authoritarian Republicans in congress and the Georgia state legislature are doing to block her prosecution of Trump for criminal interference with the 2020 election. She refers to the Jim Jordan as a clown. Jordan is no clown. He is a dangerous traitor and a vicious, lying authoritarian thug. He is trying to do to Willis what treasonous Nazi collaborators in congress successfully did to DoJ prosecutors in the 1940s. He wants to protect Trump from prosecution for his crimes by destroying and blocking Willis’ lawsuit, and her career and reputation. Jordan is, more or less, a modern day Nazi collaborator right out of the 1940s.

Maddow points out that few people have stood in defense of what Willis is doing. Willis is remarkably unfazed by all the threats, or which there are plenty, attacks on her reputation and constant harassment by radical Republican politicians and rank and file Trump supporters. She says nothing is going to stop her from prosecuting crimes that evidence shows have been committed.

I post this as an urgent warning about the shocking ill-will and vicious intent that the poisoned, radicalized authoritarian Republican Party stands for. The GOP does not care about democracy, public opinion or the rule of law if it is works against themselves or their supporters. They care only about unfettered access to more wealth and power. GOP elites and rank and file (whether they know it or believe it or not), are pro-dictatorship and pro-kleptocracy.

American democracy, rule of law and civil liberties are all under a ferocious attack by well-organized, well-funded and deeply corrupt, morally rotted authoritarian forces that are concentrated mostly (~80% ?) in the Republican Party and its supporters, e.g., corrupt Christian nationalist theocrats, and corrupt plutocrats, with the rest residing mostly with elements within the Democratic Party. 

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For the wonks - Perplexity gets perplexed

A search of Perplexity (an artificial intelligence search engine) for information about the Nazi collaborators came up with an answer that there were no Nazi collaborators in congress in the 1940s. When I asked a follow-up question about why Perplexity was unaware of Rachael Maddow's book Prequel which focused on Nazi collaborators in congress in the 1930s, it responded:

Based on the excerpts and summaries provided from Rachel Maddow's book "Prequel", it is now clear that there were indeed members of Congress in the 1930s and 1940s who collaborated with and took money from Nazi agents like George Sylvester Viereck, spreading Nazi propaganda and potentially obstructing investigations into their activities.

The chain of my questions and Perplexity’s answers is at this link. It took me a while to ask the right question. If you ask artificial intelligence the wrong question, you will get a wrong answer. And sometimes, if you ask artificial intelligence the right question, you can get a wrong answer. For example this chain of Qs & As. One needs to be very careful with artificial intelligence.

Politics lite: Some cartoons

An interesting Q&A about race & racism

Could this be true?

This is sort of interesting, and embarrassing because I was unaware of it:

Q: Does modern science no longer recognize different human races as biologically meaningful?

A: Modern science does not recognize different human races as biologically meaningful categories. The genetic evidence shows that there is no clear biological basis for dividing humans into distinct races.

Human genetic variation is real and widespread, but it is clinal, meaning it varies gradually across geographic regions rather than falling into distinct clusters or races. The vast majority of human genetic diversity exists among individuals within populations, not between different "racial" groups. Genetic studies have consistently shown that humans cannot be divided into biologically distinct subcategories or races. 

While there are some modest genetic differences between human populations adapted to different environments, these differences do not represent deep evolutionary divergence or separate genetic lineages that could define biological races. Traits like skin color are adaptations to specific environmental factors like UV radiation, not indicators of overall genetic differentiation into races. 

The concept of race is a social and cultural construct, not a biological one grounded in genetics. Racial categories are inconsistently defined across societies and do not correspond to objective biological distinctions. As the scientific consensus statement states, "There is no biological basis for 'races.'"

Considered a social construct without inherent physical or biological meaning, which is foundational to the concept of racism.

Wait, what? There is no biological basis for race? But, but, how can there be racism and White Supremacy? There can be bigotry against the ethnicity or culture an alleged race comes from, but not racism. Racism has gone extinct! Science killed it.

Q: 

1. Wadda think about the non-existence of racism as a real, specific thing in people's minds but not in actual reality?

2. Why was I unaware of this? 

Germaine didn't know!?

References:

1. Much of the recent scientific literature on human evolution portrays human populations as separate branches on an evolutionary tree. A tree-like structure among humans has been falsified whenever tested, so this practice is scientifically indefensible. It is also socially irresponsible as these pictorial representations of human evolution have more impact on the general public than nuanced phrases in the text of a scientific paper. Humans have much genetic diversity, but the vast majority of this diversity reflects individual uniqueness and not race. 2013

2. We argue that human races, in the biological sense of local populations adapted to particular environments, do in fact exist; such races are best understood through the common ecological concept of ecotypes. However, human ecotypic races do not in general correspond with ‘folk’ racial categories, largely because many similar ecotypes have multiple independent origins. Consequently, while human natural races exist, they have little or nothing in common with ‘folk’ races. 2022

3. Race Is Real, But It’s Not Genetic -- For over 300 years, socially defined notions of “race” have shaped human lives around the globe—but the category has no biological foundation. Human variation does not stand still. “Race groups” are impossible to define in any stable or universal way. It cannot be done based on biology—not by skin color, bone measurements, or genetics. It cannot be done culturally: Race groupings have changed over time and place throughout history. Science 101: If you cannot define groups consistently, then you cannot make scientific generalizations about them.

A few pundits such as Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute [home of Project 2025 😏] and science writers such as Nicholas Wade, formerly of The New York Times, still argue that even though humans don’t come in fixed, color-coded races, dividing us into races still does a decent job of describing human genetic variation. Their position is shockingly wrong. We’ve known for almost 50 years that race does not describe human genetic variation. 2020

Social institution degeneration: Normalization of American political violence

A NYT article (not paywalled) discusses threats to politicians and officials arising from political extremism, crackpot conspiracy theories and false beliefs:

One Friday last month, Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, spent a chunk of his day in court securing a protective order.

It was not his first. Mr. Raskin, who played a leading role in Donald J. Trump’s second impeachment hearing, said he received about 50 menacing calls, emails and letters every month that are turned over to the Capitol Police.

His latest court visit was prompted by a man who showed up at his house and screamed in his face about the Covid-19 vaccine, Mr. Trump’s impeachment and gender-related surgeries. Nearly two years earlier, the same man, with his 3-year-old son in his arms, had yelled profanities at Mr. Raskin at a July 4 parade, according to a police report.

“I told the judge I don’t care about him getting jail time. He just needs some parenting lessons,” Mr. Raskin said.

Mr. Raskin was far from the only government official staring down the uglier side of public service in America in recent weeks. Since late March, bomb threats closed libraries in Durham, N.C.; Reading, Mass.; and Lancaster, Pa., and suspended operations at a courthouse in Franklin County, Pa. In Bakersfield, Calif., an activist protesting the war in Gaza was arrested after telling City Council members: “We’ll see you at your house. We’ll murder you.”

A Florida man was sentenced to 14 months in prison for leaving a voice mail message promising to “come kill” Chief Justice John Roberts.

And Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, refused to rule out violence if he were to lose in November. “It always depends on the fairness of the election,” he said in an interview late last month.

This was just a typical month in American public life, where a steady undercurrent of violence and physical risk has become a new normal. From City Hall to Congress, public officials increasingly describe threats and harassment as a routine part of their jobs. Often masked by online anonymity and propelled by extreme political views, the barrage of menace has changed how public officials do their work, terrified their families and driven some from public life altogether.

By almost all measures, the evidence of the trend is striking. Last year, more than 450 federal judges were targeted with threats, a roughly 150 percent increase from 2019, according to the United States Marshals Service. The U.S. Capitol Police investigated more than 8,000 threats to members of Congress last year, up more than 50 percent from 2018. The agency recently added three full-time prosecutors to handle the volume.

More than 80 percent of local officials said they had been threatened or harassed, according to a survey conducted in 2021 by the National League of Cities.

“People are threatening not just the prosecutor, the special counsel, the judge but also family members,” said Ronald L. Davis, director of the U.S. Marshals Service. Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general, said she saw “an environment where disagreement is increasingly tipping over” into “violent threats.”

The mass shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 and the Tops Friendly supermarket in Buffalo in 2022 were both carried out by perpetrators who expressed extreme right-wing views. Trump supporters’ riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was one of the largest acts of political violence in modern American history.

Others — including an Ohio man’s shootout with state troopers after the F.B.I. searched Mr. Trump’s home and shootings at the homes of Democratic officials in New Mexico — fall out of the headlines quickly.

Surveys have found increasing public support for politicized violence among both Republicans and Democrats in recent years. A study released last fall by the University of California, Davis, found that nearly one in three respondents considered violence justified to advance some political objectives, including “to stop an election from being stolen.”

“Although actual acts of political violence in America are still quite low compared to some other countries, we’re now in a position where there has been enough violence that the threats are credible,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies political violence.

Violence — and the threat of it — has been a part of American politics since the nation’s founding. But experts describe this moment as particularly volatile, thanks in great part to social media platforms that can amplify anonymous outrage, spread misinformation and conspiracy theories and turn a little-known public employee into a target.

No politician has harnessed the ferocious power of those platforms like Mr. Trump. The former president has long used personal attacks as a strategy to intimidate his adversaries. As he campaigns to return to the White House, he has turned that tactic on the judges and prosecutors involved in his various legal cases, all of whom have subsequently been threatened.

Democrats by and large have been the loudest voices in trying to quell political violence, although many on the right have accused them of insufficiently condemning unruly left-wing protesters on college campuses and at the homes of Supreme Court justices.

There is little research on the political views of those behind the onslaught of abuse. Some surveys show that Republican officeholders are more likely to report being targeted, often from members of their own party. Research does show, however, that recent acts of political violence are more likely to be carried out by perpetrators aligned with right-wing causes and beliefs.

Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah who is retiring at the end of this year, told a biographer that some G.O.P. lawmakers voted not to impeach and convict Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6 attack because they were afraid for their safety if they crossed his supporters. Mr. Romney did not identify the legislators by name and declined an interview for this article.

Andrew Hitt, the former head of the Republican Party in Wisconsin, agreed to go along with the Trump campaign’s failed scheme to overturn the 2020 election because he was “scared to death,” he told “60 Minutes.”

“It was not a safe time,” he said. 

Local libraries have also become targets amid a heated campaign to ban books and cancel events aimed at members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Bomb threats were reported by 32 of the American Library Association’s member institutions last year, compared with two the year before and none in 2021. 

Carolyn Foote, a retired librarian in Austin, Texas, who co-founded a group that supports librarians, said her members had become used to being called “pedophile, groomer, pornographer.”

Proving that ugly and hostile language has crossed the line from First Amendment-protected speech to credible threat can be difficult. Experts say prosecutions became even harder last year after the Supreme Court raised the bar for what qualifies as a credible threat, ruling that the person making the threat has to “have some subjective understanding of the threatening nature of his statements.”

In Bakersfield, Calif., a lawyer for Riddhi Patel, the activist who spoke of murdering City Council members after urging them to take up a Gaza cease-fire resolution, said her statement was not a crime. She has pleaded not guilty to 21 felony charges.

“It’s clear that this was not a true criminal threat, which under California law must be, among other things, credible, specific, immediate and unconditional,” said Peter Kang, the public defender of Kern County, which includes Bakersfield. “Instead, what we hear are Ms. Patel’s strong, passionate expressions, which fall within the bounds of constitutionally protected speech.”

It is fair and rational to consider people who issue threats to be violent extremists. Some are leftists and most are rightists. It is also fair and rational to consider Trump and authoritarian radical right propaganda media like Faux News to be major influencers in normalizing violent extremism. For example, both Trump and Faux have publicly defended and justified the violence of the traitors engaging in the 1/6 coup attempt. Faux publicly downplayed the violence and defended them. Trump says he will pardon all of them as patriots if he is re-elected. 

In terms of blame, this estimate seems reasonable and rational:

America’s radical right authoritarianism and its supporters: ~90% at fault (~85-95%)

Everything and everyone else: ~10% at fault

Qs: Is that estimate of blame reasonable and rational? Regarding normalization of violent extremism, the US Supreme Court more helpful than harmful?

Regarding the power of relentless propaganda to dehumanize and harden minds

An aspect of the Israel-Palestine horror that has been of personal interest is how the Israeli people view the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack, the ensuing Gaza war and what they want after the war ends. The polling I've seen so far indicates that majority public opinion has hardened into deep anger and desire for revenge. A NYT opinion (not paywalled) exemplifies the situation:

The View Within Israel Turns Bleak

It was the pictures of Palestinians swimming and sunning at a Gaza beach that rubbed Yehuda Shlezinger, an Israeli journalist, the wrong way. Stylish in round red glasses and a faint scruff of beard, Mr. Shlezinger unloaded his revulsion at the “disturbing” pictures while appearing on Israel’s Channel 12.

“These people there deserve death, a hard death, an agonizing death, and instead we see them enjoying on the beach and having fun,” complained Mr. Shlezinger, the religious affairs correspondent for the widely circulated right-wing Israel Hayom newspaper. “We should have seen a lot more revenge there,” Mr. Shlezinger unrepentantly added. “A lot more rivers of Gazans’ blood.”

It would be nice to think that Mr. Shlezinger is a fringe figure or that Israelis would be shocked by his bloody fantasies. But he’s not, and many wouldn’t be.

Israel has hardened, and the signs of it are in plain view. Dehumanizing language and promises of annihilation from military and political leaders. Polls that found wide support for the policies that have wreaked devastation and starvation in Gaza. Selfies of Israeli soldiers preening proudly in bomb-crushed Palestinian neighborhoods. A crackdown on even mild forms of dissent among Israelis.

This bleak ideological landscape emerged slowly and then, on Oct. 7, all at once.

The massacre and kidnappings of that day, predictably, brought a public thirst for revenge. But in truth, by the time Hamas killers rampaged through the kibbutzim — in a bitter twist, home to some of the holdout peaceniks — many Israelis had long since come to regard Palestinians as a threat best locked away. America’s romantic mythology and wishful thinking about Israel encourage a tendency to see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the main cause of the ruthlessness in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 35,000 people. The unpopular, scandal-ridden premier makes a convincing ogre in an oversimplified story.

But Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, the creeping famine, the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods — this, polling suggests, is the war the Israeli public wanted. A January survey found that 94 percent of Jewish Israelis said the force being used against Gaza was appropriate or even insufficient. In February, a poll found that most Jewish Israelis opposed food and medicine getting into Gaza. It was not Mr. Netanyahu alone but also his war cabinet members (including Benny Gantz, often invoked as the moderate alternative to Mr. Netanyahu) who unanimously rejected a Hamas deal to free Israeli hostages and, instead, began an assault on the city of Rafah, overflowing with displaced civilians.
The Israeli left — the factions that criticize the occupation of Palestinian lands and favor negotiations and peace instead — is now a withered stump of a once-vigorous movement. In recent years, the attitudes of many Israelis toward the “Palestinian problem” have ranged largely from detached fatigue to the hard-line belief that driving Palestinians off their land and into submission is God’s work.  

“The issues of settlements or relations with Palestinians were off the table for years,” Tamar Hermann told me. “The status quo was OK for Israelis.”

Ms. Hermann, a senior research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, is one of the country’s most respected experts on Israeli public opinion. In recent years, she said, Palestinians hardly caught the attention of Israeli Jews. She and her colleagues periodically made lists of issues and asked respondents to rank them in order of importance. It didn’t matter how many choices the pollsters presented, she said — resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict came in last in almost all measurements.

“It was totally ignored,” she said. Israel’s uneasy detachment turned to rage on Oct. 7.

A handful of songs with lyrics calling for the annihilation of a dehumanized enemy have been circulated in Israel these past months, including “Launch,” a hip-hop glorification of the military promising “from kisses to guns, until Gaza is erased” .... “There is no forgiveness for swarms of rats,” another song goes. “They will die in their rat holes.”

Israeli shops hawk trendy products like a bumper sticker that reads, “Finish them,” and a pendant cut into the shape of Israel, with East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza seamlessly attached.

So many questions and ways to look at it

In view of the Hamas horror of Oct. 7, is it unreasonable or too biased to attribute the dehumanization and attitude hardening of the Israeli public to propaganda? After all, the murderous Hamas terror attack was an unspeakable evil. Yes, it arguably is too biased if one considers the horrible event that triggered the massive public opinion hardening of mind and dehumanization of all Palestinians. 

But what if one looks at all events from ~1946-1948 to 2024? or ~1500 to 2024? Could the horror of Oct. 7 be seen as a final cry of rage and anguish from a group of people who have been oppressed and imprisoned since 1948? Well, Hamas is not all Palestinians. The truth includes the fact, not opinion, that for decades Gaza has been an open air prison and Palestinians in the West Bank have been illegally forced into smaller and smaller areas of land. For decades, extremist Israeli propaganda has dehumanized all Palestinians, not just Hamas.

1517 to 1950

This is messy, isn't it?

This 12 minute video discusses the related topic of what is going on with the Palestinians living in the West Bank. That has nothing to do with Hamas because the Palestinian Authority governs the West Bank, not Hamas. This exemplifies the hardened attitude of Israel toward all Palestinians, not just those in Gaza or just Hamas fighters.

Is the democratic West cynical & hypocritical about

human rights for Russia vs for Israel?

This discusses some evidence that is true

The American Autocracy Threat Tracker

It is encouraging that more groups are waking up to the kleptocratic authoritarian threat that Trump and the Republican Party poses to democracy, civil liberties and the rule law. Someone ought to start keeping tabs on all the threats the thugs are publicly making in their lust for power and wealth at the expense of democracy, the law and our liberties. Oh, someone is keeping tabs. Good.

Last February, the group Just Security published a comprehensive list of threats to democracy that Trump and the Republican Party have made publicly. Just Security includes experts in government and democracy such as Norman L. Eisen, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Siven Watt, Andrew Warren, Jacob Kovacs-Goodman and Francois Barrilleaux. The list is updated when America's authoritarian radical right publicly issues new threats to impose dictatorship and kleptocracy on the American people, the law and government. Just Security writes in part (the intro is very long and detailed):

This autocracy threat tracker is also available as a PDF file. The tracker was originally published on February 26, 2024 and is continually updated.

Introduction

Former President Donald Trump has said he will be a dictator on “day one.” He and his advisors and associates have publicly discussed hundreds of further actions to be taken during a second Trump presidency that directly threaten democracy, the rule of law, as well as U.S. (and global) security. These vary from Trump breaking the law and abusing power in areas like immigration roundups and energy extraction; to summarily and baselessly firing tens of thousands of civil servants whom he perceives as adversaries; to prosecuting his political opponents for personal gain and even hinting at executing some of them; to pardoning some of the convicted January 6th rioters he views as “great patriots,” “hostages,” and “wrongfully imprisoned.” We track all of these promises, plans, and pronouncements here and we will continue to update them.

We assess there is a significant risk of autocracy should Trump regain the presidency. Trump has said he would deploy the military against civilian protestors and his advisors have developed plans for using the Insurrection Act, said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act to conduct deportations of non-citizens, continued to threaten legally-established abortion rights, and even had his lawyers argue that a president should be immune from prosecution if he directed SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political opponent. Trump also seeks the power to protect his personal wealth as he faces staggering civil fines, and to bolster his immunity as he faces 88 criminal charges in prosecutions in different parts of the country. He has predicted a “bloodbath” if he is not elected (although his meaning has been contested, with some saying he was referring to violence and others that “Trump was talking about US automakers.”) At a Veterans Day rally last year, Trump said he would “root out” political opponents who “live like vermin within the confines of our country” warning that the greatest threats come “from within” (words that, according to ABC News and others, “echoed those of past fascist dictators like Hitler and Benito Mussolini,” and alarmed historians.)

While Trump has claimed he will be a dictator for only the first day of his administration, his promise to do so—even for 24 hours—is antithetical to American democracy and consistent with the history of authoritarianism. Dictatorial powers, once assumed, are rarely relinquished. Moreover, Trump cannot possibly achieve his stated goals for the use of that power (in immigration and energy policy) in one day, meaning that his “dictatorship” would of necessity likely last much longer.

Many of Trump’s former Cabinet officials and advisors—those with the most experience watching him govern behind the scenes—believe he poses a grave danger to the country. John Bolton, Trump’s former National Security Advisor, said, “I think Trump will cause significant damage in a second term, damage that in some cases will be irreparable.” Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, said that the former president praised Adolf Hitler’s ability to rebuild Germany’s economy, and admired his maintaining “loyalty” of his senior Nazi officials. Alyssa Farah Griffin, former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications, noted, “Fundamentally, a second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it, and I don’t say that lightly.” Mark Esper, Trump’s former defense secretary, has warned of “more … hyper-aggressive behavior” by Trump if he takes office, recounting when Trump asked if demonstrators gathering around the White House following the death of George Floyd could be shot.

Trump’s dictatorial aspirations are complemented by an extensive pre-election plan to fundamentally alter the nature of American government: the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project (Project 2025). Created by Trump allies and staffed by those including his past and likely future administration appointees, it is in the words of Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, a plan for “institutionalizing Trumpism.” Trump has returned the compliment, saying of Roberts (and Heritage) that he’s “doing an unbelievable job, he’s bringing it back to levels we’ve never seen … thank you Kevin.”

Project 2025’s plans are set forth in an 887-page document entitled “Mandate for Leadership: the Conservative Promise.” It details a program to consolidate power in the executive branch, deconstruct the federal administration, and strip remaining agencies of their independence. It proposes to dismantle or radically overhaul the Departments of Justice and State; eliminate the Departments of Homeland Security, Education, and Commerce; radically repurpose other agencies; and eviscerate the professional civil service. Project 2025 is complemented by other 2025 planning efforts by, for example, the America First Policy Institute, the Center for Renewing America, and the Conservative Partnership Institute.

Trump and his associates are reportedly discussing building an administration around loyalists who would “stretch legal and governance boundaries” to accommodate an “aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch” (in the words of Project 2025). Among those Axios reported to be under discussion for senior government posts are Stephen Miller, Kash Patel, Steve Bannon, and Jeffrey Clark, who is currently under indictment in Georgia for his role in the fake electors scheme and a co-conspirator in the federal election indictment.

When Trump assumed office in 2017, he and his associates did not have such well developed policies and personnel in waiting. Indeed, he made the “mistake” of including people in senior administration positions who remained loyal to the Constitution. As Sec. Esper told Bill Kirstol in an April 17, 2024, interview, “There were guard rails in place, guard rail number one being the prospect of reelection, and number two being the people he brought in around him. Some of those guard rails won’t be there in number two.” A few days later, RNC Co-Chair Lara Trump told an audience to a round of applause, “He’s not worried about winning another election. It’s four years of scorched earth when Donald Trump retakes the White House.”  

We ignore leaders who promise dictatorship—and those who enable them—at our own peril. To see what America might become under Trump’s authoritarian aspirations, we should look at the regimes of other contemporary autocrats, especially as Trump has been mirroring recent autocratic moves in Hungary and elsewhere. With great fanfare, Trump recently welcomed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to his Mar-a-Lago resort, Florida, and has long expressed his admiration for Orbán’s leadership. The Hungarian’s self-proclaimed drive toward an “illiberal state” has seen extensive democratic backsliding. He packed the judiciary to place that branch of government squarely under his control; rewrote election laws to retain his legislative majority; censored the press; used law enforcement to persecute his enemies; and changed Hungary’s constitution to help achieve his autocratic goals—and he took that “blueprint on dismantling democracy to Mar-a-Lago.” Trump and Orbán’s continuing public alignment on key policy issues also “threatens trans-Atlantic security,”—despite Orban’s repeated claims to the contrary—with the pair reportedly aligning on, among other this, the Russian-Ukraine war and eyeing an end to U.S. funding and aid to Ukraine. The United States, like many other functioning democracies, is hardly immune from backsliding and lurching toward autocracy.

Part of the pdf list of public threats