From CBS to TikTok, US media are falling to Trump’s allies. This is how democracy crumbles; The Guardian, October 29, 2025

Owen Jones, The Guardian; From CBS to TikTok, US media are falling to Trump’s allies. This is how democracy crumbles

"Democracy may be dying in the US. Whether the patient receives emergency treatment in time will determine whether the condition becomes terminal. Before Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, I warned of “Orbánisation” – in reference to Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán. There, democracy was not extinguished by firing squads or the mass imprisonment of dissidents, but by slow attrition. The electoral system was warped, civil society was targeted and pro-Orbán moguls quietly absorbed the media.

Nine months on, and Orbánisation is in full bloom across the Atlantic. Billionaire Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder, and his filmmaker son, David, have become blunt instruments in this process. Trump boasts they are “friends of mine – they’re big supporters of mine”. Larry Ellison, second only to Elon Musk as the world’s richest man, has poured tens of millions into Republican coffers...

US democracy has always been heavily flawed. It is so rigged in favour of wealthy elites that a detailed academic study back in 2014 found that the political system is rigged in favour of what the economic elites want. Yet because, unlike Hungary, the US has no history of dictatorship, with a system of supposed checks and balances, some felt it could never succumb to tyranny. Such complacency has collided with brutal reality. In just nine months, the US has been dragged towards an authoritarian abyss. A warning: Trump has 39 months left in office."

‘Indecency has become a new hallmark’: writer and historian Jelani Cobb on race in Donald Trump’s America; The Guardian, October 18, 2025

David Smith, The Guardian; ‘Indecency has become a new hallmark’: writer and historian Jelani Cobb on race in Donald Trump’s America

"It is now fashionable on the left to bemoan the rise of US authoritarianism as a novel concept, a betrayal of constitutional ideals envied by the world. Cobb has a more complex take, suggesting that the US’s claim to moral primacy, rooted in the idea of exceptionalism, is based on a false premise.

He argues: “America has been autocratic previously. We just don’t think about it. It’s never been useful … to actually grapple with what America was, and America had no interest in grappling with these questions itself. Who has ever managed personal growth while constantly screaming to the world about how special and amazing they are?”

Cobb’s book maps an arc of the moral universe that is crooked and uneven, pointing out that, between the end of reconstruction and 1965, 11 states in the south effectively nullified the protections of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments of the constitution, imposing Jim Crow laws, voter suppression and violence to disenfranchise Black citizens...

It is therefore hardly unexpected that business leaders and institutions would capitulate, as they have in the past, he says: “We might hope that they would react differently but it’s not a shock when they don’t. Go back to the McCarthy era. We see that in more instances than not, McCarthy and other similar kinds of red-baiting forces were able to exert their will on American institutions.”...

He is unwavering, however, in his critique of Trump’s attack on the university sector: “What’s happening is people emulating Viktor Orbán [the leader of Hungary] to try to crush any independent centres of dissent and to utilise the full weight of the government to do it, and also to do it in hypocritical fashion...

Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah and a rare voice urging civil discourse, wondered whether this was the end of a dark chapter of US history – or the beginning. What does Cobb think? “There’s a strong possibility that it will get worse before it gets better,” he says frankly.

“We’re at a point where we navigated the volatile moment of the 1950s, the 1960s, because we were able to build a social consensus around what we thought was decent and what we thought was right, and we’re now seeing that undone. Indecency has become a new hallmark.

“But we should take some solace in the fact that people have done the thing that we need to do now previously. The situation we’re in I don’t think is impossible.”"

‘Bow to the Emperor’: We Asked 50 Legal Experts About the Trump Presidency; The New York Times Magazine, October 6, 2025

Emily Bazelon , The New York Times Magazine ; ‘Bow to the Emperor’: We Asked 50 Legal Experts About the Trump Presidency

"Last year, in the months before the 2024 presidential election, the magazine surveyed 50 members of what might be called the Washington legal establishment about their expectations for the Justice Department and the rule of law if Donald Trump were re-elected. The group was evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. They had worked as high-level officials for every president since Ronald Reagan.

A majority of our respondents told us they were alarmed about a potential second Trump term given the strain he put on the legal system the first time around. But several dissenters countered that those fears were overblown. One former Trump official predicted that the Justice Department would be led by lawyers like those in the first term — elite, conservative and independent. “It’s hard to be a bad-faith actor at the Justice Department,” he said at the time. “And the president likes the Ivy League and Supreme Court clerkships on résumés.”

Eight months into his second term, Trump has taken a wrecking ball to those beliefs."

‘Orwell: 2+2=5’ Review: How George Came to See the World as Orwellian; The New York Times, October 2, 2025

 Manohla Dargis, The New York Times; ‘Orwell: 2+2=5’ Review: How George Came to See the World as Orwellian

"“The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude,” George Orwell wrote in 1946, a year after the end of the World War II. That line appears early in “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5,” an essayistic documentary from Raoul Peck that surveys its title subject’s life and work, using them as a lens to explore authoritarian power in the past and the present. Densely packed, the movie is a whirlwind of ideas and images, by turns heady, enlivening, disturbing and near-exhausting. It’s a work of visceral urgency from Peck, who’s best known for his 2017 documentary “I Am Not Your Negro,” about James Baldwin.

Peck plucked that observation about art and politics from Orwell’s essential 1946 essay “Why I Write,” in which he lists “four great motives for writing” — especially for writing prose and, of course, aside from earning a living — including “political purpose.” Near the end of the essay, Orwell writes that he hopes to start a new book. What soon followed was “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” the seismic novel that helped turn his name into an adjective. Anchored by Orwell’s writing — and Damian Lewis’s calm, intimate voice-over — Peck charts the writer’s life in tandem with world-shattering events, focusing on when he was working on “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” which was published in 1949. Months later, Orwell was dead."

Trump Says Critical Coverage of Him Is ‘Really Illegal’; The New York Times, September 19, 2025

Luke Broadwater, The New York Times; Trump Says Critical Coverage of Him Is ‘Really Illegal’

[Kip Currier: The most objective (and nicest) way to respond to Trump's assertion that critical reporting on him is "really illegal" is that it is legally incorrect and factually untrue. Whether Trump is regrettably misinformed in stating this falsehood or intentionally uttering this inaccuracy is less material than the fact that he is objectively wrong.

There are countries where it is illegal to say critical things about heads of nations: Russia. China. North Korea. Iran. Saudi Arabia. Turkey. Thailand. Others. Indeed, criticizing the head of state will likely get one defenestrated (as tragically happens all too often in Russia), killed in other ways, tortured, jailed, or disappeared.

Fortunately, it is not (yet) illegal to say negative things about U.S. Presidents at present. And it never has been, since the founding of the country in 1776 when the monarchical dictates of England's King George III were soundly declined by the American colonists. The t-shirt below proudly (and wholly truthfully) proclaims that historical truth that occurred in America 249 years ago:

[Excerpt]

"President Trump said Friday that news reporters who cover his administration negatively have broken the law, a significant broadening of his attacks on journalists and their First Amendment right to critique the government.

A day after asserting that broadcasters should potentially lose their licenses over negative news coverage of him, Mr. Trump escalated his condemnations of the press, suggesting reporters were lawbreakers.

“They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad,” he said, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. “See, I think that’s really illegal.”

Mr. Trump did not cite a specific law he said he believed had been violated. It remained unclear Friday why Mr. Trump believed negative news coverage, which every president has faced and is protected by the Constitution, would be “really illegal.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment Friday evening."

ABC barred from Trump’s UK press conference after his clash with Australian journalist John Lyons; The Guardian, September 17, 2025

 Amanda Meade , The Guardian; ABC barred from Trump’s UK press conference after his clash with Australian journalist John Lyons

"The ABC has been barred from attending Donald Trump’s press conference near London this week after a clash between the broadcaster’s Americas editor, John Lyons, and the president in Washington DC over his business dealings.

The Australian broadcaster said its London bureau was informed by Downing Street that its accreditation to attend the press conference had been withdrawn for “logistical reasons”...

Lyons, who is reporting for Four Corners, drew the ire of the president on Tuesday when he asked Trump how much wealthier he had become since returning to the Oval Office for his second term in January.

Trump accused the reporter of “hurting Australia” with the line of questioning.

“In my opinion, you are hurting Australia very much right now,” Trump said. “And they want to get along with me.

“You know, your leader is coming over to see me very soon. I’m going to tell him about you. You set a very bad tone. You can set a nicer tone.”

Trump subsequently told Lyons: “Quiet.”"

‘Censoring you in real time’: suspension of Jimmy Kimmel show sparks shock and fears for free speech; The Guardian, September 17, 2025

Jonathan Yerushalmy, The Guardian ; ‘Censoring you in real time’: suspension of Jimmy Kimmel show sparks shock and fears for free speech

"Politicians, media figures and free speech organisations expressed anger and alarm at the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show, warning that critics of Donald Trump were being systematically silenced."

Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times is meritless, First Amendment experts say; CNN, September 17, 2025

Brian Stelter, Liam Reilly, CNN ; Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times is meritless, First Amendment experts say

"President Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times is meritless, according to half a dozen lawyers and First Amendment scholars who spoke with CNN.

But Trump’s chances in court are almost beside the point, some of the experts said, because the president seems to want a political rather than legal or financial victory.

Rebecca Tushnet, the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Law School, said the 85-page suit “is a statement of contempt for truth, the American public, the judicial process, and everything that deserves our respect in the American tradition.”

However, Tushnet said, “to pick through its legal defects, such as the complaints about statements about Fred Trump — a deceased man who cannot be defamed — is to ignore its purpose: to threaten any criticism of Trump.”

‘Homie’: DHS Ridicules Dad They Plan to Deport to Tiny African Nation; The Daily Beast, September 6, 2025

 Jack Revell , The Daily Beast ; ‘Homie’: DHS Ridicules Dad They Plan to Deport to Tiny African Nation

[Kip Currier: This is unacceptable aberrant and abhorrent behavior for U.S. government leaders and agencies like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to demean and torment human beings in this way. But as has so often been said of the Trump administration, the cruelty is the point: these actions are part of a broader stratagem. This behavior is an authoritarian tactic to dehumanize specific individuals and groups of people. The objectives of this systematic, intentional dehumanization are to (1) normalize cruelty, (2) undermine the rule of law, and (3) break down our democratic institutions. Political writer Hannah Arendt explains these strategies in her seminal 1951 work The Origins of Totalitarianism. The book is freely accessible through the Internet Archive via https://archive.org/details/TheOriginsOfTotalitarianism .

Remember, too, that DHS Head Kristi Noem is the same person who told us in her 2024 autobiography No Going Back that she shot and killed her own 14-month old wire-haired pointer dog, Cricket, with premeditation and deliberation. This is not a good person, a positive role model, or someone who exercises sound judgment and well-reasoned decision-making. 

And this is clearly not someone who should be influencing policy and leading a government agency.]

[Excerpt]

"Maryland dad Kilmar Abrego Garcia has learned where the Department of Homeland Security has decided to deport him next. 

In an email obtained by Fox News, lawyers for the DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement informed Abrego Garcia’s legal team on Friday that his new intended destination is the tiny African nation of Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland. 

Ridiculing Abrego Garcia’s legal claim of fear of persecution or torture—a core asylum principle—in many of the nations the government has considered deporting him to, the DHS wrote on social media that “Homie is afraid of the entire western hemisphere”."

Step back and take it in: the US is entering full authoritarian mode; The Guardian, August 29, 2025

Jonathan Freedland , The Guardian; Step back and take it in: the US is entering full authoritarian mode

"Meanwhile, apparently prompted by his meeting with Vladimir Putin, he is once again at war against postal voting, baselessly decrying it as fraudulent, while also demanding a new census that would exclude undocumented migrants – moves that will either help Republicans win in 2026 or else enable him to argue that a Democratic victory was illegitimate and should be overturned.

In that same spirit, the Trump White House now argues that, in effect, only one party should be allowed to exercise power in the US. How else to read the words of key Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who this week told Fox News that “The Democrat party is not a political party; it is a domestic extremist organisation.”

It’s the same picture on every front, whether it’s plans for a new military parade in Trump’s honour or the firing of health officials who insist on putting science ahead of political loyalty. He is bent on amassing power to himself and being seen to amass power to himself, even if that means departing from economic conservative orthodoxy to have the federal government take a stake in hitherto private companies. He wants to rule over every aspect of US life. As Trump himself said this week, “A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator.’” The former Obama adviser David Axelrod is not alone when he says, “We have gone from zero to Hungary faster than I ever imagined.”

The trouble is, people still don’t talk about it the way they talk about Hungary, not inside the US and not outside it. That’s partly the It Can’t Happen Here mindset, partly a reluctance to accept a reality that would require, of foreign governments especially, a rethink of almost everything. If the US is on its way to autocracy, in a condition scholars might call “unconsolidated authoritarianism”, then that changes Britain’s entire strategic position, its place in the world, which for 80 years has been predicated on the notion of a west led by a stable, democratic US. The same goes for the EU. Far easier to carry on, either pretending that the transformation of the US is not, in fact, as severe as it is, or that normal service will resume shortly. But the world’s leaders, like US citizens, cannot ignore the evidence indefinitely. To adapt the title of that long-ago novel, it can happen here – and it is."

We shouldn’t focus on ‘how bad slavery was’ says Trump. What’s next?; The Guardian, August 22, 2025

Francine Prose , The Guardian; We shouldn’t focus on ‘how bad slavery was’ says Trump. What’s next?

"The attack on museums, like the assault on education, is meant to convince us that the truth doesn’t matter, that there is no truth, that the wisest course is to blindly accept and repeat whatever lies an authoritarian government chooses to tell.

There’s some disagreement about who first said: “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” Some claim it was Winston Churchill, others attribute it to George Santayana. But does anyone doubt its veracity?

Perhaps the most nightmarish explanation is that our current administration actually wants us to repeat the most loathsome events of our common past – and to be assured that every act of brutality will disappear from our collective consciousness. There’s a terrifying kind of freedom in knowing that our most odious deeds will be erased from our historical memory, that what we do now will have no consequences – indeed, no reality – in the years to come.

According to the “historically accurate” museum exhibits and history books of the future, there will have been no slavery, there was no discrimination, there were no massacres of our Indigenous population. There was never a time when hard-working, law-abiding immigrant families were separated, when yet more children were stolen from their parents, when, according to the current estimate, 80,000 people – most of them entirely innocent – were imprisoned, when thousands more were kidnapped off the streets and deported from a country they had labored so hard to benefit. And none of this will be mentioned, none of this can be said or written on a wall text, lest we allow the unpatriotic ideologues to make America look bad."

This Evangelical Pastor Wants to Replace Women’s Right to Vote; The New York Times, August 14, 2025

David French, The New York Times ; This Evangelical Pastor Wants to Replace Women’s Right to Vote

"There are many reasons for Wilson’s rise, but one of them is squarely rooted in politics. When Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, he inherited a recent Republican tradition: The Republican president isn’t just a political leader — he’s a de facto religious leader as well.

Leaders inspire imitators, and all too many people are open to pastors exhibiting the same values as the president they admire so much. Or to put it another way, when George W. Bush was in office, “compassionate conservatism” was en vogue. And now? When Trump runs an administration where it often appears that cruelty is the point, well then, empathy is a sin. It’s not that men like Wilson had no audience before Trump; it’s that there is a new demand for Wilson’s message because it matches the Trumpist spirit of this evangelical age.

Trump is a profane, authoritarian man who delights in attacking his critics. Wilson is also a profane, authoritarian man who similarly delights in personal attacks. He created something he calls “No Quarter November,” a month when he grants Christians the right to “hoist the Jolly Roger and just go to war with the world.” His aggression is referred to as the “Moscow mood.”"

Trump sent ‘explicit’ threat to cut funds from University of Virginia, senator says; The Guardian, June 29, 2025

Marina Dunbar , The Guardian; Trump sent ‘explicit’ threat to cut funds from University of Virginia, senator says

"The University of Virginia (UVA) received “explicit” notification from the Trump administration that the school would endure cuts to university jobs, research funding and student aid as well as visas if the institution’s president, Jim Ryan, did not resign, according to a US senator.

During an interview Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, Mark Warner, a Democratic senator for Virginia, defended Ryan – who had championed diversity policies that the president opposes – and predicted that Donald Trump will similarly target other universities.

Warner said he understood that the former UVA president was told that if he “tried to fight back, hundreds of employees would lose jobs, researchers would lose funding, and hundreds of students could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld”.

“There was indication that they received the letter that if he didn’t resign on a day last week, by 5 o’clock, all these cuts would take place,” Warner added. He also said he believes this to be the “most outrageous action” that the Trump administration has taken on education since it retook office in January.

Ryan resigned from his position as UVA president on Friday. He was facing political pressure from Washington to step aside in order to resolve a justice department investigation into UVA’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, the New York Times reported on the same day.

“I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job,” Ryan said in his resignation message to the university community. He expressed an unwillingness to risk the employment of other staff, as well as cuts to funding and financial aid for students.

Ryan had a reputation for trying to make the UVA campus more diverse and encouraging students to perform community service. He had served as the university’s president since 2018."