Authoritarianism

Sacramento (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The Fourth of July we just observed, nearly 250 years after America’s Declaration of Independence, felt like a time for reckoning, not celebration. It was the saddest Fourth of July I’ve experienced in over 65 years. Until now, I never associated this day with sorrow—it was always a […]

Authoritarianism

Checks and Balances? Dream on in the Age of Trump!

Karen J. Greenberg

( Tomdispatch.com ) – “I must say,” Donald Trump commented, “I wish we had an occupying force.” It was June 1, 2020. The president, then in his first term in office, was having a phone call with the nation’s governors to discuss the ongoing Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests taking place nationwide in response to […]

Authoritarianism

Trumpism holds all Men are Created Unequal and most should be Denied Life, Liberty or the Pursuit of Happiness

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Declaration of Independence has been made a dead letter by the Trump regime as we celebrate the 249th anniversary of the United States of America. These immortal words penned by an Enlightenment gentleman, Thomas Jefferson, still ring out powerfully today: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all […]

Authoritarianism

No Kings! This is What Democracy Looks Like

Tomdispatch

( Tomdispatch.com ) – How strange. I’ve been going to demonstrations for a long, long while now. I began once upon a distant time in opposition to the nightmarish all-American war in Vietnam. And almost 60 years later, that war, in some sense, has come home. Hence, the other day, I found myself at the […]

Authoritarianism

American Spring? How nonviolent Protest in the US is Accelerating

Waging Nonviolence

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the size and scale of anti-Trump protests this year have dwarfed those in 2017, and they have been extraordinarily peaceful. Erica Chenoweth, Soha Hammam, Jeremy Pressman, and Christopher Wiley Shay June 12, 2025 ( Waging Nonviolence ) – On streets and highway passes, at intersections and in parks, millions of Americans […]

Authoritarianism

American Psycho: Trump’s Delusional Crusade Transforms America into a Pariah State

Dan Dinello

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – In Franz Kafka’s story “The Metamorphosis,” Gregor Samsa awakens to “find himself transformed into a monstrous vermin” — a terrifying metamorphosis that leaves him alienated and rejected by his family. Similarly, Trumpism rejects vast segments of the population as unworthy of belonging. Almost overnight, immigrants, government workers, scientists, lawyers, […]

Authoritarianism

The Elephant in the Room: Settler Colonialism in the White House

Yakov M. Rabkin

Montréal (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – There is a proverbial elephant in the room that few dare to identify openly. Revoking visas, arresting students on the streets, detaining them in staunchly Republican jurisdictions, banning protests, cutting federal funding to universities, and forcing institutions to censor their faculty and curricula—all of these actions, and more, […]

Authoritarianism

Trump Harvests Autocratic Powers Planted by Bush and Cheney

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com ) – In 2003, the Macedonian police arrested Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen vacationing in their country. They handed the unfortunate man over to the CIA, who shipped him off to one of their “black sites.” For those too young to remember (or who have quite understandably chosen to forget), “black sites” was […]

Authoritarianism

The “War on Terror” Comes Home in the Trump Era

Karen J. Greenberg

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Four years ago, I published Subtle Tools, a book on the erosion of American democratic norms in the face of what came to be known as the Global War on Terror. Both what had been done in the name of “national security” in response to the 9/11 attacks and how it […]