Trump’s war on higher education is similar to his war on every other major institution. He wants everyone to be afraid of him. He wants no critics to escape his wrath. He wants dissident voices silenced. He wants to be our king, our emperor, our dictator.
He has threatened to punish law firms that have represented his opponents, such as his 2016 challenger Hillary Clinton and Special Counsel Jack Smith, who gathered evidence of Trump’s crimes but was ultimately defeated by Trump’s delaying tactics.
He has threatened the news media, hitting CBS News “60 Minutes” with a $10 billion lawsuit for editing its interview with Kamala Harris (which is standard practice) and suing ABC News for a remark by George Stephanopoulos that he didn’t like. Both of these are frivolous lawsuits, but CBS is negotiating a settlement and ABC paid out $15 million to end the lawsuit. In a pre-emptive conciliatory move, Amazon (Jeff Bezos) bought the rights to a documentary about Melania Trump for $40 million, which will be produced by Melania. Bezos owns The Washington Post, where he has told the editorial board to go easy on Trump. The Post lost some of its best journalists after Bezos groveled to Trump.
He has threatened to cut off federal funding to universities if they don’t meet his demands. The ostensible reason for targeting universities is to compel them to combat anti-Semitism on their campuses, but it’s hard to credit Trump’s sincerity. He has defended anti-Semites, dined with them, and received their support. His best friend Elon Musk supported Germany’s far-right AfD party in the recent elections. A man who cares so little about civil rights, who attacks academic freedom, who defunds education and social services, who belittles minorities, who threatens democracy, and who is so utterly lacking in compassion–is no friend of Jews.
Last Friday, Trump said on his “Truth Social” account:
“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “It’s what they deserve!”
The President of the United States cannot take away the tax-exempt status of any individual or organization. That is a decision made by the IRS, and it is illegal for the President or Vice-President or any other government official to interfere in that decision. Such a decision is made by the IRS, must be made for cause, and the institution has the right to defend itself. The process can take years.
If the President could order the IRS to audit or investigate his enemies, it would be a very dangerous policy. He can’t. With Trump, the law is a minor inconvenience, so who knows what he will do. The Supreme Court told him he has absolute immunity so maybe he can disregard the law.
The Trump administration is blasting away at Harvard on multiple fronts. The Department of Homeland Security has threatened to revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll international students, who are 27 percent of Harvard’s enrollments.
The Education Department has demanded that Harvard supply the names and email addresses of all foreign students who were expelled since 2016. The Department also wants the names of all scholars, researchers, students and faculty associated with any foreign government. Just a few days ago, Secretary McMahon informed Harvard that it is no longer eligible for new funding so long as it continues to oppose the president’s agenda. That would mean allowing Trump’s agents to take control of admissions, hiring, and curriculum. The nation’s most prestigious university would have to abandon its independence to Trump.
The Department of Health and Human Services and the National Science Foundation have suspended over $2 billion in grants to Harvard for medical and scientific research. Studies that are focused on causes and cures for tuberculosis and ALS, for example, have come to a halt. Another $7 billion in research funding could be suspended. This could damage the research and work of hospitals across the Boston metro area, and the economy of Massachusetts as well. Since Massachusetts is a blue state, Trump doesn’t care.
If this looks like harassment, that’s because it is.
Trump is certainly no libertarian. He is using every federal source of funding to compel universities, colleges, schools, cities, and states to follow his commands.
Last February, Trump met with the nation’s governors. He gave them a lecture about his agenda. When it came to his determination to ban transgender athletes, he called out Governor Janet Mills of Maine. He warned her that had “better comply” with his executive order. They exchanged words. She was unbowed. She said to Trump: “See you in court.”
Trump told the Agriculture Department to hold back $3 million in food from Maine schools.
Maine sued to get the money that was due.
They settled. Maine got its $3 million. Governor Mills changed nothing.
The state’s attorney general, Aaron M. Frey, said his office had withdrawn a lawsuit it filed in objection to the funding freeze, which had held up around $3 million, he estimated, and was initiated by the Agriculture Department last month. The federal dollars, Mr. Frey said in an interview, pay for food preparation in schools and child care centers, and also assist in feeding disabled adults in congregate settings…
“The food doesn’t just buy itself, deliver itself, cook itself,” Mr. Frey said Friday, adding that the Trump administration had tried to “bully” Maine. “The message here is if you don’t follow the law and you try to target Maine without relying on any shred of law to support it, we’re going to have to take you to court.”
The White House deferred comment to the Agriculture Department.
Ms. Mills said in a statement that the Trump administration had made an “unlawful attempt to freeze critical funding.” But the agreement, she said, will preserve healthy meals for about 170,000 schoolchildren across Maine.
That’s the thing about bullies. If you stand up to them, they back off. They get their power by intimidation. At bottom, they are cowards. Take Trump. He dodged the draft. Five times. Don’t be afraid of him.
Thom Hartmann sees the pattern on the rug. Trump and Musk are stifling democratic institutions and rushing headlong towards the tyranny they both admire. Trump thinks that he can make himself dictator for life, Like his buddies in Russia and North Korea. Will the public defend the Constitution?
When Harvard, one of America’s oldest and most revered institutions of higher learning, stands defiant as the federal government freezes billions in funding simply because it refuses to knuckle under to authoritarian demands — like gutting DEI programs and turning faculty into immigration informants — we’re no longer playing the usual game of politics.
This is the open throttling of academic freedom, part of a larger, deliberate campaign to silence dissent, centralize power, and erase democratic norms.
We’ve seen this playbook before in other countries — but now it’s being run right here, in the land that once proudly called itself the world’s beacon of liberty.
Democracy doesn’t die in darkness, as the saying goes; it suffocates in broad daylight.
Americans are witnessing an unprecedented assault on the very foundations of our democratic experiment, orchestrated with a precision that would make authoritarian strongmen worldwide nod in approval.
Senator Chris Murphy has raised alarm bells about what he describes as a methodical attack on American institutions that are supposed to keep government accountable to its citizens. By his account, the strategy isn’t dramatic coups or burning parliaments; that’s not how modern democracies perish. Instead, they’re slowly dismantled through the calculated erosion of accountability mechanisms.
History provides a disturbing playbook, and we’re watching it unfold right now here in America. Putin, Orbán, and Erdoğan didn’t need tanks in the streets. They understood that the process is multi-part but straightforward:
— Legitimize political violence, — Capture the media, — Intimidate lawyers, — Install corrupt leaders within regulatory and police agencies, — Disappear first minorities and later opposition leaders, — Silence universities, and — Starve opposition movements by denying their nonprofit status and funding.
Consider what we’re seeing unfold. The recent January 6 pardons sent an unmistakable message about the acceptability of political violence. When legislators openly express fears of “retaliation” — as Senator Lisa Murkowski just did — we’re already several steps down a dangerous path.
Meanwhile, the concentration of media power in the hands of billionaires who increasingly bend to political pressure isn’t accidental. Whether through ownership, lawsuits, or regulatory threats, the ability to speak truth to power is being systematically constrained.
Universities, traditionally bastions of free thought and youth activism, face unprecedented pressure to conform or lose federal support.
Legal professionals, our front-line defenders of constitutional rights, are being asked to choose between principles and practice.
The economic dimension of this strategy can’t be ignored. Targeted tariffs and funding cuts effectively create a corporate compliance regime where business survival depends on political loyalty. When small-dollar online giving platforms become targets, it’s clear this is about drying up resources for political opposition.
Senator Murphy’s warning carries particular weight: “I still believe we can stop it,” he says. His prescription includes institutional solidarity, mass mobilization, and political courage. These steps aren’t just wishful thinking: history shows they work when deployed with determination.
The challenges are clear, but so is the path forward. Democrats and defenders of democracy must recognize this isn’t politics as usual. The systematic undermining of accountability mechanisms isn’t merely partisan: it’s anti-democratic in the most fundamental sense.
It’s the first stages of outright tyranny, the first American dictatorship.
If conventional resistance proves insufficient, Murphy suggests civil disobedience may become necessary. That’s not a suggestion to be taken lightly, especially from a sitting US senator.
The coming months will test America’s democratic resolve. The institutions being targeted aren’t merely political; they’re the scaffolding of self-governance itself. As Murphy warns, “We still have the power, but we probably have less time than most think.”
For those wondering where the line exists between alarmism and appropriate warning, consider this: When elected officials speak openly about fear of retaliation, when media owners preemptively capitulate, when universities face unprecedented political pressure, and when legal professionals must toe ideological lines, we’re no longer discussing hypotheticals.
The American experiment has faced threats before, but, outside of the Confederacy, rarely have they been so comprehensively designed or so methodically executed.
Recognition of this reality isn’t partisan, it’s patriotic. The future of American democracy depends on understanding what’s at stake and acting accordingly.
The assault on Harvard is just one chapter in a larger story — one where the villains aren’t hiding in shadows, but are operating in full view with chilling precision.
The question isn’t whether this is happening. It’s whether enough Americans will recognize the danger in time to stop it.
Most of us have never met a transgender person. The first time I knowingly met a transgender person was 2016, in Los Angeles, where I met Caitlyn Jenner, once celebrated as the Olympic superstar Bruce Jenner. I attended a corporate luncheon, where she was the main draw for an audience of young people (of which I was not one).
Trump and his friends have made a major issue of demonizing trans men and women, although they are a tiny proportion of the population (1%?) and threaten no one. So far as I know, they are not murderers, rapists, or members of violent gangs. What they want is to live their lives in peace, without harassment.
My view, as I have often expressed in the comments section, is that it’s not up to me or you or Trump to tell them how to live. The decisions they make are not my business nor anyone else’s aside from their parents and medical professionals. In Caitlyn’s case, she decided to transition at the age of 65, a decade ago. She is a political anomaly, as she supported Trump in the 2024 election, despite the hysteria he promoted about trans people.
Here is a better representative of a trans woman: Hannah Szabó.
Hannah Szabó
A friend sent me a video of Hannah Szabó speaking at Central Synagogue in Manhattan on April 4. She is a senior at Yale. She is editor-in-chief of the Yale Historical Review and has a double major in Computing-&-Linguistics (B.S.) and Comparative Literature (B.A.).
Central Synagogue is a historic reform synagogue. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl is the first and probably the only Korean-American rabbi in the country. Both my sons celebrated their bar mitzvahs in this synagogue almost 50 years ago.
Robert Reich has been a champion of democracy throughout the Trump era. An economist, he knows that we are crippled as a nation by escalating income inequality. He describes here how Viktor Orban provided a model for Trumpism and what we should do to resist our headlong plunge into oligarchy, authoritarians, and ultimately full-blown fascism. h/t to Retired Teacher, who called my attention to this article.
Reich writes:
Friends,
A few days ago I had breakfast with my old friend John Shattuck, who, as president of Central European University in Budapest, saw firsthand how Viktor Orbán took over Hungary’s democracy and turned it into an authoritarian state.
When Trump was elected in 2016, Trump endorsed Orbán, and Orbán started attacking universities — forcing the Central European University out of Hungary.
John believes Trump is emulating Orbán’s playbook. (Steve Bannon once declared that “Orbán was Trump before there was Trump.”)
Orbân’s playbook has 10 parts, according to John:
One: Take over your party and enforce internal party discipline by using political threats and intimidation to stamp out all party dissent.
Two:Build your base by appealing to fear and hate, branding immigrants and cultural minorities as dangers to society, and demonizing your opponents as enemies of the people.
Three: Use disinformation and lies to justify what you’re doing.
Four: Use your election victory to claim a sweeping mandate — especially if you don’t win a majority.
Five:Centralize your power by destroying the civil service.
Six: Redefine the rule of law as rule by executive decree. Weaponize the state against all democratic opponents. Demonize anyone who doesn’t support the leader as an “enemy of the people.”
Seven: Eliminate checks and balances and separation of powers by taking over the legislature, the courts, the media, and civil society. Target opponents with regulatory penalties like tax audits, educational penalties such as denials of accreditation, political penalties like harassment investigations, physical penalties like withdrawing police protection, and criminal penalties like prosecution.
Eight: Rely on your oligarchs — hugely wealthy business and financial leaders — to supervise the economy and reward them with special access to state resources, tax cuts, and subsidies.
Nine: Ally yourself with other authoritarians like Vladimir Putin and support his effort to undermine European democracies and attack sovereign countries like Ukraine.
Ten:Get the public to believe that all this is necessary, and that resistance is futile.
John noted that Orbán’s influence now reaches across Europe.
In Austria, a political party founded by former Nazis will be part of a new coalition government this year headed by a leader who has close ties to Russia and opposes European support for Ukraine. A similar nationalist far-right government has taken over next door in Slovakia.
Europe’s three biggest countries, Italy, France and Germany, have all swung toward the far-right, but so far they remain democracies.
Italy has a nationalist government headed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who’s followed parts of the Orbán playbook but has been pushed toward the center and has softened her position on immigration and Ukraine.
In France, the far-right party of Marine Le Pen won last year’s parliamentary elections, but a coalition of opposition parties, prodded by Emmanuel Macron, united to deny her party a parliamentary majority. Their resistance will be tested by new elections in June.
In Germany, the center-left government headed by Olaf Scholz fell at the end of last year. In late February, parliamentary elections took place that determined whether the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party would become part of a new government. Viktor Orbán, Elon Musk, and JD Vance all endorsed the AfD before the elections, but it came in second with just under 20 percent of the vote, and polls show that 71 percent of Germans believe that the AfD is a threat to democracy because of its overt connections to the Nazi past.
Poland, the biggest new democracy in Eastern Europe, at first adopted but is now resisting the Orbán model. A far-right government elected in 2015 almost destroyed the independence of the Polish judiciary, but opposition parties united to defend the courts and defeated the government in 2023, replacing it with a centrist regime headed by Donald Tusk, with a strong commitment to restore Polish democracy.
What lessons can be drawn from all this?
John believes that the best way to respond to Orbán’s right-wing populism is by building coalitions for economic populism based on health care, education, taxes, and public spending.
He points to historical examples of this, like the American Farmer-Labor coalition that brought together urban workers, white farmers, and Black sharecroppers and led to the Progressive Movement and the New Deal in the 20th century. Today there’s an urgent need for a new populist movement to attack economic inequality.
John says that defending democracy should itself be a populist cause.In the Orbán playbook, the national flag was hijacked by the authoritarian leader. John believes that the flag of American democracy must be reclaimed as a symbol of the rule of law, a society built on human rights and freedoms, and international alliances and humanitarian values.
When these soft-power democratic assets are destroyed, a huge void opens up — to be filled by authoritarians like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, who are the ultimate political models for Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump.
John urges that we pro-democracy anti-Trumpers move quickly with protests, lawsuits, and loud resistance. He says that those who believe Democrats should just play dead and wait for the 2026 midterm elections are profoundly wrong. Speed is essential.
I was struck by John’s optimism. He believes that the U.S. is better situated than Hungary to resist authoritarianism. We are 30 times bigger and infinitely more diverse, and our diversity is the source of our economic and cultural strength. The U.S. has an enormous and active civil society, a judiciary that remains mostly independent, a free and open if partially captured and manipulated media, and a constitution that guarantees the rights of the people to challenge and change their government.
Trump won less than 50 percent of the vote in last fall’s election, and his approval rating is well below that in recent polls.
National polls show that70 percent of Americans today see democracy as a core American value.Resistance to the assault on democracy is not only possible, John says, but it’s essential — and it can work, as shown by the growing number of successful lawsuits that have been brought against Trump’s flood of executive decrees and the rising tide of grassroots mobilization by civil society groups across the country who are organizing demonstrations and lobbying legislators to stand up for democracy.
For two and a half centuries, Americans have fought to expand the right to vote, to achieve equal protection, to oppose intolerance and political violence, to gain freedom of speech and religion, to guarantee due process of law.
These goals may now seem to be blocked by Trump, but the U.S. is not Germany in the 1930s nor Hungary in 2025. Americans across the country are beginning to resist. John believes American democracy will emerge stronger for our efforts.
Jill Underly was recently te-elected as State Superintendent of Schools in Wisconsin. She is an active member of the Netwotk for Public Education and attended its last two meetings. She released the following statement after two courts hacked away at Trump’s threat to withhold funds from schools that taught diversity, equity, and inclusion
MADISON, Wis. (WISCONSIN DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION PRESS RELEASE) – State Superintendent Dr. Jill Underly today issued a statement following two federal court rulings that limit the Trump administration’s ability to withhold critical school funding over an unclear certification form and process.
“Our top priority in Wisconsin is our kids and making sure every student has the support they need to succeed. The past few weeks, school leaders have been scrambling to understand what the impact of the U.S. Department of Education’s order could be for their federal funds, forcing them to take their eye off what matters most.
“Today, two separate courts reached a similar conclusion: the USDE’s new certification process is likely unlawful and unconstitutionally vague. That is a welcome development for our schools and communities who, working in partnership with parents and families, are best positioned to make decisions for their communities – not Washington, D.C.
“We are closely reviewing today’s rulings and will continue to stand up for Wisconsin schools, and most importantly, our kids.”
One of Trump’s major goals during his campaign was to strip any rights from transgender people and make them invisible. He and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth agree that trans men and women should not serve in the military and should not receive gender-affirming care to support their transition to a different gender identity. Trump signed an executive order ousting them from the military.
The Pentagon will resume gender-affirming care for transgender service members, according to a memo obtained by POLITICO, an embarrassing setback to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s efforts to restrict their participation.
The memo says the Defense Department is returning to the Biden-era medical policy for transgender service members due to a court order that struck down Hegseth’s restrictions as unconstitutional. The administration is appealing the move, but a federal appeals court in California denied the department’s effort to halt the policy while its challenge is pending.
As a result, the administration is barred from removing transgender service members or restricting their medical care, a priority of President Donald Trump and Hegseth. The administration insisted its restrictions were geared toward people experiencing medical challenges related to “gender dysphoria,” but two federal judges said in March that the policy was a thinly veiled ban on transgender people that violated the Constitution.
The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to allow the Pentagon to ban transgender servicemembers while legal battles continue to play out.
Both judges ordered the military to refrain from forcing out more than 1,000 transgender troops and to resume providing for their medical care, including surgical procedures and voice and hormone therapy. The memo is the latest move by the Pentagon to comply with those orders.
But it presents another headache for Hegseth, who has made culture war issues — such as changing recruitment standards and reinstating the ban — a key piece of his effort to make the military more lethal. Hegseth has emphasized this theme as he’s sought to defend himself amid multiple scandals, including texting sensitive details of military operations in Yemen to multiple Signal group chats and a vicious brawlbetween his top advisers.
“Service members and all other covered beneficiaries 19 years of age or older may receive appropriate care for their diagnosis of [gender dysphoria], including mental health care and counseling and newly initiated or ongoing cross-sex hormone therapy,” Dr. Stephen Ferrara, the Pentagon’s acting assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs, said in a memo dated April 21.
Trump signed a long-expected order banning transgender people from serving in the military at the outset of the administration, just as he had done in 2017. But LGBTQ+ advocacy groups quickly pounced, calling the order discriminatory.
So far, the courts have rejected the Pentagon’s arguments that including transgender troops reduces the military’s ability to fight. U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle ruled in March that there is no evidence that transgender troops harm military readiness, and ordered the Pentagon to return to the status quo.
A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday became the first appellate court to hear arguments on Trump’s transgender military policy but gave little indication of how it might rule.
Defense officials acknowledged in a March memo sent to Pentagon leadership that the agency would comply with the court order, but did not detail the steps the department would take to follow it. Hegseth has openly attacked one of the judges, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, for her order, labeling her “Commander Reyes” in a pejorative post on X.
The Trump administration claims that it wants to reduce federal intervention into the nation’s public and private institutions. But it intervenes forcefully in both public and private sectors to punish anyone with different views. It has threatened to withhold federal funding for research from universities unless the targeted universities allow the federal government to supervise its curriculum, its hiring policies, and its admissions policies. And he threatened to stop the funding of any K12 school that continues DEI programs.
The Trump regime has created a nanny state.
From Day 1, Trump made clear that he would ban practices and policies intended to diversity, equity, and inclusion. He threatened to withhold federal funding of schools that ignored his order to eliminate DEI. He has taken complete control of the Kennedy Center, so as to block DEI programming, and he has appointed a woman with no credentials to remove DEI from the Smithsonian museums.
Who knows how the African American Museum will survive Trump’s DEI purge.
ABC News reported that a federal district judge has halted the DEI ban, at least in schools associated with one of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, the NEA.
The Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any DEI policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes, a federal judge said on Thursday.
In an 82-page order, U.S. District Judge Landya McCafferty partially blocked the Department of Education from enforcing a memo issued earlier this year that directed any institution that receives federal funding to end discrimination on the basis of race or face funding cuts.
“Ours is a nation deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned,” Judge McCafferty wrote, adding the “right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is…one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes.”
“In this case, the court reviews action by the executive branch that threatens to erode these foundational principles,” she wrote.
The judge stopped short of issuing the nationwide injunction, instead limiting the relief to any entity that employs or contacts with the groups that filed the lawsuit, including the National Education Association and the Center for Black Educator Development.
It’s long been clear that Trump has relied on evangelical Christians as a significant part of his political base. It’s also long been clear that Trump himself is not religious. He seldom quotes the Bible, which he usually mangles, but he does sell a Trump Bible ($60). He is usually golfing every Sunday, seldom seen in any house of worship. He has had three wives and cheated on them all. He has operated fraudulent businesses (such as Trump University, which cheated war widows, veterans, and the elderly, and was ordered to pay $25 million to victims of his scam).
Despite having broken almost every one of the Ten Commandments, Trump is adored by evangelicals because he delivered what they wanted most: the repeal of Roe v. Wade. Now, following the agenda of Project 2025, he is wiping out the barriers between church and state and satisfying his religious base.
This week, the White House issued an extraordinary statement — a presidential Easter greeting that was more directly evangelistic than those in the past. Trump and the first lady said they were celebrating “the living Son of God who conquered death, freed us from sin, and unlocked the gates of Heaven for all of humanity.” (By contrast, the White House’s much shorter Ramadan statement last month sent “warmest greetings.”)
The White House spent much of this week celebrating, including at a live-streamed Easter prayer service and a dinner attended by the president. Trump told attendees he hoped it would be “one of the great Easters ever.”
Trump has significantly expanded the power and influence of conservative Christians in government, as my colleague Elizabeth Dias and I have been reporting on for years. This week is a visible demonstration of just how powerful people advancing conservative Christian causes have become inside this administration.
The language and rituals of the White House are changing. The first Cabinet meeting opened with prayer “in Jesus’ name.” Prayer sessions and even hymn-singing have broken out in the West Wing, in public and in private.
President George W. Bush established the first White House faith office in the early 2000s, and versions carried on under later administrations, often working to direct some federal money to faith-based groups providing social services. This term, Trump has given the office a higher stature and a broader mandate.
The new faith office is led by Trump’s longtime personal pastor, Paula White-Cain, and by Jennifer Korn, who worked in his first administration. They have promised a more ambitious agenda to end what they see as Christian persecution in America and to challenge the notion that church and state should be separate.
Ruth and her colleague Elizabeth Dias met the White House faith leaders in their much-coveted office in the West Wing.
White-Cain and Korn said they were focused on all forms of anti-religious bias, not just those affecting Christians. But if atheist groups and abortion rights groups have had a voice in government, “why shouldn’t pastors, priests and rabbis?” Korn told us. “We’re telling them the door’s open.”
In the new organizational structure, the faith office is now able to weigh in on any issue it deems appropriate. White-Cain said the office works closely not just with Trump and his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, but also with officials in intelligence, domestic policy and national security.
White-Cain and Korn have also hosted multiple briefings, listening sessions and other events with faith leaders over the last few months. One regular attendee at events hosted by the office, the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, who has visited the White House in previous administrations, said the new structure meant “unprecedented access” for faith leaders. Evangelical Christians are by far the most prominent presence.
These events are also communicating a clear message across the country. Many of the pastors have returned home to their large congregations in states like Colorado and Pennsylvania and shared photos of them with Trump. They’ve also recounted praying with him. Clips of faith leaders singing and praying in the White House have gone viral in conservative Christian circles.
“Even the White House shall be called house of prayer,” a pastor from Alabama wrote online in February, sharing a video clip of Christian leaders singing an impromptu a cappella version of the hymn “How Great Thou Art” in the Roosevelt Room. He added, “Would you join me in praying for President Trump and our United States of America?”
While the influence of conservative Christians is visible in the White House, it’s also emerging in federal policy. Trump has already taken several actions that have delighted his conservative Christian supporters. He has signed executive orders that establish a task force, spearheaded by the Justice Department, to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” and that declare there are “two sexes,” male and female.
I wonder if atheists, Muslims, Universalist Unitarians, and gay rabbis are invited to join the multi-faith meetings?
Anand Giridhadaras is a brilliant thinker and writer. He did all of us a service by seeing a therapist to get advice about how to survive the return of Trump, the Abuser-in-Chief. His blog is called “The Ink,” where this post appeared.
We’ve gotten ourselves into an abusive relationship, and it’s one we can’t escape.
The abuser in question is Donald Trump. And by abuse, we’re not talking about abuse of power, real as that may be. We’re talking about emotional abuse, doled out by a narcissist with an unstoppable need to rebuild the world in his image and to use the most powerful office in human history as a treatment center for his wounded ego.
Whether Trump suffers from a real disorder — malignant or traumatic narcissism has been floated — is a matter of debate among psychiatrists and psychologists. Most professionals have refused to make a diagnosis without a clinical interview (the so-called “Goldwater rule”), though before the 2024 election 225 experts felt Trump presented clear enough signs that they published an open letterwarning of his threat to the nation since, in their estimation, if it quacked like a duck, it was a duck:
Trump exhibits behavior that tracks with the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s (DSM V) diagnostic criteria for “narcissistic personality disorder,” “antisocial personality disorder,” and “paranoid personality disorder,” all made worse by his intense sadism, which is a symptom of malignant narcissism. This psychological type was first identified by German psychologist Erich Fromm to explain the psychology of history’s most “evil” dictators.
We’ve talked often in the newsletter about the way autocrats can build support even without offering anything to their supporters by way of real material improvements, playing on the same deep emotional needs exploited by abusers within relationships and families.
Earlier this year we also looked back to Erich Fromm’s work to understand how Trump’s cultlike appeal depended on a bond of mutual emotional dependence between abuser and abused and against a threatening world — a bond Fromm called “group narcissism.”
“Even if one is the most miserable, the poorest, the least respected member of a group, there is compensation for one’s miserable condition in feeling ‘I am a part of the most wonderful group in the world. I, who in reality am a worm, become a giant through belonging to the group,”
The situation today is even more complex — and dire — than most expected early in the campaign, as Trump competes for power and attention with fellow narcissists: the oligarchs. And chief among them is the shadow president, Elon Musk, whose sense of his own omnipotence and importance is even stronger than Trump’s, and his vision of the future far more dystopian, and his disregard for humanity even more total.
To better understand the situation facing Americans (and, to be honest, everyone around the world) our Nastaran Tavakoli-Far talked to therapist Daniel Shaw about how we can use the techniques that have helped people survive cults, abusive relationships, and toxic families to face and process and maybe even transcend the second Trump administration.
As someone who’s done a lot of reporting on topics involving narcissists and cults, something that’s really striking to me is that the advice given to the people suffering is to get out, go “no contact,” or have as little contact as possible. If you need to speak to this problematic individual do it via a lawyer, you know that kind of thing of just staying as emotionless as possible and not getting involved.
Now, what I always wonder is, because I think a lot of people when they look at Trump and MAGA, I mean a lot of people have said to me, “This is similar to what happened in my family.” A lot of these dynamics, if you’ve been exposed to narcissism, it’s actually very relatable to a lot of people.
But this isn’t a situation where you can go “no contact” because these are the people in power. You’re in a situation where you actually have to engage with these people. You can’t just leave the cult and try and heal. So what is your advice in this sort of scenario?
Stay sane, stay humane, and don’t isolate, would be the three phrases I would use.
Going “no contact” is sometimes a very good idea, but not always. And it’s also an idea that’s been turned around by abusive narcissists who isolate victims from their own families. You know, it’s the same thing that happens in Jehovah’s Witnesses. If you criticize the community, you are disfellowshipped and nobody, not your children, your spouse, your parents, or anybody is allowed to ever talk to you.
In terms of going “no contact” in a political situation, well, you don’t have that option. What are you going to do if, for example, the government benefits that you’ve paid into the system are suddenly turned off and there’s no more Social Security? Are you just going to say “Well, I’m not going to have anything to do with that bad president who just did that to me?” Or are you going to get involved in whatever way possible to fight against it?
Going “no contact” in this situation could be enabling the perpetrator, enabling the autocrat and I think that’s important to understand. If we’re enabling the autocrat, we’re complicit in the autocrat’s abuse.
So what can we do right now? If I wanted to ask for some practical advice?
One of the things that I’ve taken to heart about the current situation is the advice of Timothy Snyder, the historian who has studied the rise and fall of democracies and autocracies in Eastern Europe. One of the things he says is to not submit in advance.
Now, in the case of traumatizing narcissists, having managed a successful seduction they will begin to then create more dependence and they do that paradoxically through becoming more belligerent and belittling and more humiliating or shaming. What that does is create a state of constant intimidation at the same time increasing the sense of dependence the victim has on the narcissist.
In the current situation, it’s clear that everyone who is an opponent of the Trump administration is meant to feel horrified, shocked, belittled, and intimidated. That is what I believe is important: not to submit to the intention to terrify, intimidate, and make people feel powerless and small. So not to submit to that means that I don’t allow myself to be paralyzed with fear. I don’t allow myself to be boiling with rage, and I don’t isolate myself. I remember and connect to what I love about being in the world, about being a person, what I love about other people, and to the people who love me. Staying connected, not isolating, and not allowing yourself to drown in fear or rage is not submitting in advance.
So that’s my sense of what’s important right now.
You mentioned staying sane and about keeping connections. This time around it seems a lot of people are either kind of checking out or not checking the news every day. A lot of people are saying “I just want to do something positive in my community or be there for my family.” and things like that. What do you think about that? Why aren’t people protesting?
Right. I think everybody got exhausted, those who voted against Trump were exhausted by the amount of energy and effort spent hoping to elect Harris. I do limit my exposure so that I can keep my sanity for the time being. I don’t think that’s wrong and I encourage people who need to do that to do it.
So staying sane and humane, having those connections, and speaking up, speaking to our political representatives and pushing them.
People who care about these issues, who do not want to enable autocracy in this country or in general, exist at every level of society, and each of us has a certain amount of power.
I speak primarily to other psychotherapists but some of my ideas can be useful in thinking about the political, so I try to speak where possible within my community. Each of us has a community, and if we can be vocal within our communities at least we can hope to make an impact, even on one person.
Groups will form that we may want to lend our support to, either financial support or volunteer support. I’m currently supporting Democracy Docket, for example, where Mark Elias has been conducting so many successful lawsuits against a lot of abuses of government. I am not a millionaire elite, so I make small donations on a regular basis. People can do that.
People can volunteer, they can protest and demonstrate. All of these things are happening. They will happen, I believe, to a greater extent.
We may be under the threat of martial law in Trump’s world. We’re under the threat of having the National Guard tear-gas us if we take to the streets. He’s already demonstrated that he will do that and he’s saying he’ll do it again. But to whatever extent possible we need to speak, whatever our community might be, no matter how small. If you hold beliefs about injustice, it’s worth speaking out.
So what, exactly, is a traumatizing narcissist?
The traumatizing narcissist is a person who — for various reasons, based on their developmental history — has developed what starts out as a fantasy of omnipotence.
Did you ever buy a lottery ticket? That’s a fantasy of omnipotence. We all have them. It was said by Freud that we start out as babies with a sense of omnipotence because everybody adores us. And that we have to grow up and lose that sense of omnipotence so that we don’t become narcissists.
A traumatizing narcissist doesn’t lose that infantile omnipotence. They go through some kind of traumatic humiliation growing up, and that leads them to the fantasy that they can be the most powerful person in the world and nobody can hurt them or humiliate them or make them feel small or weak. As that fantasy becomes a delusion, they start to be absolutely convinced of their superiority, of their infinite entitlement, and of their greatness.
Some traumatizing narcissists focus on an individual or a family. There they can exercise their delusion of omnipotence over a small group of people or over just one person. But their delusion can be so powerful that it invites others to join in. Often the delusion makes them charismatic and persuasive. They can become, in some cases, autocratic politicians. In other cases, they can become gurus, or they can become internet influencers. They have so much conviction in their own delusion of their own omnipotence that they persuade others to join.
Could you briefly describe the kind of people who join in? Who get into these kinds of relationships?
When people speak to me about having been in this kind of a relationship, they’re often full of shame and trying to understand what’s wrong with them. What I’ll say is, “Well, you were being vulnerable, which is very human.”
There is nobody who volunteers to be groomed and the traumatizing narcissist grooms people. We don’t volunteer for that. Some people may be more vulnerable to grooming than others but I’ve seen some very together, high-functioning people who got groomed by traumatizing narcissists, it’s not about being weak or unstable as a person. Look at Bernie Madoff, who convinced some of the most wealthy, creative, high-functioning people in the world that they should give him all their money.
I was very inspired when I left the cult I had been part of when I was younger by Erich Fromm’s book Escape from Freedom. He tried to understand what was happening in Germany which led people to believe that Hitler was a savior.
I think in a similar vein, people believe that Donald Trump is a savior, and part of the problem is that they are only being exposed to the information that Donald Trump wants them to have, which is the propaganda that is funded by millions and millions and millions of dollars by fossil fuel oligarchs and digital oligarchs. There is extraordinary support for Trump as the CEO and them as the board of directors of the new world they think they’re creating. It’s frightening because it is like they read Orwell’s 1984 and decided the hero was Big Brother.
I would call these people malignant narcissists rather than traumatizing narcissists because they’re not just narcissistic, they’re also sociopathic and they believe that there is no law that they should have to obey, that they make the laws.
Sorry, when you say these people, do you mean Trump, or do you mean Trump and the tech bros and fossil fuel bros?
The group of elites who support autocrats. The autocrat and the elites that support the autocrat are people who see themselves as a superior race of people, entitled to rule over everyone else. Their solution for poor people is to create a jail system.
One of the major thinkers in the tech world has proposed that poor people be made into biofuel, that the prison system could become a factory for creating biofuel out of human beings. These things sound unbelievable. But they are being said publicly.
Yes, that’s the person. He’s extremely influential over Vice President JD Vance, and Peter Thiel is a big disciple of his, as are quite a few other billionaires in the tech world.
So we have an elite oligarchy in support of an autocrat. But why do people view Donald Trump as a savior?
There are a lot of reasons. But what Erich Fromm said is that people are afraid of freedom. They are uncertain of how to be free. And when they feel that there is a powerful leader, it’s like that becomes a magical person who they can feel safe and protected by. The allure of somebody promising absolute total protection, who seems very strong and very powerful and very certain, that is a very powerful allure.
To be a free person means that you have to provide yourself with a sense of safety and you have to create safety in your community.
