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Heather Cox Richardson: Trump and Musk Are Destroying the Government

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2025 //
14

Heather Cox Richardson demonstrates the negative effects of Elon Musk’s DOGS, which protected his interests and saved little, if any, money. With Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax plan, the deficit will increase by $4-5 trillion, so Musk’s chainsaw contributed nothing but demoralization and destruction of the federal workforce. She also summarizes the multiple ways in which Trump is sabotaging the rule of law. She includes footnotes, as usual. Subscribe to her blog to see them.

She writes:

In July 2024, according to an article published today by Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey in the New York Times, billionaire Elon Musk texted privately about his concerns that government investigations into his businesses would “take me down.” “I can’t be president,” he wrote, “but I can help Trump defeat Biden and I will.”

After appearing on stage with Trump on October 5, Musk texted a person close to him: “I’m feeling more optimistic after tonight. Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.” About an hour later, he added: “This is not something on the chessboard, so they will be quite surprised. “‘Lasers’ from space.”

Musk invested about $290 million in the 2024 election and, when Trump took office, became a fixture in the White House, heading the “Department of Government Efficiency.” It set out to kill government programs by withholding congressionally approved funds, a practice that courts have ruled unconstitutional and Congress expressly prohibited with the 1974 Impoundment Control Act.

Musk vowed that his “Department of Government Efficiency” would cut $2 trillion from the U.S. budget, but he quickly backed off on those numbers. In the end, DOGE claimed savings of $175 billion, but that claim is unverifiable and CNN’s Casey Tolan says it’s probably wrong: less than half of it is backed up with any documentation.

Instead, as CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf reported today, since DOGE cut staffing at the enforcement wing of the Internal Revenue Service, for example, and cut employees at national parks, which also generate revenue, its cuts may well end up costing money. Max Stier, who heads the Partnership for Public Service, suggests DOGE cuts could cost U.S. taxpayers $135 billion because agencies will need to train and hire replacements for the workers DOGE fired. Stier called DOGE’s actions “arson of a public asset.”

Grind and Twohey reported that Musk’s drug consumption during the campaign—they could not speak to his habits in the White House, although he appeared high today at a White House press conference—was “more intense than previously known.” He was a chronic user of ketamine, took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, and traveled with a box that held about 20 pills for daily use. Those in frequent contact with him worried about his frequent drug use, erratic behavior, and mood swings. As a government contractor, Musk should receive random drug tests, but Grind and Twohey say he received advance warning of those tests.

It was never clear that Musk’s role at DOGE was legal, and the White House has tried to maintain that he was only an advisor, despite Trump’s February 19 statement, “I signed an order creating [DOGE] and put a man named Elon Musk in charge.” On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that 14 states can proceed with their lawsuit against billionaire Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency,” saying the states had adequately supported their argument that “Musk and DOGE’s conduct is ‘unauthorized by any law.’”

Trump posted today on social media: “This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way. Elon is terrific!” In a press conference today, Trump reiterated that Musk “is not really leaving.”

Musk’s time at the helm of DOGE might not have saved taxpayer money, but it has changed the world in other ways. Musk has used his time in the government to end investigations into his companies, score government contracts, and get the government to press countries to accept his Starlink communications network as a condition of tariff negotiations. According to John Hyatt of Forbes, Musk’s association with Trump has made him an estimated $170 billion richer.

The implications of DOGE’s actions for Americans are huge. DOGE operatives are now embedded in the U.S. government, where they are mining Americans’ data to create a master database that can sort and find individuals. Former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper called it “a full-scale redirection of the government’s digital nervous system into the hands of an unelected billionaire.”

Today, Sheera Frenkel and Aaron Krolik of the New York Times reported that Musk put billionaire Peter Thiel’s Palantir data analysis firm into place across the government, where it launched its product Foundry to organize, analyze, and merge data. Thiel provided the money behind Vice President J.D. Vance’s political career. Wired and CNN had previously reported how the administration was using this merged data to target undocumented immigrants, and now employees are detailing their concerns with how the administration could use their newly merged information against Americans more generally.

Internationally, Musk’s destruction of the United States Agency for International Development, slashing about 80% of its grants, is killing about 103 people an hour, most of them children. The total so far is about 300,000 people, according to Boston University infectious disease mathematical modeller Dr. Brooke Nichols. Ryan Cooper of The American Prospect reported today that about 1,500 babies a day are born HIV-positive because Musk’s cuts stopped their mothers’ medication.

In the New York Times today, Michelle Goldberg recalls how Musk appeared uninterested in learning what USAID actually did—prevent starvation and provide basic healthcare—and instead called it a “radical-left political psy-op,” and reposted a smear from right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos calling USAID “the most gigantic global terror organization in history.” Goldberg also recalls Musk’s tendency to call people he disdains “NPCs,” or non-player characters, which are characters in role-playing games whose only role is to advance the storyline for the real players.

Aside from DOGE, the focus of Trump’s administration—other than his own cashing in on the presidency—has been on tariffs and immigration. Like the efforts of DOGE, those show a disdain for the law in favor of concentrating power in the executive branch.

During the campaign, Trump fantasized that constructing a high tariff wall around the U.S. would force other countries to fund the national deficit, enabling a Republican Congress to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. In fact, domestic industries and consumers bear the costs of tariffs. Trump’s high tariffs, many of which he imposed by declaring an economic emergency and then using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), created such havoc in the stock and bond markets that he backed off.

Yesterday, Sayantani Ghosh, David Gaffen, and Arpan Varghese of Reuters reported that although most of the highest tariffs have yet to go into effect, Trump’s trade war has cost companies more than $34 billion in lost sales and higher costs.

Trump has changed tariff policies at least 50 times since he took office, and traders have figured out they can buy stocks cheaply when markets plummet after a dramatic tariff announcement, and sell when Trump changes his mind. This has recently given rise to Trump’s nickname “TACO,” for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

This moniker has apparently irritated Trump so much he has taken to social media to defend his abrupt dropping of tariffs on China, saying he did it to “save them” from “grave economic danger,” although in fact, China turned to other trading partners to cushion the blow of U.S. tariffs. Trump went on to suggest China did not live up to what he considered its part of the bargain, and he would no longer be “Mr. NICE GUY!”

On Wednesday a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that President Donald J. Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs based on the IEEPA are illegal. The Constitution gives to Congress, not to the president, the power to levy tariffs. Trump launched a social media rant in which he attacked the judges, insisted that “it is only because of my successful use of Tariffs that many Trillions of Dollars have already begun pouring into the U.S.A. from other Countries,” and said that he could not wait for Congress to handle tariffs because it would take too long—in fact, most of Congress does not approve of the tariffs—and that following the Constitution “would completely destroy Presidential Power.” “The President of the United States must be allowed to protect America against those that are doing it Economic and Financial harm.”

Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit paused that ruling until at least June 9, when both parties will have submitted legal arguments about whether the stay should remain in place as the government appeals the ruling that the tariffs are illegal. White House senior counsel for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro, the key proponent of Trump’s trade war, said: “Even if we lose, we’ll do it another way.”

Today Trump said he will double the tariff on steel imports from 25% to 50%.

The other major focus of the administration has been expelling undocumented immigrants from the U.S. During the 2024 campaign, Trump whipped up support by insisting that former President Joe Biden had permitted criminals to walk into the U.S. and terrorize American citizens. Trump vowed to launch the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history” and often talked of deporting the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., although his numbers have ranged as high as 21 million without explanation.

The administration has hammered on immigration to promote the idea that it is keeping Americans safe. But its first target of arresting at least 1,200 individuals a day has fallen far short. In Trump’s first 100 days, Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it arrested an average of about 660 people a day.

On Wednesday, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who along with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is the face of the administration’s immigration policy, told the Fox News Channel that the administration is now aiming for “a minimum of 3,000 arrests…every day.” Administration officials hope to deport a million people in Trump’s first year in office.

CNN reported yesterday that those officials are putting intense pressure on law enforcement agencies to meet that goal. This means that hundreds of FBI agents have been taken off terror threats and espionage cases involving China and Russia to be reassigned to immigration duties. Some FBI offices are offering overtime pay if agents help with “enforcement and removal operations.” Officers from other agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) have also been deployed against immigrants in place of their regular duties.

Steven Monacelli of The Barbed Wire noted today that local law enforcement and state troopers have also been diverted to immigration, using a national network of cameras that read license plates. Joseph Cox and Jason Keobler of 404 Media reported yesterday that a Texas sheriff used the same system over the course of a month to look for a woman whom he said had a self-administered abortion, saying her family was worried about her safety.

Their attempt to appear effective has led to very visible arrests and renditions of undocumented migrants to prisons in third countries, especially the notorious CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador. The administration has deliberately flouted the right of persons in the United States to due process as guaranteed by the Constitution. The administration has met court orders with delay and obfuscation, as well as by attacking judges and the rule of law.

The administration continues to insist those it has arrested are dangerous criminals who must be deported without delay, but more and more reporting says that many of those expelled from the country had no criminal convictions. Today, ProPublica reported that the Trump administration’s own data shows that officials knew that “the vast majority” of the 238 Venezuelans it sent to CECOT had not been convicted of crimes in the U.S. even as it deported them and called them “rapists,” “savages,” “monsters,” and “the worst of the worst.”

ICE has increasingly met quotas by arresting immigrants outside of immigration check-ins and courtrooms: yesterday Dina Arévalo of My San Antonio reported that ICE arrested five immigrants, including three children, outside of an immigration court after a judge had said they were no longer subject to removal proceedings. The officers used zip ties on all five individuals.

At stake is the turn of the United States away from democracy and toward the international right wing. Yesterday the U.S. State Department notified Congress that it intends to use the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor to promote “Democracy and Western Values.” On Tuesday a senior advisor for that bureau, Samuel Samson, who graduated from college in 2021, explained that the State Department intends to ally with the European far right to protect “Western civilization” from current democratic governments.

It also plans to turn the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, which manages the flow of people into the U.S., into an “Office of Remigration” to “actively facilitate” the “voluntary return of migrants” to other countries and “advance the president’s immigration agenda.”

“Remigration” is a term from the global far right. As Isabela Dias of Mother Jones notes, its proponents call for the “mass expulsion of non–ethnically European immigrants and their descendants, regardless of immigration status or citizenship, and an end to multiculturalism.” Of the congressional report, a person who works closely with the State Department told Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket: “All of it is pretty awful with some pieces that definitely violate existing law and treaties. But institutionalizing neo-Nazi theory as an office in the State Department is the most blatantly horrifying.”

This concept is behind not only the expulsion of undocumented immigrants, but also the purge of foreign scholars and lawful residents. The Supreme Court blessed this purge today when, during the period that litigation is underway, it allowed the administration to end immigration paroles for about 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela admitted under a Biden-era program, instantly making them undocumented and subject to deportation.

The court decided the case on the shadow docket, without briefings or explanation. In a dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote: “[S]omehow, the Court has now apparently determined…that it is in the public’s interest to have the lives of half a million migrants unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal claims.”

Jackson added a crucial observation. The court, she wrote, “allows the Government to do what it wants to do regardless [of the consequences], rendering constraints of law irrelevant and unleashing devastation in the process.”

—

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Citizenship, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Economy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Freedom, Funding, History, Immigration, Musk, Elon, Propaganda, Trump

Oliver Darcy: Don’t Fall for the Rightwing Attacks on Biden

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2025 //
16

Oliver Darcy is a media expert who reports on the media at his blog called Status. He here writes about the unwarranted jubilation of rightwing pundits who believe that their relentless attacks on Biden’s cognition were correct after all. This turns out to be a useful topic for them right now as Trump is hoovering up all the cash he can handle from his profitable dealings in real estate, bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and other lucrative deals.

When you compare the two, it’s clear that Biden’s presidency was unblemished by corruption or scandal. The unemployment rate was low, inflation was dropping, and relationships with our allies in Europe, Canada, Mexico, and Asia were strong. The Economist said that the American economy was “the envy of the world.”

Now we are locked, as Rahm Emanuel wrote in The Washington Post, in a state of chaos, corruption, and cruelty. Every government agency has been ripped apart by Elon Musk’s DOGS, and our democracy is turning into an imperial presidency. Trump has assembled a Cabinet of billionaires and FOX News personalities. From day to day, we wonder which government responsibility will be cast aside.

I don’t know what Biden’s mental state was. But I liked his government far more than Trump’s cruel autocracy.

Darcy writes:

For years, right-wing media pushed a warped narrative of Joe Biden as a brain-dead puppet controlled by sinister, shadowy forces. Now they’re demanding vindication—but they do not deserve it.

Over the last week, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book, “Original Sin,” has landed with a flurry of attention-grabbing headlines—not just for the reporting, but for what Tapper has said during the press tour. In an interview with Megyn Kelly on Tuesday, Tapper declared that “conservative media was right and conservative media was correct” about Joe Biden’s mental state. 

But that’s not quite true. Or rather, it simplifies a much more nuanced media and political reality. While it’s fair to argue that the press should have covered Biden’s age with greater urgency—and to acknowledge that Biden clearly lost a step during his presidency—that’s a far cry from validating the deeply irresponsible narrative right-wing media spun for years: that the president of theUnited Stateswas a mentally incapacitated puppet with dementia, unaware of his own surroundings, and propped up by a “shadow government” running the country in his name. 

That was never journalism. It was propaganda. Full stop.

Since the early days of the 2020 campaign, MAGA Media figures—particularly on Fox News—lobbed increasingly absurd claims about Biden’s mental faculties. They painted him as a senile old man who didn’t know what day it was, who couldn’t walk unaided, and who spent his presidency dozing off while Barack Obama or Ron Klain or some other shadowy liberal elite force secretly ran the country behind closed doors.

This wasn’t grounded in evidence. It wasn’t the result of deep reporting or careful observation. It was pure narrative warfare—an attempt to delegitimize Biden not just as a candidate but as a commander-in-chief. And the coverage became so cartoonish at times that no amount of fact-based reporting about Biden could pierce the right-wing media bubble.

None of this is to deny that Biden was aging. He was. By the end of his term, it was obvious to those around him—and to many voters—that he lacked the energy he once had. Even Democratic operatives privately acknowledged that he didn’t have his fastball anymore. But there’s a world of a difference between an 80-something president, who has always been prone to gaffes, showing his age and a man secretly suffering from debilitating dementia or worse. And conflating the two, as Fox News and its allies routinely did, wasn’t just misleading—it was malicious.

Yes, Biden’s debate performance on CNN was troubling. Yes, the press should have been more aggressive in scrutinizing his capacity to serve a second term. But reporters who refrained from joining the right-wing media hysteria were not negligent or part of a cover-up—they were simply cautious. They understood the weight of diagnosing a president with a serious neurodegenerative disorder without hard evidence. And they understood the cost of being wrong, particularly asDonald Trump ran on an authoritarian-like platform that he is now implementing in office.

MAGA Media’s goal was never honest diagnosis. It was political demolition. They weaponized Biden’s verbal gaffes, his slower gait, and his lower-energy demeanor to manufacture the idea that he was mentally vacant. Never mind that Biden managed the job without the chaos and confusion that has markedTrump’s second term. No matter what Biden did—whether it was biking, traveling, or delivering speeches—the same echo chamber smeared him with the same predictable attacks.

That wasn’t journalism. It was performance. And it came from people like Kelly and Sean Hannity, who weren’t doing reporting at all. They weren’t gathering facts. They were throwing mud, hoping some of it would stick. And in many corners of the country, it did.

That’s what makes the current revisionism so maddening. Now, with Tapper and Thompson’s book pointing to Biden’s visible decline, MAGA Media figures are claiming vindication. They’re demanding apologies from journalists who didn’t amplify their dementia narrative—insisting, once again, that they were “right all along.” 

It’s reminiscent of how right-wing media rewrote history around Robert Mueller’s Russia probe or the COVID-19 pandemic: flattening complexity, cherry-picking facts, and pretending their worst-faith speculation was truth from the start.

But they weren’t right. They were irresponsible. They didn’t try to understand what was happening behind the scenes—they invented a version of it that was politically convenient. And just because Biden aged, and struggled in the final days of his presidency, doesn’t make their years of bad-faith character assassination suddenly noble. Notably, while they maligned Biden, they let Trump—a man prone to deranged rants and wild conspiracy theories—off the hook entirely.

Biden didn’t have a perfect presidency, and his age became an unavoidable liability. But he was not an empty shell of a man, either. He governed. He made decisions. He passed legislation. And he did it while under constant attack from a media machine that acted not as a watchdog—but as an attack dog.

No one owes that dishonest machine an apology.

Categories Biden, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Economy, Trump

Trump Threatens to Transfer Harvard’s Billions for Scientific Research to Trade Schools, Demands Names of Foreign Students

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2025 //
13

Trump is a petty man who is filled with rage, grievance, and a passion for retribution. His current target is Harvard University because the nation’s most prestigious university told him no. Harvard’s President Alan Garber said it would not allow the federal government to control its curriculum, its admissions, and its hiring policies. No.

Every Cabinet department has pulled research grants to Harvard. Now he warns he might turn the billions that were going to medical and scientific research and hand it over to trade schools.

He would rather stop researchers who are trying to find cures for cancer, tuberculosis, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, and other diseases than back down on his efforts to stifle academic freedom and his vendetta against Harvard.

I don’t know about you, but I would rather see the federal government fund the search for a cure for MS than withdraw the funding. If he wants to fund trade schools, why should he do so at the expense of crucial research?

He wrote on Truth Social yesterday:

“I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land,” Trump said in a post on social media. “What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!”

Meanwhile, Trump dreamed up another way to harass Harvard during the hours when he couldn’t get to sleep. He demanded that Harvard give him a list containing the names and countries of origin of all its foreign students. Harvard has nearly 7,000 foreign students. Why? What will he do with those names? Will he say they are spies and try again to expel them? Funny thing is he already has all their names and countries. They were registered when they applied for a visa. It’s all a campaign of endless vengeance by a petty, bitter man.

Categories Academic Freedom, Economy, Extremism, Fascism, Funding, Health, Higher Education, Research, Science, Stupid, Trump

Fareed Zakaria: Trump’s War on Science Is Damaging Our Economy and Our Future

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2025 //
17

If someone asked you which of Trump’s policies was the most catastrophic, what would you say? His personal attacks on law firms that had the nerve to represent clients he didn’t like? His unleashing of ICE to threaten and arrest people who have committed no crime? His efforts to intimidate the media? His assault on free speech, freedom of the press, and academic freedom? His blatant disregard for the Constitution?

All of these are horrible, despicable, and vile.

Yet one of his grievances burns deeper than the other. This is his contempt for science.

His first show of irrational hatred for science was his selection of the utterly unqualified Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services. He is a conspiracy theorist with no experience in science or medicine. RFK has been a one-man wrecking crew.

Then he used his authority to close down university research centers. These centers are working on cures for the most intractable diseases: cancer, ALS, Alzheimer’s, and more.

Why does Trump hate science? Is it another facet of his ongoing hatred for knowledge, the arts, culture?

Fareed Zakaria of CNN gives a good overview.

Watch.

Categories Academic Freedom, Cruelty, Democracy, Economy, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Ignorance, Science

Wall Street Journal: Trump Tax Plan Will Not Cut the Deficit

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2025 //
15

Richard Rubin of The Wall Street Journal politely explains the lie behind Trump’s “big beautiful budget plan”: it will not cut the deficit. It will increase it.

WASHINGTON—House Republicans pushed President Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax-and-spending bill past a key hurdle late Sunday night, but the last-minute grappling has them colliding with a stark reality: The plan won’t reduce federal budget deficits and would make America’s fiscal hole deeper.

The bill could reach the House floor this week, and it is a tenuous balance between the party’s tax-cut wing and factions seeking larger, quicker spending cuts. To get a bill through the House with their 220-213 majority, GOP tax cutters trimmed their ambitions and scheduled some breaks to expire. Many spending hawks, meanwhile, backed the plan while groaning that it doesn’t go far enough fast enough. Others are holding out for more…

Moody’s Ratings, in downgrading the U.S.’s AAA rating on Friday, said it didn’t expect Congress to produce material multiyear spending or deficit reductions. Publicly held federal debt stands at about $29 trillion, nearly double the level when Trump and Republicans passed the 2017 tax law. Nearly $1 in every $7 the U.S. spends goes toward paying interest, more than the country spends on defense.

Categories Economy, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump’s Politics of Distraction

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2025 //
10

Heather Cox Richardson uses her well-honed skills as a historian to weave together disparate events and demonstrate the media strategy of the Trump administration. It could be summarized by the succinct phrase: “Dazzle them with BS.”

She writes:

MAGA world is performing over-the-top outrage over a photo former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey posted on Instagram, where he has been teasing a new novel. The image shows shells on a beach arranged in a popular slogan for opposing President Donald J. Trump: “86”—slang for tossing something away—followed by “47”, a reference to Trump’s presidency.

Using “eighty-six” as either a noun or a verb appears to have started in the restaurant industry in the 1930s to indicate that something was out of stock. It is a common term, used by MAGA itself to refer to getting rid of somebody…until now.

MAGA voices are insisting that this image was Comey’s threat to assassinate the president. Trump got into the game, telling Brett Baier of the Fox News Channel: “that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear…. [H]e’s calling for the assassination of the president…that’s gonna be up to Pam and all of the great people…. He’s a dirty cop.” Trump’s reference to Attorney General Pam Bondi and law enforcement paid off: yesterday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service are investigating Comey. He showed up voluntarily at the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., today for an interview.

In the past day, Trump’s social media account has also attacked wildly popular musical icons Bruce Springsteen and, somewhat out of the blue, Taylor Swift. Dutifully, media outlets have taken up a lot of oxygen reporting on “shellgate” and Trump’s posts about Springsteen and Swift, pushing other stories out of the news.

In his newsletter today, retired entrepreneur Bill Southworth tallied the times Trump has grabbed headlines to distract people from larger stories, starting the tally with how Trump’s posts about Peanut the Squirrel the day before the election swept like a brushfire across the right-wing media ecosystem and then into the mainstream. In early 2025, Southworth notes, as the media began to dig into the dramatic restructuring of the federal government, Trump posted outrageously about Gaza, and that story took over. When cuts to PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and the U.S. Agency for International Development threatened lives across Africa, Trump turned the conversation to white South Africans he lied were fleeing “anti-white genocide.”

Southworth calls this “narrative warfare,” and while it is true that Republican leaders have seeded a particular false narrative for decades now, this technique is also known as “political technology” or “virtual politics.” This system, pioneered in Russia under Russian president Vladimir Putin, is designed to get people to vote an authoritarian into office by creating a fake world of outrage. For those who do not buy the lies, there is another tool: flooding the zone so that people stop being able to figure out what is real and tune out.

The administration has clearly adopted this plan. As Drew Harwell and Sarah Ellison of the Washington Post noted in early March, the administration set out to portray Trump as a king in order “to sell the country on [Trump’s] expansionist approach to presidential power.”

The team set out not just to confront critics, but to drown them out with a constant barrage of sound bites, interviews with loyalists, memes slamming Democrats, and attack lines.

“We’re here. We’re in your face,” said Kaelan Dorr, a deputy assistant to the president who runs the digital team. “It’s irreverent. It’s unapologetic.” The White House brought right-wing influencers into the press pool, including at least one who before the election was exposed as being on the Russian payroll. Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung, who before he began to work for Trump was a spokesperson for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, said their goal was “FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE.”

Dominating means controlling the narrative. That starts with perceptions of the president himself. Trump’s appearances have been deeply concerning as he cannot follow a coherent thread, frequently falls asleep, repeatedly veers into nonsense, and says he doesn’t know about the operations of his government. Yesterday, after journalist S.V. Date noted that the administration has posted online only about 20% of Trump’s words, Cheung told Date “You must be truly f*cking stupid if you think we’re not transparent.”

The White House also pushed back dramatically against a story that appeared in Business InsiderMonday, comparing Donald Trump Jr. to former president Joe Biden’s son Hunter. The White House suggested it would take legal action against Business Insider’s German parent company.

Controlling the narrative also appears to mean manipulating the media, as Russians prescribed. Last month, Jeremy Kohler and Andy Kroll of ProPublica reported that Trump loyalist and political operative Ed Martin, now in charge of the “Weaponization Working Group,” in the Department of Justice, secretly seeded stories attacking a judge in a legal case that was not going his way. Martin has appeared more than 150 times on the Russia Today television channel and on Russian state radio, media outlets the State Department said were “critical elements in Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem,” where he claimed the Democrats were weaponizing the court system. Now he is vowing to investigate Democrats and anyone who criticizes the administration.

As Trump’s popularity falls, Trump’s political operators have spent in the “high seven figures,” Alex Isenstadt of Axios says, to run ads in more than 20 targeted congressional districts to push lawmakers to get behind Trump’s economic program. “Tell Congress this is a good deal for America,” the ad says. “Support President Trump’s agenda to get our economy back on track.”

In their advertising efforts, Musk’s mining of U.S. government records is deeply concerning, for the treasure trove of information he appears to have mined would enable political operatives to target political ads with laser precision in an even tighter operation than the Cambridge Analytica program of 2016.

The stories the administration appears to be trying to cover up show a nation hobbled since January 20, 2025, as MAGA slashes the modern government that works for ordinary Americans and abandons democracy in order to put the power of the United States government into the hands of the extremely wealthy.

Trump vowed that high tariffs on goods from other countries would launch a new golden era in the United States, enabling the U.S. to extend his 2017 tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations, some of which expire at the end of this year. But his high tariffs, especially those on goods from China, dramatically contracted the economy and raised the chances of a recession.

His constant monkeying with tariff rates has created deep uncertainty in the economy, as well as raising concerns that at least some of his pronouncements are designed to manipulate the market. Today, Walmart announced it would have no choice but to raise prices, and the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index dropped to its second lowest reading on record.

Trump insisted earlier that other countries would come begging to negotiate, but now appears to have given up on the idea. “It’s not possible to meet the number of people that want to see us,” he said, announcing today that he will simply set new rates himself. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump argued that other countries would pay high tariff duties, helping the U.S. Treasury to address its high deficits at the same time the wealthy got further tax cuts.

Over the course of this week, Republicans tried to push through Congress a measure that they have dubbed “One, Big, Beautiful Bill,” a reference to Trump’s term for it. The measure extended Trump’s tax cuts at a cost to the nation of about $4.6 trillion over ten years and raised the debt ceiling by $4 trillion. At the same time, it cut Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and a slew of other programs.

The Republicans failed to advance that bill out of the House Budget Committee Friday afternoon. Far-right Republicans complained not that it cut too much from programs Americans rely on, but that it cut too little. Citing the dysfunction in Washington, D.C. and the uncertain outlook for the American economy, Moody’s downgraded the credit rating of the country today from AAA to AA1.

Since Trump took office, the “Department of Government Efficiency” also claimed to be slashing “waste, fraud, and abuse” from government programs, although actual financial savings have yet to materialize. Instead, the cuts are to programs that help ordinary Americans and move money upward to the wealthy. News broke today that cuts of 31% to the enforcement wing of the Internal Revenue Service will cost money: tax evasion among the top 10% of earners costs about $700 billion a year.

The cuts were driven at least in part by the ideological extremism of Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought was a key author of Project 2025, which calls for decimating the federal government.

Vought talked about traumatizing federal workers, and has done so, but the cuts have also traumatized Americans who depend on the programs that DOGE tried to cut. Cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) meant about $2 billion less in contracts for American farmers, while close to $100 million worth of food that could feed 3.5 million people rots in government warehouses.

Cuts to the Federal Aviation Administration have left airports without adequate numbers of air traffic controllers. After two 90-second blackouts at Newark Liberty International Airport when air traffic controllers lost control with airplanes, yesterday the air traffic controllers at Denver International Airport lost contact with planes for 2 minutes.

Cuts to a program that funds the healthcare of first responders and survivors of the September 11 World Trade Center terror attacks are leaving thousands of patients unclear whether their cancer treatments, for example, will be covered. Yesterday, acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) David Richardson told staff that FEMA is not prepared for hurricane season, which starts on June 1, and will work to return responsibility for the response to emergencies to the states. A document prepared for Richardson and obtained by Luke Barr of ABC News said: “As FEMA transforms to a smaller footprint, the intent for this hurricane season is not well understood, thus FEMA is not ready.”

Yesterday, news broke that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been in talks with the producers of the reality show Duck Dynasty for a new reality show in which immigrants compete against each other in cultural contests to win the chance to move their U.S. citizenship applications ahead faster. It is made-for-TV, just like so many of the performances this administration uses to distract Americans from the unpopular policies that are stripping the government of benefits for ordinary Americans and moving wealth upward.

Such a show might appeal to confirmed MAGA. But it is a profound perversion of the American dream.

Categories Character, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Economy, Ethics, Extremism, Fake News, Trump

Michael Hiltzik: Trump’s Tariff War is Nonsensical

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2025 //
1

Michael Hiltzik is a Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist for the Los Angeles Times, who write about business and whatever else he wants. In this column, he tries to make sense of Trump’s tariff war. It’s hard to do because it doesn’t make sense. Trump claims to have made great deals with China and the United Kingdom, but on closer inspection, he didn’t. People assume that Trump was a successful businessman, but he wasn’t. He played one on TV. He declared bankruptcy six times, and he had no background in international economic policy.

Hiltzik writes:

Are you confused about Donald Trump’s tariff policy, including why he instigated a global trade war, what its impact will be on the U.S. economy and how hard it will hit your pocketbook?

Join the club. So too are economists, trade experts, political prognosticators and Trump himself. Their bewilderment has only intensified with the White House’s recent announcement of trade “deals” with Britain and China. 

Those quote marks are proper, because it’s unclear how much of a bargain Trump has struck with those countries despite his triumphalist rhetoric. 

Running a trade deficit is nothing new for the United States. Indeed, it has run a persistent trade deficit since the 1970s—but it also did throughout most of the 19th century.

— Brian Reinbold and Yi Wen, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

On Monday, for instance, Trump declared that he had achieved a “total reset” in trade relations with China. That doesn’t appear to be true, given that the thrust of the announcement was a 90-day pause in the recent round of U.S.-imposed tariffs on Chinese goods and retaliatory Chinese levies on goods imported from the U.S.

Indeed, the announcement appears at least superficially to represent another climb-down by Trump of the stern tariff regime he claimed to be imposing. No one is even sure that the purported cease-fire will survive for the full 90 days. Even if it does, it means 90 days of continued uncertainty about the relations between the two largest economies on the planet.

Praise for Trump’s tariff policy has been largely concentrated among his Cabinet members and other courtiers. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, for one, was effusive about the British negotiations, even though they plainly achieved nothing concrete. “We started at 10% [tariffs] and we ended at 10%,” Lutnick told an Oval Office press gathering last week. “We got it done in 45 days, certainly because we work for Donald Trump.”

Stock market investors have shown every sign of hanging on for dear life as the on-again-off-again tariffs have unfolded. 

As of Monday’s market close, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index is down 3.39% since Trump’s inauguration. The tech-oriented Nasdaq index is down by more than 5.3% since the inauguration. Both indices are in the red year-to-date.

Let’s try to clear away some of the confusion.

On Feb. 4, Trump imposed a 10% tariff on all Chinese goods, then raised it to 20% on March 4. That meant that the effective rate on some imports from China rose to 45%, including a 25% levy on imported steel and aluminum. That rose by another 10% on April 5, reflecting global 10% “reciprocal” tariffs that Trump described as countering tariffs placed on U.S. goods by countries around the world. A few days later, Trump raised total China tariffs to at least 145%.

Meanwhile, China was retaliating with its own tariffs on U.S.-made imports, ultimately set at 125%. Trade between the two countries virtually halted. Shipping traffic at West Coast ports, notably the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, plummeted amid proliferating predictions of empty shelves in the U.S. by September.

Where are we today? According to the initial announcement, the “reciprocal” tariff on China will remain at 10%; according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who represented the U.S. at bilateral talks this weekend. Chinese goods will still be subject to an additional 20% levy Trump has described as punishment for China’s role in fentanyl exports to the U.S. 

China, in return, cut its retaliatory tariffs to 10% from 125%, but left in place tariffs on U.S. farm goods — an additional 15% on chicken, wheat, corn and cotton and 10% on sorghum, soybeans, pork, beef, seafood, fruits, vegetables and dairy products. That’s bad news for U.S. farmers, for whom China had been a growing market, reaching a record $36.4 billion in 2022 before shrinking to $24.7 billion last year. 

The deal Trump claimed to have reached last week with Britain was also murky. To begin with, the rationale for imposing “reciprocal” tariffs made no sense. Trump had justified those tariffs as countermoves to trade deficits the U.S. recorded with the target countries — but Britain is among the major trade partners that have consistently run a trade surplus with the U.S., meaning that it bought more from this country than it sold. 

(Britain ranks only eighth among America’s trading partners; Canada, Mexico and China are the top three, respectively.) 

As was the case with China, the agreement announced with Britain amounted to an agreement to keep talking, rather than a concrete deal. For all that Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer congratulated themselves for their commitment to “deliver shared prosperity for American and British citizens alike,” the document they issued explicitly states that it “does not constitute a legally binding agreement” but only anticipates a “reasonable period of negotiation.”

Even so, the terms the White House mentioned stoked concerns among U.S. automakers. That’s because they included cutting tariffs on imported British cars to 10% from the 25% imposed on cars and auto parts imported from other countries, chiefly Canada and Mexico under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which Trump negotiated in his first term.

“It will now be cheaper to import a U.K. vehicle with very little U.S. content than a USMCA-compliant vehicle from Mexico or Canada that is half American parts,” complained the American Automotive Policy Council, a lobbying group for Ford, General Motors and Stellantis. Which British automakers would be its chief beneficiaries? Land Rover, Jaguar, Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Mini, McLaren and Aston Martin. About 103,000 vehicles from those brands came into the U.S. in 2024, auto market analyst Sam Fiorani told the Detroit Free Press.

That brings us back to Trump’s reliance on tariffs as a weapon in trade negotiations. His core belief appears to be that every bilateral trade deficit suffered by the U.S. is harmful to its economy, or an attack on its national security or even its sovereignty. 

Many economists find this notion bizarre. “Running a trade deficit is nothing new for the United States,” Brian Reinbold and Yi Wen of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis have observed. “Indeed, it has run a persistent trade deficit since the 1970s — but it also did throughout most of the 19th century.”

For the most part, they argue trade deficits have been good for the U.S. economy. They reflected the importation of capital goods that fed into America’s rapid industrialization a century ago. More recently, they’ve reflected America’s wealth, which enabled U.S. consumers to buy more from abroad.

The truth is that the international trade regime in place for the last half-century or so has been a boon for American consumers and businesses. The U.S. outsourced the lowest-skilled work for the manufacture of products including electronics and baby clothes to countries with the lowest prevailing wage rates, while turning a blind eye to the abuses visited on those laborers — adults and children alike. Tariffs were low and, perhaps more importantly, stable.

In return, sellers — such as Apple — of those manufactured goods purchased by American consumers became some of the most valuable public companies in the world. U.S. stock prices and the value of high-tech companies in Silicon Valley soared. A new class of billionaire plutocrats, their wealth based less on manufacturing than on services, emerged.

Inexplicably, it was Trump, who blew this long-lasting arrangement to smithereens. Not because he thought the globalization of manufacturing was morally suspect, but because he saw it as damaging to the U.S. economy.

It’s true that manufacturing employment has seen a precipitous drop from 2000 through the 2008-2009 recession. According to international trade expert Kyle Handley of UC San Diego, some 6 million manufacturing jobs were lost in that period. But international trade was only one of several factors in the decline; automation and “a broad shift toward service sector employment” also played a role, especially in sectors such as healthcare, business and professional services, and communications and transportation.

“Many of the changes are irreversible,” Handley wrote last year. Nevertheless, “nostalgia for the past remains salient in national conversation.” 

Trump’s inability, or disinclination, to look deeper into the roots of U.S. trade deficits, which he sees as invariably the result of illicit trade barriers blocking U.S. exports, may explain the bewildering course of White House tariff policy. 

For the White House to “suggest that the trade deficit is somehow reflective of trade barriers, and the administration’s cherry-picking of the data (which excludes services where the United States has a surplus) further points to the arbitrary nature of its claims,” Inu Malak of the Council on Foreign Relations observes. 

How Trump’s deal-making will proceed from here is anyone’s guess. One question concerns whether they’re even constitutional, since the Constitution vests trade policy in Congress. A lawsuit making that point filed by five small importers harmed by the tariffs will be heard Wednesday by the federal Court of International Trade. 

Trump has misused the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to claim that authority for himself, the lawsuit asserts. “The government’s position,” Ilya Somin, a constitutional law expert at George Mason University who represents the plaintiffs, told me, “is that IEEPA gives the president the power to impose whatever tariffs he wants, against any country, for as long as he wants, so long as he first declares a ‘national emergency’ (which they argue he can do anytime he wants for any reason).” 

But IEEPA doesn’t mention tariffs, the plaintiffs note, and has never been used to impose or increase them. Nor can trade deficits rise to the level of a “national emergency,” as Trump claims, given that the trade imbalances present when he took office had been in place for years, even decades, the plaintiffs say. 

The question remaining is how lasting Trump’s disruption of international trade relations will be. His policies have already had one effect: Trust in the U.S. as a reliable trading partner has been profoundly shaken. 

America profited from that trustworthiness for many decades. It may not be restored for years to come.

Categories Economics, Economy, Ignorance, Trump

John Thompson: Oklahoma Has Its Own DOGE, Just as Destructive as Elon’s

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2025 //
17

After Trump introduced Elon Musk and his so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” several Republican-controlled states created their own DOGE operations. Like the one Musk launched, these were non-governmental, unelected, unaccountable cost-cutters, set loose to apply a chainsaw to state government.

John Thompson reports on what happened in Oklahoma.

CBS’s Sixty Minutes recently reported on the danger of H5N1 bird flu spinning out of control. It cited Dr. Kamran Khan who explained why “We are really at risk of this virus evolving into one that has pandemic potential.” Another expert agreed that “this flu could make Covid look like a walk in the park.”

This frightening reporting comes as the DOGE–OK seeks to cut nearly $150 million for programs that provide immunization services, pathogens surveillance, and emerging infectious diseases prevention, and provide Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Prevention of Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

And this is only one reason for looking into the DOGE–OK process.

Anyone paying attention to Elon Musk’s leadership of the Trump administration’s DOGE campaign to cut federal programs has reason the fear the DOGE campaigns launched in 26 states. After all, as the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) explains, when Governor Kevin Stitt opened Oklahoma’s DOGE-OK, he called for a reduction in our personal income and corporate tax rates, thus making the state’s tax code even more regressive.

The EPI further explained that Stitt selected Marc Nuttle, “who was the ‘chief strategist’ behind Oklahoma’s 2001 so-called right-to-work referendum—a policy designed to disempower workers and lower wages (and contrary to proponents’ claims, it did not bolster job growth in the state).” The executive order empowered Nuttle to lead efforts of a newly formed agency to study the state budget.

Moreover, the EPI explains:

DOGE-OK is itself duplicative since the Office of the State Auditor and Inspector is constitutionally mandated to “examine the state and all county treasurers’ books, accounts, and cash on hand, stipulating that [the office] shall perform other duties as may be prescribed by law.” Similar to DOGE-OK, the auditor reviews staffing levels, assesses state spending, and issues public reports to promote transparency.

The DOGE-OK report now explains:

Once DOGE-OK ideas are received, they are analyzed and vetted with the appropriate group. If validated, ideas are added to the DOGE-OK website. 

But, when I studied the report, I found no sign of hard evidence to back its claims. For instance, they didn’t explain their methodology, and offered no cost/benefit analyses. DOGE didn’t explain what “groups” it considered to be “appropriate,” and what data was used to analyze and vet, and validate their ideas.  

Since the first DOGE headlines focused on $157 million in supposedly “wasteful health grants” by the federal government, I focused on Medicaid and Department of Health cuts.

These proposed cuts are especially disturbing because, as Shiloh Kantz, the executive director of the nonpartisan Oklahoma Policy Institute, explained, “Oklahoma already ranks among the worst in health outcomes.”

First, DOGE-OK claimed that $60 million per year would be saved if the state, not the federal government, performed eligibility checks on children. And, they cited two drugs that received accelerated approval without working, costing $42 million. But, they did not mention the number and the benefits of the other drugs, like the Covid vaccine, that received accelerated approval.

Also, DOGE-OK inexplicably said that easing the prescription drug cost cap would improve prices. And they recommended repeal of staffing requirements for Long-Term Care facilities in order to save $76 million annually, without mentioning harm to elderly patients due to under-staffing.

DOGE-OK also said that three Oklahoma State Department of Health programs should be cut by almost $150 million because their funding exceeded the amount necessary.  As already mentioned, in the wake of Covid pandemic, and as measles and bird flu spread, these programs provide immunization services, pathogens surveillance, and emerging infectious diseases prevention, etc. So, how did DOGE reach the conclusion that the full funding of those programs is no longer necessary?  

Then, DOGE-OK said that 7 programs should have cuts because of “duplication,” with partners doing the same or similar work. They said $2.2 million would be saved by getting rid of the team efforts necessary to improve health.

And Sex Education should be cut by $236,000 because of its low Return on Investment.

Again, I saw no evidence behind their recommendations for $157,606,300 in overall health care reductions. Neither did they address financial costs of implementing their ideas. And, there is no evidence that DOGE seriously considered the costs in terms of the lives that would be damaged or lost.

Given the history of the Trump/Musk DOGE, none of the DOGE–OK should be a surprise. When Gov. Stitt selected Nuttle, a true-believer in Milton Friedman, to run the project, Stitt said, “With his help, we’ll leave state government leaner than we found it.”

Is that the proper way to launch a supposedly balanced and evidence-driven investigation of such complex and crucial policy approaches?

Stitt’s news release previewed Nuttle’s methodology: “use his knowledge of the inner workings of government to comb through agency budgets, legislative appropriations, and contracts.”

So, to paraphrase the DOGE-OK report’s description of its methodology, its proposals would be “analyzed and vetted” by what they see as the “appropriate group.”

In other words, Oklahomans were never promised an open, balanced, evidence-based DOGE process for making our state better. But the same is also true for Musk’s federal DOGE chainsaw.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Economy, Ethics, Extremism, Health, Oklahoma

Thom Hartmann: Democracy Can Die in Broad Daylight

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2025 //
11

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?

He wrote:

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.

Categories Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Democracy, Disruption, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Musk, Elon, Trump, Tyranny

Robert Reich: Trump Is Following Viktor Orban’s Model

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2025 //
24

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 that 70 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.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Economy, Extremism, Fascism, Higher Education, International, Trump
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