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Heather Cox Richardson
Foreign May 14, 2025 On May 8, political scientists Stephen Levitsky, Lukin Wei and Daniel Zyblatt published an op ed in the New York Times reminding readers that most modern authoritarian leaders are elected. They maintain their power by using the power of the government arrests, tax audits, defamation suits, politically targeted investigations, and so on to punish and silence their opponents. They either buy or bully the media and civil society until opposing voices cave to their power. Levitsky Way and Zyblack call this system competitive authoritarianism. A country that has fallen to it still holds elections, but the party in power has so weighted the system in its favor that it's virtually impossible for it to lose. The way to tell if the United States has crossed the line from democracy to competitive authoritarianism, the political scientists explain, is to see if people feel safe opposing those in power. Can they safely protest, publish criticism of the government, support opposition candidates? Or does taking a stand against those in power lead to punishment either by the government or by government supporters? Looking at the many ways the Trump administration has been harassing critics, law firms, universities, judges and media stations, they conclude that America has crossed the line into competitive authoritarianism. Since they made that observation less than a week ago, there has been more evidence of the administration's attempt to consolidate power after the National Intelligence Council, or nic, the the nation's top body for analyzing intelligence, produced a report that contradicted President Donald J. Trump's assertion that the Venezuelan government was directing the actions of the Trenda Aragua, or tda, gang Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard fired acting NIC chair Michael Collins and his deputy, Maria Langen Reikoff. The administration used the claim that Venezuela was working with TDA as justification for invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies act to render migrants from Venezuela to El Salvador. A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the director is working alongside President Trump to end the weaponization and politicization of the intelligence community. Department of justice leaders are also consolidating power under the claim of ending weaponization. In a dramatic reversal of Department of Justice policies, Trump loyalist Ed Martin said yesterday that when the department finds it does not have the grounds to charge political opponents with a crime, it will name and shame them, attempting to convict them in the court of public opinion rather than a court of law. Trump initially nominated Martin to be the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. But Martin's extremism convinced Senate Republican Thom Tillis to vote with Democrats on the Judiciary Committee to stop his nomination. So Trump put him at the head of the Justice Department's Weaponization Working Group, allegedly designed to ferret out the weaponization of former President Joe Biden's Department of Justice, but clearly intended to use the Justice Department to advance Trump's interests. A federal grand jury in Wisconsin yesterday indicted Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan, charging that she tried to help a man evade agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ice. Dugan permitted an undocumented immigrant to leave her courtroom and enter the public hallway by the jury door rather than the public door. A week later, federal officials arrested her at the courthouse, photographed her in handcuffs, and spread the news of her arrest on social media. And Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters that Dugan's arrest was a warning to others. A bipartisan group of 150 former federal and state judges wrote to Bondi to protest both Dugan's arrest and the administration's threats against the judiciary. Today, U.S. circuit Judge Amy St. Eve and Judge Robert Conrad, both of whom were appointed by Republican presidents, asked the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government to increase funding for judges security. David Gilbert of Wired reported today that calls for impeachment and violent threats against US judges on social media have gone up by 327% since last year. In a piece in the Atlantic today, respected conservative Judge J. Michael Ludig noted that for all of Trump's insistence that he is the victim of the weaponization of the federal government against him, it is Trump who is actually weaponizing the federal government against both his political enemies and countless other American citizens. Today, Ludig warned that Trump is trying to end the rule of law in the United States, recreating the sort of monarchy against which the nation's founders rebelled. He lists Trump's pardoning of the convicted January 6 rioters, which he did with the collusion of Ed Martin the arrest of Judge Dugan, which Ludig calls appalling the deportation of a US Citizen with a child's mother and the investigation of private citizen Christopher Krebs for not one of his signature initiatives during his first 100 days in office does Trump have the authority under the Constitution and laws of the United States that he claims Judge Ludig writes. Not for tariffs, not for unlawful deportations, not for attacks on colleges and law firms, not for his attacks on birthright citizenship, not for handing power to billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, not for trying to end due process, not for his attempts to starve government agencies by impounding their funding, not for his vow to regulate federal elections and not for his attacks on the media. The courts are holding, judge Ludig writes, and will continue to hold. But Trump will continue his assault on America, its democracy and rule of law, until the American people finally rise up and say no more. And rising up they are. The chaotic cuts of the Department of Government Efficiency soured people on billionaire Elon Musk and on government cuts Yesterday, Representative Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat of Florida, told Ben Johansen of Politico that while Republicans claim the House Department of Government Efficiency caucus created to work with Musk to audit the government is just getting started, moskowitz says it is dead defunct. We only had two total meetings in five months. Currently, Newark Liberty International Airport is serving as an illustration of the effects of the Department of Government Efficiency's cuts. On Monday, the airport was supposed to be staffed with 14 air traffic controllers but was down to just three, causing delays of up to seven hours. As Ed Pilkington of the Guardian reported, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy assured the public on Sunday that it was safe to fly out of the Newark airport, but on Monday told a podcaster that his wife was supposed to fly out of Newark, but he had switched the flight to one out of New York's LaGuardia. Recent polling shows that Trump is underwater in polling, meaning that more people disapprove than approve of his actions, even on his core issues of immigration and the economy. Many Trump voters apparently believed he would deport only violent criminals and are now shocked to see masked officers breaking car windows to arrest mothers with children. The rendition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the notorious Seekot terrorist prison in El Salvador without due process and through what the administration initially called administrative error has caused such an uproar that, as Adrian Carrasquillo of the Bulwark noted today, the White House is working aggressively to try to recover control of the narrative by smearing the Maryland father as a member of the MS.13 gang, a a human trafficker and a terrorist with no evidence. The administration has also lost credibility on the economy. Jeff Stein, Natalie Allison and David J. Lynch of the Washington Post reported today that since he took office, Trump has changed his tariff policies at least 50 times. Some didn't last a day. After insisting that his high tariffs would bring manufacturing to the United States, Trump's administration on Monday announced it would reduce Trump's 145% tariff on goods from China to 30%. China said it would correspondingly lower the tariff it had put on US Goods in retaliation for Trump's tariff. It's been completely insane, economist Michael Strain from the right leaning American Enterprise Institute think tank told the Washington Post reporters. When I step back from the euphoria over easing tariffs with China, what I see is the tariff rate is five times as high as when Trump took office and we seem to have gotten nothing out of it at all. Evidently concerned that Trump's economic agenda is so unpopular it will fail in Congress, Trump's political operators have spent in the high seven figures, Alex Eisenstadt of Axios says to run ads in more than 20 targeted congressional districts to push lawmakers to get behind it. Tell Congress this is a good deal for America, the ad says. Support President Trump's agenda to get our economy back on track. As the American people have turned on Trump, Democrats have been standing against him and members of his administration. Yesterday's discussion of the one big beautiful bill the Republicans are trying to get through Congress sparked dramatic pushback. The measure cuts taxes for the wealthy and corporations and helps to offset those financial benefits at the top of society with cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or snap, which used to be known as food stamps, as well as a bevy of other programs that help ordinary Americans. When the House Committee on Energy and Commerce began to debate their piece of the bill yesterday, there were protests within the hearing room and in the hallway outside. After 10 hours, the committee still had not gotten to the Medicaid cuts, which Democrats suggested was intentional. Representative Troy A. Carter Sr. A Democrat of Louisiana, recorded a video at 1:00 clock this morning noting that Republicans want to do this in the dead of night and not let the American people see. He continued, shame on you. The people deserve to see the actions that you're doing to them by cutting Medicaid in favor of the richest rich for tax breaks. Wewontletyou. The fireworks in two other hearings today rivaled the fights in the hearing over cuts to Medicaid. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem testified today before the House Homeland Security Committee, but she refused to answer Democrats questions about the deportation of US citizens. The reality that the MS.13 on a photograph of Abrego Garcia's hand was photoshopped? Or that the Supreme Court has unanimously ordered the administration to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States. Instead, she simply kept talking over the members of Congress, reiterating administration talking points. Your department has been sloppy, representative Seth Magaziner, a Democrat of Rhode island, said. And instead of focusing on real criminals, you have allowed innocent children to be deported while you fly around the country playing dress up for the cameras. Instead of enforcing the laws, you have repeatedly broken them. You need to change course immediately before more innocent people are hurt on your watch. Democrats also challenged Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. When he testified for the first time today before both the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Health, Education, labor and Pensions Committee to promote Trump's budget. Kennedy seemed angry at being questioned and like Noem, repeated debunked lies. He angrily claimed he had not fired any working scientists and and was not withholding money for life saving research. Although during his tenure 20,000 people, one quarter of the health workforce have lost their jobs and the administration has cut $2.7 billion in research funding for the National Institutes of Health. Memorably, Kennedy told Representative Mark Pocan, a Democrat of Wisconsin, I don't think people should be taking medical advice from me. Judge Hannah Dugan herself pushed back against the administration today when she moved for an order to dismiss her indictment. Her motion called the government's prosecution virtually unprecedented and entirely unconstitutional. The government cannot prosecute her, she argued, because she is entitled to judicial immunity for her official acts as president. She cited Trump versus the United States, the July 2024 Supreme Court decision protecting Trump from prosecution for crimes committed as part of his official acts. Voters in Omaha, Nebraska, last night dramatically rejected Trumpism when they elected Democrat John Ewing as their new mayor over Republican incumbent Gene Stoddard. Ewing served in the Omaha Police department for almost 25 years before becoming Douglas County Treasurer for 17 years. He will be Omaha's first black mayor. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, MA. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.