Authoritarianism

In the spring of 2025, the President signed executive orders against five of the country’s most prominent law firms. One folded in six days. Eight more paid before anyone signed an order against them. Four fought, and every court to rule has sided with them. The firms that paid bought nothing they could not have won, and gave away the one thing that made them worth attacking. [Read More]

He doesn’t talk about killing as the cost of defending the country. He talks about it as the point. [Read More]

Trump signed an executive order cutting the recommended childhood vaccine schedule from 17 diseases to 11 and splitting the MMR shot into three, citing autism claims decades of research have already closed the book on. AAP’s own attorney says it defies the federal injunction his organization already won. This publication said the order was coming on Thursday. It landed the following Monday. [Read More]

From an NSA contractor to a three-star general to two attorneys inside HUD, the pattern repeats: disclose something true and inconvenient, and face firing, investigation, or prosecution. The Philadelphia Inquirer has counted more than 470 targets of retribution since January 2025. These are eight of them. [Read More]

Seventeen inspectors general fired in one night. A CDC director fired for refusing to lie. FBI agents purged for old casework. Named political rivals indicted by a hand-picked prosecutor, then un-indicted by a judge. A Supreme Court ruling that just made most of it permanent. Same mechanism, run in parallel across the federal government since day four of this administration. [Read More]

Texas is investigating the American Academy of Pediatrics for breaking with RFK Jr.’s reshaped vaccine schedule, his own CDC director was fired for refusing to rubber-stamp his conclusions, a court injunction is still blocking the schedule, and the White House is now weighing an executive order to escalate further. This publication named this dynamic in December 2024, before Kennedy even had the job. [Read More]

How Republican rhetoric demonizes opponents, invites authoritarianism, and echoes the language of fascism. [Read More]

A federal judge ruled Kari Lake’s takeover of Voice of America unlawful. Congress says DHS’s official communications, from social media to airport PSAs, cross a line federal appropriations law already drew. Neither ruling, nor firing the DHS secretary responsible, changed what either agency does next. [Read More]

Trump’s July 16 primetime address promised newly declassified proof that China stole the 2020 election. The documents he released do not say that. The officials whose job it is to know, including members of his own party, are the ones saying so. [Read More]

Two ICE officers killed two men in two vehicle stops six days apart, and neither man was the person agents had come to arrest. Judged by the standard DHS applies to everyone else, that is state terrorism. [Read More]