This is what dictatorship looks like.
We're not powerless. How long this dictatorship lasts is up to us.
Things to do right now:
Make sure your passports are up-to-date. I’m serious.
Trans Folks/Parents of Trans Kids: Know Your Rights for Passports
Act: Demand the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Support Public Media, and everything from 5Calls and Indivisible to make Democrats do their jobs even better (it’s working!)
Follow:, Chris Murphy (Bluesky, IG), Chris Van Hollen (Bluesky, IG), AOC (Bluesky, IG), Amy Spitalnick, Nexus Project, Amanda Litman, Timothy Snyder
Vote: If you’re eligible and haven’t done so, please vote for me in the WZC!
“This is what democracy looks like!” is a common protest chant these days.
But let’s not kid ourselves: this is what dictatorship looks like.
“Dictatorship” sounds harsh, like an insult to our American identity. We picture North Korea, China, Russia, or Iran. My words sound hyperbolic, even slanderous.
But those words are true.
Dictatorships occur in a spectrum. We’re not (yet) under a totalitarian regime controlling every aspect of our daily lives.
Today we live under “competitive authoritarianism” in which many democratic institutions remain, especially in our federalist system. They offer (limited) pathways to restore liberal democracy.
Despite many moments of panic since January 20, I always remember: we have power.
Whether Maine’s governor, Harvard, or law firms refusing to surrender, there are so many ways individuals, companies, and institutions can - must - fight back. Some court rulings are being implemented, while others ignored, so every lawsuit matters.
We’ll have fair elections in blue states and cities that will impact the daily lives of millions of people. It’s why Democrats need to demonstrate that they can deliver on quality of life issues under control of state/local governments, not just oppose Trump.
If Trump’s ignoring the Supreme Court less than 100 days into his second term, I don’t think it’s wrong to question if the House GOP would respect election results that’d put it out of power 18 months from now.
Nevertheless, we must fight like hell in every election we can. Fair elections will happen in NJ and VA this year, as well as swing House seats in blue states next year, even if there’s a risk that the latter won’t be seated by Trump’s allies in Congress.
Make no mistake: it is going to get worse, but to what extent depends on us.
Remember that America only achieved full democracy in the 1960s after massive, sustained organizing inside and out of halls of power. This moment requires of us an entirely new level of mobilization and fortitude that most living adults today have never experienced.
My mind’s flooded with so much more to say, but I’d rather you take in the words of others who know much more about these issues - this moment - than I do:
The Emergency Is Here, Ezra Klein & Asha Rangappa
“If President Donald Trump decides that you are to rot in a foreign prison, then that is his right. And you? You have no rights.”
“We are not even 100 days into this administration, and we are already faced with this horror. And I can feel the desire to look away from it, even within myself. What all of this demands is too inconvenient, too disruptive.”
“But Trump has said it all plainly and publicly: He intends to send those he hates to foreign prisons beyond the reach of U.S. law. He does not care — he will not even seek to discover — if those he sends into these foreign hells are guilty of what he claims. Because this is not about their guilt — it is about his power.”
So you want to be a dissident?, Julia Angwin & Ami Fields-Meyer:
“Many dissidents we spoke to said that, amid prolonged and cascading political crises, establishing a political home for yourself is a necessary ingredient for nurturing noncooperation. Think of this as the equivalent of participation in a faith community that meets to worship—a regular practice to guard against loneliness and despair, and check in with others going through a similar experience.”
Law Firms, Trade Wars and the Weakness of Monarchs, Paul Krugman
Even now, I don’t think businesses, investors and the public in general fully appreciate what it means that we’re all subject to the whims of a mad king. But they’ll learn.
This Could Never Happen Here, Jeremy Ben-Ami
“Arrests by masked security agents? Deportations to foreign jails with no remedy? Universities under attack? A President set to defy the courts? Never in our wildest dreams!”
America’s Future Is Hungary, Anne Applebaum
“After being elected to a second term in 2010, Orbán slowly replaced civil servants with loyalists; used economic pressure and regulation to destroy the free press; robbed universities of their independence, and shut one of them down; politicized the court system….This autocratic takeover is precisely what Bannon, Roberts, and others admire, and are indeed seeking to carry out in the U.S. right now….But proponents of these ideas rarely talk about what happened to the Hungarian economy, and to ordinary Hungarians, after they were implemented there.”
What the Comfort Class Doesn’t Get, Xochitl Gonzalez
“Many things drove voters to Trump, including xenophobia, transphobia, and racism. But the feeling that the Democratic Party had been hijacked by the comfort class was one of them. I recently saw—and admittedly laughed at—a meme showing a group of women from The Handmaid’s Tale. The text read: ‘I know, I know, but I thought he would bring down the price of eggs.’ To many Americans, classism is the last socially acceptable prejudice. It’s not hard to understand the resentment of a working-class person who sees Democrats as careful to use the right pronouns and acknowledge that we live on stolen Indigenous land while happily mocking people for worrying about putting food on the table.”
Trump and Netanyahu Steer Toward an Ugly World, Together, Thomas Friedman
“Each is a wannabe autocrat…working to undermine the rule of law and so-called elites in his respective country…seeking to crush what he calls a ‘deep state’ of government professionals. Each is steering his nation away from its once universal aspiration to be a ‘light unto the nations’ toward a narrow, brutish might-equals-right ethnonationalism that is ready to mainstream ethnic cleansing. Each treats his political opposition not as legitimate but as enemies within….Each is driving his country away from its democratic traditional allies. Each asserts territorial expansion as a divine right — ‘From the Gulf of America to Greenland’ and ‘From the West Bank to Gaza.’
What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it, Nora Berman
“It’s poignant, and illuminating, that Jewish university presidents are demonstrating more chutzpah in the face of this government onslaught than some of their counterparts….they [identified that] Trump’s campaign didn’t really seem to be about fighting antisemitism at all, but rather about using that fight as a justification for government overreach.”
Trump Is Sending People To The Camps, Hunter Walker
“More than a prison, El Salvador’s CECOT has many if not all the hallmarks of a concentration camp. The Trump administration has unlawfully deported a group it finds highly undesirable — migrants largely from Venezuela — to CECOT, a facility known for its utter brutality and unyielding inhumanity that is located in a foreign country where US courts have no jurisdiction. Further, they have done so with no evidentiary basis for claims of migrants’ criminality and with no due process.” - Dr. Sandra Susan Smith, Professor of Criminal Justice at Harvard’s Kennedy School
“Smith’s point might sound extreme since the term “concentration camp” is most closely associated with the German Nazi regime that left millions dead. However, mass executions are actually not part of the official definition. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia published by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, “the term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy.”
This professor studies dictatorships. He helped convince Harvard to stand up to Trump, Kate Lithnicum
“‘We are currently witnessing the collapse of our democracy,’ [Steven] Levitsky said.”
“He has been shocked by the speed at which Trump has moved in his second term to gut parts of the U.S. government and eliminate democratic guardrails — from attempting to deport international students for political speech to refusing to comply with court orders, such as the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that the administration ‘facilitate’ the return a man wrongfully deported to El Salvador.”
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