Philippa Kaur

After United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested multiple people on alleged immigration violations, protests broke out in Los Angeles.

In response, police and military personnel have been deployed around the greater LA area.

Authorities have been using “less lethal” weapons against crowds of civilians, but these weapons can still cause serious harm.

Footage of an Australian news reporter being shot by a rubber bullet fired by police – who appeared to deliberately target her – has been beamed around the world. And headlines this morning told of an ABC camera operator hit in the chest with a “less lethal” round.

This has provoked debate about police and military use of force.

Read more:
In Trump’s America, the shooting of a journalist is not a one-off. Press freedom itself is under attack

What are ‘less lethal’ weapons?

As the term suggests, less lethal (also called non lethal or less-than-lethal) weapons are items that are less likely to result in death when compared with alternatives such as firearms.

Less lethal weapons include weapons such as:

pepper spray
tear gas
tasers
batons
water cannons
acoustic weapons
bean-bag rounds
rubber bullets.

They are designed and used to incapacitate people and disperse or control crowds.

They are meant to have temporary and reversible effects that minimise the likelihood of fatalities or permanent injury as well as undesired damage to property, facilities, material and the environment.

Fatalities can still occur but this does not necessarily mean the weapon itself caused those.

In Australia in 2023, for example, 95-year-old aged care resident Clare Nowland was tasered, fell backwards, hit her head and died from her head injury.

In 2012, responding to a mistaken report about an armed robbery, police physically restrained, tasered and pepper sprayed 21-year-old Roberto Curti multiple times. He died but his exact cause of death (and whether the use of less lethal weapons played a causal role) was not clear.

Do these weapons work to quell unrest?

The impetus for police and military use of less lethal force came about, in part, from backlash following the use of lethal force in situations where it was seen as a gross overreaction.

One example was the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in South Africa, when police officers in a black township opened fire on an anti-apartheid protest, killing 69 civilians.

In theory, less lethal force is meant to provide a graduated level of response to events such as riots or protests, where the use of lethal force would be disproportionate and counter-productive.

It is sometimes described as the “next step” to use after de-escalation techniques (like negotiation or verbal commands) have failed.

Less lethal weapons can be used when some degree of force is considered necessary to restore order, neutralise a threat, or avoid full-blown conflict.

How well this works in practice is a different story.

There can be unintended consequences and use of less lethal force can be seen as an act of aggression by a government against its people, heightening existing tensions.

The availability of less lethal weapons may also change perceptions of risk and encourage the use of force in situations where it would otherwise be avoided. This in turn can provoke further escalation, conflict and distrust of authorities. More

No travel can be considered completely safe. There are inherent risks from transportation, criminal activity, communicable diseases, injury and natural disasters.

Still, global travel is booming — for those who can afford it.

To reduce the chances of things going wrong, governments issue official travel advisories: public warnings meant to help people make informed travel decisions.

Sometimes these advisories seem puzzling – why, for example, does the US still have the “safest” rating despite the ongoing volatility in Los Angeles?

How do governments assess where is safe for Australians to travel?

A brief history of travel advisories

The United States pioneered travel advisories in 1978, with other countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland following.

Australia started providing travel advisories in 1996 and now runs its system under the Smart Traveller platform.

To determine the risk level, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) draws on diplomatic reporting, assessments from Australian missions overseas about local security conditions, threat assessments from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and advice from Five Eyes intelligence sharing partners (Australia, the US, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada).

The goal is to create “smart, responsible informed travellers”, not to restrict tourism or damage foreign relationships.

DFAT has stressed its system is not influenced by “commercial or political considerations”.

Soft power and safety

In theory, these advisories are meant to inform travellers, keep them safe and reduce the burden on consular services.

However, they can also subtly reflect politics and alliances.

While travel advisories are presented as neutral, fact-based risk assessments, they may not always be free from political bias.

Research shows governments sometimes soften their warnings for countries they are close with and overstate risks in others.

A detailed analysis of US State Department travel warnings from 2009 to 2016 found only a weak correlation between the number of American deaths in a country and the warnings issued.

In some cases, destinations with no record of US fatalities received frequent warnings, while places with high death tolls had none.

In early 2024, Australia issued a string of warnings about rising safety concerns in the US and extremely strict entry conditions even with an appropriate visa.

Yet, the US kept its Level 1 rating – “exercise normal safety precautions” – the same advice given for places such as Japan or Denmark.

Meanwhile, Australia’s warning for France was Level 2 — “exercise a high degree of caution” — due to the potential threat of terrorism.

Experts have also criticised Australia’s travel warnings for being harsher toward developing countries.

The UK, a country with lower crime rates than the US, also sits at Level 2 — putting it in the same risk level as Saudi Arabia, Nicaragua and South Africa.

Read more:
In Trump’s America, the shooting of a journalist is not a one-off. Press freedom itself is under attack

Inconsistencies and grey areas

The problem is, the advisory levels themselves are vague: a Level 2 warning can apply to countries with very different risk profiles.

It’s used for places dealing with terrorism threats like France, or vastly different law and respect for human rights such as Saudi Arabia, or countries recovering from political unrest such as Sri Lanka.

Until early June 2025, Sweden was also rated Level 2 due to localised gang violence, despite relatively low risks for tourists. Its rating has since been revised down to Level 1.

Travel advisories often apply a blanket rating to an entire country, even when risks vary widely within its borders.

For instance, Australia’s Level 1 rating for the US doesn’t distinguish between different regional threats.

In June 2025, 15 people were injured in Boulder, Colorado after a man attacked a peaceful protest with Molotov cocktails.

Earlier in 2025, a major measles outbreak in West Texas resulted in more than 700 cases reported in a single county.

Despite this, Australia continues to classify the entire country as a low-risk destination.

This can make it harder for travellers to make informed, location-specific decisions.

Recent travel trends

Recent data indicate a significant downturn in international travel to the US: in March 2025, overseas visits to the US fell by 11.6% compared to the previous year, with notable declines from Germany (28%), Spain (25%) and the UK (18%).

Australian visitors to the US decreased by 7.8% compared to the same month in 2024, marking the steepest monthly drop since the COVID pandemic.

This trend suggests travellers are reassessing risk on their own even when official advisories don’t reflect those concerns.

The US case shows how politics can affect travel warnings: the country regularly experiences mass casualty incidents, violent protests and recently has been detaining and deporting people from many countries at the border including Australians, Germans and French nationals.

Yet it remains at Level 1.

What’s really going on has more to do with political alliances than safety: increasing the US travel risk level could create diplomatic friction.

What travellers can do now

If you’re a solo female traveller, identify as LGBTQIA+, are an academic, come from a visible minority or have spoken out online against the country you’re visiting, your experience might be very different from what the advice suggests.

So, here are some tips to stay safe while travelling:

Check multiple sources: don’t rely solely on travel advisories – compare travel advice from other countries
Get on-the-ground updates: check local news for coverage of events. If possible, talk to people who’ve recently visited for their experiences
For broader safety trends, tools like the Global Peace Index offer data on crime, political stability and healthcare quality. If you’re concerned about how locals or police treat certain groups, consult Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, or country-specific reports from Freedom House
Consider identity-specific resources: there are travel guides and safety indexes for LGBTQIA+ travellers like Equaldex, women travellers (Solo Female Travelers Network) and others. These may highlight risks general advisories miss.

Travel advisories often reflect whom your country trusts, not where you’re actually safe. If you’re relying on them, make sure you understand what they leave out. More

Former chairman Zia Yusuf has rejoined Reform after quitting days previously. Yusuf had said he no longer wanted to work to get the party into government when new MP Sarah Pochin called for a ban on burqas in the UK. However, he seems to have had a change of heart and will return, ostensibly to lead the party’s “department of government efficiency”.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s bromance, however, is on much rockier ground. There’s no sign of the world’s richest man reconciling with the US president, his former employer.

These spats, at first glance, might seem like little more than, put politely, teething problems in (relatively) new political operations. Or, a little less politely, the unedifying spectacle of people in or seeking power being completely unable to act like adults.

However, it also points to something more akin to a canary in the coalmine for radical right parties around the world. Their increasing reliance on an ultra-wealthy donor class presents an ideological puzzle that may not be solvable.

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Reform currently operates on what has been described as vibes alone. That is to say, there’s very little meaningful common ground between the people who vote for Reform and the party elite. The only continuity is their sense of anger at the current political system.

This, as we are seeing in election after election, is an incredibly powerful (and compelling) force. The problem is, of course, that you can’t oppose forever. You often end up having to actually do something. All boxers, Mike Tyson will be glad to tell you, have a plan – until they get punched in the face.

And what makes them such a powerful force at the moment, is precisely that which may cause challenges further down the line. At least for me, given it’s my bread and butter research-wise, I see this when I follow the money.

And I’m increasingly asked a lot of questions about the kind of people who are either giving money to Reform – or who Reform are courting (and at the moment it is decidedly the latter which is the case).

My position is that they very broadly fit into three categories. First are disaffected traditional Conservatives who are increasingly seeing a party – in the words of Farage – “worth investing in”. In the donations figures released on June 10, these are represented by bussinessmen Bassim Haidar and Mohammed Amersi.

Then you have a Silicon Valley-reared tech-bro libertarian. This group already runs on a “move fast and break things” philosophy so the idea of an insurgent party which proclaims, on entering parliament, that “the fox is in the henhouse” naturally appeals.

The final pot of money is filled via small donations, ballooning membership and a whole chunk of votes from a disaffected white working-class population to whom the language of economic and cultural grievances resonates.

There are some places where the interests of these groups align – most notably a distaste for government interference and red tape (though not necessarily a smaller state in terms spending on public services). They also share a sense that progressive politics, broadly defined, ought to be pegged back a bit (but with an emphasis on a bit).

They differ on a great deal else, to the extent that you can only really please two out of the three, but never everybody. And, unfortunately, without all three the project starts collapsing. This is what we have been seeing in the fractious relationships between Trump and Musk and Farage and Yusuf.

Two out of three ain’t bad – but it’s not enough

Yusuf (and Musk) are very much representative of the new tech-bro class. And, when Yusuf called questions about banning the burqa “dumb” he was speaking at both an ideological and organisational level.

At the ideological level it is, frankly, a bit rich for his blood, because “philosophically I am always a bit uneasy about banning things which, for example, would be unconstitutional in the United States”.

Organisationally, it pushes Reform much closer to what journalist Fraser Nelson calls “a tactic more akin to the old BNP”. Indeed, Reform started “just asking questions” about burqas at the same time as it started twisting footage to claim that Anas Sarwar, leader of Scottish Labour, wants to prioritise the needs of Pakistanis.

This kind of dog-whistle politics appeals to some, but puts off a lot more, including, I think, some of the (saner) tech-bro right.

Indeed, Ian Ward at Politico perceptively notes that if we want to explain the current Musk-Trump meltdown we should look back to Christmas 2024, when cracks first started appearing over immigration policy.

The tech-bro right are, generally speaking, much less hardline on the flow of people than the Maga-populist right (think Steve Bannon and Tommy Robinson). In fact, they are pro-high skilled immigration as it tends to benefit them and their business interests.

Tech-bros also like the idea of moving fast and breaking things in theory. But when things start moving fast and actually breaking in practice (or Tesla stocks start to plummet), they tend to get a bit freaked out.

In other words, it’s not just that they don’t like government, they don’t like governing and the inevitable compromise that comes with it. When they say move fast and break things, I get the sense what they really mean is “leave me alone so I can make billions in peace”.

Musk and Trump have been exchanging barbed social media posts since the former left the White House.
EPA/Francis Chung

This, of course, is quite appealing to traditional hedge-fund conservatives, but is also the politics that literally built the economic grievances that much of the white-working class support for the populist radical right is, in turn, built on.

Two out of three ain’t bad, but you do need all three. So, don’t be surprised if despite Farage’s seemingly genuine affection for Yusuf, it all falls apart again before long.

Ultimately, Reform will need to decide how they are going to spin these plates. The good news is that it might well be that they can, indeed, get by on vibes alone until the next general election. The bad news, unfortunately, is that winning an election is the easy bit. Just ask Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer. After all, everyone has a plan. More

The video of a Los Angeles police officer shooting a rubber bullet at Channel Nine reporter Lauren Tomasi is as shocking as it is revealing.

In her live broadcast, Tomasi is standing to the side of a rank of police in riot gear. She describes the way they have begun firing rubber bullets to disperse protesters angry with US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants.

As Tomasi finishes her sentence, the camera pans to the left, just in time to catch the officer raising his gun and firing a non-lethal round into her leg. She said a day later she is sore, but otherwise OK.

Although a more thorough investigation might find mitigating circumstances, from the video evidence, it is hard to dismiss the shot as “crossfire”. The reporter and cameraman were off to one side of the police, clearly identified and working legitimately.

The shooting is also not a one-off. Since the protests against Trump’s mass deportations policy began three days ago, a reporter with the LA Daily News and a freelance journalist have been hit with pepper balls and tear gas.

British freelance photojournalist Nick Stern also had emergency surgery to remove a three-inch plastic bullet from his leg.

In all, the Los Angeles Press Club has documented more than 30 incidents of obstruction and attacks on journalists during the protests.

Trump’s assault on the media

It now seems assaults on the media are no longer confined to warzones or despotic regimes. They are happening in American cities, in broad daylight, often at the hands of those tasked with upholding the law.

But violence is only one piece of the picture. In the nearly five months since taking office, the Trump administration has moved to defund public broadcasters, curtail access to information and undermine the credibility of independent media.

International services once used to project democratic values and American soft power around the world, such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, have all had their funding cut and been threatened with closure. (The Voice of America website is still operational but hasn’t been updated since mid-March, with one headline on the front page reading “Vatican: Francis stable, out of ‘imminent danger’ of death”).

The Associated Press, one of the most respected and important news agencies in the world, has been restricted from its access to the White House and covering Trump. The reason? It decided to defy Trump’s directive to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.

Even broadcast licenses for major US networks, such as ABC, NBC and CBS, have been publicly threatened — a signal to editors and executives that political loyalty might soon outweigh journalistic integrity.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is more used to condemning attacks on the media in places like Russia. However, in April, it issued a report headlined: “Alarm bells: Trump’s first 100 days ramp up fear for the press, democracy”.

A requirement for peace

Why does this matter? The success of American democracy has never depended on unity or even civility. It has depended on scrutiny. A system where power is challenged, not flattered.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution – which protects freedom of speech – has long been considered the gold standard for building the institutions of free press and free expression. That only works when journalism is protected — not in theory but in practice.

Now, strikingly, the language once reserved for autocracies and failed states has begun to appear in assessments of the US. Civicus, which tracks declining democracies around the world, recently put the US on its watchlist, alongside the Democratic Republic of Congo, Italy, Serbia and Pakistan.

The attacks on the journalists in LA are troubling not only for their sake, but for ours. This is about civic architecture. The kind of framework that makes space for disagreement without descending into disorder.

Press freedom is not a luxury for peacetime. It is a requirement for peace. More

Last week, President Donald Trump ordered an investigation into “who ran the United States while President Biden was in office”, alleging top aides masked the “cognitive decline” of his predecessor. The announcement referenced revelations in a new book by journalists Jake Tapper (CNN) and Alex Thompson (Axios).

Original Sin made headlines last month for revealing that Biden’s declining physical and cognitive health had been hidden from the public by his closest aides and his loyal but overly protective wife, Jill Biden.

Whatever merit there is in Trump’s order must be seen alongside his bottomless cynicism. He seizes on the two authors’ investigative journalism to continue tarnishing his predecessor’s reputation, while doing everything in his power to bully news companies such as CBS over almost meritless defamation cases and to cut the funding of public media organisations PBS and NPR.

Review: Original Sin – Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson (Hutchinson Heinemann)

In November 2020, Biden was seen by many as a hero. He won the American election and saved the country from Donald Trump, who scholars judged among the worst presidents in the nation’s history, not least because just over 384,500 people died from COVID-19 that year.

Today, just as many see Biden as a villain. He said he would be a “bridge” president. He knew he would have ended his second term aged 86 if he had won and served it, so said he would hand over to a successor well in time for the 2024 election. But he didn’t. Not until three and a half weeks after his wincingly bad performance in a debate with Trump last June.

By then it was too late for his Democratic Party to go through its usual primaries process. Biden anointed his vice president Kamala Harris as his successor, but with only 107 days to campaign before the election, it is more accurate to say he gave her what football commentators call a “hospital pass”.

Donald Trump regained the presidency. Four months into his second term, all but his most loyal supporters (and this time he has made sure to surround himself only with loyal supporters) think it is already much worse than his first.

Whatever Biden achieved in his presidency is being forgotten amid the horror at watching America’s democratic institutions assaulted by an authoritarian leader determined to undo Biden’s policies, especially on climate change.

What on earth happened? How much responsibility does Biden bear? Did the news media subject Biden to sufficient scrutiny before the debate last June? Was everyone except the MAGA base suffering from a new variant of what conservative commentators long ago dubbed “Trump derangement syndrome”?

In short order, the answers are: Biden declined faster and worse than had been anticipated; a lot; the media possibly didn’t scrutinise him enough, but it’s more complicated than that – and, yes, “Trump derangement syndrome” was a factor, though not quite in the way conservative commentators thought.

Did the news media subject Biden to sufficient scrutiny?
Andrew Harnik/AAP

Clooney’s alarm

Original Sin’s most spectacular revelation was that at a Democrat fundraising event last year, Biden did not appear to recognise George Clooney – who as well as being an actor, is a longtime Democrat supporter and a friend of the president.

Clooney was shocked by Biden’s frail appearance. “Holy shit,” he thought, according to the authors, as he watched Biden enter the room, taking tiny steps with “an aide guiding him by his arm”. The book describes the excruciating moment in detail:

“You know George,” the assisting aide told the president, gently reminding him who was in front of him.“Yeah, yeah,” the president said to one of the most recognizable men in the world, the host of this lucrative fundraiser. “Thank you for being here.”“Hi, Mr. President,” Clooney said.“How are ya?” the president replied.“How was your trip?” Clooney asked.“It was fine,” the president said.It was obvious to many standing there that the president did not know who George Clooney was. […]“George Clooney,” the aide clarified for the president.“Oh, yeah!” Biden said. “Hi, George!”

George Clooney and bystanders were shocked when Biden didn’t recognise his film-star friend at a 2024 fundraiser.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AAP

A Hollywood VIP who witnessed the moment told the authors “it was not okay”, describing it as “uncomfortable”. Clooney felt he had to sound the alarm publicly, which he did in an impassioned opinion piece for The New York Times a few weeks later, on July 10. He wrote about how he loved and respected Biden, but

the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can. It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.

Just days after publicity about the book began, news broke that Biden has stage four prostate cancer – and that he had not had a prostate test for more than a decade.

The ‘loyalty police’

Tapper and Thompson’s book derives not only from their day jobs, but from reporting they have done since last November’s election, including interviews with 200 people. Some of them, even now, prefer to speak on background rather than be named.

Through them, they tell a bracing story with three main themes.

First, there is the unblinking loyalty of close aides. Chief strategist Mike Donilon had been with Biden since 1981. Bruce Reed was a speechwriter and longtime political consultant. Steve Ricchetti had been Biden’s chief of staff when he was vice president, and was also a friend who would watch the morning political shows with him. All four of Richetti’s children worked in the Biden administration, the authors write.

Jill Biden’s longtime aides, Annie Tomasini and Anthony Bernal, were fiercely protective of the Bidens as much as the office of the president. “Are you a Biden person?” they would ask, leading other aides to label them the “loyalty police”.

Collectively, the close aides were known as The Politburo. Kamala Harris’ aides called them a “cabal of the unhelpful”. Time and again, they responded to queries about Biden’s health with firm assurances he was doing fine – even though the president needed to be supplied with cue cards when he was meeting his cabinet secretaries.

Jill Biden’s fiercely protective aides were labelled ‘the loyalty police’.
Stan Gilliland/AAP

Biden, like previous presidents, had an annual medical check-up and was given a clean bill of health. But doctors outside the White House noted that his cognitive abilities were not tested. Asked about this, aides – and Biden himself – would say he passed a cognitive test every day of his presidency, which was a superficially plausible but practically meaningless statement.

Some aides genuinely believed in Biden, while others harboured doubts. The latter suppressed those to focus on the task of defeating Trump in 2024. One told Tapper and Thompson: “He just had to win, and then he could disappear for four years – he’d only have to show proof of life every once in a while.” Which sounds pretty much like the plot of the 1989 movie, Weekend at Bernie’s, except the situation was anything but comic.

Biden’s aides admonished journalists, including Alex Thompson, for even raising the issue of the president’s health. Worse, they shielded Biden from what his own pollsters were saying about his dire prospects for re-election.

The oldest presidential candidates

For Biden, work usually began at 9am, included two hours in the afternoon for “POTUS time”, and finished at 4.30pm when he had dinner. Availability for evening events was limited. By 2024, cabinet secretaries in the Biden administration told Tapper and Thompson that Biden could not be relied upon to be available at 2am for the kind of emergency the presidency can require.

Everyone knew, or at least suspected this. In 2020, Biden and Trump were the two oldest people to contest the presidency. When the 78-year-old Biden won, he became the oldest serving president in a country that has no upper age limits in the congress or the senate.

After the Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, born the same year as Biden, froze in public a second time, in 2023, his fellow Republican Nikki Haley said, “The Senate is the most privileged nursing home in the country […] You have to know when to leave.”

When the Democrats did unexpectedly well at the 2022 midterm elections, Biden’s aides took that as a sign he should run again, rather than note the level of protest in the midterm vote, which came soon after the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade decision on abortion.

The opinion polls, though, were telling. An early November 2022 Ipsos poll had the president’s approval rating at a low 39%, Tapper and Thompson report. Two thirds of those surveyed said they thought the country was on the wrong track. When Ipsos ran a poll after the midterm election, 68% said Biden might not be up for the challenge of running in 2024. Worse, almost half of Democrats agreed.

Joe Biden’s onstage fall at the United States Air Force Academy in 2023 was an unwelcome sign of his physical aging.
Andrew Harnik/AAP

Biden’s aides may have been right to marvel at what their boss could still do, and to resent the media harping on about Biden’s age while turning a blind eye to his cheeseburger-chomping, Coke-slurping political nemesis, only four years younger. The bitter fact for them is that by 2020 Biden looked and sounded frail while Trump looked and sounded commanding.

Trump may have lied repeatedly during the debate last June, but in a real sense that was not news; Trump lies as easily as he breathes. What was news was watching a mumbling, open-mouthed US president freeze on live television.

Grisly anecdotes and Hunter Biden

Original Sin is replete with grisly anecdotes about Biden’s decrepitude. “The guy can’t form a fucking sentence”, thought one aide attending to him onboard Air Force One. This leads to the second main theme: the tragic circumstances that appear to have accelerated the decline.

It is well known that personal tragedy has scarred – and in crucial ways shaped – Biden’s life and career. He lost his first wife, Neilia, and their one-year-old daughter, Naomi, in a car accident in 1972. Their young sons, Beau and Hunter, were in the car. They survived but Hunter suffered a fractured skull, an injury with lifelong effects, according to Tapper and Thompson.

Joe Biden with his sons and first wife Neilia (centre), who died with their daughter Naomi in a 1972 car accident.
AAP

Beau served as an army officer in the Iraq war. On his return, he was elected attorney-general of Delaware in 2006 and 2010. He planned to run for governor in 2016. But a year earlier, the brain cancer for which he was first treated in 2013 recurred; he died in May 2015. In a worrying precursor to later actions, the Bidens kept Beau’s illness a secret. “Beau’s death aged him significantly,” a longtime Biden confidant told Tapper and Thompson. “His shoulders looked smaller. His face looked more gaunt. In his eyes, you could just see it.”

A year later, Hunter Biden became addicted to crack cocaine. Ashley, Biden’s daughter by his second wife Jill, also struggled with addiction. Both spiralled downwards after Beau’s death, which weighed heavily on their father. As the authors write:

After Beau’s death in 2015, Biden desperately and understandably clung to Hunter. He would privately refer to him as ‘my only living son.’ But Biden aides felt that Hunter manipulated his father’s blind love for his own aims. The president struggled to say no to Hunter. Aides felt that he had tragically become Hunter’s chief enabler.

In 2021 Hunter published a memoir, Beautiful Things, and travelled round the country in an effort to provide hope to others struggling with addiction. The memoir’s candour provided valuable information to David Weiss, a special counsel appointed by Attorney-General Merrick Garland in 2023.

Weiss had been previously appointed by the first Trump administration to investigate the contents of a laptop Hunter Biden left at a repair shop. Biden had not interfered with Garland’s decision, as he did not want to be seen as behaving the way his predecessor had.

Weiss charged Hunter Biden over his possession of a handgun while being addicted to cocaine. A plea deal broke down and Hunter faced trial in 2024. The Biden family attended each day of the trial. Biden felt guilty, believing Hunter would never have been on trial if he wasn’t the president’s son.

There is little doubt the Republicans weaponised Hunter Biden’s actions, but he gave them plenty of ammunition. He had had an extramarital affair with his brother’s widow and had introduced her to cocaine, to which she became addicted. There is more, but you get the (tawdry) picture.

Then, after the election in November, Biden did what he had repeatedly said he wouldn’t, exercising his power as president to pardon his son. It may have been the understandable action of a besieged father, but Biden did not frame it that way, blaming Garland, wrongly, for pursuing the case.

After the November 2024 election, Biden pardoned his son Hunter.
Evan Vucci/AAP

Equally to the point, the authors report that Trump’s lawyers took note, believing the Hunter Biden pardon “gave them a great deal of leeway on whether they could pardon and free from prison the hundreds of convicted January 6 insurrectionists” from the 2021 Capitol riot. Which of course Trump did as soon as he took office in January 2025.

The old adage has it that two wrongs don’t make a right. But for a politician who had won the presidency promising to be everything Trump was not, it was a fatal, final blow to Biden’s credibility.

The media ‘missed a lot’

The third theme of the book asks how much of all this the news media reported during Biden’s presidency. Some, but not all of it – including some by Thompson, who recently won a White House Correspondents’ Association award for his disclosures.

Both he and his co-author acknowledge they and other journalists did not dig hard enough to reveal the extent to which the Biden administration was hampered by the president’s declining health. Said Thompson:

Being truth-tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves. We – myself included – missed a lot of this story, and some people trust us less because of it […] We should have done better.“

It is worth keeping this in perspective. The news media’s failings in the lead up to the Iraq war in 2003 were more significant. Then, too many journalists swallowed the administration’s lines justifying its decision to invade a country, while the work of those who did report sceptically was buried well inside the newspaper. There, it “played as quietly as a lullaby”, as The New York Times’ first public editor, Daniel Okrent, wrote in 2003.

The war’s reporting led to a lot of soul searching in American newsrooms. If there was a coverup in the media about the Biden administration, it wasn’t very effective, wrote media critic Jon Allsop in the New Yorker. “Not least because the majority of the public thought Biden was too old long before the debate.”

The other element infecting both the mainstream media and social media is divisiveness, rancour and hostility. It is hard, for journalists and the public, to see political information other than through a hyper-partisan lens. I felt this acutely when reading the section in Original Sin about Biden getting drawn into the FBI’s investigation of Trump for withholding classified documents – when the FBI found Biden had done essentially the same thing. (Though it should be stressed Biden, unlike Trump, cooperated at all times.)

‘Well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’

It was through this investigation that special counsel Robert Hur’s recording of a long interview with Biden came to light. Journalists were backgrounded that Hur was a right-wing operative; he was anything but that, write Tapper and Thompson. He treated Biden fairly and respectfully. In the interview, excerpts of which run to seven pages of the book, Biden rambles and needs regular reminding of facts – including the year his son Beau died.

In Hur’s report, released in 2024, he found Biden had inappropriately retained classified documents but he did not recommend pressing charges. To a jury, Hur concluded, Biden would present “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”. He was making the kind of decision prosecutors routinely make about the likelihood of a conviction.

Hur was attacked by the White House and much of the media as a partisan warrior who had brought up the death of the president’s son in the interview, when it was Biden who mentioned it himself. If Hur really had been a partisan warrior, the authors write, he would have recommended continuing with the prosecution.

Special Counsel Robert Hur was branded a right-wing operative, but was ‘anything but’, write Tapper and Thompson.
Nathan Howard/AAP

Several months later, after the disastrous Biden-Trump debate, friends and colleagues texted Hur saying he must have felt vindicated. “Hur told them that all he felt was sad. How could anyone look at Joe Biden at that debate and not feel bad?”

It is true that aides, and sometimes the news media, have covered up previous presidents’ health issues, such as Franklin Roosevelt’s paralysis from polio, John Kennedy’s debilitating back pain that required heavy doses of painkillers, and Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease.

Tapper and Thompson argue the coverup of Biden’s health problems is the most consequential in presidential history.

Underplays Biden’s achievements

The authors successfully prosecute their case about Biden’s responsibility for his own demise. Perhaps worried they may not be believed by Democrat supporters, they continue amassing evidence well beyond that point, which means the minutiae of aides continuing to deny the reality of Biden’s decline becomes repetitive.

Their relentless focus on Biden’s decline also means they underplay both his achievements as a president and the breadth of his character. At one point, they admiringly refer to Richard Ben Cramer’s book about the 1988 presidential campaign, What it Takes, which includes Biden’s failed attempt to win the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

Cramer’s book is a massive 1,047 pages. He interviewed more than a thousand people and took so long on the book it came out during the next presidential campaign, in which Bill Clinton was elected.

One reviewer, Richard Brownstein, wrote of it: “Presidential elections are the white whale of American journalism – and in Cramer they have found a manic Melville.” But it is written in an intimate, novelistic style, taking the reader deep into the lives and thoughts and feelings of the candidates, George H.W Bush, Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis, Richard Gephardt, Gary Hart and Biden.

Cramer told Robert Boynton in an interview for his 2005 book, The New New Journalism, he was amazed political journalists spend so little time talking to childhood friends, family and early colleagues.

If you want to understand how someone got to the point where he [sic] is a credible candidate for president of a nation of 250 million people, you’d better godamn-well know how he is wonderful. But most journalists don’t care about that.

As such, Cramer provides a deeper, richer portrait of Biden as an idiosyncratic and flawed, but also impressive politician, who was a force of nature in his youth. By comparison, Original Sin reads like an autopsy: which in a way, it is. If you want to remember why Biden became an effective politician in the first place, seek out a copy of What it Takes.

In the end, though, whatever achievements Biden had as president are being overtaken by his disastrous decision to try to hang on for a second term. By the evidence presented in Original Sin, “Honest Joe” was, like many politicians, prey to ego and overvaulting ambition, and prone to secrecy when it suited him.

He and his aides thought – and astonishingly still do think – he was the person best able to repel the return of a person they feared (with good reason) would do enormous damage to the country. Biden said this after the November election, earning Harris’s ire, for which he apologised, and Donilon affirmed it in an interview with the authors early this year.

The savage irony is, by their actions, Biden and his team eased Trump’s path to victory last November. Now, it is not just Americans but the rest of the world who are left to deal with the second Trump administration. More

Violence has erupted on the streets of cities across southern California over the weekend, as protesters clashed with agents from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency detaining people they suspected to be illegal immigrants. The US president, Donald Trump, took the unusual decision on Saturday to deploy 2,000 troops from California’s national guard, despite not being requested to by the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom.

Newsom has threatened to sue Trump over what he has called “an illegal act, an immoral act, an unconstitutional act”. Other California officials have also denounced the move, with Senator Adam Schiff calling it a “dangerous precedent for unilateral misuse of the guard across the country”.

Raids by ICE agents have increased significantly since mid-May when the Trump administration threatened to fire senior ICE officials if they did not deliver on higher arrest quotas. Several high-profile wrongful arrests of US citizens have further inflamed tensions.

Protests have escalated in California, a Democratic stronghold and a “sanctuary state” where local law enforcement does not cooperate with ICE to detain illegal immigrants.

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At around 24,000 troops, California’s national guard is the largest in the United States. Each state has its own national guard unit, a reserve force under the control of the governor which can be called upon in times of crisis – often to help out during natural disasters or other emergencies. For example, in January, Newsom activated several thousand troops to aid relief work during the devastating fires that threatened Los Angeles.

In 1992, the then president, George H.W. Bush, backed the call of the then governor of California, Pete Wilson, call to deploy national guard members to quell the South Central LA riots.

Now troops are back on the streets of LA. But this time not at the behest of the governor. Trump’s unilateral decision to take federal control over the national guard pits the president against the state of California – and importantly, against a state that has constantly resisted his anti-immigrant agenda. Newsom is seen by many as a possible contender for the Democratic Party’s nomination in the 2028 presidential election.

Historical precedents

Is there a precedent for this? Yes and no. The Insurrection Act (passed in 1807, but revised several times) authorises the president to call on the national guard in times of crisis or war to supplement state and local forces. This has been codified in title 10 of the US Code, which details the laws of the land.

In 1871, the law was revised to specifically allow for the national guard to be used in the protection of civil rights for black Americans. Legal experts have long called for reform of the Insurrection Act, arguing that the language is too vague and open to misuse.

In the past, former US presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson all invoked different sections of the Act to protect civil rights, particularly against segregationist states. While the act implies consent between governor and president, it does not require it.

Two examples stand out. On June 11 1963, John F. Kennedy issued executive order 11111 mobilising the national guard to protect desegregation of the University of Alabama, against the wishes of Alabama governor George Wallace.

Wallace’s determination to block the registration of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, produced a produced a sensational media moment when Wallace physically blocked the entrance of the university. Local law enforcement stood by the governor. With the state of Alabama in defiance of federal law, Kennedy saw no alternative but to deploy the guard.

Less than two years later, in March 1965 Lyndon B. Johnson again deployed the guard in Alabama, bypassing Governor Wallace. In February, a state trooper in the town of Marion killed a young voters-rights activist, Jimmie Lee Jackson.

This shooting, along with several violent attacks by the local police on voter registration activists in Selma, inspired a series of marches in support of the 1965 voting rights bill. On the eve of the march from Selma to Montgomery, tensions between local police and civil rights protesters were at a high.

Civil rights activists, including Martin Luther King Jr, lead a march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama, March 1965, to support the right to safe voter registration.
Wikimedia Commons

In response, Johnson bypassed Wallace and called in the national guard to ensure, as he put it, the rights of Americans “to walk peaceably and safely without injury or loss of life from Selma to Montgomery”.

Before last Saturday, this was the last time a president circumvented the authority of the state governor in deploying the guard. But even in this instance, there was an implied request from Wallace, who explicitly requested federal aid in the absence of state resources.

The subtext here is that Wallace did not want to be seen to call up the national guard himself, so he forced Johnson to make that decision, allowing him to claim that the president was trampling on state sovereignty.

Insurrection Act

This is not the current situation in California. The LAPD is the third largest police force in the US, with over just under 9,000 sworn officers. While its ranks have shrunk in recent years, it has been responding to the recent protests and unrest. There is no reason to think that Newsom would hesitate to call in the national guard if warranted.

Protesters shelter behind makeshift barricades in Los Angeles, June 8 2025.
EPA-EFE/Allison Dinner

In reality, Trump has invoked the Insurrection Act to protect ICE agents. Indeed, the national guard has a complicated history of responding to civil unrest. The current situation is in stark contrast with the past, and faces serious questions of legitimacy.

It is difficult not to see this as the latest move by the Trump administration to subjugate California. In early January Trump threatened to withhold federal aid to rebuild after the wildfires. In past months he threatened to withdraw all of the state’s federal funding to punish it for its stance on campus protests and the inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s sports.

Unlike his predecessors, Trump has not mobilised the national guard to protect civil rights against a hostile police force. Instead, he appears to be using this as leverage to undermine a political opponent he views as blocking his agenda. Circumventing gubernatorial powers over the national guard in this way has no precedent and heralds the next stage in an extended conflict between the president and the state of California. More

Many observing the economic chaos, cruelty and climate vandalism emanating from United States President Donald Trump are hoping the Democrats can clip his wings at the November 2026 mid-term elections. What does the left need to do differently? Some see the ideas in a bestselling new book as a path back to power.

California governor Gavin Newsom called Abundance “one of the most important books Democrats can read”. Australian politicians are taking note, too. Andrew Leigh, Assistant Minister for both Productivity and Treasury, just proclaimed “the abundance agenda for Australia”. Treasurer Jim Chalmers called the book “a ripper”.

In Abundance, journalists Ezra Klein (New York Times) and Derek Thompson (Atlantic) argue the left “has repeatedly substituted process for outcome”. This results in overregulation that halts genuine progress. Both self-declared liberals, they are speaking to the left, while criticising both “a right that fought the government and a left that hobbled it”.

“We have a startling abundance of the goods that fill a house and a shortage of what’s needed to build a good life,” they write, calling for a “correction”. They conclude “what we can build is more important than what we can buy”.

Andrew Leigh and Jim Chalmers are looking to Abundance for ideas.
Lukas Coch/AAP

Why Abundance matters

Abundance puts forward various policy ideas, such as fast-tracking projects important to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and overriding local approval processes to help create affordable housing. But the authors give more attention to “a new set of questions” to guide politics.

What is scarce that should be abundant? What is difficult to build that should be easy? What inventions do we need that we do not yet have?

Their focus is on the things we need: housing, transportation, clean energy, health and innovation – and on progressives focusing on how these things are supplied, rather than just allocating money to them. The left has given too much attention to whether the poor can afford things (like housing) and not enough to whether they are supplied, the authors argue.

As Leigh said this week, citing Abundance, a society that wants these things “must also be able to string the wires, build the homes, and support the labs”.

Klein and Thompson believe “abundance is a necessary prerequisite for liberalism at large”. American life has revolved around the promise of being “people of plenty”, they say (borrowing from historian David Potter). But this is no longer the case.

Voters are more likely to be open to policies such as expanded immigration, they argue, if they feel they and their children have an abundance of opportunities in areas such as housing. They are more likely to support climate action if it is framed as providing cheaper renewable energy, rather than raising the costs of fossil fuels or restricting economic activity.

Housing, affordability, progress

Trump’s 2024 win represented a nationwide shift to the right. But it was largest in Democrat governed states and cities, “where voters were most exposed to the day-to-day realities of liberal governance”. California, which has the worst homelessness and housing affordability problem in the US, is one example. More Americans are leaving the state than moving there.

Australia faces a similar challenge, with many families suffering housing stress. The typical house has gone from costing the average worker around four years’ earnings in the 1960s to 1980s, to over ten years now.

One reason for the lack of housing – in the US and here – is not enough houses are being built. Regulation is named as one culprit and “Nimby-ism” as another: those who want more social and affordable housing, but “not in my back yard”. The authors point out current homeowners have a financial incentive to lobby against more homes being built.

One reason for the lack of housing in the US and Australia is not enough homes are being built.
Diego Fedele/AAP

They warn “the problem is that if you subsidise demand for something that is scarce you’ll raise prices or force rationing”. If programs give people on low incomes more money to buy houses, but regulations prevent any increase in the number of houses, this bids up house prices.

In Australia, this problem can arise from the right as well as the left. The policy the Coalition took to the last election of making mortgage interest tax deductible and allowing people to withdraw their superannuation to buy homes would have just driven up house prices.

Setting minimum standards for housing, such as mandatory features or required parking spaces, may also backfire. It may just make even the cheapest housing too expensive for those on very low incomes – and result in the erosion of alternatives, like boarding houses. As the authors ask: does it really protect the poor to “move them from a boarding home without parking spaces to a tent beneath the overpass?”

But the blame is placed less on individuals resisting change and protecting their assets than on the governments who create the conditions for it. “If homelessness is a housing problem, it is also a policy choice – or more accurately, the result of many, many, many small policy choices.”

Tied up in red tape

The book warns an excess of well-intentioned regulations may be preventing good outcomes. “Each individual decision is rational. The collective consequences are maddening.” John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s chief of staff said: “We got so good at stopping projects that we forgot how to build things in America.”

In Leigh’s “abundance agenda” address, he diagnosed a similar problem in Australia: “across housing, infrastructure, energy and research”, we currently lack “the capacity to deliver at the pace and scale that the moment demands”. He acknowledged the need for “systems that protect the public interest without paralysing progress”.

One example in Abundance is California’s failure to build a big infrastructure project – a high-speed rail network – first investigated in 1982 and planned for from 1992. “In the time California spent failing to complete its 500-mile high-speed rail system,” they observe, “China has built more than 23,000 miles of high-speed rail.”

Another is a federal program to boost America’s semiconductor industry, which expected companies to disclose the extent to which their supply chains include minority, veteran and female-owned businesses and their investment in affordable housing and schools.

“There is some margin at which trying to do more means ultimately achieving less,” the authors conclude. One cause, they suggest, may be the excessive influence of lawyers: legal thinking centres on processes rather than results. The US has four times as many lawyers per capita as France.

Climate change and clean energy

The authors argue strongly for clean energy as a solution to climate change – and they are optimistic about it. The world installed more solar power in 2023 than it did between 1954 and 2017, they write – and the cost of solar is falling so fast that for much of the day it will be effectively free, in much of the world, by 2030.

The authors are confident economic growth is not inconsistent with addressing climate change. They argue for a combination of supporting scientific research to address it, and being vigilant so regulations do not inadvertently make it harder.

They cite examples of regulations that have done just that – delays caused by obtaining the multiple approvals needed to install a charging network for electric cars, or finding land for and then building wind turbines. Such regulations tend to become more restrictive and more complex over time.

Abundance is optimistic about clean energy as a solution to climate change.
Richard Vogel/AAP

“Energy analysts Sam Calisch and Saul Griffith estimate that in the next few years consumers will need to replace about one billion machines with clean alternatives,” the authors write. “We don’t just need the energy we generate now to be clean. We need much more of it.” AI, too, demands much more energy production. For example, a Google search using AI consumes ten times the power of a standard search.

Problems in funding science

Procedures are also impeding basic research. “American science has accumulated a set of processes and norms that favour those who know how to play the system, rather than those who have the most interesting ideas,” they write, citing economist Pierre Azoulay.

This “skill” now has a name: “grantsmanship”. Scientists now spend up to 40% of their time filling out grant applications and doing subsequent administration, rather than on direct research.

This all results in a “bias against novelty, risk and edgy thinking”. It makes less likely such serendipitous results as a study of lizard spit (Gila monster venom, to be precise) leading to Ozempic, a treatment for diabetes and obesity.

Scientists now spend up to 40% of their time filling out grant applications and doing administration.
Steven Markham/AAP

This week, Leigh diagnosed similar problems at universities in Australia. “Translating discoveries into new technologies, treatments, or policies is harder than it should be – not because the ideas aren’t strong, but because the systems around them are slow, opaque and risk‑averse.”

Klein and Thompson advocate being more scientific about science funding. Government should use randomised control trials to compare the results of different funding approaches, they suggest. Out of this could emerge some idea about the sensible amount of paperwork for – and the best criteria for awarding – grant applications.

Since the book was written, matters have worsened in the US. President Trump has launched a campaign against science, especially climate science and universities.

Most recently, he has tried to expel all Harvard’s international students.

A liberalism that builds

The authors concede their primary audience is the left. They are writing for those who think inequality and climate change are real problems and want more effective ways of dealing with them. The book’s final sentence states their goal: “a liberalism that builds”.

A Democratic congressman from Silicon Valley, former economics lecturer at Stanford, Ro Khanna, endorsed the book as “reimagining government instead of slashing it”. It is a marked contrast to Elon Musk’s DOGE, which confuses cutting international aid for making it more efficient.

I think this is an important book that could have a lasting influence, especially in the US – but more broadly as well. It challenges some of the policies of progressives, but from a perspective that supports their goals. (It helps that it has an index and abundant endnotes giving sources.)

Lessons for Australian progressives

One interpretation of Labor’s smashing win in the 2025 Australian election was that the left here doesn’t face the problems it does in the US.

But Labor cannot assume they will face another inept campaign by the opposition in 2028 or 2031. They should preempt the challenges raised in this book.

In its closing pages, Abundance challenges us:

If you believe in government, you must make it work. To make it work, you must be clear-eyed about when it fails and why it fails. More

President Donald Trump’s critics often accuse him of harboring authoritarian ambitions. Journalists and scholars have drawn parallels between his leadership style and that of strongmen abroad. Some Democrats warn that the U.S. is sliding toward autocracy – a system in which one leader holds unchecked power.

Others counter that labeling Trump an autocrat is alarmist. After all, he hasn’t suspended the Constitution, forced school children to memorize his sayings or executed his rivals, as dictators such as Augusto Pinochet, Mao Zedong and Saddam Hussein once did.

But modern autocrats don’t always resemble their 20th-century predecessors.

Instead, they project a polished image, avoid overt violence and speak the language of democracy. They wear suits, hold elections and talk about the will of the people. Rather than terrorizing citizens, many use media control and messaging to shape public opinion and promote nationalist narratives. Many gain power not through military coups but at the ballot box.

The softer power of today’s autocrats

In the early 2000s, political scientist Andreas Schedler coined the term “electoral authoritarianism” to describe regimes that hold elections without real competition. Scholars Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way use another phrase, “competitive authoritarianism,” for systems in which opposition parties exist but leaders undermine them through censorship, electoral fraud or legal manipulation.

In my own work with economist Sergei Guriev, we explore a broader strategy that modern autocrats use to gain and maintain power. We call this “informational autocracy” or “spin dictatorship.”

These leaders don’t rely on violent repression. Instead, they craft the illusion that they are competent, democratic defenders of the nation – protecting it from foreign threats or internal enemies who seek to undermine its culture or steal its wealth.

President Donald Trump appears at an Air Force base in Doha, Qatar, on May 15, 2025.
Win McNamee/Getty Images

Hungary’s democratic facade

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán exemplifies this approach. He first served from 1998 to 2002, returned to power in 2010 and has since won three more elections – in 2014, 2018 and 2022 – after campaigns that international observers criticized as “intimidating and xenophobic.”

Orbán has preserved the formal structures of democracy – courts, a parliament and regular elections – but has systematically hollowed them out.

In his first two years he packed Hungary’s constitutional court, which reviews laws for constitutionality, with loyalists, forced judges off the bench by mandating a lower retirement age and rewrote the constitution to limit judicial review of his actions. He also tightened government control over independent media.

To boost his image, Orbán funneled state advertising funds to friendly news outlets. In 2016, an ally bought Hungary’s largest opposition newspaper – then shut it down.

Orbán has also targeted advocacy groups and universities. The Central European University, which was registered in both Budapest and the U.S., was once a symbol of the new democratic Hungary. But a law penalizing foreign-accredited institutions forced it to relocate to Vienna in 2020.

Yet Orbán has mostly avoided violence. Journalists are harassed rather than jailed or killed. Critics are discredited for their beliefs but not abducted. His appeal rests on a narrative that Hungary is under siege – by immigrants, liberal elites and foreign influences – and that only he can defend its sovereignty and Christian identity. That message resonates with older, rural, conservative voters, even as it alienates younger, urban populations.

A global shift in autocrats

In recent decades, variants of spin dictatorship have appeared in Singapore, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Leaders such as Hugo Chávez and the early Vladimir Putin consolidated power and marginalized opposition with minimal violence.

Data confirm this trend. Drawing from human rights reports, historical records and local media, my colleague Sergei Guriev and I found that the global incidence of political killings and imprisonments by autocrats dropped significantly from the 1980s to the 2010s.

Why? In an interconnected world, overt repression has costs. Attacking journalists and dissidents can prompt foreign governments to impose economic sanctions and discourage international companies from investing. Curbing free expression risks stifling scientific and technological innovation – something even autocrats need in modern, knowledge-based economies.

Still, when crises erupt, even spin dictators often revert to more traditional tactics. Russia’s Putin has cracked down violently on
protesters and jailed opposition leaders. Meanwhile, more brutal regimes such as those in North Korea and China continue to rule by spreading fear, combining mass incarceration with advanced surveillance technologies.

But overall, spin is replacing terror.

America too?

Most experts, myself included, agree that the U.S. remains a democracy.

Yet some of Trump’s tactics resemble those of informational autocrats. He has attacked the press, defied court rulings and pressured universities to curtail academic independence and limit international admissions. His admiration for strongmen such as Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele alarms observers. At the same time, Trump routinely denigrates democratic allies and international institutions such as the United Nations and NATO.

Some experts say democracy depends on politicians’ self restraint. But a system that survives only if leaders choose to respect its limits is not much of a system at all.
What matters more is whether the press, judiciary, nonprofit organizations, professional associations, churches, unions, universities and citizens have the power – and the will – to hold leaders accountable.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán delivers a speech at a hotel in Madrid on Feb. 8, 2025.
Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images

Preserving democracy in the US

Wealthy democracies such as the U.S., Canada and many Western European countries benefit from robust institutions such as newspapers, universities, courts and advocacy groups that act as checks on government.

Such institutions help explain why populists such as Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi or Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, although accused of bending electoral rules and threatening judicial independence, have not dismantled democracy outright in their countries.

In the U.S., the Constitution provides another layer of protection. Amending it requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states – a far steeper hurdle than in Hungary, where Orbán needed only a two-thirds parliamentary majority to rewrite the constitution.

Of course, even the U.S. Constitution can be undermined if a president defies the Supreme Court. But doing so risks igniting a constitutional crisis and alienating key supporters.

That doesn’t mean American democracy is safe from erosion. But its institutional foundations are older, deeper and more decentralized than those of many newer democracies. Its federal structure, with overlapping jurisdictions and multiple veto points, makes it harder for any one leader to dominate.

Still, the global rise of spin dictatorships should sharpen awareness of what is happening in the U.S. Around the world, autocrats have learned to control their citizens by faking democracy. Understanding their techniques may help Americans to preserve the real thing. More