US Politics

The anger was raw and resolute. Speaking at the Republican congressman Mike Flood’s town hall in Lincoln, Nebraska, a woman pointed to the estimated $450m cost of “Alligator Alcatraz”, an immigration detention facility in Florida. “How much does it cost for fascism?” she demanded. “How much do the taxpayers have to pay for a fascist country?”The crowd erupted in applause and whoops. In the week that Donald Trump marked his 200th day in office, few mainstream political commentators are bandying around terms such as “fascist”. But many are warning of a societal march towards authoritarianism that, far from losing momentum, appears to be gathering pace.Over the past month the US president has demanded that his predecessor, Barack Obama, be prosecuted for “treason”, fired the government’s top labour statistician following a weak jobs report and forced Columbia University to pay more than $200m in a settlement that many saw as capitulation.Trump has also egged on Republicans in Texas and other states to redraw congressional maps so they favour his party in future elections – turning the FBI on dissenting Democrats – and ordered a new census that excludes people “who are in our Country illegally”.And his administration has pursued a hostile takeover of the nation’s capital, Washington DC, threatening to place the city under federal control, promising to restore a Confederate statue toppled by Black Lives Matter protesters and executing a radical makeover of the White House itself.The trend line is clear to Trump’s critics. Rachel Maddow, a leading progressive TV host, told viewers of her show on the MSNBC network this week: “We do now live in a country that has an authoritarian leader in charge. We have a consolidating dictatorship in our country.”Terms such as “fascist”, “authoritarian” and “dictatorship” were once dismissed as the refuge of those suffering “Trump derangement syndrome”. Not any more. There is now a growing consensus that the pillars of US democracy are being demolished one by one.Matt Bennett, an executive vice-president of Third Way, a centrist thinktank hardly prone to hyperbole, said: “It’s getting dramatically worse by the day. The question of whether we’re in a constitutional crisis or whether authoritarianism has arrived is kind of an academic one. It’s either here or it’s going to be here very soon.“We’re still short of them openly defying a supreme court ruling or intentionally deporting US citizens or attempting to shut down a news media operation. But we’re not very far short.”The assault on the constitution is wider and deeper than in Trump’s first term, when he arrived in the Oval Office like a trainee pilot sitting in the cockpit of a Boeing 747, overwhelmed by its array of dials and controls. Now he and his allies – notably his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller – know precisely which levers to pull and how little air resistance they are likely to meet.View image in fullscreenHaving promised to be a dictator only on “day one”, Trump got to work pardoning supporters involved in the 6 January 2021 riot at the US Capitol, installing loyalists at the justice department and FBI and recruiting the billionaire Elon Musk to scythe through government agencies, sidelining Congress along the way.The president repeatedly challenged judicial rulings, even calling for the impeachment of judges who rule against his administration. After a judge blocked a deportation order, Trump called him “crooked” and said he should be “impeached”, prompting a “rare rebuke” from the chief justice, John Roberts.The administration escalated attacks on media outlets it accused of unfavourable coverage, moving some out of their Pentagon workspace or barring them from the Oval Office and Air Force One. It also purged the leadership of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, installing Trump himself as chairman.At the 100-day mark, comparisons were being drawn with autocrats such as Viktor Orbán of Hungary. Two hundred days in, Orbán has been left looking like an amateur by the speed and scale of Trump’s efforts to expand presidential power, undermine institutions and control information.Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist, said: “He’s clearly made a decision to turn America into some form of dictatorship. There’s no way any longer to look away from that. The excuses – ‘Well, it can’t happen here, American civil society is strong enough to resist’ – may be true, but what’s clear now is that his aspiration is to end American democracy for all time and to turn this country into some kind of authoritarian state.”Among the starkest examples was Trump’s concerted effort to deflect attention from the Jeffrey Epstein files by baselessly reviving the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The attorney general, Pam Bondi, has directed federal prosecutors to launch a grand jury investigation into allegations that members of Obama’s administration manufactured intelligence.Then came the abrupt dismissal of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, after a jobs report showed downward revisions. Trump accused her of “faking the jobs numbers” and that the figures were “RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad”, offering only “my opinion” as proof.Trump’s efforts to dominate US culture are far more sophisticated than in his first term. According to an analysis by the Axios news site, he has extracted more than $1.2bn in settlements from at least 13 of the most elite players in academia, law, media and tech. Among them was a $16m deal with Paramount that critics saw as a “bribe” and coincided with the cancellation of the late-night show of the CBS comedian Stephen Colbert, one of the most incisive satirical voices of the Trump era.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenRosenberg added: “There’s no question that our lack of history with a leader like this, and the perception of American exceptionalism, made many institutional players in our society unprepared for what was to come. The key here is that the way that Trump succeeds is by isolating people and by not allowing people to work together collectively.”Funding cuts by Republicans in Congress forced the shutdown of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, dealing a huge blow to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. Government websites have been scrubbed of data on the climate and other issues – including, apparently, the constitution itself.Ominously, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History removed a reference to the 2019 and 2021 impeachments of Trump from a panel in an exhibition about the presidency. A Smithsonian spokesperson said the removal was part of a temporary fix and the exhibit eventually “will include all impeachments”.Although Trump has faced setbacks in the courts, he shows no signs of slackening his pace. Last month he signed a tax and spending bill that, while stripping health insurance from millions of people, includes a record $170bn for immigration enforcement and detention. Amid concerns over its masked agents snatching people off the streets, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) will become the biggest domestic police force in the US – and bigger than many countries’ armies.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “We’re on a glide path towards the dissolution of the cornerstones of American democracy. It started with Trump and his threats, even to Republicans, and now it’s accelerated to secret police. The billions of dollars going to Ice is going to create the largest police force in the country and it’s beholden to the president.”Jacobs added: “The next backstop is going to be, will there be competitive elections next year? The gerrymandering in Texas may be a bad sign about whether Democrats and Americans who are ready to vote against Republicans will have that opportunity around the country.”Despite the concerns over an uneven playing field, the midterm elections remain Democrats’ best chance of checking Trump’s power. They hope to harness the rage boiling over at Republican town halls, such as that held by Flood in Nebraska this week, and at protests such as “No Kings” demonstrations that brought millions of people to the streets.Indeed, for all his strongman posturing, Trump is deeply unpopular: a University of Massachusetts Amherst opinion poll released this week found his approval rating at just 38%, down six percentage points since April, though only 1% of Trump voters regret their vote. That drop includes men, one of the president’s most reliable groups of supporters.From his military parade in Washington to his bombing of Iran, from his escalation of immigration enforcement to his so-called “big, beautiful bill”, the American people are rejecting Trump’s leadership and agenda, according to Rosenberg, the Democratic strategist.“A majority of the country now knows that he’s the old man behind the curtain and not the wizard,” he said. “He still has control over Maga and Republicans in Congress but he doesn’t have the persuasive capacity any longer to keep his hold on the broad majority of the country.“This is a sign of his weakness and that he’s not as strong as he believes he is. It’s one of the reasons why he’s looking for these avenues to re-establish his strength and power and have there be a perception that people are bending the knee.“Every time he tries to do this, it fails and he grows more distant to the American people. That has to give us hope we have the tools in the coming months to start winning elections and building a more successful pro-democracy movement that can contain the damage that Trump and Maga are doing to the country in the coming years.” More

The Trump administrations has threatened Harvard’s lucrative portfolio of patents amid its long-running dispute with the university, accusing it of breaching legal and contractual requirements tied to federally funded research.In a letter, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick demanded that Harvard provide within four weeks a list of all patents stemming from federally funded research grants, including how the patents are used and whether any licensing requires “substantial US manufacturing”. Harvard did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Many civil rights experts, faculty and White House critics believe the Trump administration’s targeting of schools for supposedly failing to address antisemitism on campus is a pretext to assert federal control and threaten academic freedom and free speech.Trump administration threatens Harvard federal funding and patentsIn his letter to Harvard, Lutnick also said the commerce department had begun a “march-in” process under the federal Bayh-Dole Act that could let the government take ownership of the patents or grant licenses.As of 1 July 2024, Harvard held more than 5,800 patents, and had more than 900 technology licenses with over 650 industry partners, according to the Harvard Office of Technology Development.Read the full storyTammy Bruce nominated for US deputy ambassador to UNDonald Trump said on Saturday he was nominating former Fox News commentator Tammy Bruce as the next US deputy representative to the United Nations.Bruce has been serving as the chief spokesperson for the state department since Trump took office this year. Trump said Bruce, who had no prior foreign policy experience before becoming spokesperson in January, “will represent our country brilliantly at the United Nations”.Read the full storyIRS commissioner reportedly removed over immigration policy disputeThe removal of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) commissioner Billy Long after just two months came after the federal tax collection agency said it could not release some information on taxpayers suspected of being in the US illegally, it was reported on Saturday.The Washington Post reported the Department of Homeland Security had sent the IRS a list of 40,000 names that it suspected of being in the country illegally. DHS asked the tax service to crosscheck confidential taxpayer data to verify their addresses.The IRS reportedly responded that it was able to verify fewer than 3% of the names on the DHS list, but declined requests for further information, citing taxpayer privacy rights.Read the full story‘We are at war – bring it on’: Democrats ready to fight dirty to stop TrumpKen Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, speaking in Chicago this week, said: “This is a new Democratic party. We’re bringing a knife to a knife fight, and we are going to fight fire with fire.”It was a brutally honest acknowledgement of what a decade of Donald Trump’s politics has wrought. Out go the courtly and courteous playing-by-the-rules Democrats convinced that Maga is a passing phase, a fever that will break. In come a new generation of pugnacious Democrats prepared to take off the gloves and fight dirty.The trigger for this scorched-earth approach is Trump’s push to find more Republican seats in the House of Representatives ahead of next year’s crucial midterm elections through gerrymandering, a process of manipulating electoral maps to benefit one party over another.Read the full storyHow did we get all this gerrymandering? A brief history Extreme GOP gerrymanders have remade American politics over the last 15 years. They have locked Republicans into office in state legislatures nationwide, even in purple states when Democratic candidates win more votes. They have delivered a reliable and enduring edge to the GOP in the race for Congress.How did we get here? How did gerrymandered lines, rather than voters, gain the power to determine winners and losers?Read the full storyPete Hegseth reposts video that says women shouldn’t be allowed to voteThe US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, recently shared a video in which several pastors say women should no longer be allowed to vote, prompting one progressive evangelical organization to express concern.Hegseth reposted a nearly seven-minute report CNN segment on X on Thursday that focuses on pastor Doug Wilson, a Christian nationalist. In the segment, he raises the idea of women not voting.Doug Pagitt, a pastor and the executive director of the progressive evangelical organization Vote Common Good, said the ideas in the video were views that “small fringes of Christians keep” and said it was “very disturbing” that Hegseth would amplify them.Read the full storyUnder-fire FDA figure returns just days after leaving Vinay Prasad is returning to his role overseeing vaccine, gene therapy and blood product regulation at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) a little more than a week after he left the agency.Two days before Prasad stepped down last month, Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer and conspiracy theorist, had released misleadingly edited audio to suggest Prasad had admitted sticking pins in a Trump voodoo doll, when the full audio made it clear that he was talking about the kind of thing an imagined liberal Trump-hater would do.Prasad is an oncologist who was a fierce critic of US Covid-19 vaccines and mask mandates.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

A Georgia man who opened fire on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta on Friday, killing a police officer, had blamed a Covid-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal, a law enforcement official said.

Documents filed recently in the New Orleans Roman Catholic archdiocese’s five-year bankruptcy case provide more clarity on how claims will be doled out to survivors of clergy abuse if a proposed settlement is approved.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 8 August 2025. More