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      State Dept.’s Fight Against Disinformation Comes Under Attack

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      The Global Engagement Center has become the focus of Republican-led criticism that the U.S. government coerces social media platforms into removing offensive content.A Republican-led campaign against researchers who study disinformation online has zeroed in on the most prominent American government agency dedicated to countering propaganda and other information operations from terrorists and hostile nations.The agency, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, is facing a torrent of accusations in court and in Congress that it has helped the social media giants — including Facebook, YouTube and X — to censor Americans in violation of the First Amendment.The attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, and two conservative digital news outlets last week became the latest plaintiffs to sue the department and its top officials, including Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. The lawsuit said the center’s work was “one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation.”The center faces a more existential threat in Congress. House Republicans blocked a proposal this month to reauthorize the center, which began in 2011 to counter the propaganda of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. A small agency, with a regular staff of 125 people, many of them contractors, and a budget of $61 million, the center coordinates efforts across the government to track and expose propaganda and disinformation from Russia, China and other adversaries. With its mandate set to expire at the end of next year, the center is now operating under a shroud of uncertainty, even though its supporters say there is no evidence to back the charges against it.If the Republicans hold firm, as a core bloc in the House appear determined to do, the center would disband amid two major regional wars and a wave of elections in 2024, including the U.S. presidential campaign.James P. Rubin, the center’s coordinator since early this year, disputed the allegations that his organization censored Americans’ comments online. The center’s legal mandate, he said, was to “focus on how foreign adversaries, primarily China and Russia, use information operations and malign interference to manipulate world opinion.”“What we do not do is examine or analyze the U.S. information space,” he said.The center’s fate has become enmeshed in a much broader political and legal campaign over free speech and disinformation that has gained enough traction to reach the Supreme Court.A lawsuit filed last year by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana accused numerous government agencies of cajoling or coercing social media platforms into removing content that spread what officials called false or misleading information about the Covid-19 pandemic, the presidential election of 2020 and other issues.A federal court ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor in July, temporarily barring government officials from contacting officials with the companies except in matters of law enforcement or national security. An appeals court largely upheld the ruling in September but limited its reach, excluding several agencies from the lower court’s injunction against contacts, the Global Engagement Center among them.“There is no indication that State Department officials flagged specific content for censorship, suggested policy changes to the platforms or engaged in any similar actions that would reasonably bring their conduct within the scope of the First Amendment’s prohibitions,” wrote a three-judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.The Global Engagement Center, which is part of the State Department, is facing a torrent of accusations in court and in Congress that it has helped the social media giants to censor Americans.J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressThe Supreme Court is expected to weigh in next spring on the Missouri case, a decision that could have big ramifications for the government and free speech in the internet era. The campaign against researchers who study the spread of disinformation has already had a chilling effect on universities, think tanks and private companies, which have found themselves smothered by subpoenas and legal costs.The efforts have been fueled by disclosures of communications between government officials and social media companies. Elon Musk who released a selection of messages after he purchased Twitter, since rebranded as X, called the Global Engagement Center “the worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation.”“They are a threat to democracy,” wrote Mr. Musk, who has restored numerous accounts that Twitter had suspended for violating the platform’s guidelines for disinformation, hate speech and other content. (Over the weekend, he allowed the return of Alex Jones, a far-right conspiracy theorist who spent years falsely claiming the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 was a hoax.)The Global Engagement Center has faced criticism before — not over censorship, but for having little effect at a time when global propaganda and disinformation has become more pernicious than ever with the rise of social media.A report by the State Department’s inspector general last year said the center suffered from a sclerotic bureaucracy that limited its ability to manage contractors and failed to create a strategic planning process that could measure its effectiveness. The department accepted the findings and promised to address them, the report said.Mr. Rubin, who was appointed at the end of last year, has sought to bolster the center’s core mission: challenging disinformation from foreign adversaries intent on undermining American democracy and influence around the world.In September, the center released a sweeping report that accused China’s Communist Party of using “deceptive and coercive methods” to try to control the global information environment. A month later it released two reports on Russia’s covert influence efforts in South America, including one intended to pre-empt an operation before it got off the ground.The Global Engagement Center began in 2011 to counter the propaganda of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.Jon Elswick/Associated PressThe center has had regular interactions with the social media companies, but, the appeals court ruled, there is no evidence that its officials coerced or otherwise influenced the platforms. Federal regulations prohibit any agency from engaging in propaganda at home.“We are not in the business of deciding what is true or not true,” Mr. Rubin said, adding that the center’s role was to identify “the hidden hand” of foreign propaganda.Since the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January, however, the Global Engagement Center has faced numerous subpoenas from a subcommittee investigating the “weaponization of government,” as well as depositions in lawsuits and requests for records under the Freedom of Information Act.At public hearings, House Republicans have repeatedly threatened not to renew the center’s expiring mandate and have grilled department officials about Americans whose accounts have been suspended. “The onus on you is to change my mind,” Representative Brian Mast, a Republican from Florida, told Daniel Kimmage, the center’s principal deputy coordinator, at a hearing in October.The Democrats in both houses of Congress and the Republicans in the Senate reached an agreement to extend the center’s mandate as part of the defense authorization act — one of the few pieces of legislation that might actually pass this year — but House Republicans succeeded in stripping the provision out of the broader legislation.The plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed last week in Texas argued that the department had in effect sidestepped its legal constraints by providing grants to organizations that routinely identify sources of disinformation in public reports and private interactions with social media platforms. The organizations include the Global Disinformation Index, a nonprofit based in London; and NewsGuard, a company in New York.The two news organizations that joined Texas in filing the suit — The Federalist and The Daily Wire — were both listed by the Global Disinformation Index in a December 2022 report as having a high risk for publishing disinformation. (The New York Times was among those rated as having a minimum risk. The Times’s website, the report said, “was not always free of bias, but it generally avoided targeting language and adversarial narratives.”)The center’s grant to the group — $100,000 in total — went to a project focused on disinformation in Southeast Asia. But the lawsuit claimed that its support injured the outlets “by starving them of advertising revenue and reducing the circulation of their reporting and speech — all as a direct result of defendants’ unlawful censorship scheme.”Josh Herr, The Daily Wire’s general counsel, said the outlet might never know “the full extent of the business lost.”“But this lawsuit is not about quantifying those losses,” he said. “We are not seeking damages. What we are seeking is to protect our rights, and all publishers’ rights, under the First Amendment.”Nina Jankowicz, a researcher who briefly served as the head of a disinformation advisory board at the Department of Homeland Security last year before controversy scuttled her appointment and the board itself, said the argument that the State Department was responsible for the impact of research it did not finance was absurd.Ms. Jankowicz said that the campaign to cast efforts to fight disinformation as a form of censorship had proved politically effective even when evidence did not support the claims.“I think any American, when you hear, ‘Oh, the administration, the White House, is setting up something to censor Americans, even if that has no shred of evidence behind it, your ears are going to prick up,” she said. “And it’s really hard to disprove all that.” More

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      Political Debate Is Rife on TikTok. Politicians? Not So Much.

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      President Biden and the White House regularly post to millions of followers on social media, talking about the economy on Facebook, sharing Christmas decorations on YouTube, showcasing pardoned turkeys on Instagram, posting about infrastructure on the X platform. They’re even on Threads.But they aren’t speaking directly to 150 million Americans on TikTok. There’s no official @POTUS, White House or Biden-Harris 2024 account. You’ll find only one of the Republican presidential candidates there — and just 37 sitting Congress members, according to a New York Times review of accounts.Some pundits call next year the “TikTok election” because of the ballooning power and influence of the video app. TikTok may have been known for viral dances in 2020, but it has increasingly become a news source for millennials and Gen Z-ers, who will be a powerful part of the electorate. But less than a year from the election, most politicians are keeping their distance from the app, as efforts grow in Washington and elsewhere to restrict or ban it because of its ownership by the Chinese company ByteDance. Many lawmakers and regulators have expressed concern that TikTok could put users’ information into the hands of Beijing officials — an argument that the company disputes.By passing up a huge microphone because of those concerns, however, politicians are running the risk that they and their campaigns will not directly reach young people on the app. They might also be upstaged by savvy challengers who may not feel so conflicted and who can figure out how to use TikTok to their advantage.Many campaigns are trying to hedge their bets by turning to a growing network of TikTok political influencers to share their messages or by making short videos on YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels in hopes that they’ll end up trending on TikTok. They have to give up some control to do that, and they need to persuade creators to work with them, often for little to no pay.To many political consultants, the politicians’ absence on TikTok is perhaps untenable.“The discourse is being shaped by this thing even if you yourself don’t use it,” said Teddy Goff, a top digital strategist for President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist, said that he was telling candidates “if you didn’t get it banned in 2023, you need to get on in 2024.”Several Republican presidential candidates have slammed TikTok at their recent debates and criticized Vivek Ramaswamy, the one candidate who has joined the app despite previously referring to it as “digital fentanyl.” He has defended joining TikTok, saying he did it to reach young voters.Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign team said that it did not need its own TikTok accounts to reach voters.“The reality is us having an account would not make a substantial difference in what we need to do on TikTok,” said Rob Flaherty, Mr. Biden’s deputy campaign manager and the former White House director of digital strategy. “The most important thing you can do is work through influencers.”TikTok arrived as a political force during the 2022 midterm campaign, when Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, successfully roasted his opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, in a flurry of cutting videos, and Representative Jeff Jackson, Democrat of North Carolina, used a video filter to make his head look like a piece of broccoli while talking about reaching younger audiences.Annie Wu Henry, a 27-year-old digital strategist who helped run Mr. Fetterman’s TikTok account in 2022, said his use showcased TikTok’s potential reach and influence. She said she was amazed as she watched clips and memes that Mr. Fetterman’s campaign posted on the app take off “and become actual parts of conversation or picked up by traditional media sources.”Annie Wu Henry helped run social media for John Fetterman’s Senate campaign last year.Michelle Gustafson for The New York TimesWeeks after the elections, though, Washington’s sentiment toward the company turned sour. The Biden administration, as well as most states, some cities and some college campuses, has barred the app from being used on official devices. Some lawmakers have called for a national ban.Today, just 7 percent of the 533 Senators and Representatives have verified accounts on TikTok, and some have never posted, according to the analysis by The Times. None are Republican. The few who have joined often post to the app from separate “TikTok phones” because of security concerns, said Mike Nellis, a Democratic digital strategist.Mr. Jackson is the most popular, with 2.5 million followers, and Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, comes in second, with 1.4 million. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota each have over 200,000 followers.Ms. Wu said campaigns, including Mr. Biden’s, were potentially leaving major audiences on the table.“It needs to be figured out, and there’s almost this rush right now of who’s going to do it,” she said.The White House has tapped into TikTok in the past few years by working with social media stars to promote access to Covid-19 vaccines and to brief viewers on the Russia-Ukraine war and the Inflation Reduction Act. Several stars told The Times they weren’t paid but were eager to participate.That sort of workaround is expected to be even more popular next year. “There’s this booming industry under the surface of both agencies and platforms that are helping political organizations, social impact groups and politicians themselves sponsor content on TikTok and partner with creators and influencers to put out messaging,” said Brian Derrick, a political strategist and co-founder of Oath, a platform for guiding donations to Democratic campaigns.TikTok prohibits paid political ads, including paying creators for endorsements. It doesn’t encourage politicians to join the platform, though it does verify official accounts.A White House spokesperson, when asked about the use of TikTok, pointed to a rule barring the app from being used on federal devices as of March and declined to comment further.Harry Sisson, a 21-year-old junior at New York University and a political commentator on TikTok, is a rising creator, sharing news and opinions against backdrops of social media posts and articles.Yuvraj Khanna for The New York TimesHarry Sisson, a 21-year-old junior at New York University and a political commentator on TikTok, started posting in 2020, when he was a high school senior, to help Mr. Biden’s campaign for president. He has amassed 700,000 followers.Mr. Sisson said that in the past year and a half, Democratic groups had offered him more opportunities, including filming voting videos with Mr. Obama and watching the State of the Union at the White House. He wasn’t paid but was thrilled to be involved.With the White House in particular, he said, “They’ve always stressed, we’re not here to tell you guys what to say, if you disagree with us, we’re not going to be upset.”Mr. Sisson said he earned money through views on his TikTok videos and accepted some paid collaborations with advocacy groups that he believed in like Planned Parenthood, but his goal was to help elect Democrats. A.B. Burns-Tucker, a political TikTok creator, believes that her content has influenced voters, pointing to the approval of a recent Ohio ballot measure that enshrined a right to abortion in the State Constitution.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesA.B. Burns-Tucker, 34, is another political content creator who has joined White House briefings. She posts on TikTok as @iamlegallyhype, and has over 700,000 followers. She said her account took off after she made a popular explainer video about the Russia-Ukraine war, which colloquially referred to world leaders as “Big Daddy Biden” and “Big Bad P.” She says she’s now a news source for people who don’t tune in elsewhere.“I talk about current events with my friends all the time, but most of them are like, ‘Girl, I don’t watch the news, if you don’t tell me I don’t know,’” she said. “I took that and ran with it.”Ms. Burns-Tucker believes that she has influenced voters, pointing to the approval of a recent Ohio ballot measure that enshrined a right to abortion in the State Constitution. She was paid by Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights to make a TikTok video that urged people to vote for the ballot measure, which aligned with her personal beliefs, she said. “A lot of people in the comment section were like, I didn’t even know, I’ll be in line first thing tomorrow,” she added. The video passed 45,000 views.People like Mr. Sisson and Ms. Burns-Tucker don’t have a parallel among conservatives, said Amanda Carey Elliott, a digital consultant for Republicans.Ms. Elliott said that she was firmly against using TikTok based on the party’s stance on China — but that there was also less incentive for Republicans to use it.“There’s not a huge culture of TikTok influencers on the right — it’s just not the same for us,” she said.Still, some Republican consultants say the opportunity is too big to pass up. Mr. Wilson, the Republican strategist, has been trying to guide candidates on how to sign up for the app after criticizing it.“Candidates drive in cars all the time — that doesn’t mean they want cars to be unregulated,” he said. “There’s not necessarily a hypocrisy there if you’re clear about what your position is and how you’re using it.” More

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      DeSantis Dismisses One Endorsement (for Haley) and Plays Up Another (for Him)

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      At a town hall in Iowa, Ron DeSantis, who has the backing of Iowa’s popular governor, attacked Nikki Haley after she added a key supporter: Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire.As Republicans struggle to coalesce around a single rival to former President Donald J. Trump, the popular governors of Iowa and New Hampshire have also split their ticket.Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, which votes first in the Republican presidential nominating contest, is backing Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, which votes second, is supporting Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor.On Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis played up the power of Ms. Reynolds’s backing while dismissing the potency of Mr. Sununu and calling Ms. Haley an avatar of “the old failed Republican establishment of yesteryear.”“Even a campaigner as good as Chris is not going to be able to paper over Nikki being an establishment candidate,” Mr. DeSantis said during a town hall for Iowa voters broadcast by CNN on Tuesday, hours after Mr. Sununu announced his endorsement of Ms. Haley at an event in New Hampshire. “I mean, she’s getting funded by liberal Democrats from California like the founder of LinkedIn, people on Wall Street like the head of JPMorgan.”For Mr. DeSantis, the town hall was a chance to make his pitch before a national audience without the name-calling and noisy cross-talk of the Republican presidential debates. He had entered the race as the clear favorite to upend Mr. Trump. But as frequent missteps have marred his campaign, some influential megadonors have thrown their support behind Ms. Haley, whom they see as more moderate.Among them are the two donors name-checked by Mr. DeSantis, Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, and Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase. (Ms. Haley also has the backing of traditional Republican donors.)Both Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley trail Mr. Trump by wide margins in polls nationally as well in the early-voting states. To close the gap, Mr. DeSantis has jumped at every opportunity to appear before Iowa voters, including the town hall hosted by CNN, a news organization that he has frequently derided as “corporate media.”Many of the questions asked on Tuesday, both by the voters in attendance at Grand View University in Des Moines and the moderator, Jake Tapper, were less than hard-hitting, and Mr. DeSantis was able to have a largely easy and confident stage presence.One voter asked him what food he most enjoyed at the Iowa State Fair. “Pork on a stick,” Mr. DeSantis replied with a smile, “but I did not do it in public because they said if they get a picture of it, you know, it’s a really bad thing.”Mr. Tapper asked Mr. DeSantis, who often talks about “destroying leftism,” to name his favorite Florida Democrat. He responded with two county sheriffs in South Florida.But Mr. DeSantis was also given the opportunity to detail some of his policy positions. On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. DeSantis said he opposed a two-state solution. On Ukraine, he expressed support for efforts by Republicans in Congress to tie funding for its war against Russia to U.S. border security. On Social Security, he said seniors should keep their benefits and called for a bipartisan effort to ensure the program’s long-term stability.“My grandmother lived till 91,” Mr. DeSantis explained. “Social Security was her sole source of income. So I understand what a lot of people are going through.”Still, he was sometimes light on specifics.Pressed by Mr. Tapper to say when he would release his plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, Mr. DeSantis said, “We’re working on it.”He added: “You kind of campaign in poetry, then you govern in prose.”And although he saved his harshest words for Ms. Haley, Mr. DeSantis also forcefully criticized Mr. Trump, something he has rarely done on national television.In his first answer, Mr. DeSantis said that Mr. Trump had “dramatically” mishandled the economy during the coronavirus pandemic. He also said that Mr. Trump was “flip-flopping” on abortion by criticizing a six-week ban that Mr. DeSantis had signed in Florida. And he noted Mr. Trump’s failure to build a wall on the United States’ southern border and have Mexico pay for it, as he had pledged to do.“It’s a different Donald Trump than ’15 and ’16,” he argued. “Back then he was colorful, but it was really America-first about the policies. Now, a lot of it’s about him.”Mr. DeSantis has said that Mr. Trump must be beaten in Iowa if Republicans want to stop him elsewhere. He has devoted extensive resources to winning the state, visiting each of its 99 counties and moving roughly a third of his campaign staff there.Outside groups are also helping his cause. One allied super PAC has built an extensive ground game to turn out support during the Jan. 15 caucuses. Another is investing heavily in advertisements targeting Ms. Haley.And he has campaigned frequently with Ms. Reynolds, who endorsed him last month. In a radio interview on Tuesday before the town hall, Mr. DeSantis called her “a tremendous help.”Other candidates are also focusing heavily on Iowa. The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy plans to visit a total of 29 counties this week alone, according to his campaign. On Wednesday, Mr. Ramaswamy will appear in a similar CNN town hall in Des Moines.But none of the efforts have seemed to move the polls. Mr. DeSantis now trails Mr. Trump by more than 30 points among Iowa Republicans, according to a Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom survey released on Monday.And in New Hampshire, where Mr. DeSantis has spent far less time, Ms. Haley has now pulled into second place. Mr. DeSantis has fallen to fourth or fifth. More

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      Las inquietudes sobre el autoritarismo de Trump abren un debate en EE. UU.

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      El expresidente y sus aliados hacen poco para tranquilizar a quienes están preocupados por una posible dictadura. Incluso, con sus declaraciones y acciones parecen estar reafirmando esas alarmas.El otro día, cuando un historiador escribió un ensayo en el que advertía que elegir al expresidente Donald Trump el próximo año podría conducir a una dictadura, un aliado de Trump no tardó en responder con un llamado para que dicho historiador fuera enviado a prisión.Suena casi como una parodia: la respuesta a las inquietudes de un autor sobre una dictadura es procesarlo. Pero Trump y sus aliados no se están tomando la molestia de rechazar con firmeza la acusación de una dictadura para tranquilizar a quienes les preocupa lo que podría significar un nuevo mandato. En todo caso, parece que la están alentando.Si Trump regresara a la presidencia, sus allegados han prometido “perseguir” a los medios de comunicación, iniciar investigaciones penales contra excolaboradores que se distanciaron del expresidente y expulsar del gobierno a los funcionarios públicos que consideran desleales. Cuando los críticos señalaron que el lenguaje de Trump sobre eliminar a todos los “parásitos” de Washington evocaba al de Adolf Hitler, un portavoz del expresidente dijo sobre los críticos que su “triste y miserable existencia será destruida” bajo el gobierno de Trump.El propio Trump hizo poco para calmar a los estadounidenses cuando su amigo Sean Hannity intentó ayudarlo en Fox News la semana pasada. Durante una reunión de foro abierto, Hannity le planteó a Trump lo que parecía ser una pregunta sencilla al pedirle que reafirmara que, por supuesto, no tenía la intención de abusar de su poder y usar el gobierno para castigar a sus enemigos. En lugar de tan solo concordar con esa afirmación, Trump aseguró que solo sería un dictador en el “Día 1” de un nuevo periodo.“Trump ha dejado bien claro, mediante todas sus acciones y retórica, que admira a los líderes que despliegan tipos de poder autoritario, desde Putin hasta Orbán pasando por Xi, y que quiere ejercer ese tipo de poder en casa”, comentó Ruth Ben-Ghiat, autora de Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, en referencia a Vladimir Putin de Rusia, Viktor Orbán de Hungría y Xi Jinping de China. “La historia nos demuestra que los autócratas siempre manifiestan quiénes son y qué van a hacer”, agregó. “Solo que nosotros no escuchamos hasta que es demasiado tarde”.A pesar de su enfrentamiento público con la dirigencia china, el presidente Trump ha elogiado al presidente Xi Jinping por sus políticas de hombre fuerte.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesEn los últimos días, las conversaciones sobre el posible carácter autoritario de una nueva presidencia de Trump han impregnado el debate político en la capital de Estados Unidos. Una serie de informes en The New York Times esbozaron varios planes desarrollados por aliados de Trump para imponer un enorme poder en un nuevo mandato y detallaron cómo el exmandatario tendría menos restricciones constitucionales. The Atlantic publicó una edición especial en la que 24 colaboradores pronosticaron cómo sería un segundo periodo presidencial de Trump, y muchos predijeron un régimen autocrático.Liz Cheney, quien fue legisladora republicana por Wyoming en el Congreso y vicepresidenta del comité de la Cámara de Representantes encargado de investigar el asalto del 6 de enero de 2021 al Capitolio, publicó un nuevo libro en el que advierte que Trump es un peligro claro y presente para la democracia estadounidense. Y, por supuesto, se publicó el ensayo del historiador Robert Kagan en The Washington Post que motivó a J. D. Vance, senador republicano por Ohio y aliado de Trump, a presionar al Departamento de Justicia para que lo investigara.Seamos claros, los presidentes estadounidenses han excedido los límites de su poder y han sido llamados dictadores desde los primeros días de la república. John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson y Franklin Roosevelt, entre otros, fueron acusados de ser déspotas. Se decía que Richard Nixon consolidó su poder en la “presidencia imperial”. Tanto a George W. Bush como a Barack Obama se les comparó con Hitler.Pero hay algo distinto en el debate actual, más allá de la retórica subida de tono o los desacuerdos legítimos sobre los límites del poder ejecutivo, algo que sugiere que este es un momento fundamental de decisión en el experimento estadounidense. Tal vez es una manifestación del desencanto popular con las instituciones del país: solo el 10 por ciento de los estadounidenses piensa que la democracia funciona muy bien, según una encuesta realizada en junio por The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.Tal vez es un reflejo del extremismo y la demagogia que se han vuelto tan comunes en la política de muchos lugares en el mundo. Y tal vez proviene de un expresidente que reclama su antiguo puesto y evidencia una afinidad tan desconcertante hacia los autócratas.En una ocasión, Trump expresó que no sentía ni un atisbo de remordimiento al compartir en redes sociales una cita de Mussolini y adoptó el lenguaje de Stalin al llamar a los periodistas los “enemigos del pueblo”. Le dijo a su jefe de gabinete que “Hitler hizo muchas cosas buenas” y luego expresó que deseaba que los generales estadounidenses fueran como los generales de Hitler.En diciembre del año pasado, poco después de iniciar su campaña de reaparición, Trump hizo un llamado a “poner fin” a la Constitución para retirar de inmediato al presidente Joe Biden del cargo y reinstaurarlo a él en la Casa Blanca sin tener que esperar a otras elecciones.Los defensores de Trump desestiman los temores sobre sus instintos autocráticos como quejas de los liberales que no lo apoyan ni a él ni a sus políticas y que intentan asustar a los votantes de maneras engañosas. Argumentan que Biden es el verdadero dictador, ya que su Departamento de Justicia llevará a juicio a su rival más contundente el próximo año por varios presuntos delitos, aunque no hay evidencia de que Biden haya participado personalmente en esas decisiones, y a pesar de que algunos exasesores de Trump afirman que las acusaciones son legítimas.“Los comentarios relacionados con una dictadura que realizan Kagan y sus colegas escritores liberales es un intento de asustar a los estadounidenses no solo para distraerse a sí mismos de los errores y la debilidad del gobierno de Biden, sino porque hay algo que ellos temen aún más: que un segundo gobierno de Trump tenga mucho más éxito a la hora de implementar su agenda y deshacer políticas y programas progresistas que el primero”, escribió Fred Fleitz, quien trabajó brevemente en la Casa Blanca de Trump, en el sitio web American Greatness el viernes.Kagan, un académico muy respetado de la Institución Brookings y autor de numerosos libros de historia, tiene muchos antecedentes de apoyar una política exterior firme que, en opinión de la izquierda, dista mucho de ser liberal. Pero desde hace años ha sido un crítico firme y declarado de Trump. En mayo de 2016, cuando otros republicanos se hacían a la idea de la primera nominación de Trump a la presidencia, Kagan advirtió: “así es como el fascismo llega a Estados Unidos”.Su ensayo del 30 de noviembre sonó como una nueva advertencia. Puede que los intentos de Trump para poner en marcha sus ideas más radicales en su primer mandato hayan sido obstaculizados por asesores republicanos y oficiales militares más moderados, argumentó Kagan, pero no se va a volver a rodear de esas figuras y encontrará menos de los controles y contrapesos que lo limitaron la última vez.Los defensores del expresidente califican los temores sobre los instintos autocráticos de Trump como quejas de liberales que intentan asustar a los votantes.Jordan Gale para The New York TimesEntre otros ejemplos, Kagan citó el intento de Trump por anular una elección que había perdido, sin tomar en cuenta la voluntad de los votantes. También señaló los comentarios francos de Trump sobre llevar a juicio a sus adversarios y desplegar al ejército en las calles para reprimir las manifestaciones. “En unos pocos años, hemos pasado de tener una democracia relativamente segura a estar a unos pasos cortos, y a escasos meses, de la posibilidad de vivir una dictadura”, escribió Kagan.Vance, senador recién llegado que buscó el apoyo de Trump y la semana pasada fue mencionado por Axios como un posible compañero de fórmula a la vicepresidencia en 2024, se ofendió en nombre del expresidente. Envió una carta al fiscal general Merrick Garland en la que sugería que Kagan debía ser llevado a juicio por incitar una “rebelión abierta”, y basó su argumento en una parte del ensayo de Kagan que señalaba que los estados dirigidos por demócratas podrían desafiar la presidencia de Trump.Vance escribió que “según Robert Kagan, la perspectiva de una segunda presidencia de Donald Trump es tan terrible como para justificar una rebelión abierta contra Estados Unidos, junto con la violencia política que invariablemente le seguiría”.El artículo de Kagan no abogaba realmente por la rebelión, sino que pronosticaba la posibilidad de que los gobernadores demócratas se opusieran a Trump “mediante una forma de anulación” de la autoridad federal. De hecho, llegó a insinuar que los gobernadores republicanos podrían hacer lo mismo con Biden, algo que tampoco defendía.Vance intentaba establecer un paralelo entre el ensayo de Kagan y los esfuerzos de Trump para revertir las elecciones de 2020. El senador escribió que, según la lógica del Departamento de Justicia al investigar a Trump, el artículo de Kagan podría ser interpretado como una “invitación a la ‘insurrección’, una expresión de ‘conspiración’ delictiva o un intento de ocasionar una guerra civil”. Para enfatizar su idea, insistió en que hubiera respuestas para el 6 de enero.Kagan, quien publicó otro ensayo el jueves sobre cómo detener la trayectoria hacia la dictadura que él vislumbra, comentó que la intervención del senador validaba sus argumentos. “Es revelador que su primer instinto tras ser atacado por un periodista es sugerir que lo encierren”, señaló Kagan en una entrevista.Los ayudantes de Trump y Vance no respondieron a las solicitudes de comentarios. David Shipley, editor de opinión de The Washington Post, defendió el trabajo de Kagan. “Estamos orgullosos de publicar los reflexivos ensayos de Robert Kagan y animamos al público a leer sus artículos del 30 de noviembre y del 7 de diciembre juntos, y a sacar sus propias conclusiones”, dijo. “Estos ensayos forman parte de una larga tradición de Kagan de iniciar conversaciones importantes”.Es una conversación que tiene meses por delante y un final incierto. Mientras tanto, nadie espera que Garland tome en serio a Vance, incluido casi con toda seguridad el propio Vance. Su carta era una declaración política. Pero dice algo de este momento que su propuesta de procesar a un crítico se pueda ver como un triunfo político.Peter Baker es el corresponsal jefe del Times en la Casa Blanca. Ha cubierto a los cinco últimos presidentes estadounidenses y a veces escribe artículos analíticos que sitúan a los mandatarios y sus gobierno en un contexto y un marco histórico más amplios. Más de Peter Baker More

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      Talk of a Trump Dictatorship Charges the American Political Debate

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      Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies are not doing much to reassure those worried about his autocratic instincts. If anything, they seem to be leaning into the predictions.When a historian wrote an essay the other day warning that the election of former President Donald J. Trump next year could lead to dictatorship, one of Mr. Trump’s allies quickly responded by calling for the historian to be sent to prison.It almost sounds like a parody: The response to concerns about dictatorship is to prosecute the author. But Mr. Trump and his allies are not going out of their way to reassure those worried about what a new term would bring by firmly rejecting the dictatorship charge. If anything, they seem to be leaning into it.If Mr. Trump is returned to office, people close to him have vowed to “come after” the news media, open criminal investigations into onetime aides who broke with the former president and purge the government of civil servants deemed disloyal. When critics said Mr. Trump’s language about ridding Washington of “vermin” echoed that of Adolf Hitler, the former president’s spokesman said the critics’ “sad, miserable existence will be crushed” under a new Trump administration.Mr. Trump himself did little to assuage Americans when his friend Sean Hannity tried to help him out on Fox News this past week. During a town hall-style meeting, Mr. Hannity tossed a seeming softball by asking Mr. Trump to reaffirm that of course he did not intend to abuse his power and use the government to punish enemies. Instead of simply agreeing, Mr. Trump said he would only be a dictator on “Day 1” of a new term.“Trump has made it crystal clear through all his actions and rhetoric that he admires leaders who have forms of authoritarian power, from Putin to Orban to Xi, and that he wants to exercise that kind of power at home,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” referring to Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Viktor Orban of Hungary and Xi Jinping of China. “History shows that autocrats always tell you who they are and what they are going to do,” she added. “We just don’t listen until it is too late.”Despite his public sparring with China’s leaders, President Trump has praised President Xi Jinping for his strongman policies.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTalk about the possible authoritarian quality of a new Trump presidency has suffused the political conversation in the nation’s capital in recent days. A series of reports in The New York Times outlined various plans developed by Mr. Trump’s allies to assert vast power in a new term and detailed how he would be less constrained by constitutional guardrails. The Atlantic published a special issue with 24 contributors forecasting what a second Trump presidency would look like, many of them depicting an autocratic regime.Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman from Wyoming who was vice chairwoman of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, published a new book warning that Mr. Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy. And of course, there was the essay by the historian, Robert Kagan, in The Washington Post that prompted Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio and a Trump ally, to press the Justice Department to investigate.To be sure, American presidents have stretched their power and been called dictators going back to the early days of the republic. John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, among others, were all accused of despotism. Richard M. Nixon was said to have consolidated power in the “imperial presidency.” George W. Bush and Barack Obama were both compared to Hitler.But there is something different about the debate now, more than overheated rhetoric or legitimate disagreements over the boundaries of executive power, something that suggests a fundamental moment of decision in the American experiment. Perhaps it is a manifestation of popular disenchantment with American institutions; only 10 percent of Americans think democracy is working very well, according to a poll in June by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.Perhaps it is a reflection of the extremism and demagoguery that has grown more prevalent in politics in many places around the world. And perhaps it stems from a former president seeking to reclaim his old office who evinces such perplexing affinity for and even envy of autocrats.Mr. Trump once expressed no regret that a quote he shared on social media came from Mussolini and adopted the language of Stalin in calling journalists the “enemies of the people.” He told his chief of staff that “Hitler did a lot of good things” and later said he wished American generals were like Hitler’s generals.Last December, shortly after opening his comeback campaign, Mr. Trump called for “termination” of the Constitution to remove Mr. Biden immediately and reinstall himself in the White House without waiting for another election. The former president’s defenders dismiss the fears about Mr. Trump’s autocratic instincts as whining by liberals who do not like him or his policies and are disingenuously trying to scare voters. They argue that President Biden is the real dictator because his Justice Department is prosecuting his likeliest challenger next year for various alleged crimes, although there is no evidence that Mr. Biden has been personally involved in those decisions and even some former Trump advisers call the indictments legitimate.“The dictator talk by Kagan and his fellow liberal writers is an attempt to scare Americans not just to distract them from the failures and weakness of the Biden administration but because of something they are even more afraid of: that a second Trump administration will be far more successful in implementing its agenda and undoing progressive policies and programs than the first,” Fred Fleitz, who served briefly in Mr. Trump’s White House, wrote on the American Greatness website on Friday.Mr. Kagan, a widely respected Brookings Institution scholar and author of numerous books of history, has a long record of support for a muscular foreign policy that hardly strikes many on the left as liberal. But he has been a strong and outspoken critic of Mr. Trump for years. In May 2016, when other Republicans were reconciling themselves to Mr. Trump’s first nomination for president, Mr. Kagan warned that “this is how fascism comes to America.”His essay on Nov. 30 sounded the alarm again. Mr. Trump may have been thwarted in his first term from enacting some of his more radical ideas by more conventional Republican advisers and military officers, Mr. Kagan argued, but he will not surround himself with such figures again and will encounter fewer of the checks and balances that constrained him last time. The former president’s defenders dismiss the fears about Mr. Trump’s autocratic instincts as complaints by liberals who are trying to scare voters.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesAmong other things, Mr. Kagan cited Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn an election that he had lost, disregarding the will of the voters. And he noted Mr. Trump’s overt discussion of prosecuting opponents and sending the military into the streets to quell protests. “In just a few years, we have gone from being relatively secure in our democracy to being a few short steps, and a matter of months, away from the possibility of dictatorship,” Mr. Kagan wrote.Mr. Vance, a freshman senator who has courted Mr. Trump’s support and was listed by Axios this past week as a possible vice-presidential running mate next year, took umbrage on behalf of the former president. He dispatched a letter to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland suggesting that Mr. Kagan be prosecuted for encouraging “open rebellion,” seizing on a point in Mr. Kagan’s essay noting that Democratic-run states might defy a President Trump.Mr. Vance wrote that “according to Robert Kagan, the prospect of a second Donald Trump presidency is terrible enough to justify open rebellion against the United States, along with the political violence that would invariably follow.”Mr. Kagan’s piece did not actually advocate rebellion, but simply forecast the possibility that Democratic governors would stand against Mr. Trump “through a form of nullification” of federal authority. Indeed, he went on to suggest that Republican governors might do the same with Mr. Biden, which he was not advocating either.But Mr. Vance was trying to draw a parallel between Mr. Kagan’s essay and Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. By the Justice Department’s logic in pursuing Mr. Trump, the senator wrote, the Kagan article could be interpreted as “an invitation to ‘insurrection,’ a manifestation of criminal ‘conspiracy,’ or an attempt to bring about civil war.” To make his point clear, he insisted on answers by Jan. 6.Mr. Kagan, who followed his essay with another on Thursday about how to stop the slide to dictatorship that he sees, said the intervention by the senator validated his point. “It is revealing that their first instinct when attacked by a journalist is to suggest that they be locked up,” Mr. Kagan noted in an interview.Aides to Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance did not respond to requests for comment. David Shipley, the opinion editor of The Post, defended Mr. Kagan’s work. “We are proud to publish Robert Kagan’s thoughtful essays and we encourage audiences to read both his Nov. 30 and Dec. 7 pieces together — and draw their own conclusions,” he said. “These essays are part of a long Kagan tradition of starting important conversations.”It is a conversation that has months to go with an uncertain ending. In the meantime, no one expects Mr. Garland to take Mr. Vance seriously, including almost certainly Mr. Vance. His letter was a political statement. But it says something about the era that proposing the prosecution of a critic would be seen as a political winner. More

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      ¿Cómo cubrir a Trump? Univision, como otros medios, busca una respuesta

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      Los reclamos contra Univision comenzaron en cuanto se emitió su entrevista con Donald Trump. Un mes después, aún no han cesado.Para los críticos de Univision, la entrevista del 9 de noviembre —con sus preguntas fáciles y pocas preguntas de seguimiento del entrevistador, Enrique Acevedo— ha confirmado sus temores desde que la cadena, tradicionalmente de tendencia de izquierda, se fusionó con la cadena mexicana Televisa a principios del año pasado en un acuerdo de 4.800 millones de dólares. La cadena, argumentan ellos, estaba dando un preocupante giro a la derecha con sus nuevos propietarios, que tienen fama de cultivar relaciones con los principales políticos de México, donde Televisa ha sido un temido artífice de figuras de influencia durante más de 50 años.Las maniobras de última hora de Univision levantaron aún más sospechas. Pocas horas antes de la emisión de la entrevista, la cadena retiró su invitación a la campaña de Biden para emitir anuncios durante el especial de una hora con Trump, citando lo que parecía ser una nueva política de la empresa. Apenas una hora después, Univision canceló abruptamente una entrevista con el director de medios hispanos de la campaña de Biden.Pero la razón de los cambios en la cadena no puede explicarse solo por consideraciones políticas, según las entrevistas con más de una decena de periodistas y ejecutivos actuales y retirados de Univision, entre ellos Acevedo y Daniel Coronell, presidente de noticias de la cadena.Los medios de comunicación hispanos son susceptibles a la misma inquietud que afecta a otras redacciones estadounidenses. Las audiencias de las noticias de televisión en español están en declive, lo que se suma a la presión de una economía desigual. Y el dilema sobre cómo cubrir a Trump —¿debe tener una cobertura exhaustiva, mínima o incluso alguna?— preocupa a Univision tanto como a sus homólogos en inglés.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      ‘What the Heck?’ CNN’s Debate Plans Leave New Hampshire Officials Confused.

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      The news network said it would host a Republican primary debate in New Hampshire at Saint Anselm College. That was news to Saint Anselm.With great fanfare this week, CNN announced it would host the network’s first debate of the 2024 presidential campaign, gathering the Republican candidates for a marquee event on Jan. 21 at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire.There was only one problem: Saint Anselm had no idea what CNN was talking about.“We were surprised to be included on a press release by a network about a debate which we had not planned or booked,” Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm, said in a statement on Friday.The chairman of New Hampshire’s Republican Party, Chris Ager, went a little further.“The CNN thing came out and everybody’s like, ‘What the heck?’” Mr. Ager said in an interview. “I’m still scratching my head. And I still haven’t been contacted by CNN at all.”There is, however, a competing debate scheduled to take place three days earlier, hosted by CNN’s rivals at ABC News. The ABC debate, on Jan. 18, is set to be held at Saint Anselm, and it has the approval of both the college and state Republican officials. “We’ve been working for months planning with ABC,” Mr. Ager said. “We’ve already done a run-through of the facility. We’ve agreed on a lot of the details.”The CNN announcement, Mr. Ager said, caught his team off guard. “For a big, professional organization like that, putting out a location on this date and the location doesn’t know — something’s not quite right,” he said.A CNN spokeswoman said on Friday: “We can’t speak to any miscommunication within Saint Anselm, but we are moving forward with our plans to host a debate in New Hampshire on Jan. 21.”ABC is the traditional host of presidential debates in New Hampshire ahead of the state’s first-in-the-nation primary. Its local station, WMUR-TV in Manchester, N.H., which is a co-host of the Jan. 18 debate, is New Hampshire’s only affiliate of the Big Three broadcast networks.Mr. Ager said he also had concerns about CNN holding a debate just two days before the Jan. 23 primary, which he said would leave candidates little time to respond to any major moments onstage.“In New Hampshire, we like to give everybody a fair shot as much as possible,” he said.The apparent debate snafu came as the Republican National Committee announced that candidates were free to appear at any debate, eliminating a previous requirement that the candidates could participate only in debates formally approved by the party. The rule change, announced Friday, will potentially offer more national exposure to the remaining candidates, as they try to make inroads against the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Trump has so far refused to appear at any of the four televised Republican primary debates. He has not signaled if he will appear at the ABC event in New Hampshire on Jan. 18.CNN also said this week that it would host a televised debate in Des Moines on Jan. 10 at Drake University, ahead of the Iowa caucuses.Drake University issued a news release promoting that event, so it appears the institution was aware of the network’s plans.Shane Goldmacher More

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      Conundrum of Covering Trump Lands at Univision’s Doorstep

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      The howls of protest against Univision began as soon as its interview with Donald J. Trump aired. A month later, they still haven’t stopped.To critics of Univision, the Nov. 9 interview — with its gentle questioning and limited follow-ups from the interviewer, Enrique Acevedo — has confirmed their fears since the traditionally left-leaning network merged with the Mexican broadcaster Televisa early last year in a $4.8 billion deal. The network, they said, was taking a troubling turn to the right under its new owners, who have a reputation for cultivating relationships with leading politicians in Mexico, where Televisa has been a feared kingmaker for more than 50 years.Last-minute maneuvering at Univision raised further suspicions. Just hours before the interview aired, the network reversed its invitation to the Biden campaign to run ads during the hourlong special with Mr. Trump, citing what appeared to be a new company policy. Scarcely an hour later, Univision abruptly canceled an interview with the Biden campaign’s director of Hispanic media.But the reason for changes at the network can’t be explained by political considerations alone, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former Univision journalists and executives, including Mr. Acevedo and Daniel Coronell, the network’s president of news.Hispanic media is proving susceptible to the same upheaval straining other American newsrooms. Spanish-language television news audiences are in decline, compounding pressure from an uneven economy. And the dilemma over how to report on Mr. Trump — should he get exhaustive, minimal or even no coverage? — is vexing Univision just as it is its English-language counterparts.Univision executives have said they are making a pivot toward the center — a strategy that reflects the split political preferences of the Hispanic electorate and the need to broaden their audience.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More