Week 46 - The Return
Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.
This was quite a week! What strikes me the most in summarizing one of the longest lists of broken norms so far is the lack of pushback that persists. Trump is by all accounts unilaterally making decisions on foreign policy, economic policy, healthcare issues, censorship, prosecutorial discretion, and more. He has become so brazen that he feels comfortable saying out loud, and repeatedly, that the Justice Department must go after his enemies — something previously unthinkable — and firing those who refuse to do so. He also this week, on several occasions, lashed out at his enemies, which includes apparently every American who disagrees with him. His words, at Charlie Kirk’s funeral: “I hate my opponent. And I don’t want the best for them.” His words, at the United Nations to world leaders who allow immigration and clean energy: “Your countries are going to hell.”
Mind you, the American people are not happy. An AP-NORC poll found 75% of Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong direction, including more than half of Republicans. Trump’s approval stands at the lowest of his second regime. Yet Trump, unlike in the first term when members of his party and regime would push back, is not having boundaries erected before him. Not by Congress, nor the Supreme Court, which is again and again expanding his power, in the shade of the aptly named shadow docket, offering no explanation for their rulings. So as has been his pattern in both regimes, with no boundaries or pushback, Trump pushes norms further, and grasps more and more power.
Also alarming this week are Trump and his regime’s attacks on free speech. Members of his regime are doing his bidding now. Disney suspended comedian Jimmy Kimmel after the FCC threatened to take away broadcast rights; the FTC is wielding deal approval for media companies as a cudgel; the Pentagon restricted journalists’ access; even West Point academy was sued for silencing professors. On this one issue, there is some muted pushback from conservatives, mostly out of fear that when the shoe is on the other foot, it will come back to haunt them. Ironically, the notion of the “woke right,” something unthinkable just months ago, became a thing this week.
An AP-NORC poll found that 75% of Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong direction, up from 62% in June. Most of the increase came from Republicans, with 51% saying wrong direction, up from 29% in June.
On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3, on its shadow docked, that Trump can fire Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, for now, while the court considers in December expanding presidential power to shape independent agencies.
The court agreed to hear the case unusually early, before the case had fully worked its way through the lower courts. The conservative majority could be poised to overturn a 1935 ruling that found commissioners can only be removed for misconduct or neglect of duty.
Justice Elana Kagan wrote in her dissent, “Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars,” and “to transfer government authority from Congress to the president, and thus to reshape the nation’s separation of powers.”
NBC News reported the Trump regime was feeling ecstatic about having won 19 Supreme Court decisions, including a 16-case winning streak. The last time the regime lost was in May. Almost all the cases have been decided without explanation on the shadow docket.
AP reported Trump’s General Services Administration is seeking to rehire hundreds of employees terminated by DOGE, which had left the agency broken and understaffed. Staffers who choose to return will be granted what amounted to seven months of paid vacation.
The Republican-led Senate voted along party line, 51–47, to use the ‘nuclear’ option to confirm 48 of Trump’s nominees for ambassadorial and sub-cabinet level positions as a block. The shift in rules does not affect the confirmations of federal judges and heads of Cabinet agencies.
On Wednesday, an open letter by more than 100 liberal philanthropies, including the Ford Foundation and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, defended their sector and missions, amid Trump’s threatened crackdown to revoke their tax-exempt status.
On Wednesday, Trump posted on Truth Social that he was designating antifa as a “MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” which would be “thoroughly investigated,” after Charlie Kirk’s murder. It was unclear which group Trump was referring to, as antifa is an ideology, not a formal organization, according to the FBI.
NBC News reported a federal investigation into the assassination of Kirk thus far has found “no evidence” of ties between Tyler Robinson and left-wing groups.