The Six Rules Every Dictator Lives By | Stephen Kotkin (Dartmouth Lecture)
The Six Rules Every Dictator Lives By | Stephen Kotkin (Dartmouth Lecture)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcXEtJ0XoPk
Tag: autocracy
US sanctions wife of Brazilian judge who oversaw Bolsonaro prosecution
Trump is using U.S. sanction power to punish those who prosecute people Trump likes politically. This isn’t an act of justice, but an act of defending those who try to coup democracies. He did something similar when he pardoned the January 6th attackers who tried to end U.S. democracy.
“The U.S. announced new sanctions on the wife of Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Monday, the latest move in the Trump administration’s effort to object to the prosecution of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
The Trump administration has repeatedly targeted de Moraes for overseeing the prosecution of Bolsonaro, who was convicted of organizing a coup to remain in office following his electoral loss to now-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022. A panel of Supreme Court justices, including de Moraes, voted earlier this month to sentence the far-right populist leader, an ally of Trump’s, to a 27-year prison sentence.
…
The Brazilian government called the move “a new attempt of undue interference in Brazilian internal affairs,” accusing the U.S. government of pursuing “the politicization and distortion” of the Magnitsky Act.
“This new attack on Brazilian sovereignty will not achieve its goal of benefiting those who led the failed coup attempt, some of whom have already been convicted by the Supreme Federal Court. Brazil will not bow to this latest aggression,” Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/22/bolsonaro-prosecution-us-sanctions-00575122
Trump Sends Troops to Portland & Shootings Trigger Left-Right Blame Game | The Daily Show
Trump appears to be basing his decision to send the military to police Portland on what he sees on TV. The governor of Oregon tried to convince him that Portland was not a warzone, but Trump was not convinced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY
‘We can’t delay any longer’: Trump urges Bondi to prosecute his rivals
Trump is demanding that the Justice Department make unjust, political prosecutions. This is yet another dent in U.S. democracy hammered in by Donald Trump.
“President Donald Trump publicly vented at Attorney General Pam Bondi.., saying the lack of criminal charges against top adversaries was “killing our reputation and credibility.”
“We can’t delay any longer,” Trump posted on Truth Social in a message directed to “Pam.” “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” He specifically lamented the lack of criminal charges against Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, three of his most prominent political antagonists.”
…
“Trump capped his message to Bondi by accusing Democrats of impeaching him twice and indicting him five times “over nothing.” In 2023, Trump was charged in criminal cases that accused him of seeking to subvert the 2020 presidential election, corrupt Georgia’s election process, hoard classified information at Mar-a-Lago after his first term and cover up a hush money payment scheme.
Only the hush money case, brought by Manhattan prosecutors, reached a jury, which found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts. Two of the cases, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, were dropped after Trump won the 2024 election. And the Georgia case remains mired in pretrial dysfunction, with lead prosecutor Fani Willis recently disqualified over a conflict of interest.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/20/trump-bondi-truth-social-00574380?utm_content=politico/magazine/Politics&utm_source=flipboard
Why Jimmy Kimmel Returned and Bob Iger MUST Go
Why Jimmy Kimmel Returned and Bob Iger MUST Go
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h-G_IpzvGk
Ezra Klein: When A Shutdown is the Only Option | The Bulwark Podcast
“I think you’re having a shutdown because there are masked men in the streets; I think you’re having a shutdown because the FCC is using its powers to silence comedians; I think you’re having a shutdown because Donald Trump is weaponizing the workings of the federal government into something that is like what we see in Hungary; I think you’re having a shutdown because we are in fundamentally abnormal political circumstances and a shutdown is one of very few ways for Democrats to yell really loudly, ‘stop, this is some kind of emergency…we are going to try to throw ourselves in front of this truck’. Even if healthcare polls well…I think on some level, both your people and the public…know that this is not really about healthcare.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUAGkuq48zY
American Democracy Might Be Stronger Than Donald Trump
“Trump does all the same things as the authoritarians Levitsky and Ziblatt studied: He has refused to accept electoral defeats; called political opponents criminals and tried to jail them even while backing his own violent supporters; and lashed out at opponents and the media as “enemies of the people” — a chilling phrase that echoes Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
But Trump’s authoritarianism also resembles that of dangerous populists who failed to kill democracy. Careful studies that never seem to get much press find that only about a fifth of dangerous populists actually kill democracy, including in different regions and across different time spans. If you’re serious about weighing the Trump threat, you should be asking what makes the difference between countries where democracy died and countries where it survives.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/09/19/american-democracy-resilience-00548910
Don’t Be Fooled by a Trump-Xi Deal on TikTok
“Over the last eight months, the Trump administration has run roughshod over Congress and its constitutional prerogatives. Trump’s decision to ignore the TikTok ban on his first day in office may seem minor in the grand scheme of things, but it foreshadowed a series of far more aggressive moves to usurp much of lawmakers’ constitutional authority: dismantling congressionally-created agencies, redirecting congressionally appropriated funds and implementing a massive tax hike on the American public in the form of Trump’s chaotic tariff regime.
The vast majority of this was made possible by congressional Republicans, who have largely turned a blind eye to all of Trump’s gambits, and by the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, who have handed Trump a series of victories this year in his wide-ranging efforts to both unilaterally slash the federal government while dramatically expanding the powers of the presidency.
The acquiescence to Trump’s TikTok reprieve this year has been a far more bipartisan affair, but it has been a constitutional farce all the same, and it is not over yet.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/09/19/tiktok-trump-xi-deal-law-column-00571832
Supreme Court keeps in place Trump funding freeze that threatens billions of dollars in foreign aid
Why have a Congress if the president can just ignore its laws? Why have a Constitution if the president can just ignore it? The power to spend is clearly given to Congress. The President is supposed to execute that spending. This is the president refusing to faithfully execute those laws, clearly violating the division of powers spelled out in the Constitution.
“The Supreme Court on Friday extended an order that allows President Donald Trump’s administration to keep frozen nearly $5 billion in foreign aid, handing him another victory in a dispute over presidential power.
With the three liberal justices in dissent, the court’s conservative majority granted the Republican administration’s emergency appeal in a case involving billions of dollars in congressionally approved aid. Trump said last month that he would not spend the money, invoking disputed authority that was last used by a president roughly 50 years ago.
The Justice Department sought the high court’s intervention after U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ruled that Trump’s action was likely illegal and that Congress would have to approve the decision to withhold the funding.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/supreme-court-keeps-place-trump-204620328.html
Trump Has a Habit of Asserting Broad, Unreviewable Authority
“Whether he is waging the drug war, imposing tariffs, deporting alleged gang members, or fighting crime, the president thinks he can do “anything I want to do.””
https://reason.com/2025/09/17/trump-has-a-habit-of-asserting-broad-unreviewable-authority/