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AN 9 25

History’s path is never linear. But its turns can be very sharp.

It is rare to be able to identify the moment when we can say “this is the point at which everything changed”.

So have we reached the point where we can say the United States is in a constitutional crisis? Has American democracy failed? Has the US descended into authoritarianism?

If the answers to those questions weren’t clear already, they are now.

Yes. It is happening. Right now.

Not because of one incident, but a series of moments and choices, events within familiar historical structures, that are pushing the US over the edge.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the choices made by the administration in its aftermath, is one such moment. It was immediately clear the Trump administration would use Kirk’s murder as a pretext for accelerating its authoritarian project, weaponising it to destroy opponents, both real and imagined.

In a video address from the Oval Office, Trump blamed the “radical left” and promised a crackdown on “organizations” that “contributed” to the crime. His vice president, JD Vance,, effectively making it a tool of state-sponsored media. VID]

On that show, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller promised “we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks”.

In the MAGA-verse, terms such as “radical left”, “networks” and “organisations” are code for any form of opposition or dissent – including the Democratic Party and traditional media. It is worth noting here that “radical left” is now shifting to terms as broad as “left-leaning”, progressive or, even more subversive, liberal.

The Trump administration is promising to go after the fundraising architecture of its opposition, broadly defined. And it will. It is already using the agencies of the federal government – including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service – to threaten, punish and obliterate those who oppose it.

And the moments keep coming. On Wednesday, Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, appeared on another far-right podcast. Carr – a Project 2025 contributor – suggested that broadcasters running the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show were risking “the possibility of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC” due to Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death.

That night, ABC announced that Kimmel’s show would be suspended indefinitely.

Kimmel’s moment follows Stephen Colbert’s. It follows another moment earlier in the week, when Trump berated senior Australian Broadcasting Commission journalist John Lyons, aggressively telling him he was “hurting” Australia and that he would tell the Australian prime minster as much. The ABC has since been barred from Trump’s UK press conference, ostensibly for “logistical reasons”.

In the firehose of these moments, it can be difficult to see them in context. But they are all connected – part of a deliberate, carefully planned program to destroy anyone or anything that opposes or even questions Republican orthodoxy as defined by Trump.

The Kirk moment, the Kimmel moment, and all the rest, must be understood in that broader framework. This week, too, the Trump administration announced it was deploying the National Guard into Memphis, Tennessee. It will likely also send the National Guard into Chicago, as it has long been threatening. It has already despatched the National Guard into Los Angeles and Washington DC.

Trump and his cronies are openly musing about other “Democrat cities”. The point is to sow fear and suppress dissent. It is working.

This month, in the aftermath of a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, Trump promised to end mail-in voting. The Trump-aligned Supreme Court is poised to gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act intended to prevent racial discrimination. The mid-term elections are still over a year away.

Incredibly, we are only eight months into the second Trump administration. But the moments will keep coming, and the speed at which they arrive will likely accelerate.

Taken together, they paint a very grim picture for the future of US democracy, constrained though it already is. The widespread, coordinated suppression of dissent – and the extended chilling effect that suppression has – are ripping apart the fabric of American political life.

It is here. It is happening. History is being made before our eyes.

This is a monumental change. For the United States. For the world.

Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, *RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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AN 5 25

Donald Trump is now four months into his second presidency, and some of his critics are commenting that Joe Biden's presidency now seems like a lifetime ago.

Trump's cheerleaders in right-wing media are applauding his "record of achievement," claiming that he has accomplished a great deal in a short period of time. But the New York Times' Thomas B. Edsall has a very different view.

In his May 20 column, Edsall argues that some of the damage Trump has inflicted on the United States during the last four months will take years to repair.

"One thing stands out amid all the chaos, corruption and disorder: the wanton destructiveness of the Trump presidency," Edsall laments. "The targets of Trump's assaults include the law, higher education, medical research, ethical standards, America’s foreign alliances, free speech, the civil service, religion, the media and much more…. Some of the damage Trump has inflicted can be repaired by future administrations, but repairing relations with American allies, the restoration of lost government expertise and a return to productive research may take years — even with a new and determined president and Congress."

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Edsall adds, "Let’s look at just one target of the (Trump) Administration's vendetta: medical research. Trump's attacks include cancellation of thousands of grants, cuts in the share of grants going to universities and hospitals; and proposed cuts of 40 percent or more in the budgets of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Science Foundation."

Several interviewees cited examples of long-lasting "damage" Trump is inflicting.

Retired Judge J. Michael Luttig, a Never Trump conservative, told Edsall, "I even believe he is destroying the American presidency, though I would not say that is intentional and deliberate."

Princeton University history professor Sean Wilentz told Edsall, "The gutting of expertise and experience going on right now under the blatantly false pretext of eliminating fraud and waste is catastrophic and may never be completely repaired…. There is no precedent, not even close, unless you consider Jefferson Davis an American president. "

Andrew Rudalevige, a political scientist at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, told Edsall, "The damage caused to governmental expertise and simple competence could be long-lasting. Firing probationary workers en masse may reduce the government employment head count, slightly, but it also purged those most likely to bring the freshest view and most up-to-date skills to government service, while souring them on that service."

Mara Rudman of the University of Virginia's Miller Center told Edsall, "The most lasting impact of this term will be felt in the damage done to the reputation of the United States as a safe harbor where the rule of law is king, and where the Constitution is as sacred a national document as any country has developed. Through his utter disregard for the law, Trump has shown both how precious and how fragile are the rules that undergird our institutions, our economic and national security, and the foundation for our democracy."

*Thomas B. Edsall's full New York Times column is available at this link (subscription required).

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