Time for collective action

It’s time – past time – to speak up about the sharp plunge into authoritarianism that Donald Trump, Elon Musk et al are trying to impose in the United States.

Time for everyone* to speak up.

There are myriad actions being taken now that are illegal and unconstitutional, and others that are perhaps only unethical. Since I can’t cover everything in one piece, my focus here will be on the attacks on freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the rule of law. To pick a handful of these attacks by Trump and his appointees, they have purged Inspectors General and the Department of Justice, installed loyalists atop the military while removing JAG lawyers who could restrain him, ousted many people of color and women in what amounts to efforts at resegregation, banned the Associated Press from White House interviews while launching investigations into an array of media outlets, impounded funds appropriated by Congress to USAID (the Supreme Court has already ruled against this, though we shall see if he follows the court’s ruling) and a host of other agencies with the not-very-leftwing U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops suing the State Department for suspending refugee assistance, threatened funds to universities that don’t eliminate DEI programs (read the sharp reply by the dean of Georgetown University’s law school calling that a violation of the First Amendment), and threatened to deport foreign students over “illegal protests.”

Mike Ware, ousted as Inspector General of the Small Business Administration, said: “Our democracy is not even in danger. It’s no longer a democracy when people don’t have the freedom to speak truth to power, where independent oversight is no longer a thing, where transparency in government is viewed negatively.”

Yet instead of seeing a wave of opposition and outspoken response from across society, as happened in Trump’s first administration, which was far less extreme, many are choosing to bite their tongues – at least publicly. Or even paying millions to kiss the ring and attempt to get in Trump’s good graces. Yale’s Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld and Stephen Henriques wrote in the New York Times that many are afraid of counter-attacks by Trump, yet said they are hearing over and over from leaders a variation of “We invest where there is the rule of law, not the law of rulers.” They urged collective action from business leaders to urgently lobby the administration and legislators over the harmful consequences of Trump’s policies.

As John K. Glenn, senior director at the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for democracy, outlines, democracies are more secure, safer and more prosperous. These are all desirable qualities, whether you’re a person living in a country or a CEO looking for a stable environment for business.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Wall Street Journal, both right-leaning, have come out with statements or editorials opposing Trump’s tariffs, and the latter has published several strong editorials against Trump’s cozying up to Putin, as well as publishing an essay Friday that “Trump is overturning the world order that America built.” In mandatory SEC quarterly reports, public companies are beginning to list warnings that actions by the Trump administration present significant risks to their business. The U.S. is quickly becoming an unreliable partner for longtime allies, and an undesirable place to invest – during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this past week, I heard from investors and founders who are pulling back from the U.S. due to uncertainty.

Tech writer Mike Masnick wrote a piece last week elaborating on “why Techdirt is now a democracy blog, whether we like it or not.” It’s one of the best articles I’ve read recently, calling what’s happening “the systematic dismantling of the very infrastructure that made American innovation possible. Business depends on rule of law, stable institutions, at least somewhat predictable policy and freedom of speech.”

As Masnick put it: “If you do not recognize that mass destruction of fundamental concepts of democracy and the U.S. Constitution happening right now, you are either willfully ignorant or just plain stupid. I can’t put it any clearer than that.”

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank discusses Trump’s efforts to erode press freedom by banning credible media outlets such as the Associated Press from White House press conferences while favoring MAGA-friendly outlets such as One America News, launching investigations into media outlets, his acting U.S. attorney in D.C. threatening to prosecute anyone impeding DOGE’s work, cutting off funds to pro-democracy outlets around the world and Musk calling for journalists to be given a long prison sentence for their standard editing of a Kamala Harris interview.

Meanwhile, the attacks on free speech include federal agencies being ordered to remove a host of words from public-facing websites, and grant proposals and contracts were being reviewed for these words too. It’s a long list, including words such as immigrant, disability, pollution, climate crisis women, barrier, sex, race, gender and more. As someone who suffered a concussion that led to a stroke, I am baffled as to how one would investigate differences in how traumatic brain injuries impact women and men if you can’t use the word “women” (“men” is not banned) or how you would research the role of the blood-brain barrier in TBI recovery without using the word “barrier. How can one investigate the impact of climate change if you can’t even use the phrase “climate change?” These restrictions set the U.S. up to lose its global leadership in scientific and medical research.

These are all dangerous attacks on the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Read experts on democracy, strongmen and autocracy such as Anne Applebaum, Masha Gessen, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Stephen Levitsky or Timothy Snyder. No prior nation barreling into strongman or fascist rule is a perfect match for what’s happening now in the U.S., but you can find strong echoes in the Reconstruction-era Jim Crow South, Putin’s Russia in the early 2000s, Orban’s Hungary, Franco’s Spain or – yes – Hitler’s 1930s Germany.

Gessen, who grew up in Russia, writes:

I am reminded of reading about the lives of exiles in Paris in the 1930s. German Jews and Communists, who had run for their lives, watched as the world reshuffled itself. Political parties that used to be antifascist flipped overnight, assuming positions that ranged from appeasement to a full embrace. French and British leaders looked away as Hitler tested his strength outside Germany. As antifascism was marginalized, antisemitism became mainstream. Hitler’s victims were blamed for their own misfortune.

Stephen Levitsky, author of How Democracies Die, and Lucan A. Way, published a piece in Foreign Affairs in early February, written primarily before Trump’s second term began, titled: “The Path to American Authoritarianism: What Comes After Democratic Breakdown.” In an interview with New York Magazine weeks later, Levitsky said it’s going even worse than he expected.

But it doesn’t have to continue that way. We, the people, have power. We must use it.

As Snyder writes in On Tyranny, “Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.”

If it feels frightening or risky to speak and/or act against actions that run counter to the U.S. Constitution, counter to U.S. law and/or counter to the U.S.’s best interests, well … it will only become more so. The time to stop a would-be authoritarian is before power is consolidated. It’s far harder later.

*Caveat that those who are in particularly vulnerable groups, such as immigrants who are undocumented or even those with visas who are not U.S. citizens, may need to be more cautious.