<
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/19/trump-us-autocracy-authoritarianism>
"It reads like a checklist of milestones on the road to autocracy.
A succession of opposition politicians, including Alex Padilla, a US senator,
are handcuffed and arrested by heavy-handed law enforcement for little more
than questioning authority or voicing dissent.
A judge is arrested in her own courthouse and charged with helping a defendant
evade arrest.
Masked snatch squads arrest and spirit people away in public in what seem to be
consciously intimidating scenes.
The president deploys the military on a dubious legal premise to confront
protesters contesting his mass roundups of undocumented migrants.
A senior presidential aide announces that habeas corpus – a vital legal defence
for detainees – could be suspended.
The sobering catalogue reflects the actions not of an entrenched dictatorship,
but of Donald Trump’s administration as the president’s sternest critics
struggle to process what they say has been a much swifter descent into
authoritarianism than they imagined even a few weeks ago.
“Trump is throwing authoritarian punches at a much greater rate than any of
these other cases in their first year in power,” said Steven Levitsky, Harvard
political scientist and author, with Daniel Ziblatt, of
How Democracies Die.
“But we don’t yet know how many of those punches will land or how society will
respond.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
