NEW YORK – Observers have been sounding the alarm about Donald Trump’s authoritarian ambitions since well before he was first elected in 2016.
Since his return to the White House this year, they have also been warning that Republican lawmakers and the Supreme Court’s conservative majority would continue to enable him. And yet in the United States and worldwide, leaders continue to indulge and flatter him.
Trump’s second administration has vindicated the most dire warnings, targeting agencies and institutions that safeguard democracy at home and project soft power abroad, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of Education and the Social Security Administration. It has deployed the military to U.S. cities for spurious reasons, launched a mass deportation campaign that offers little to no due process and repeatedly defied judges’ rulings. And since late summer, it has been bombing boats in the Caribbean that it alleges are carrying drugs to the U.S.
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