
Analysis
How Trump Could Use a Crisis to End American Democracy
THOM HARTMANN
The Hartmann Report
There’s a long history of leaders using national emergencies to raise their popularity, expand their own power, overwhelm opposition politicians, scapegoat minorities, suspend constitutions and elections, and provide a legal façade for ending or weakening democracy.
Published On: 02/24/2025
Federal Workers Fear DOGE Is Watching Their Every Move
Paresh Dave, Dell Cameron, Alexa O'Brien
Wired
A federal law enforcement source warns that monitoring could theoretically be used to gather political intelligence on federal employees, while the administration looks for more palatable reasons to terminate them later; similar to how law enforcement may obtain evidence that's inadmissible in the course of a criminal investigation, but then search for another evidentiary basis to file charges.
Published On: 02/21/2025
How Trump Is Dismantling Press Freedom in America
Clayton Weimers
Reporters Without Borders
The newly-elected president, his administration, and his political allies have conducted a rapid series of attacks on press freedom that amount to a monumental assault on freedom of information.
Published On: 02/19/2025
How Russia Quietly Shapes Western Elections
Oana Popescu-Zamfir
carnegieendowment
Russia pursues a systematic strategy of undermining elections and influencing public opinion in the West. EU and NATO countries must recognize that Moscow often acts through agents within their own borders, and build resilience to such interference.
Published On: 02/13/2025
Musk’s Playbook: Payments, Power, and Neoreaction
Dave Troy
The Washington Spectator
...Congress is baffled as to why Musk is doing all of this, and what he possibly wants from access to sensitive data including US Treasury records on social security numbers, bank routing and account numbers, healthcare data, and Department of Energy information on nuclear weapons. He has given free rein to a group of 20-ish boys — tech enthusiasts with no training or relevant experience — so they can “improve” things and harvest information.
Published On: 02/12/2025
When Algorithms Replace Democracy
Mike Brock
notesfromthecircus.com
Teams of young tech operatives are systematically dismantling democratic institutions and replacing them with proprietary artificial intelligence systems. Civil servants who raise legal objections are being removed. Government databases are being migrated to private servers. Decision-making power is being transferred from elected officials and career bureaucrats to algorithms controlled by a small network of Silicon Valley elites.
Published On: 02/08/2025
Neo-Nazis Cash In as Meta Ignores Its Own Rules
Global Project Against Hate and Extremism
globalextremism.org
In this new more permissive online environment, an investigation by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) has discovered neo-Nazi activity flourishing on Instagram, including degrading hate speech, antisemitic conspiracism, and even Nazi symbols being used to sell merchandise.
Published On: 02/06/2025
How the Media Is Failing Democracy in Real Time
Oliver Darcy
Status
After years of warnings about what Donald Trump would do if he returned to power, the president is dismantling institutions, warping law enforcement agencies, seeking retribution on his critics, treating undocumented immigrants with cruelty, imposing and threatening seismic tariffs, and openly musing about seizing foreign territories. The American experiment is convulsing before our eyes.
And yet, you wouldn't quite realize it from the tone of the news coverage.
Published On: 02/05/2025
Resources