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.

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.

Anthony Romero, the A.C.L.U.’s executive director, talks about what he thinks could happen if the Trump Administration defies the authority of the courts.

Without a healthy party system, you’re basically left with either violence or autocracy as the way disagreements get resolved.

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.

...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.

From Ukraine to Afghanistan, independent media organisations across the world are being forced to lay off staff or shut down after losing USAid funding.

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.

Trump’s courts-based intimidation campaign against the press descends from handiwork of one of his most prominent Silicon Valley backers, venture capitalist and neo-reactionary ghoul Peter Thiel.

The oil, coal, and gas industries are now effectively running all branches of government.

The brave few who stood up to the magnates of the Gilded Age came to mind this month, when Ann Telnaes, a Washington Post cartoonist, resigned over the paper’s refusal to publish a cartoon in which she skewered today’s titans of industry—­Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Post, among them.

“Our constitution was literally a copy of the US Constitution. We have three branches of government. We have freedom of the press. Within six months of President Duterte taking office in 2016, those institutions crumbled.

When an authoritarian regime takes over, NGOs, advocacy nonprofits, and activist organizations face significant threats.

Certainly, people can debate policy issues and the virtues of candidates, but fact-checking is another matter. There is such a thing as truth.

With President-elect Donald J. Trump returning to the White House, media outlets large and small are taking steps to prepare for what they fear could be a legal and political onslaught against them from the new administration and Mr. Trump’s allies inside and outside the government.