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A supporter of US President-elect Donald Trump holds a US flag near his residnece at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on November 29, 2024.
Trump has muscled unquestioned loyalty of the Republican Party, and weak resistance by a Democratic Party establishment that appears to detest the left more than it does the far right. Now our challenge begins.
When Adolph Hitler was handed the German chancellorship in 1933 after bullying a broken and dying Weimer Republic, he had won just 32 percent of the vote. Though his Nazi party was in political regression and nearly bankrupt, within a few months Hitler smashed the old order and built a monstrous dictatorship that would last 12 blood-drenched years.
With Trump 2.0, we too face the advent of an administration seeking to destroy the existing system and build its own scaffolding of a new order Trump and his most fervent MAGA strategists hope will rule for 50 years to come, as confidant Steve Bannon predicts. With most of the old guard Republicans who were reputed to provide guard rails during his first four years discarded, it is important to learn from means employed by other dictators.
From past tyrants like Mussolini, Pinochet, Franco, and Hitler to their descendants today who Trump admires, like Putin and Orban, there are common tactics that paved their way. Those steps to absolute power, as Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes in Strongmen, include the use of political violence, scapegoating, vilification, and persecution of targeted groups, with ample use of racism, misogyny, xenophobia and other bigotry alongside the fabrication of domestic crises requiring emergency action.
Two strongmen strategies warrant particular focus. First, securing support of national political parties and elites and acceptance by most of the population, the latter partly achieved through control of information sources. Trump has made inroads in both realms.
After being gifted the chancellorship by a failing democracy and business class who mistakenly thought they could control him, Hitler’s immediate priority was to establish a national consensus
Trump has muscled unquestioned loyalty of the Republican Party, and weak resistance by a Democratic Party establishment that appears to detest the left more than it does the far right. As to the oligarchy, the 2024 election cycle’s top seven donors funded the Republican Party with gifts as high as $200 million. The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has become a virtual co-president. The second wealthiest, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg just paid a post-election kiss the ring visit to Mar-a-Lago after recently passing now third on the list, Jeff Bezos, who notoriously blocked a Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris.
Wall Street is “already making big bets” as “investors have sent prices zooming for stocks of banks, fossil-fuel producers and other companies expected to benefit from Trump’s preference for lower tax rates and lighter regulation.” Despite Trump’s phony anti-Wall Street rhetoric, a very different message was sent by his pick of billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, described by Robert Reich as “the opposite of a bomb-thrower” for the key financial post of Treasury Secretary. And, the stock market closed November with its biggest monthly gains in a year.
After being gifted the chancellorship by a failing democracy and business class who mistakenly thought they could control him, Hitler’s immediate priority was to establish a national consensus writes Peter Fritzsche in Hitler’s First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich, as described in a review by Christopher Browning.
The Nazis “benefited enormously from the yearning of millions of Germans for a ‘new start’ after years of crisis and deadlock,” writes Browning. “Transformation of the German mood” was fueled initially by a desire to end political violence, mostly driven by Hitler’s Brownshirt militia, and Hitler’s promise “to preserve law and order.” Though the U.S. hardly faces the same Depression era conditions, the deadlock, mostly produced by Republican obstructionism, and Trump’s demagogy about immigration “invasions” and lies about rising violent crime, are a parallel. “The framing of crisis is most particular to authoritarian rule,” notes Ben-Ghiat. “Crisis justifies states of emergency and the scapegoating of enemies who endanger the country from inside the nation or across the border.”
Hitler manufactured a “restored Volksgemeinschaft,” or people’s community, to produce “willing identification and consent from a significant majority of Germans” and “necessity of compliance,” wrote Fritzche. It is “now understood as defined by racial exclusion rather than political, social, and religious inclusion.” The goal was “ideological congruence” that led to the “great achievement of the Third Reich”—getting Germans “to see themselves as the Nazis did” with a “new lease on collective life… to make Germany great” again.
For Trump and his MAGA movement, the first signs of a similar goal are evident from an election in which Trump achieved electoral gains over his 2020 defeat. A mid-November CBS poll found that 52 percent of Americans believe “fundamental changes are needed in our political system,” 54 percent are “happy” or “satisfied” Trump won, 53 percent are “excited” or “optimistic” about “what Trump will do as president,” 37 percent want him to “have more presidential power” than he did in his first term, 42 percent think he will “protect your rights and freedoms,” 59 percent approve of how he is handling his transition, and 57 percent support his most prominent pledge for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. As Pod Save America’s Dan Pfeiffer warned on Bluesky, “the imprimatur of significant public support is dangerous. It emboldens Trump and his allies and could zap the courage of Democrats.”
Information control is crucial to building wide national acceptance that all tyrants seek. “Propagandistic manipulation of public opinion replaced debate about complicated ideas,” pointed out Robert Paxton in his book The Anatomy of Fascism. “Fascism offered defenders of a cultural canon new propaganda skills along with a new shamelessness about using them.”
Ben-Ghiat describes how in 1933, Germany had more newspapers than Britain, France, and Italy combined. Hitler rapidly closed newspapers, fired and imprisoned thousands of journalists, and made editors and publishers police their own publications. Putin “early in his presidency presided over hostile takeovers of TV networks to gain control of news and political broadcasting and put resources into his preferred network.”
Former White House Counsel Ian Bassin emphasizes that “a key Orbán tactic” in Hungary to dismantle their democracy was “that his allies bought media outlets that were critical of the regime and turned them into loyal cheerleaders for the regime.”
Trump has long branded major U.S. media as an “enemy of the people,” and not subtly encouraged violence by his most rabid supporters against media outlets and journalists.
The increasingly autocratic Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another Trump ally, has censored Israeli media to block internal coverage of the horror of his war crimes in Gaza, and “raided and shut down Al Jazeera offices in Israel and the West Bank.” On November 24, the Israeli Cabinet that Netanyahu controls sanctioned the leading independent news outlet Haaretz by cutting government advertising and subscriptions for employees of state owned companies, and barred communication with Haaretz by government-funded entities.
“The decision to boycott Haaretz …is not a stand-alone event. It is part of a well-crafted master plan to weaken and then destroy the free press and independent media in Israel… and to shut down any news outlet that doesn't totally align with the government,” said Israeli journalist Anat Saragusti on Pod Save the World.
Trump has long branded major U.S. media as an “enemy of the people,” and not subtly encouraged violence by his most rabid supporters against media outlets and journalists. During the 2024 campaign he mostly boycotted mainstream media, focusing instead on rightwing broadcast, social media and podcasts for communicating with voters. Exit polls found a high percentage of Trump voters obtained most of their news from those sources. Fox News further cemented its hold as the overwhelmingly dominant cable TV news channel by as much as 73 percent of watchers, notes streamer Hasan Piker.
Robust civil society responses are the essential ingredient to assaults on information sources, and the efforts to build public complicity with Trumpism.
Looking ahead, former Obama deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, observes, “you intimidate media, you try to force them (to) bend them to your will, you use state funds, state sanctions.” Trump is “following the playbook of Orban. How far will Trump go?”
Interviewed on The Daily Blast podcast, former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan warned that Trump can “threaten to yank broadcast licenses” (as Trump has already threatened CBS and others). He can “pull back funding or leadership of organizations that come under control of the federal government.”
He “could go after journalists that have used information from a source that is classified making an example of them,” Sullivan says. Trump could also invoke the infamous 1917 Espionage Act “which has in the past been used to punish government officials who have taken classified information and given it to the press,” most notably against former National Security Advisor translator Reality Winner for leaking classified information reports about Russian interference in the 2016 election, but not yet against journalists themselves.
“I would expect to see Trump and his people looking for good examples that can be made of someone to do just that to, and therefor throw journalists in jail under the aegis of the Espionage Act.” One clear danger, she observes is “self-censorship on the part of journalists and news organizations because they are afraid of this kind of retribution.”
Robust civil society responses are the essential ingredient to assaults on information sources, and the efforts to build public complicity with Trumpism. To balance media complicity with Trump, Sullivan cites the 250,000 people who canceled their subscriptions to the Washington Post in anger at Bezos, and how MSNBC’s Morning Joe program saw its ratings plummet in its “coveted demographic by as much as 40 percent” after its hosts paid their fealty visit to Mar-a-Lago. “That has to send a message, and it sends a message where it can be heard… most when it cuts into profits or the possibility of profits.”
That, and so much more, will be the test for us all.
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
When Adolph Hitler was handed the German chancellorship in 1933 after bullying a broken and dying Weimer Republic, he had won just 32 percent of the vote. Though his Nazi party was in political regression and nearly bankrupt, within a few months Hitler smashed the old order and built a monstrous dictatorship that would last 12 blood-drenched years.
With Trump 2.0, we too face the advent of an administration seeking to destroy the existing system and build its own scaffolding of a new order Trump and his most fervent MAGA strategists hope will rule for 50 years to come, as confidant Steve Bannon predicts. With most of the old guard Republicans who were reputed to provide guard rails during his first four years discarded, it is important to learn from means employed by other dictators.
From past tyrants like Mussolini, Pinochet, Franco, and Hitler to their descendants today who Trump admires, like Putin and Orban, there are common tactics that paved their way. Those steps to absolute power, as Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes in Strongmen, include the use of political violence, scapegoating, vilification, and persecution of targeted groups, with ample use of racism, misogyny, xenophobia and other bigotry alongside the fabrication of domestic crises requiring emergency action.
Two strongmen strategies warrant particular focus. First, securing support of national political parties and elites and acceptance by most of the population, the latter partly achieved through control of information sources. Trump has made inroads in both realms.
After being gifted the chancellorship by a failing democracy and business class who mistakenly thought they could control him, Hitler’s immediate priority was to establish a national consensus
Trump has muscled unquestioned loyalty of the Republican Party, and weak resistance by a Democratic Party establishment that appears to detest the left more than it does the far right. As to the oligarchy, the 2024 election cycle’s top seven donors funded the Republican Party with gifts as high as $200 million. The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has become a virtual co-president. The second wealthiest, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg just paid a post-election kiss the ring visit to Mar-a-Lago after recently passing now third on the list, Jeff Bezos, who notoriously blocked a Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris.
Wall Street is “already making big bets” as “investors have sent prices zooming for stocks of banks, fossil-fuel producers and other companies expected to benefit from Trump’s preference for lower tax rates and lighter regulation.” Despite Trump’s phony anti-Wall Street rhetoric, a very different message was sent by his pick of billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, described by Robert Reich as “the opposite of a bomb-thrower” for the key financial post of Treasury Secretary. And, the stock market closed November with its biggest monthly gains in a year.
After being gifted the chancellorship by a failing democracy and business class who mistakenly thought they could control him, Hitler’s immediate priority was to establish a national consensus writes Peter Fritzsche in Hitler’s First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich, as described in a review by Christopher Browning.
The Nazis “benefited enormously from the yearning of millions of Germans for a ‘new start’ after years of crisis and deadlock,” writes Browning. “Transformation of the German mood” was fueled initially by a desire to end political violence, mostly driven by Hitler’s Brownshirt militia, and Hitler’s promise “to preserve law and order.” Though the U.S. hardly faces the same Depression era conditions, the deadlock, mostly produced by Republican obstructionism, and Trump’s demagogy about immigration “invasions” and lies about rising violent crime, are a parallel. “The framing of crisis is most particular to authoritarian rule,” notes Ben-Ghiat. “Crisis justifies states of emergency and the scapegoating of enemies who endanger the country from inside the nation or across the border.”
Hitler manufactured a “restored Volksgemeinschaft,” or people’s community, to produce “willing identification and consent from a significant majority of Germans” and “necessity of compliance,” wrote Fritzche. It is “now understood as defined by racial exclusion rather than political, social, and religious inclusion.” The goal was “ideological congruence” that led to the “great achievement of the Third Reich”—getting Germans “to see themselves as the Nazis did” with a “new lease on collective life… to make Germany great” again.
For Trump and his MAGA movement, the first signs of a similar goal are evident from an election in which Trump achieved electoral gains over his 2020 defeat. A mid-November CBS poll found that 52 percent of Americans believe “fundamental changes are needed in our political system,” 54 percent are “happy” or “satisfied” Trump won, 53 percent are “excited” or “optimistic” about “what Trump will do as president,” 37 percent want him to “have more presidential power” than he did in his first term, 42 percent think he will “protect your rights and freedoms,” 59 percent approve of how he is handling his transition, and 57 percent support his most prominent pledge for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. As Pod Save America’s Dan Pfeiffer warned on Bluesky, “the imprimatur of significant public support is dangerous. It emboldens Trump and his allies and could zap the courage of Democrats.”
Information control is crucial to building wide national acceptance that all tyrants seek. “Propagandistic manipulation of public opinion replaced debate about complicated ideas,” pointed out Robert Paxton in his book The Anatomy of Fascism. “Fascism offered defenders of a cultural canon new propaganda skills along with a new shamelessness about using them.”
Ben-Ghiat describes how in 1933, Germany had more newspapers than Britain, France, and Italy combined. Hitler rapidly closed newspapers, fired and imprisoned thousands of journalists, and made editors and publishers police their own publications. Putin “early in his presidency presided over hostile takeovers of TV networks to gain control of news and political broadcasting and put resources into his preferred network.”
Former White House Counsel Ian Bassin emphasizes that “a key Orbán tactic” in Hungary to dismantle their democracy was “that his allies bought media outlets that were critical of the regime and turned them into loyal cheerleaders for the regime.”
Trump has long branded major U.S. media as an “enemy of the people,” and not subtly encouraged violence by his most rabid supporters against media outlets and journalists.
The increasingly autocratic Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another Trump ally, has censored Israeli media to block internal coverage of the horror of his war crimes in Gaza, and “raided and shut down Al Jazeera offices in Israel and the West Bank.” On November 24, the Israeli Cabinet that Netanyahu controls sanctioned the leading independent news outlet Haaretz by cutting government advertising and subscriptions for employees of state owned companies, and barred communication with Haaretz by government-funded entities.
“The decision to boycott Haaretz …is not a stand-alone event. It is part of a well-crafted master plan to weaken and then destroy the free press and independent media in Israel… and to shut down any news outlet that doesn't totally align with the government,” said Israeli journalist Anat Saragusti on Pod Save the World.
Trump has long branded major U.S. media as an “enemy of the people,” and not subtly encouraged violence by his most rabid supporters against media outlets and journalists. During the 2024 campaign he mostly boycotted mainstream media, focusing instead on rightwing broadcast, social media and podcasts for communicating with voters. Exit polls found a high percentage of Trump voters obtained most of their news from those sources. Fox News further cemented its hold as the overwhelmingly dominant cable TV news channel by as much as 73 percent of watchers, notes streamer Hasan Piker.
Robust civil society responses are the essential ingredient to assaults on information sources, and the efforts to build public complicity with Trumpism.
Looking ahead, former Obama deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, observes, “you intimidate media, you try to force them (to) bend them to your will, you use state funds, state sanctions.” Trump is “following the playbook of Orban. How far will Trump go?”
Interviewed on The Daily Blast podcast, former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan warned that Trump can “threaten to yank broadcast licenses” (as Trump has already threatened CBS and others). He can “pull back funding or leadership of organizations that come under control of the federal government.”
He “could go after journalists that have used information from a source that is classified making an example of them,” Sullivan says. Trump could also invoke the infamous 1917 Espionage Act “which has in the past been used to punish government officials who have taken classified information and given it to the press,” most notably against former National Security Advisor translator Reality Winner for leaking classified information reports about Russian interference in the 2016 election, but not yet against journalists themselves.
“I would expect to see Trump and his people looking for good examples that can be made of someone to do just that to, and therefor throw journalists in jail under the aegis of the Espionage Act.” One clear danger, she observes is “self-censorship on the part of journalists and news organizations because they are afraid of this kind of retribution.”
Robust civil society responses are the essential ingredient to assaults on information sources, and the efforts to build public complicity with Trumpism. To balance media complicity with Trump, Sullivan cites the 250,000 people who canceled their subscriptions to the Washington Post in anger at Bezos, and how MSNBC’s Morning Joe program saw its ratings plummet in its “coveted demographic by as much as 40 percent” after its hosts paid their fealty visit to Mar-a-Lago. “That has to send a message, and it sends a message where it can be heard… most when it cuts into profits or the possibility of profits.”
That, and so much more, will be the test for us all.
When Adolph Hitler was handed the German chancellorship in 1933 after bullying a broken and dying Weimer Republic, he had won just 32 percent of the vote. Though his Nazi party was in political regression and nearly bankrupt, within a few months Hitler smashed the old order and built a monstrous dictatorship that would last 12 blood-drenched years.
With Trump 2.0, we too face the advent of an administration seeking to destroy the existing system and build its own scaffolding of a new order Trump and his most fervent MAGA strategists hope will rule for 50 years to come, as confidant Steve Bannon predicts. With most of the old guard Republicans who were reputed to provide guard rails during his first four years discarded, it is important to learn from means employed by other dictators.
From past tyrants like Mussolini, Pinochet, Franco, and Hitler to their descendants today who Trump admires, like Putin and Orban, there are common tactics that paved their way. Those steps to absolute power, as Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes in Strongmen, include the use of political violence, scapegoating, vilification, and persecution of targeted groups, with ample use of racism, misogyny, xenophobia and other bigotry alongside the fabrication of domestic crises requiring emergency action.
Two strongmen strategies warrant particular focus. First, securing support of national political parties and elites and acceptance by most of the population, the latter partly achieved through control of information sources. Trump has made inroads in both realms.
After being gifted the chancellorship by a failing democracy and business class who mistakenly thought they could control him, Hitler’s immediate priority was to establish a national consensus
Trump has muscled unquestioned loyalty of the Republican Party, and weak resistance by a Democratic Party establishment that appears to detest the left more than it does the far right. As to the oligarchy, the 2024 election cycle’s top seven donors funded the Republican Party with gifts as high as $200 million. The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has become a virtual co-president. The second wealthiest, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg just paid a post-election kiss the ring visit to Mar-a-Lago after recently passing now third on the list, Jeff Bezos, who notoriously blocked a Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris.
Wall Street is “already making big bets” as “investors have sent prices zooming for stocks of banks, fossil-fuel producers and other companies expected to benefit from Trump’s preference for lower tax rates and lighter regulation.” Despite Trump’s phony anti-Wall Street rhetoric, a very different message was sent by his pick of billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, described by Robert Reich as “the opposite of a bomb-thrower” for the key financial post of Treasury Secretary. And, the stock market closed November with its biggest monthly gains in a year.
After being gifted the chancellorship by a failing democracy and business class who mistakenly thought they could control him, Hitler’s immediate priority was to establish a national consensus writes Peter Fritzsche in Hitler’s First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich, as described in a review by Christopher Browning.
The Nazis “benefited enormously from the yearning of millions of Germans for a ‘new start’ after years of crisis and deadlock,” writes Browning. “Transformation of the German mood” was fueled initially by a desire to end political violence, mostly driven by Hitler’s Brownshirt militia, and Hitler’s promise “to preserve law and order.” Though the U.S. hardly faces the same Depression era conditions, the deadlock, mostly produced by Republican obstructionism, and Trump’s demagogy about immigration “invasions” and lies about rising violent crime, are a parallel. “The framing of crisis is most particular to authoritarian rule,” notes Ben-Ghiat. “Crisis justifies states of emergency and the scapegoating of enemies who endanger the country from inside the nation or across the border.”
Hitler manufactured a “restored Volksgemeinschaft,” or people’s community, to produce “willing identification and consent from a significant majority of Germans” and “necessity of compliance,” wrote Fritzche. It is “now understood as defined by racial exclusion rather than political, social, and religious inclusion.” The goal was “ideological congruence” that led to the “great achievement of the Third Reich”—getting Germans “to see themselves as the Nazis did” with a “new lease on collective life… to make Germany great” again.
For Trump and his MAGA movement, the first signs of a similar goal are evident from an election in which Trump achieved electoral gains over his 2020 defeat. A mid-November CBS poll found that 52 percent of Americans believe “fundamental changes are needed in our political system,” 54 percent are “happy” or “satisfied” Trump won, 53 percent are “excited” or “optimistic” about “what Trump will do as president,” 37 percent want him to “have more presidential power” than he did in his first term, 42 percent think he will “protect your rights and freedoms,” 59 percent approve of how he is handling his transition, and 57 percent support his most prominent pledge for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. As Pod Save America’s Dan Pfeiffer warned on Bluesky, “the imprimatur of significant public support is dangerous. It emboldens Trump and his allies and could zap the courage of Democrats.”
Information control is crucial to building wide national acceptance that all tyrants seek. “Propagandistic manipulation of public opinion replaced debate about complicated ideas,” pointed out Robert Paxton in his book The Anatomy of Fascism. “Fascism offered defenders of a cultural canon new propaganda skills along with a new shamelessness about using them.”
Ben-Ghiat describes how in 1933, Germany had more newspapers than Britain, France, and Italy combined. Hitler rapidly closed newspapers, fired and imprisoned thousands of journalists, and made editors and publishers police their own publications. Putin “early in his presidency presided over hostile takeovers of TV networks to gain control of news and political broadcasting and put resources into his preferred network.”
Former White House Counsel Ian Bassin emphasizes that “a key Orbán tactic” in Hungary to dismantle their democracy was “that his allies bought media outlets that were critical of the regime and turned them into loyal cheerleaders for the regime.”
Trump has long branded major U.S. media as an “enemy of the people,” and not subtly encouraged violence by his most rabid supporters against media outlets and journalists.
The increasingly autocratic Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another Trump ally, has censored Israeli media to block internal coverage of the horror of his war crimes in Gaza, and “raided and shut down Al Jazeera offices in Israel and the West Bank.” On November 24, the Israeli Cabinet that Netanyahu controls sanctioned the leading independent news outlet Haaretz by cutting government advertising and subscriptions for employees of state owned companies, and barred communication with Haaretz by government-funded entities.
“The decision to boycott Haaretz …is not a stand-alone event. It is part of a well-crafted master plan to weaken and then destroy the free press and independent media in Israel… and to shut down any news outlet that doesn't totally align with the government,” said Israeli journalist Anat Saragusti on Pod Save the World.
Trump has long branded major U.S. media as an “enemy of the people,” and not subtly encouraged violence by his most rabid supporters against media outlets and journalists. During the 2024 campaign he mostly boycotted mainstream media, focusing instead on rightwing broadcast, social media and podcasts for communicating with voters. Exit polls found a high percentage of Trump voters obtained most of their news from those sources. Fox News further cemented its hold as the overwhelmingly dominant cable TV news channel by as much as 73 percent of watchers, notes streamer Hasan Piker.
Robust civil society responses are the essential ingredient to assaults on information sources, and the efforts to build public complicity with Trumpism.
Looking ahead, former Obama deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, observes, “you intimidate media, you try to force them (to) bend them to your will, you use state funds, state sanctions.” Trump is “following the playbook of Orban. How far will Trump go?”
Interviewed on The Daily Blast podcast, former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan warned that Trump can “threaten to yank broadcast licenses” (as Trump has already threatened CBS and others). He can “pull back funding or leadership of organizations that come under control of the federal government.”
He “could go after journalists that have used information from a source that is classified making an example of them,” Sullivan says. Trump could also invoke the infamous 1917 Espionage Act “which has in the past been used to punish government officials who have taken classified information and given it to the press,” most notably against former National Security Advisor translator Reality Winner for leaking classified information reports about Russian interference in the 2016 election, but not yet against journalists themselves.
“I would expect to see Trump and his people looking for good examples that can be made of someone to do just that to, and therefor throw journalists in jail under the aegis of the Espionage Act.” One clear danger, she observes is “self-censorship on the part of journalists and news organizations because they are afraid of this kind of retribution.”
Robust civil society responses are the essential ingredient to assaults on information sources, and the efforts to build public complicity with Trumpism. To balance media complicity with Trump, Sullivan cites the 250,000 people who canceled their subscriptions to the Washington Post in anger at Bezos, and how MSNBC’s Morning Joe program saw its ratings plummet in its “coveted demographic by as much as 40 percent” after its hosts paid their fealty visit to Mar-a-Lago. “That has to send a message, and it sends a message where it can be heard… most when it cuts into profits or the possibility of profits.”
That, and so much more, will be the test for us all.
The new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator joins "a team of snake oil salesmen and anti-science flunkies that have already shown disdain for the American people and their health," said one critic.
Echoing a party-line vote by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee last week, the chamber's Republicans on Thursday confirmed President Donald Trump's nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, former televison host Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Since Trump nominated Oz—who previously ran as a Republican for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania—a wide range of critics have argued that the celebrity cardiothoracic surgeon "is profoundly unqualified to lead any part of our healthcare system, let alone an agency as important as CMS," in the words of Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
After Thursday's 53-45 vote to confirm Oz, Weissman declared that "Republicans in the Senate continued to just be a rubber stamp for a dangerous agenda that threatens to turn back the clock on healthcare in America."
Weissman warned that "in addition to having significant conflicts of interest, Oz is now poised to help enact the Trump administration's dangerous agenda, which seeks to strip crucial healthcare services through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act from hundreds of millions of Americans and to use that money to give tax breaks to billionaires."
"As he showed in his confirmation hearing, Oz will also seek to further privatize Medicare, increasing the risk that seniors will receive inferior care and further threatening the long-term health of the Medicare program. We already know that privatized Medicare costs taxpayers nearly $100 billion annually in excess costs," he continued, referring to Medicare Advantage plans.
CMS is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, now led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who, like Oz, came under fire for his record of dubious claims during the confirmation process. Weissman said that "Dr. Oz is joining a team of snake oil salesmen and anti-science flunkies that have already shown disdain for the American people and their health. This is yet another dark day for healthcare in America under Trump."
In the middle of Trump's tariff disaster, the Senate is voting to confirm quack grifter Dr. Oz to lead the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services.
[image or embed]
— Jen Bendery (@jbendery.bsky.social) April 3, 2025 at 12:29 PM
Oz's confirmation came a day after Trump announced globally disruptive tariffs and Senate Republicans unveiled a budget plan that would give the wealthy trillions of dollars in tax cuts at the expense of federal food assistance and healthcare programs.
"While Dr. Oz would rather play coy, this is no hypothetical. Harmful cuts to Medicaid or Medicare are unavoidable in the Trump-Republican budget plan that prioritizes another giant tax break for the president's billionaire and corporate donors," Tony Carrk, executive director of the watchdog group Accountable.US, said ahead of the vote.
"None of Dr. Oz's 'miracle' cures that he's peddled over the years will help seniors when their fundamental health security is ripped away to make the rich richer," Carrk continued. "And while privatizing Medicare may enrich Dr. Oz's family and big insurance friends, it will cost taxpayers far more and leave millions of patients vulnerable to denials of care and higher out-of-pocket costs."
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), was similarly critical, saying after the vote that "at a time when our population is growing older and the need for access to home care, nursing homes, affordable prescription drugs, and quality medical care has never been greater, Americans deserve better than a snake oil salesman leading the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services."
"Dr. Mehmet Oz has been shilling pseudoscience to line his own pockets. He can't be trusted to defend Medicare and Medicaid from billionaires who want to dismantle and privatize the foundation of affordable healthcare in this country," the union leader added. "AFSCME members—including nurses, home care and childcare providers, social workers and more—will be watching and fighting back against any effort to weaken Medicare and Medicaid. The 147 million seniors, children, Americans with disabilities, and low-income workers who rely on these programs for affordable access to healthcare deserve nothing less."
"While your kids are getting ready for school, kids in Gaza were once against just massacred in one," said one observer.
Israeli airstrikes targeted at least three more school shelters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing dozens of Palestinians and wounding scores of others on a day when local officials said that more than 100 people were slain by occupation forces.
Gaza's Government Media Office said that at least 29 people—including 14 children and five women—were killed and over 100 others were wounded when at least four missiles struck the Dar al-Arqam school complex in the Tuffah neighborhood of eastern Gaza City, where hundreds of Palestinians were sheltering after being forcibly displaced from other parts of the embattled coastal enclave by Israel's 535-day assault.
Al Jazeera reported that "when terrified men, women, and children fled from one school building to another, the bombs followed them," and "when bystanders rushed to help, they too became victims."
Warning: Video contains graphic images of death.
A first responder from the Palestine Red Crescent Society—which is reeling from this week's discovery of a mass grave containing the bodies of eight of its members, some of whom had allegedly been bound and executed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops—told Al Jazeera that "we were absolutely shocked by the scale of this massacre," whose victims were "mostly women and children."
An official from Gaza's Civil Defense, five of whose members were also found in the mass grave on Sunday, said: "What's going on here is a wake-up call to the entire world. This war and these massacres against women and children must stop immediately. The children are being killed in cold blood here in Gaza. Our teams cannot perform their duties properly.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Zaher al-Wahidi said that the death toll was likely to rise, as some survivors were critically injured.
Dozens of victims were reportedly trapped beneath rubble of Thursday's airstrikes, but they could not cbe rescued due to a lack of equipment.
The IDF claimed that "key Hamas terrorists" were targeted in a strike on what it called a "command center." Israeli officials routinely claim—often with little or no evidence—that Palestinian civilians it kills are members of Hamas or other militant resistance groups.
Israel also bombed the nearby al-Sabah school, killing four people, as well as the Fahd School in Gaza City, with three reported fatalities.
Some of the deadliest bombings in the war have been carried out against refugees sheltering in schools, many of them run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—at least 280 of whose staff members have been killed by Israeli forces during the war.
The United Nations Children's Fund has called Gaza "the world's most dangerous place to be a child." Last year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called "List of Shame" of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts. More than 17,500 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Thursday's school bombings sparked worldwide outrage and calls to hold Israel accountable.
"While your kids are getting ready for school, kids in Gaza were once against just massacred in one," Australian journalist, activist, and progressive politician Sophie McNeill wrote on social media. "We must sanction Israel now!"
There were other IDF massacres on Thursday, with local officials reporting that more than 100 people were killed in Israeli attacks since dawn. Al-Wahidi said more than 30 people were killed in strikes on homes in Gaza City's Shejaya neighborhood, citing records at al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza.
Al Jazeera reported that al-Ahli's emergency room "is overwhelmed with casualties and, as is so often the case over the past 18 months, the victims are Gaza's youngest."
Thursday's intensified airstrikes came as Israeli forces pushed into the ruins of the southern city of Rafah. Local and international media reported that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families fled from the area, which Israel said it will seize as part of a new "security zone."
Human rights defenders around the world condemned U.S.-backed killing and mass displacement, with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—whose bid to block some sAmerican arms sales to Israel was rejected by the Senate on Thursday—saying: "There is a name and a term for forcibly expelling people from where they live. It is called ethnic cleansing. It is illegal. It is a war crime."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which last year issued arrest warrants for the pair over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
According to Gaza officials, Israeli forces have killed or wounded at least 175,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including upward of 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Almost everyone in Gaza has been forcibly displaced at least once, and the "complete siege" imposed by Israel has fueled widespread and sometimes deadly starvation and disease.
"Working-class candidate v. billionaire political race. I'm here for it," wrote one longtime progressive strategist.
Dan Osborn, an Independent U.S. Senate candidate who struck a chord with working-class voters in Nebraska and came within striking distance of unseating his Republican opponent last year, announced Thursday that he's considering another run, this time challenging GOP Sen. Pete GOP Ricketts, who is up for election in 2026.
"We could replace a billionaire with a mechanic," Osborn wrote in a thread on X on Thursday. "I'll run against Pete Ricketts—if the support is there." Osborn said that he's launching an exploratory committee and would run as Independent, as he did in 2024.
Ricketts has served as a senator since 2023, and prior to that was the governor of Nebraska from 2015-2023. By one estimate, Ricketts has a net worth of over $165 million—though the wealth of his father, brokerage founder Joe Ricketts, and family is estimated to be worth $4.1 billion, according to Forbes.
A mechanic and unionist who helped lead a strike against Kellogg's cereal company, Osborn lost to Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) by less than 7 points in November 2024 in what became an unexpectedly close race.
Although he didn't win, he overperformed the national Democratic ticket by a higher percentage than other candidates running against Republicans in competitive Senate races, according to The Nation.
"Billionaires have bought up the country and are carving it up day by day," said Osborn Thursday. "The economy they've built is good for them, bad for us. Good for huge multinationals and multibillionaires. Bad for workers. Bad for small businesses, bad for family farmers. Bad for anyone who wants Social Security to survive. Bad for your PAYCHECK."
Osborn cast the potential race as between "someone who's spent his life working for a living and will never take an order from a corporation or a party boss" and "someone who's never worked a day in his life and is entirely beholden to corporations and party."
"We could take on this illness, the billionaire class, directly," he said.
Osborn, who campaigned on issues like Right to Repair and lowering taxes on overtime payments, earned praise from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who told The Nation in late November that Osborn's bid should be viewed as a "model for the future."
Osborn "took on both political parties. He took on the corporate world. He ran as a strong trade unionist. Without party support, getting heavily outspent, he got through to working-class people all over Nebraska. It was an extraordinary campaign," Sanders said.
In reaction to the news that Osborn is exploring a second run, a former Sanders campaign manager and longtime progressive Democratic strategist Faiz Shakir, wrote: "working-class candidate v. billionaire political race. I'm here for it."