Latest news with #BariWeiss
Fox News
a day ago
- Health
- Fox News
CNN's Tapper rips media smear campaign against Hur, WSJ report on Biden decline without mentioning own network
CNN anchor Jake Tapper has taken aim at the media's treatment of those who sounded the alarm about former President Joe Biden's cognitive decline before it was fully exposed at the now-infamous presidential debate, despite the fact that his own network was guilty of lobbing such attacks. As Biden was actively seeking reelection, there were two explosive moments that drew attention to his mental acuity before the debate. The first was in February 2024 with the release of the Hur report, which determined the Justice Department would not seek criminal charges over the then-president's mishandling of classified information, in part because a jury would deem him as a "sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory." The report also revealed Biden couldn't remember key dates, such as when he was in office and when his son Beau died. The second was in June 2024, weeks before the debate, when The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report titled, "Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping," a months-long investigation by reporters Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes involving more than 45 sources who were either directly involved or briefed on meetings with Biden, who they said "appears slower now, someone who has both good moments and bad ones." On Bari Weiss' "Honestly" podcast Thursday, Tapper spoke about how the Biden White House went to "war" with Special Counsel Robert Hur, who he described to Weiss as a "serious civil servant," and how members of the media participated. "A lot of people in the media are very complicit and part of the smear machine against Robert Hur," Tapper told Weiss. "Robert Hur is smeared and cannot get a job for months. And he was – honestly, if you look back at what he said, that was polite!" He also praised "great reporters" Linksey and Hughes, noting they, too, were viciously attacked. "[They] are garroted by the Democratic Party and by journalists and by media critics, and by journalism professors and this whole industry of people who claim to be non-partisan assessors of truth… that had to have been traumatizing for them," Tapper said. What Tapper failed to mention was that CNN was among those "complicit" in Team Biden's attacks on Hur and The Wall Street Journal. Jim Acosta, who at the time was Tapper's CNN colleague, wondered aloud if Hur's assessment was "out of bounds," while CNN commentator and former Biden White House communications director Kate Bedingfield accused Hur of "editorializing" his report, and then-CNN political analyst John Avlon wondered why "some spin on the ball" was included. One of CNN's go-to legal experts, Jeffrey Toobin, scolded Hur for making "unnecessary points" about Biden's advanced age, characterizing the special counsel as a "Republican partisan" who "trashed" the president despite not bringing charges. "Part of that report was an outrage, was a disgrace," Toobin said at the time. "I mean, the idea that they that he would make such a big point of Biden being elderly is not something a prosecutor needed to do." CNN liberal pundit Paul Begala similarly attacked the "partisan Trumper" for "editorializing way out of his league," even suggesting Hur was motivated to seek revenge on Biden for voting against William Rehnquist, for whom Hur had clerked, during his Supreme Court confirmation as Chief Justice in 1986 when Biden served as a senator. "This guy has donated to Republicans. He is a partisan," Begala said. "The only job he had was to indict or not indict, and to add all this — the only thing he didn't add was the legal disclaimer that this is a political ad in support of Donald Trump. It was a total cheap shot." CNN's then-senior political analyst Gloria Borger immediately took Biden's side, insisting, "This is not a man who's going to forget the day his son died" and echoed Biden's falsehood that Hur was the one who brought up Beau's death in the interview when, in fact, it was the president. Perhaps Biden's biggest defender at CNN at the time was its media reporter, Oliver Darcy (who has since left the network), who declared Hur's depiction of Biden's mental state "didn't match reality." "The acknowledgement from some, but not all, news outlets on Tuesday about the true nature of Biden's deposition marked another embarrassing moment for the national press, which has floundered at pivotal moments in the lead up to the crucial 2024 presidential election," Darcy wrote in March 2024. "The deposition transcripts not only indicated that Biden appeared fairly sharp during his testimony, joking with investigators and retelling stories with granular detail, but that Hur was misleading in how he presented some of the information included in his report." "Hur chose to portray the president as a mentally diminished elderly man who struggled to recall basic information during his deposition, raising alarm bells about whether he had the fitness to serve in the nation's highest office. Hur's characterization of Biden played directly into a years-long campaign waged by Biden's political opponents and the powerful right-wing media machine to depict the president as a senile, aloof man," he continued. Following The Wall Street Journal's report, several CNN anchors stressed that the paper's story heavily relied on Republican criticism of Biden and called out former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who gave the only on-the-record statement, for appearing to flip-flop on Biden's sharpness in previous comments (the Journal reporters later explained it as a tactical PR move at the time for McCarthy to bolster cooperation with the Biden White House). CNN's Boris Sanchez grilled Hughes over Democratic allegations that her story was "slanted," a question that would be unfathomable to a journalist covering Donald Trump. Darcy erupted at The Wall Street Journal, insisting its reporting "suffers from glaring problems," lecturing the paper it "owes its readers — and the public — better." "It is difficult to imagine that the newspaper, or any outlet, would run a similar story declaring that Trump is 'slipping' behind the scenes based on the word of top Democratic figures — despite the fact that the Democratic leadership has demonstrated a much stronger relationship with the truth in recent years than their Republican counterparts," Darcy wrote. "More broadly speaking, The Journal's piece pointed to a continued problem roiling the news media as it covers the 2024 election. Trump is permitted to fall asleep in court and make nonsensical public statements on a routine basis without any serious questions raised about his mental acuity," the ex-CNN pundit continued. "Meanwhile, Biden is judged on an entirely different standard." A spokesperson for CNN declined to comment.
The Guardian
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The anti-woke warriors used to defend free speech. Now they make McCarthyism look progressive
Thoughts and non-denominational prayers to all the anti-woke warriors out there. It may seem as though everything is going their way now Donald Trump is back with a vengeance, but the poor things have run into a bit of a branding problem. For years, the anti-woke crowd positioned themselves as fearless free thinkers taking on the intolerant left. The journalist Bari Weiss wrote a fawning New York Times piece in 2018 describing rightwing voices such as Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens as 'renegades of the intellectual dark web' (IDW). Now, however, the people who used to position themselves as oppressed truth-tellers operating in what Weiss's article called an 'era of That Which Cannot Be Said', have a state-sanctioned microphone. They've won. But in winning they've made it difficult to continue the charade that they give a damn about 'cancel culture'. Look around: some of these self-styled free speech warriors are doing everything they can to ruin the lives of everyone who doesn't 100% agree with them. Most conservatives don't seem to mind that their hypocrisy is now on full display. But, according to a recent piece on the news site Semafor, a handful of people within the anti-woke media ecosystem are starting to have something of an identity crisis. 'One didn't have to be especially prescient to spot those 'anti-woke' types who would just slowly become Maga flunkies,' said the libertarian journalist Michael Moynihan, who had a short stint at Weiss's publication the Free Press before becoming disillusioned. Remember when the right railed against people losing jobs for old comments they'd made? In 2018, for example, the Atlantic fired the conservative columnist Kevin Williamson after the backlash about a 2014 podcast appearance in which the 60-year-old had suggested women should face hanging for having an abortion. Cue a million furious tweets from the 'renegades of the IDW' about how, as Ben Shapiro put it on X, 'virtually everyone is vulnerable if they run afoul of the Left's interests'. Now, however, there's no denying that virtually everyone is vulnerable if they run afoul of the right's interests. Semafor's piece notes that 'One [Free Press] investigation that exposed two low-profile employees at PBS who had focused on diversity and got them fired rubbed even some of its allies the wrong way'. At least the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) employees at PBS 'only' got fired. Canary Mission and Betar US, two pro-Israel groups, have been compiling 'deportation' lists of pro-Palestinian activists on college campuses and sharing them with the Trump administration. Betar US has also warned that it is going to expand its focus beyond immigrants to naturalised US citizens. These organisations are just a couple of cogs in a massive dissent-crushing machine. The Christian nationalist Heritage Foundation, which spearheaded Project 2025, is behind a dystopian plan called Project Esther that cynically weaponises very real concerns about antisemitism to shut down criticism of Israel and quash pro-Palestinian activism. And you can bet these censorious projects won't end with Palestinians: at the rate we're going, pro-choice sentiment will soon be considered 'anti-Christian' and anyone espousing it will get deported. If that sounds far-fetched, let me remind you that last month the veterans affairs department ordered staff to report their colleagues for 'anti-Christian bias'. Drunk on their power to deport and defame, some on the right have officially lost the plot. For months a number of conservative voices have been engaged on a mission to cancel Ms Rachel, a children's entertainer whose real name is Rachel Accurso. If you have small children, Ms Rachel needs no introduction. For everyone else, she wears a pink headband and sings songs such as Icky Sticky Bubble Gum. Ms Rachel's videos have always been gently inclusive: she incorporates sign language and she has frequently had Jules Hoffman, a non-binary musician, on her show. On her personal social media she has also advocated for issues such as paid family leave. The right tried to cancel Ms Rachel over Hoffman's gender identity back in 2023. Now they're trying to cancel the beloved star again; this time for the 'crime' of speaking up about Palestinian kids and featuring a three-year-old double amputee from Gaza in a video. The fact Accurso is humanising Palestinian children is driving some rightwing voices so berserk that they're smearing her as antisemitic, asking the US attorney general for an investigation, and spreading the ridiculous and completely baseless lie (which the New York Times bizarrely chose to amplify) that she is being funded by Hamas. Welcome to our 'new era of That Which Cannot Be Said': one that may make McCarthyism seem progressive. It would seem the new renegades of the intellectual dark web are those of us who think you shouldn't bomb starving babies in their sleep just because they are Palestinian. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
Axios
24-04-2025
- Business
- Axios
Independent journalists prioritize community building for growth
Influential journalists who have positioned themselves as subject matter experts and amassed large followings are ditching traditional outlets to venture out on their own. Why it matters: These independent journalists are grappling with the same challenges that many communication and brand teams face. That is, how do they differentiate themselves in the market and establish a strong reputation with the audiences that matter most? State of play: As trust in media declines, independent journalists are pivoting away from writing for passive readerships and toward building a hyper-engaged community — and it's proving to be quite lucrative. The Free Press, founded by former New York Times writer Bari Weiss, boasts more than 155,000 paid subscribers and is estimated to generate at least $10 million annually from subscription revenue, per Axios' Sara Fischer. Former Bloomberg reporter Eric Newcomer announced that his independent media entity, Newcomer, brought in $2 million in revenue in 2024 and he has recently made his first round of hires. Former CNN reporter Oliver Darcy's Status newsletter has accumulated more than 70,000 total subscribers since its launch and is estimated to generate $1 million in annual recurring revenue. The latest big-name journalist to make this pivot is former Forbes editor Alex Konrad, who last month launched Upstarts Media, covering the startup ecosystem. The big picture: The volatility of the news industry, paired with the growth of publishing platforms, has made independent journalism more appealing but has also led to more media fragmentation. The formats and distribution channels are also evolving, with news personalities like Jim Acosta and Chris Matthews hosting daily live shows on these creator-owned platforms like Substack, for example. Between the lines: Independent ventures enable journalists to become hyper-specific on coverage areas and desired audiences — and it allows them to engage with these audiences as they wish. Konrad created a WhatsApp group for the founding subscribers to his Upstarts newsletter, in which he actively hosts conversations. Substack writer Emily Sundberg is known for engaging in real-time through her comments section. Driving the news: Christine Choi, partner at early stage venture capital firm M13, gathered several journalists who ditched traditional newsrooms to build their own media empires — like Newcomer, Konrad, Polina Pompliano and Zack Guzmán — to help make sense of the evolving landscape for a room full of investors, founders and communication professionals. Media entrepreneurs like Business Insider co-founder Henry Blodget, Quartz co-founder and CEO of Charter media Kevin Delaney and Capital Allocators founder Ted Seides were also in the crowd. What they're saying: In-person events are a major component of community building, Konrad told me during our on-stage conversation at the M13 event. "The media landscape and technological trends [are] pushing us towards community, towards a direct relationship with your audience," he said. "The most important thing about events is to have a moment where I can talk to a bunch of people that matter to [the startup] ecosystem and help them meet other people within the ecosystem. "It's not just revenue for me. It's about seeing that close connection with our audiences grow."
The Guardian
24-04-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
David Sirota, Arjun Singh, Ariella Markowitz and Natalie Bettendorf
'I am a gay woman who is moderately pro-choice – I know that there are some people in this room who don't believe that my marriage should have been legal,' the rightwing impresario Bari Weiss told a Federalist Society gathering in 2023. 'And that's OK. Because we're all Americans who want lower taxes.' The assembled conservatives guffawed at hearing the quiet part out loud: in this case, the admission that tax cuts for the rich have been the glue holding the US conservative movement together. And yet, less than two years after Weiss's speech, the epoxy seems to be less sticky. In recent weeks, polls have shown Republican voters becoming far more skeptical of across-the-board tax reduction proposals. Reflecting that shift, GOP lawmakers are now trial-ballooning a proposal to increase some taxes on the wealthy. Some Maga voices are attempting to articulate a Republican-leaning, tax-cut version of Democrats' traditional redistributionist rhetoric, arguing that higher taxes on millionaires should finance bigger tax cuts for the working class. All of this has the Washington swamp's old-guard Republicans in a panic; one longtime anti-tax leader insisted that 'there are traitors inside the Trump White House,' and another declared: 'This is a potential crisis in the party – it sounds like Bernie Sanders economics.' So what happened? Why is the anti-tax argument losing its unifying power among Republicans? As the Lever's new investigative audio series Tax Revolt details, the answer may lie in that movement's key revelation a half-century ago. In the mid-1970s, the Republican party was adrift, demoralized and divided amid both the post-Watergate backlash and the Republican president Gerald Ford's attempt to raise taxes in pursuit of halting inflation and plugging federal budget holes. A young journalist named Jude Wanniski had an epiphany when at a lunch meeting, he watched the economist Arthur Laffer draw a curve on a napkin to argue to the Ford staffers Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld that cutting taxes could raise companies' revenues. Two years later, Wanniski penned a grand unifying 'Santa Claus Theory', arguing that Republicans had 'continued to play Scrooge, carping against increased spending without ever offering the obvious alternative': tax reduction. He concluded: 'Republicans, traditionally the party of income growth, should be the Santa Claus of tax reduction,' offering it as a supposed gift to Americans – and understand that 'the first rule of successful politics is Never Shoot Santa Claus.' It was a revelation for a new generation of conservatives seeking to create a sunnier, more optimistic image for the GOP in the wake of Barry Goldwater's cranky campaign and Richard Nixon's downfall. Younger, more telegenic Republican leaders such as Representative Jack Kemp passed the essay around to colleagues, urging them to reimagine tax cuts not solely as a means to demonize government, but also as a way to court the working class with promises of life-bettering benefits. The dual message of so-called 'supply-side economics' soon found its Santa Claus in the anti-tax governor turned anti-tax president Ronald Reagan. 'As government's hunger for ever more revenues expanded, families saw taxes cut deeper and deeper into their paychecks,' Reagan said before signing federal legislation to cut the top marginal tax rate. 'This tax bill is less a reform than a revolution. Millions of working poor will be dropped from the tax rolls altogether, and families will get a long-overdue break with lower rates.' High-income tax cuts became the Republican party's economic policy priority – and depicting such gifts to the wealthy as a boon to the working class became the GOP's political strategy. Indeed, Reagan, George W Bush and Donald Trump each championed tax cut legislation that delivered disproportionate benefits to the rich, and fueled an explosion of economic inequality – all while presenting their agenda as fight-for-the-little-guy populism. 'I promised we would pass a massive tax cut for the everyday, working American families who are the backbone and the heartbeat of our country,' Trump said on the eve of signing his $1.9tn tax cut bill in 2017. 'We're just days away [from] keeping that promise and delivering a truly amazing victory for American families. We want to give you, the American people, a giant tax cut for Christmas.' This sales pitch became ubiquitous, and most political prognosticators assumed it would always be effective. But survey data suggests that most Americans have come to realize that while Tax Cut Santa Claus has been stashing big gifts under billionaires' Christmas trees, he's been leaving everyone else's stockings empty. Whereas more than half of Americans approved of Reagan's first major high-income tax cut proposal, only about a third of Americans approved of Bush's similar tax proposal at the same time in his presidency. By the time Trump assumed office for his first term, less than a third of Americans supported his high-income tax cut initiative, knowing that such policies have failed to benefit them personally and failed to boost the macroeconomy. Fast forward to Trump's second term. In previous eras, a new Republican president delivering more tax cuts for the wealthy would be a foregone conclusion under Wanniski's Santa Claus theory. But that political hypothesis is now buckling under the weight of Trump's new $4.5tn proposal to extend his 2017 tax cuts. In its current form, the White House's initiative would deliver more than half its benefits to the richest 10% of the country. Coupled with spending cuts and tariffs, Trump's agenda would deliver a big income boost to the top 1%, while reducing the income of the bottom 80%, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. As Trump's legislative agenda hits Congress, opposition to more high-income tax cuts is strong not just among Democrats and independents, but also among Republicans. Morning Consult reports that 70% of GOP voters believe 'the wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes' – a whopping eight-point jump from six years ago. Moreover, 'roughly 7 in 10 voters, including 2 in 3 Republicans, support proposals to raise taxes on earners making more than $400,000.' Republican leaders are responding with the previously unthinkable: proposals to raise some taxes on the rich. Indeed, Trump reportedly floated the idea and some GOP lawmakers are considering creating a new top tax bracket. This has touched off an intraparty civil war. On one side are those who came of age in the Reagan and George W Bush epochs – Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, the former vice-president Mike Pence, Americans for Tax Reform's Grover Norquist, the hedge-funder-turned-GOP senator Dave McCormick, and the Club for Growth's Stephen Moore. This old guard believes Republicans can still get away with depicting billionaire giveaways as populism, and vilifying tax hikes on the rich. 'It's vicious and full of envy. It's a dumb idea. It's bad for the economy,' said Norquist, who spent the last quarter-century pressing Republicans to sign pledges to oppose all tax increases. 'What happened when George Herbert Walker Bush raised the top rate? Let's see, he lost the next election. We lost House and Senate seats and taxes went up and we had a recession.' On the other side are newfangled Maga voices – the former Mitt Romney staffer Oren Cass, Vice-President JD Vance, the former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, and reportedly Trump's budget director, Russell Vought. They sense political peril in Republicans presenting themselves as populists while their party enriches billionaires and corporations. 'We have to increase taxes on the wealthy,' Bannon said in December. This month he added that conservatives must prove 'Republicans are not the country club Republicans', which is 'why it's so important to not extend the tax cuts for the wealthy'. Of the old anti-tax crowd, Bannon added: 'They're arrogant and they refuse to look at the reality of the situation we're in … The times are totally different.' Of course, we've been at these junctures before – moments when Republicans seemed to sense political vulnerability on taxes. In 1985, Reagan tried to deflect Democrats' criticism of his tax policy by insisting: 'There is one group of losers in our tax plan – those individuals and corporations who are not paying their fair share or, for that matter, any share. These abuses cannot be tolerated.' Similarly, George W Bush momentarily pushed back against conservative aides pressing him to champion yet another tax cut for the rich. 'Didn't we already give them a break at the top?' he reportedly asked. But the powerful anti-tax movement of those eras convinced both Republican presidents to plow forward. Reagan followed up his first tax cut by further reducing the top tax rate, and Bush's sequel to his first tax cut was slashing taxes on corporate dividends. Trump could end up doing much the same. After all, ramming more tax cuts for the rich through Congress is the surest way for Trump to enrich himself, his family and the entire front row of his inauguration. But this time around, the long-term politics of taxes are in flux. Running the same tax play would show a Republican president siding with oligarchs against the preferences of his own party's rank and file that no longer buys the Santa Claus theory. That's a new and unpredictable dynamic – one that may finally begin weakening the anti-tax movement's grip on power in the years ahead. David Sirota is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Lever, an investigative news outlet. Arjun Singh, Ariella Markowitz and Natalie Bettendorf are producers of the outlet's weekly podcast Lever Time, which is releasing a new miniseries Tax Revolt, on the 50-year history of the anti-tax movement now culminating in the Trump tax cuts.
News.com.au
23-04-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
‘Limitless power': Conservative legal experts warn Donald Trump is breaking the law
Some of the most prominent legal experts in the United States, including several conservatives, have issued a fresh warning that the Trump administration is blatantly breaking the law. The Free Press, a publication founded by former New York Times and Wall Street Journal columnist Bari Weiss, surveyed seven such experts from across the political spectrum. The verdict was unanimous. 'The consensus is striking, and perhaps surprising, given the ideological diversity of these contributors,' The Free Press wrote. 'All agreed that the President's legal tactics reflect a dangerous willingness to ignore statutory and constitutional constraints, and that he must be reined in quickly.' Today President Trump drove home the point by confirming his desire to deport people from the United States without due process – something his administration has already been doing, most strikingly by sending migrants to a notoriously brutal jail in El Salvador. The American government claims these people are violent gang members, though most of them have no criminal record, and none of them were given a chance to contest the allegation before being deported. The US is paying El Salvador to hold them. It's unclear whether they will ever be released from El Salvador's Cecot prison, otherwise known as the 'Terrorism Confinement Centre'. 'I hope we get co-operation from the courts, because you know, we have thousands of people that are ready to go out,' Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office today. 'And you cannot have a trial for all of these people. The system was not meant, that not – we don't think there is anything that says – we are getting them out. And a judge cannot say, 'No, you have to have a trial.' The trial is going to take two years. 'No, we are going to have a very dangerous country if we are not allowed to do what we are entitled to do.' To justify deporting people by uncontestable fiat, Mr Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a law from the late 1700s designed to be used during wartime. It allows the President to remove nationals of a foreign country with whom the United States is at war; in this case he is claiming the presence of foreign gangs in the US constitutes an invasion. The law has been used thrice before, during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II. As previously mentioned, The Free Press invited opinions from seven different legal experts. I'm going to start with those more naturally aligned with Mr Trump's policies. First up, Ed Whelan, who served in the Bush administration and, before that, clerked for conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. 'The Department of Justice is pursuing the White House's political interests. So the de facto attorney-general, to whom nominal Attorney-General Pam Bondi and other top DOJ officials answer, appears to be White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, a non-lawyer whose sharp political skills include an inclination to utter brazen falsehoods,' Mr Whelan said. 'The White House has also marginalised DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel. That office has long had the responsibility to review a president's proposed executive orders and proclamations to ensure they are lawful. The Office of Legal Counsel has a strong institutional bias in favour of executive power, but its unwillingness to rubber-stamp Trump's decrees has rendered it unwelcome. The unsurprising result is that many of Trump's executive orders and proclamations have serious legal vulnerabilities. 'As someone who supports many of Trump's policy goals, I fear that the administration has no coherent legal strategy. Its temperamental disposition to see law as politics will not help it win legal battles. And its growing but wildly overblown perception of the judiciary as its enemy portends a stark conflict that will leave us all worse off.' Andrew McCarthy, a Fox News legal analyst and former prosecutor, brought up the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration has conceded it deported wrongly due to an 'administrative error'. It has, however, resisted court orders requiring it to bring him back to the United States, saying he is now in Salvadoran custody and therefore beyond American control. Mr McCarthy highlighted a recent ruling by federal judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, who was appointed to his position by conservative president Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. 'The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,' Judge Wilkinson wrote. 'Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. 'This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.' Mr McCarthy said the Trump administration is, on its face, acting 'lawlessly', and the real question here is why it's doing so. 'Is there a strategy? The somehow less disturbing possibility is that, having been the victim of ruinous lawfare – the leveraging of the government's law enforcement and intelligence apparatus against a political enemy – Trump is merely exacting retribution, as promised during the campaign,' he said. 'More perilous: having cowed the conservative, constitutionalist elements of the Republican Party and thus nullified Congress's formidable arsenal to check executive misconduct, the President seeks to eviscerate any remaining constraints on his power by illustrating that the courts and American institutions are impotent, too.' Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, is a constitutional originalist, placing him in the conservative camp as well. His argument to The Free Press was that Mr Trump's actions amount to 'major steps towards authoritarianism'. 'The second Trump administration is trying to undermine the Constitution on so many fronts that it's hard to keep track,' he said. 'But three are particularly dangerous: the usurpation of Congress's spending power; unconstitutional measures against immigration justified by bogus claims that the US is under 'invasion'; and assertions of virtually limitless presidential power to impose tariffs. 'The administration's claims that courts are powerless to order the return of illegally deported and imprisoned people menace not only immigrants, but American citizens. 'Under Trump's logic, they, too, could be deported and imprisoned abroad, and courts could not order their return. 'In sum, Trump has tried to impose unconstitutional, unaccountable, one-man rule over the federal budget, immigration policy, and foreign trade, thereby threatening civil liberties, the autonomy of states and private institutions, the US economy, and more. 'If not stopped, he will have taken major steps toward authoritarianism.' Our last conservative legal scholar is Jonathan Adler, a professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. 'No one thought that Donald Trump was particularly concerned with constitutional niceties,' Prof Adler noted. 'But some are still shocked at the aggressiveness with which the second Trump administration has challenged the rule of law, asserting authority denied by the Constitution, disregarding legal constraints enacted by Congress, and thumbing its nose at judicial orders. And doing so with the active co-operation of so many lawyers in the administration who have taken oaths to uphold the law and Constitution. 'The administration's declaration of unilateral authority to define the contours of American citizenship and deport individuals without affording them the barest degree of due process is a betrayal of constitutional values. 'Its insistence that the president can simply decree changes in federal law and disregard legislatively enacted constraints on agency authority are assaults on the rule of law.' Prof Adler argued that 'even where the Trump administration pursues laudable goals', it has tended to act with 'reckless disregard' for the law. 'As much as America needs a presidential administration willing to push back against the progressive excesses of the 21st century, it needs one capable of pursuing such ends without adopting the illiberal means and methods of its predecessors,' he said. 'Indeed, abandoning such principles, and inviting inevitable defeat in court, will compromise the goals the administration seeks to achieve.' Other experts surveyed by The Free Press were of a more progressive bent, and were therefore, if anything, harsher. Lawrence Lessig, for example, said the 'closest analogue' to the US government's current behaviour was 'the Mafia'. 'Never has a president behaved like this. It's not even close,' he argued. 'Sure, during actual wars, presidents have walked up to the line of executive authority. Maybe FDR and Lincoln crossed those lines. Legal historians are on both sides of those debates. But this president threatens with power he knows he does not have, even if he believes he will get away with threatening it. 'And in the face of this threat, the truly tragic reality is that the key institution designed to resist this threat, Congress, is incapable of mustering any resistance. The courts will do what they can, but courts were never built to address this kind of threat.'
