AMERICA IS A FASCIST STATE
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Opposed to anarchism, democracy, pluralism, egalitarianism, liberalism, socialism, and Marxism fascism is at the far right wing of the traditional left–right spectrum.
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Opposed to anarchism, democracy, pluralism, egalitarianism, liberalism, socialism, and Marxism fascism is at the far right wing of the traditional left–right spectrum.
AMERICA IS A ROGUE STATE
A nation or state regarded as breaking international law and posing a threat to the security of other nations.
A nation or state regarded as breaking international law and posing a threat to the security of other nations.
All the Things Trump Thinks He Owns
Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times
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by Jamelle Bouie
August 27, 2025
New York Times
The White House does not belong to Donald Trump. It is the property of the United States — of the American people. The president is a temporary resident whose claim on the building lasts only as long as his time in office, which is set by the Constitution.
The Smithsonian Institution does not belong to President Trump, either. It is not even part of the executive branch. It was established by Congress in 1846 as a “trust instrumentality,” an independent organization backed by the government and administered by a Board of Regents that consists of the chief justice and the vice president of the United States, federal lawmakers and private citizens. In the broad sense, then, the Smithsonian also belongs to the American people, as an expression of their interest in “the increase and diffusion of knowledge.”
And it should go without saying that Washington — a city of 700,000 people with its own government and elected leaders — is neither the president’s plaything nor his possession.
Of course none of this has kept the president from acting as if he does own the White House, the Smithsonian, the District of Columbia and practically everything else under the flag as well. It has not stopped him from paving over the historic Rose Garden or developing plans to construct a gaudy new ballroom for an Executive Mansion now adorned in the same manufactured, faux-baroque glamour as his other chintz-draped properties.
That Trump lacks any claim on the Smithsonian has not stopped him from trying to impose his vision of American history on its museums. His administration is in the process of trying to censor exhibits that in his view spend too much time on the ugly side of the American experience. “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” the president wrote on his Truth Social website. It is clear, from his mention of slavery, that the president has the National Museum of African American History in his cross hairs. But the White House review of the Smithsonian extends to other museums as well. The administration “aims to ensure alignment with the president’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”
And the president’s clear sense of ownership of Washington has expressed itself in the form of an armed military occupation of the most visible parts of the city. Trump has also called for a $2 billion “beautification” campaign to shape the city to his liking. It is not for nothing that he has hung large portraits of himself from federal buildings, in a flourish befitting the authoritarian and totalitarian societies he so deeply admires.
Relative to the worst of the Trump administration — the destruction of the nation’s capacity for scientific and medical research, the indiscriminate arrest of immigrants by roving bands of masked agents and its base-line lawlessness — the president’s move to treat the public property of the United States as part of his personal estate is a minor, almost trivial offense. Who does it hurt, really, if Trump wants to build a second Mar-a-Lago on the Potomac? Is it really an issue if the nation’s museums spend a little less time on slavery — especially if most attendees will learn about it elsewhere? And while the occupation of Washington is far from trivial, it is not hard to find prominent voices who think the president has a point about crime and disorder in the nation’s capital.
This is wrongheaded. Trump’s pretense to ownership of public goods and public spaces isn’t some quirk to be ignored or waited out — “There goes our Donald!” — but a direct expression of his autocratic ambitions and despotic cast of mind. We can almost see him as he sees himself, not as president of a republic — and subject to external constraints — but as an American Bonaparte (albeit more Louis Napoleon than the original) sitting astride the nation itself. Less a caretaker bound to the rhythms of constitutional time than a sovereign ruler of limitless authority.
Or as Trump said during his first term, “I have an Article II where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”
On Monday, the president held a news conference in the Oval Office while signing a number of executive orders. Flanked by his most loyal subordinates — some of whom took the opportunity to lavish him with obsequious praise — Trump took questions and monologued about the glories of his rule.
“We have tremendous things in every way,” he declared. “It’s hard to believe you can do that when you have a corrupt media. Many of you are corrupt. There’s nothing we can do about it. We keep winning and we are going to keep winning.”
The atmosphere was more regal than republican.
The executive orders themselves were presented as royal decrees. Under one, which purported to announce a new criminal offense, anyone caught burning the stars and stripes would be investigated for a kind of lèse-majesté and sent to prison if guilty. “If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail,” Trump said. “No early exits.” In another decree, the president announced the creation of a so-called rapid response force of National Guard troops, to be deployed wherever he says there is crime or disorder. Trump also mused about the extent of his own power as he mocked opponents of his domestic deployments. “They say we don’t need it — ‘freedom, freedom, he’s a dictator,’” sneered the president. “Maybe we would like a dictator,” he continued. “I don’t want a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense and a smart person.”
It should be obvious that the president doth protest too much. To watch this display, to take in this spectacle, was to see, in perfect limpid clarity, his desires made manifest. He may not want to be a dictator — that may be a little too modern for his tastes — but he clearly wants to be a king. As Trump said the next day during a televised cabinet meeting: “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States.”
Later on Monday, the president announced that he had fired Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, over allegations of mortgage fraud. This has less to do with a sincere interest in good government — again, this is Donald Trump we’re talking about — than it does the president’s embrace of radical theories of executive power, by which he claims total control over the executive branch, ignoring Congress, imposing his will on independent agencies and dismantling those parts of the federal bureaucracy that offend his sensibilities. Trump does not like Fed independence and sees Cook as his path to personal power over the nation’s monetary policy.
But Trump can’t fire anyone from the Federal Reserve Board, and Cook says she won’t resign. “President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no excuse exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so,” she said in a statement on Tuesday. “I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022.”
The president will no doubt try to pressure both Cook and her boss, Jerome Powell, but there’s no guarantee that he’ll succeed. Cook has the law on her side, and she may well prevail. Her choice to stand her ground is a reminder that while Trump may want to be a king, it is still up to us, as Americans, whether we treat him like one.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/08/28/us/trump-news-updates
LiveUpdated
August 28, 2025
New York Times
Trump Administration Live Updates:
Fed Governor Lisa Cook Sues President Over Firing She Calls ‘Unprecedented and Illegal’
Lisa Cook said that she would not step down from the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. Credit: Brittany Greeson for The New York Times
Where Things Stand:
Fed firing: Lisa Cook, a governor on the Federal Reserve Board, sued President Trump on Thursday, calling his attempt to fire her “unprecedented and illegal” and setting up a court fight with lasting implications for the central bank’s independence. The president has criticized the Fed for months and said he was dismissing Ms. Cook over accusations of mortgage fraud, even though she has not been charged with any wrongdoing. Ms. Cook’s suit also accuses Mr. Trump of violating her due process rights. Read more ›
C.D.C. director: The White House said late Wednesday that it had fired Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to remove her. Dr. Monarez, an infectious disease researcher, was sworn in a month ago by Mr. Kennedy, but was said to have clashed with him over vaccine policy. Read more ›
Deportations: The Salvadoran immigrant who was arrested again this week as officials sought to deport him for a second time has asked a judge to grant him asylum, his lawyers said on Wednesday. The request is another possible legal avenue for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to remain in the United States. Read more ›
by Tony Romm
August 28, 2025
Economic reporter
New York Times
With her lawsuit challenging her firing, Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor, sets the stage for a landmark legal battle over the future of the nation’s central bank.
Trump has coupled personal attacks on Cook with renewed demands that the central bank lower interest rates, and signaled he hoped soon to install governors who share his views on monetary policy, a campaign that features prominently in Cook’s lawsuit.
Notably, Cook’s lawsuit did not provide an explanation for why the Fed governor listed two residences as her primary residence — one of the allegations at the crux of her firing. Instead, lawyers say she was not afforded time to respond properly and formally to the accusations.
Aug. 28, 2025, 9:30 a.m. ET23 minutes ago
Tony RommBen Casselman and Colby Smith
Lisa Cook sues Trump for firing her from the Federal Reserve Board.
Economic reporter
New York Times
With her lawsuit challenging her firing, Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor, sets the stage for a landmark legal battle over the future of the nation’s central bank.
Trump has coupled personal attacks on Cook with renewed demands that the central bank lower interest rates, and signaled he hoped soon to install governors who share his views on monetary policy, a campaign that features prominently in Cook’s lawsuit.
Notably, Cook’s lawsuit did not provide an explanation for why the Fed governor listed two residences as her primary residence — one of the allegations at the crux of her firing. Instead, lawyers say she was not afforded time to respond properly and formally to the accusations.
Aug. 28, 2025, 9:30 a.m. ET23 minutes ago
Tony RommBen Casselman and Colby Smith
Lisa Cook sues Trump for firing her from the Federal Reserve Board.
Many experts have questioned the legality of President Trump’s firing of Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor. Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Lisa Cook, a governor on the Federal Reserve Board, sued President Trump on Thursday over his decision to fire her from the nation’s central bank, arguing that she should be immediately reinstated because the White House had no authority to order the dismissal.
Ms. Cook’s lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, sets the stage for a landmark legal battle with lasting implications for the Fed, an independent institution that Mr. Trump has savaged for months in a bid to install new political loyalists and force down interest rates. The lawsuit also listed the Fed and Jerome H. Powell, its chair, as defendants alongside Mr. Trump. That reflected their ability to take actions that adhered to the president’s orders, the lawsuit said.
Ms. Cook officially embarked on her legal campaign three days after Mr. Trump announced he would fire her in a letter posted to social media. The president claimed that Ms. Cook, who was confirmed by the Senate in 2022, had engaged in mortgage fraud, as he invoked a power in the Fed’s founding statute that allowed him to dismiss governors for cause.
But Ms. Cook, the first Black woman to serve as Fed governor, has not been charged or convicted of any crime. Many experts questioned the legality of Mr. Trump’s actions, pointing out that the allegations against Ms. Cook were unproven and involved conduct that predated her time at the Fed. Nor was Ms. Cook afforded an opportunity to review the evidence and respond to the claims formally, which struck many observers as legally problematic.
In a 24-page filing, lawyers for Ms. Cook described the firing as “unprecedented and illegal,” and said it would “subvert” the central bank’s congressionally mandated protections as laid out in the Federal Reserve Act. The filing said Mr. Trump violated Ms. Cook’s right to due process, highlighting that she had no chance to respond to the allegations before the president announced her termination.
The lawsuit did not provide an explanation for why Ms. Cook listed two residences as her primary residence, which is the issue at the crux of Mr. Pulte’s campaign against her. Instead, it sought to paint the firing as purely political and not based on anything other than a desire to oust a governor who was not ready to fall in line with the president’s directives on interest rates.
“The unsubstantiated mortgage fraud allegations that allegedly occurred prior to Governor Cook’s Senate confirmation do not amount to ‘inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,’” the lawsuit read, “nor has the President alleged that they do.”
The lawyers asked the district court to allow Ms. Cook to continue serving at the Fed on a temporary basis while she contested the legality of her firing. That could allow her to cast a vote on the direction of interest rates at the next Fed meeting to discuss borrowing costs in September.
Ms. Cook retained her own counsel in the lawsuit, and she is not represented by the Federal Reserve. The central bank in recent days has sought to emphasize its independence while offering no comment about the legality of Mr. Trump’s actions or the allegations levied against one of its own members, even though the case could carry stark ramifications for others on the Fed board, potentially leaving them vulnerable to dismissal by Mr. Trump.
A final verdict in the case is expected to take many months, and in the meantime, Mr. Trump has signaled he has started to explore potential replacements for Ms. Cook. His administration is also likely to appeal any ruling that reinstates Ms. Cook temporarily, priming the battle for the Supreme Court, where the justices in recent months have allowed the president to dismiss the leaders of some independent federal agencies at will.
While the justices have acknowledged there may be special protections afforded to the Fed, court observers say Ms. Cook’s case may nonetheless present a series of novel legal issues to resolve, including what constitutes a cause that would allow a president to fire a sitting governor. The term is generally understood to mean professional neglect or malfeasance, though it is not clearly defined in the Fed statute.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department also did not immediately respond.
Mr. Trump issued his order to fire Ms. Cook more than a week after the federal housing director, Bill Pulte, claimed he had unearthed evidence showing that the Fed governor had wrongly identified two homes as her primary residence on mortgage applications before she was appointed to the Fed. That, according to Mr. Pulte, allowed Ms. Cook to obtain favorable loan terms.
Mr. Pulte referred the matter to the Justice Department, which opened a criminal investigation, as he insisted his agency would continue to root out fraud. But his accusations fit a familiar pattern, one that has seen Mr. Pulte leverage the powers of his office — as the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency — to investigate or attack Mr. Trump’s most recognizable political enemies.
In doing so, both Mr. Trump and Mr. Pulte have frequently expressed their disdain for the Fed and its approach to interest rates, which the central bank has left unchanged for months out of concern that the president’s policies could cause inflation. The two men have each attacked the chairman of the Fed, Jerome H. Powell, while drumming up allegations that he committed fraud in overseeing a renovation of the central bank’s headquarters. At one point, Mr. Pulte privately encouraged Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Powell.
At a marathon cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Trump asserted that Ms. Cook had committed an “infraction,” explaining to reporters that “she can’t have an infraction, especially that infraction, because she’s in charge of, if you think about it, mortgages, and we need people that are 100 percent aboveboard.”
But Mr. Trump also appeared to rejoice at the prospect he might soon have a “majority very shortly” at the central bank. “Once we have a majority, housing is going to swing, and it’s going to be great,” he said. “People are paying too high an interest rate. That’s the only problem with housing.”
Another Fed governor, Adriana Kugler, abruptly announced she would step down from her post, even though her term did not end until January. In her place, Mr. Trump has said he plans to tap Stephen Miran, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, though the president said this week that he could alternatively put Mr. Miran up for Ms. Cook’s seat. His nomination requires Senate approval.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/opinion/trump-emergency-powers-washington.html
Opinion
Lisa Cook, a governor on the Federal Reserve Board, sued President Trump on Thursday over his decision to fire her from the nation’s central bank, arguing that she should be immediately reinstated because the White House had no authority to order the dismissal.
Ms. Cook’s lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, sets the stage for a landmark legal battle with lasting implications for the Fed, an independent institution that Mr. Trump has savaged for months in a bid to install new political loyalists and force down interest rates. The lawsuit also listed the Fed and Jerome H. Powell, its chair, as defendants alongside Mr. Trump. That reflected their ability to take actions that adhered to the president’s orders, the lawsuit said.
Ms. Cook officially embarked on her legal campaign three days after Mr. Trump announced he would fire her in a letter posted to social media. The president claimed that Ms. Cook, who was confirmed by the Senate in 2022, had engaged in mortgage fraud, as he invoked a power in the Fed’s founding statute that allowed him to dismiss governors for cause.
But Ms. Cook, the first Black woman to serve as Fed governor, has not been charged or convicted of any crime. Many experts questioned the legality of Mr. Trump’s actions, pointing out that the allegations against Ms. Cook were unproven and involved conduct that predated her time at the Fed. Nor was Ms. Cook afforded an opportunity to review the evidence and respond to the claims formally, which struck many observers as legally problematic.
In a 24-page filing, lawyers for Ms. Cook described the firing as “unprecedented and illegal,” and said it would “subvert” the central bank’s congressionally mandated protections as laid out in the Federal Reserve Act. The filing said Mr. Trump violated Ms. Cook’s right to due process, highlighting that she had no chance to respond to the allegations before the president announced her termination.
The lawsuit did not provide an explanation for why Ms. Cook listed two residences as her primary residence, which is the issue at the crux of Mr. Pulte’s campaign against her. Instead, it sought to paint the firing as purely political and not based on anything other than a desire to oust a governor who was not ready to fall in line with the president’s directives on interest rates.
“The unsubstantiated mortgage fraud allegations that allegedly occurred prior to Governor Cook’s Senate confirmation do not amount to ‘inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,’” the lawsuit read, “nor has the President alleged that they do.”
The lawyers asked the district court to allow Ms. Cook to continue serving at the Fed on a temporary basis while she contested the legality of her firing. That could allow her to cast a vote on the direction of interest rates at the next Fed meeting to discuss borrowing costs in September.
Ms. Cook retained her own counsel in the lawsuit, and she is not represented by the Federal Reserve. The central bank in recent days has sought to emphasize its independence while offering no comment about the legality of Mr. Trump’s actions or the allegations levied against one of its own members, even though the case could carry stark ramifications for others on the Fed board, potentially leaving them vulnerable to dismissal by Mr. Trump.
A final verdict in the case is expected to take many months, and in the meantime, Mr. Trump has signaled he has started to explore potential replacements for Ms. Cook. His administration is also likely to appeal any ruling that reinstates Ms. Cook temporarily, priming the battle for the Supreme Court, where the justices in recent months have allowed the president to dismiss the leaders of some independent federal agencies at will.
While the justices have acknowledged there may be special protections afforded to the Fed, court observers say Ms. Cook’s case may nonetheless present a series of novel legal issues to resolve, including what constitutes a cause that would allow a president to fire a sitting governor. The term is generally understood to mean professional neglect or malfeasance, though it is not clearly defined in the Fed statute.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department also did not immediately respond.
Mr. Trump issued his order to fire Ms. Cook more than a week after the federal housing director, Bill Pulte, claimed he had unearthed evidence showing that the Fed governor had wrongly identified two homes as her primary residence on mortgage applications before she was appointed to the Fed. That, according to Mr. Pulte, allowed Ms. Cook to obtain favorable loan terms.
Mr. Pulte referred the matter to the Justice Department, which opened a criminal investigation, as he insisted his agency would continue to root out fraud. But his accusations fit a familiar pattern, one that has seen Mr. Pulte leverage the powers of his office — as the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency — to investigate or attack Mr. Trump’s most recognizable political enemies.
In doing so, both Mr. Trump and Mr. Pulte have frequently expressed their disdain for the Fed and its approach to interest rates, which the central bank has left unchanged for months out of concern that the president’s policies could cause inflation. The two men have each attacked the chairman of the Fed, Jerome H. Powell, while drumming up allegations that he committed fraud in overseeing a renovation of the central bank’s headquarters. At one point, Mr. Pulte privately encouraged Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Powell.
At a marathon cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Trump asserted that Ms. Cook had committed an “infraction,” explaining to reporters that “she can’t have an infraction, especially that infraction, because she’s in charge of, if you think about it, mortgages, and we need people that are 100 percent aboveboard.”
But Mr. Trump also appeared to rejoice at the prospect he might soon have a “majority very shortly” at the central bank. “Once we have a majority, housing is going to swing, and it’s going to be great,” he said. “People are paying too high an interest rate. That’s the only problem with housing.”
Another Fed governor, Adriana Kugler, abruptly announced she would step down from her post, even though her term did not end until January. In her place, Mr. Trump has said he plans to tap Stephen Miran, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, though the president said this week that he could alternatively put Mr. Miran up for Ms. Cook’s seat. His nomination requires Senate approval.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/opinion/trump-emergency-powers-washington.html
Opinion
Why Trump Always Wants a Crisis
Credit: Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Listen to this article · 10:24 minutes
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by Jamelle Bouie
August 13, 2025
New York Times
How did the president justify the “public safety emergency” he used to deploy the National Guard to Washington and seize control of its local police force?
He said there was crime — “bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.”
“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people,” said President Trump in a stark attack on the nation’s capital. The solution? Military force. “We’re going to put it in control very quickly, like we did in the southern border.” The president later described Washington as more violent and dangerous than some of “the worst places on earth.”
None of this is true. The Justice Department itself announced in January that crime in the capital is, according to data from its Metropolitan Police Department, “the lowest it has been in over 30 years.” The M.P.D. cites a 26 percent decrease in total violent crime so far this year compared with the same period a year earlier. And the areas around the White House, where the president has made a point of stationing National Guardsmen, are not known for crime or disorder (unless you count the Jan. 6 rioters, pardoned by Trump in one of the first acts of his second term). Despite several high-profile incidents — including an assault on a young member of the “Department of Government Efficiency” — there is no evidence to support the president’s hellish depiction of the District.
But his claims are less reason than pretext. Trump is simply enthralled by the image of a crackdown, especially on those he’s deemed deviant. Recall that he wanted to use the Insurrection Act during the protests of the summer of 2020, asking his secretary of defense, Mark Esper, if soldiers could shoot protesters “in the legs or something.” In addition, and perhaps more than anything, he wants to appear in charge, whether or not he’s accomplishing his goals.
The president’s action in the capital — the first time a president invoked the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973 to take over the city’s police — is just the latest in a long list of so-called emergencies he has conjured up to claim unilateral authority over the American people.
In January, alleging an “invasion” of the country, Trump declared an emergency on the border as pretext for the use of federal troops for immigration enforcement. In March, he invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 with the claim that a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, was conducting “irregular warfare against the territory of the United States,” a definition of “warfare” that cuts against legal precedent and the plain meaning of the word. Trump used this emergency to unleash immigration authorities on anyone deemed a “gang member,” removing them to the brutal CECOT prison in El Salvador.
And in April, he announced a theretofore nonexistent national economic emergency, invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to “address the national emergency posed by the large and persistent trade deficit.” With this, Trump claimed the power to impose broad tariffs at his absolute discretion, beginning a trade war with much of the world.
In addition, Trump has invoked emergency powers to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court; to punish Brazil for its prosecution of its former president Jair Bolsonaro; and to threaten our northern neighbor, Canada, with import duties.
None of these were real emergencies. There was, and is, no external crisis facing the United States. But for reasons of both personality and political ambition, Trump needs a crisis to govern — or rather, to rule. And if the actual conditions of reality will not give him a state of exception, he’ll create one himself.
In his 1948 book “Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies,” the political scientist Clinton Rossiter observed that while the Constitution lacks a formal switch for emergency governance, Congress has, throughout the nation’s history, permanently vested the president with “vast discretionary powers to be exercised in time of war or other national emergency, usually to be determined and proclaimed by himself.”
This accretion of emergency powers continued well past the postwar period and into the present — a steady concentration of power in the person of the president. You could even argue, as Garry Wills did in “Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State,” that the advent of atomic weaponry and the subsequent Cold War produced “a permanent emergency” that has “made the abnormal normal, and constitutional diminishment the settled order.”
By this view, Trump represents a difference of degree — albeit an extreme one — and not a difference of kind from predecessors who ignored the law, denied constitutional protections and abused presidential authority under the guise of national security.
To the extent there is a limiting force on the use of emergency or crisis powers — before, during or after the 20th century — it is a president’s commitment to the constitutional system itself. Abraham Lincoln claimed vast new powers for the presidency that he justified as necessary evils to save the Union and preserve American liberty.
In the face of insurrection, he wrote to Congress in 1862, “It became necessary for me to choose whether, using only the existing means, agencies, and processes which Congress had provided, I should let the Government fall at once into ruin or whether, availing myself of the broader powers conferred by the Constitution in cases of insurrection, I would make an effort to save it, with all its blessings, for the present age and for posterity.”
In a nation made supposedly of laws, we have gambled on the discretion of men to keep the use of crisis authority in check. With Trump, we played a bad hand. Rather than treat emergency powers as a dangerous tool to be wielded with care and caution, this president has used them with reckless abandon as a toy — a means through which he can live his fantasies of strength, domination and authoritarian control.
Beyond the psychological impulse, there is a practical reason that Trump has embraced emergency powers and crisis government through pretense: He can’t do anything else. Look past his boastful claims of deal-making prowess and you’ll see a president who struggles to hold his own in a negotiation of equals and is too acutely solipsistic to persuade a skeptic of his own view. Even his much-vaunted (by subordinates and admirers) trade deals and agreements with institutions of higher education are less exchanges than a form of extortion, in which he uses threats of pain, punishment and legal action to impose a settlement.
Every occupant of the Oval Office is tempted by the immense powers of the presidency. A president with neither the disposition nor the ability to do the work of ordinary democratic politics — of deliberation, negotiation and compromise — is bound to abuse them. And this is all the more true for a president who doesn’t want order as much as he does submission and revenge.
Americans of the revolutionary generation were preoccupied with the problem of power. “For Mankind are generally so fond of Power that they are oftener tempted to exercise it beyond the Limits of justice than induced to set Bounds to it from the pure Consideration of the Rectitude of Forbearance,” observed Daniel Dulany, an influential Maryland lawyer, in 1765. Power was a necessary part of human affairs, but it had to be tamed lest it trample over liberty itself.
The British constitution — understood not as a written document but as, in the words of John Adams, “a frame, a scheme, a system, a combination of powers for a certain end, namely, the good of the whole community” — was thought to be perfectly balanced to restrain power in defense of liberty.
It did this by giving each segment of English society, the royalty, the nobility and the commons, its own role to play in the maintenance of the commonweal. “So long as each component remained within its proper sphere and vigilantly checked all efforts of the others to transcend their proper boundaries,” explained the historian Bernard Bailyn, “there would be a stable equilibrium of poised forces each of which, in protecting its own rights against the encroachments of the others, contributed to the preservation of the rights of all.”
Or, as the influential Massachusetts lawyer James Otis wrote in 1762, “This when the checks and balances are preserved, is perhaps the most perfect form of government, that in its present depraved state, human nature is capable of.”
(Otis then went on to add, in what reads as an ominous note given present circumstances: “It is a fundamental maxim in such a government, to keep the legislative, and executive powers, separate. When these powers are in the same hands, such a government is hastening fast to its ruin, and the mischiefs and miseries that must happen before that fatal period, will be as bad as those felt in the most absolute monarchy.”)
The issue for the colonists was that one of those powers, the crown, had reached outside its proper jurisdiction. It seized authority that it did not rightfully have. And in doing so, it threatened the rights and liberties of the people. It is part of the irony of the American experience that to restrain power, Americans built a government more powerful than that which they had before.
If Trump had an appreciation for that irony — which is to say, a sense of restraint — then we would be in calmer waters than we are now. Unfortunately, he sees power in precisely the way that 18th-century Americans feared: as an excuse to accumulate more power.
He is abusing lawful authority, as well as outright breaking the law, so that he can construct something above the law — an emergency government that imposes upon and runs roughshod over American freedom. And with every exercise of this ill-gotten power he desires more, proving the minister Jonathan Mayhew’s observation, made a short year before the Stamp Act crisis, that “Power is like avarice, its desire increases by gratification.”
The president’s most famous attribute is that nothing, for him, is ever enough. He has never had enough real estate, or enough wealth, or enough praise, adulation and worship. We should have realized, after his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, that he couldn’t have enough power, either. He still can’t. And only time will tell what that means for our efforts to govern ourselves.
I suspect that, as Trump inevitably works to extend his personal dominion over the entire country, we’ll find renewed value in the insights of our revolutionary forebears. We may even decide to put them to use.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va.
The C.D.C. director has been fired, the White House says, but she is refusing to leave.
Susan Monarez was sworn in as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just last month.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
The White House said late Wednesday that it had fired Susan Monarez, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after a tense confrontation in which Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to remove her from her position. A lawyer for Dr. Monarez said in response that she was refusing to step down.
Dr. Monarez, an infectious disease researcher, was sworn in just a month ago by Mr. Kennedy, but had clashed with the secretary over vaccine policy, people familiar with the events said. Four other high-profile C.D.C. officials quit en masse, apparently in frustration over vaccine policy and Mr. Kennedy’s leadership.
Because Dr. Monarez has been confirmed by the Senate — previous C.D.C. directors were not subject to such confirmation — she serves at the pleasure of the president, and Mr. Kennedy likely did not have the authority to dismiss her.
At 9:30 p.m., a spokesman for President Trump, Kush Desai, said in an email that Dr. Monarez was “not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again,” and so “the White House has terminated Monarez from her position with the C.D.C.”
Shortly past midnight, one of Dr. Monarez’s lawyers, Mark S. Zaid, rejected the firing as “legally deficient” because the president did not announce it. Mr. Desai did not respond to an email message asking if Mr. Trump would do so.
The wild back and forth over Dr. Monarez’s future, along with the resignations of four of the C.D.C.’s top leaders, will undoubtedly throw the nation’s public health agency into further turmoil. It has already faced a tumultuous month in which agency employees were laid off and a gunman fired a barrage of bullets at its Atlanta headquarters, killing a policeman and terrifying employees.
Her lawyers, Mr. Zaid and Abbe Lowell, had asserted in a statement earlier Wednesday that Dr. Monarez’s situation was symbolic of larger issues.
“It is about the systematic dismantling of public health institutions, the silencing of experts, and the dangerous politicization of science,” they wrote. “The attack on Dr. Monarez is a warning to every American: Our evidence-based systems are being undermined from within.”
The clash between Mr. Kennedy and Dr. Monarez, which had been brewing for days, burst into public view on Wednesday. That afternoon, the Department of Health and Human Services announced on X that Dr. Monarez was “no longer” director of the C.D.C.
Without elaborating, the agency thanked her for “her dedicated service to the American people,” adding that Mr. Kennedy “has full confidence in his team at @CDCgov who will continue to be vigilant in protecting Americans against infectious diseases at home and abroad.”
Hours later, Mr. Lowell and Mr. Zaid disputed the department’s account, saying Dr. Monarez “has neither resigned nor received notification from the White House that she has been fired, and as a person of integrity and devoted to science, she will not resign.”
Mr. Kennedy and his department, they said, “have set their sights on weaponizing public health for political gain and putting millions of American lives at risk.”
Neither Dr. Monarez nor the department responded to requests for comment.
Dr. Monarez and Mr. Kennedy were at odds over vaccine policy, according to an administration official who is familiar with the events.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said Mr. Kennedy had summoned Dr. Monarez to his office on Monday and demanded that she resign. When she refused, Mr. Kennedy demanded that she remove the agency’s top leadership by the end of the week.
Dr. Monarez then called Senator Bill Cassidy, the Republican chairman of the Senate health committee, who in turn called Mr. Kennedy, according to the official. Mr. Kennedy, furious, summoned Dr. Monarez to a second meeting on Tuesday and accused her of “being a leaker,” according to the official, and told her she would be fired.
The official said Dr. Monarez spoke to other senators as well. On Wednesday, a White House official told Dr. Monarez that if she did not resign by the end of the day, President Trump would fire her.
The four high-ranking agency officials who did resign are Dr. Debra Houry, the C.D.C.’s chief medical officer; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who ran the center that issues vaccine recommendations; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who oversaw the center that oversees vaccine safety; and Dr. Jennifer Layden, who led the office of public health data.
Some cited an increasingly tense environment within the Trump administration that had become intolerable.
“I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health,” Dr. Daskalakis wrote in an email to colleagues, adding that they “continue to shine despite this dark cloud over the agency and our profession.”
Dr. Jernigan was deeply involved in the agency’s response to anthrax, swine flu and Covid; Dr. Daskalakis helped the nation cope with an mpox outbreak; Dr. Layden established the Covid strategic science unit; and Dr. Houry built the agency’s opioid response program.
Former C.D.C. leaders said the departures would harm the agency and the nation.
Dr. Mandy Cohen, who ran the agency during the second half of the Biden administration, called the officials “exceptional leaders who have served over many decades and many administrations,” and warned that “the weakening of the C.D.C. leaves us less safe and more vulnerable as a country.”
Dr. Anne Schuchat, the C.D.C.’s principal deputy director until her retirement in May 2021, called them “the best of the best.”
“These individuals are physician-scientist public health superstars,” she said. “I think we should all be scared about the nation’s health security.”
The resignations, which coincided with a decision by the Food and Drug Administration to put new restrictions on updated Covid vaccines for the fall-winter season, occurred at a difficult time for the nation’s public health agency.
Earlier this month, a gunman angry about Covid vaccines opened fire on C.D.C. headquarters in Atlanta, killing a policeman, shattering bullet-resistant windows and traumatizing employees.
After the attack, Dr. Houry and Dr. Daskalakis both pushed for Dr. Monarez to reassure C.D.C. employees that the matter would be given the attention it deserved.
“We’re mad this has happened,” Dr. Houry said in a large group call the day after the shooting. Dr. Daskalakis, whose office was among those hit by bullets, told Dr. Monarez that employees wanted to see a plan for their safety and an acknowledgment that the attack was not just “a shooting that just happened across the street with some stray bullets.”
It seemed to many employees on the call that Dr. Monarez had not spoken to Mr. Kennedy directly after the attack. Mr. Kennedy did not address the shooting until the day afterward, when he posted condolences on his official X accounts. Mr. Trump has still not spoken about the assault.
H.H.S. employees issued an open letter pleading with Mr. Kennedy, who has repeatedly cast doubt on Covid shots and other vaccines, to stop spreading “inaccurate information.”
Dr. Monarez, while not pointing a finger at the health secretary, echoed their concerns about misinformation in a note to employees.
In interviews and opinion articles, many current and former employees — including one of the agency’s most storied directors, Dr. William Foege — also blamed Mr. Kennedy’s rhetoric for playing a part in the shooting.
Dr. Foege, 89, who helped eradicate smallpox in the 1970s, recently wrote that Mr. Kennedy’s “words can be as lethal as the smallpox virus.”
In an email to colleagues, Dr. Jernigan said he was grateful for the opportunity to serve the American public for more than 30 years but “given the current context in the department, I think it is best for me to offer my resignation.”
Dr. Houry, in her own email, said she, too, felt unable to continue, given the circumstances at the agency: “This is a heartbreaking decision that I make with a heavy heart.”
Dr. Monarez was the first nonphysician to lead the C.D.C. in more than 50 years. She had been acting director of the agency since Mr. Trump took office, and she was nominated to the top post after the president withdrew his first choice, Dr. David Weldon.
Morale has plummeted at the agency as Mr. Kennedy has severely reduced the work force, sharply cut back C.D.C. funding and eliminated some core functions of the agency.
Dr. Monarez was expected to run her plans by Matt Buckham, the new chief of staff at H.H.S., and by Matt Buzzelli, the chief of staff at C.D.C., according to a person familiar with the unusual arrangement.
Her brief leadership included dealing with the fallout from decisions by Mr. Kennedy, who had unseated members of an influential vaccine advisory committee and replaced them with some staunch opponents of existing immunization policies.
Late last week, H.H.S. confirmed that a vocal Covid vaccine opponent had been appointed to lead a subcommittee reviewing the safety of the shots, upsetting public health experts.
In addition, Mr. Kennedy has gone against the consensus of many scientists and public health experts by announcing new efforts and funding for research into whether there is a link between vaccines and autism, despite years of studies that have not found evidence to support his belief.
In recent weeks, the C.D.C. has been under pressure from Mr. Kennedy’s allies to grant access to a large database called the Vaccine Safety Datalink that is managed in part by large health systems around the United States.
Mr. Kennedy brought in David Geier, a widely discredited researcher who has published studies using the database and purporting to show a link between vaccines and autism.
Mr. Geier’s team has been seeking the data from the C.D.C. and other corners of the federal health bureaucracy for the work seeking a tie between vaccines and autism.
Mr. Kennedy previously complained that officials were blocking his access to federal data. But in a presidential cabinet meeting on Tuesday, he suggested that his staff was likely to have a preliminary answer to the cause of autism soon.
“We’re finding interventions, certain interventions now that are clearly, almost certainly causing autism, and we’re going to be able to address those in September,” Mr. Kennedy said.
Aug. 27, 2025, 4:37 p.m. ETAug. 27, 2025
Maggie Haberman
Trump met with advisers, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, about the future of Gaza.
PHOTO: Palestinian families fleeing their homes north of Gaza City on Monday, after Israeli military officials announced plans for a full-scale assault on the city. Credit: Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
President Trump held a lengthy Oval Office meeting on Wednesday about the postwar future of the Gaza Strip, even as a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas remains elusive and residents of the territory face a humanitarian crisis.
Mr. Trump met for more than 90 minutes with his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, as well as with Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and former White House adviser Jared Kushner, according to two people briefed on the matter.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, was there for portions of the meeting, as was Tony Blair, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom who has since begun a global institute, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Mr. Kushner did not respond to a message seeking comment. He has never been fully gone from Mr. Trump’s orbit, taking a behind-the-scenes role in recent years. During the first Trump administration, he led the way on Mr. Trump’s biggest diplomatic achievement, the Abraham Accords, establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and three Arab states, and has his own business and other ties to the region.
Details of Wednesday’s meeting were not immediately clear. Mr. Witkoff revealed plans for the meeting in a Fox News interview with Bret Baier on Tuesday, saying that the administration was assembling “a very comprehensive plan” to deal with the region.
Mr. Trump has spoken in broad terms about a bright future for Gaza — but not necessarily one that includes the Palestinians who live there. He has mused about turning the territory into a luxury resort and, at times, moving its residents elsewhere.
The Oval Office meeting came the same day that Mr. Rubio met with the Israeli minister of foreign affairs at the State Department, according to a readout from Israeli officials. Mr. Rubio and Gideon Sa’ar spoke about the situation in the Middle East, including the aftermath of the Israeli war on Iran, the Trump administration’s bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites and the war in Gaza.
Recently, the United States became more active in distributing aid to Palestinians in Gaza. The U.N. Security Council has said the territory is facing a man-made hunger crisis caused by Israel, which has pounded Gaza with strikes since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas sparked the fighting.
Mr. Witkoff has been Mr. Trump’s lead in talks that led to the return of some of the hostages taken by Hamas during the bloody attack, but efforts at a sustainable cease-fire and the release of the remaining hostages have encountered roadblocks.
While previous talks managed to briefly stop the fighting, the United States and Israel continue to seek a comprehensive deal to end the conflict and return the rest of the hostages.
The Israeli military has been gearing up for a full-scale offensive to take over Gaza City. Israeli officials say the new military push would begin in the coming weeks unless Hamas agrees to Israel’s terms.
Tyler Pager contributed reporting.
August 27, 2025, 12:05 p.m. ETAug. 27, 2025
Alan Feuer
Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration is trying to deport a second time, requests asylum.
PHOTO: Lawyers for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, pictured center, have pushed for his asylum. Credit: Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran immigrant who was arrested again this week as officials sought to deport him for a second time, has asked a judge to grant him asylum, his lawyers said on Wednesday. The move opens up a new legal avenue for him to remain in the United States.
The revelation that Mr. Abrego Garcia was seeking asylum came during a hearing in Federal District Court in Maryland on a separate legal challenge that his lawyers filed on Monday: an attempt to stop the administration from deporting him again — this time to Uganda.
The asylum request, submitted to a Maryland immigration judge, added to the increasingly complex web of cases that Mr. Abrego Garcia has found himself involved in since March, when the Trump administration deported him in error to a notorious terrorism prison in El Salvador, his homeland. That removal, officials eventually acknowledged, violated a court ruling issued in 2019 and known as a withholding of removal order that had expressly barred him from being sent to the country where he feared his life could be in danger.
When Mr. Abrego Garcia obtained the withholding of removal order, he had also applied for asylum. But while the immigration judge who considered his application found it to be “credible,” he pointed out that Mr. Abrego Garcia had not filed for asylum within a year of arriving in the United States as required under the law.
Even as he fights re-deportation, Mr. Abrego Garcia and his lawyers have also been fending off criminal charges brought against him in Federal District Court in Nashville. Those charges, filed in June in coordination with his return from El Salvador, accuse him of having taken part in a conspiracy to smuggle undocumented immigrants across the United States from 2016 until this year.
At the hearing in Maryland, Judge Paula Xinis, who has been handling Mr. Abrego Garcia’s deportation cases, told the government that it could not send him anywhere outside of the United States for at least the next few months. Judge Xinis said that she would hold a hearing on Oct. 6 to determine whether he might face danger, even torture, if he is expelled to Uganda, adding that she plans to issue a decision no more than 30 days later.
Since his arrest on Monday, Mr. Abrego Garcia has been held in an immigration detention center in Virginia and his lawyers said that they had no plans to ask for his release at least until the hearing was held in October. Judge Xinis ordered the administration to keep him locked up within 200 miles of her courtroom as his new legal challenge moves forward.
His asylum request could take months to be resolved.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran immigrant who was arrested again this week as officials sought to deport him for a second time, has asked a judge to grant him asylum, his lawyers said on Wednesday. The move opens up a new legal avenue for him to remain in the United States.
The revelation that Mr. Abrego Garcia was seeking asylum came during a hearing in Federal District Court in Maryland on a separate legal challenge that his lawyers filed on Monday: an attempt to stop the administration from deporting him again — this time to Uganda.
The asylum request, submitted to a Maryland immigration judge, added to the increasingly complex web of cases that Mr. Abrego Garcia has found himself involved in since March, when the Trump administration deported him in error to a notorious terrorism prison in El Salvador, his homeland. That removal, officials eventually acknowledged, violated a court ruling issued in 2019 and known as a withholding of removal order that had expressly barred him from being sent to the country where he feared his life could be in danger.
When Mr. Abrego Garcia obtained the withholding of removal order, he had also applied for asylum. But while the immigration judge who considered his application found it to be “credible,” he pointed out that Mr. Abrego Garcia had not filed for asylum within a year of arriving in the United States as required under the law.
Even as he fights re-deportation, Mr. Abrego Garcia and his lawyers have also been fending off criminal charges brought against him in Federal District Court in Nashville. Those charges, filed in June in coordination with his return from El Salvador, accuse him of having taken part in a conspiracy to smuggle undocumented immigrants across the United States from 2016 until this year.
At the hearing in Maryland, Judge Paula Xinis, who has been handling Mr. Abrego Garcia’s deportation cases, told the government that it could not send him anywhere outside of the United States for at least the next few months. Judge Xinis said that she would hold a hearing on Oct. 6 to determine whether he might face danger, even torture, if he is expelled to Uganda, adding that she plans to issue a decision no more than 30 days later.
Since his arrest on Monday, Mr. Abrego Garcia has been held in an immigration detention center in Virginia and his lawyers said that they had no plans to ask for his release at least until the hearing was held in October. Judge Xinis ordered the administration to keep him locked up within 200 miles of her courtroom as his new legal challenge moves forward.
His asylum request could take months to be resolved.
The Latest on the Trump Administration:
Denmark: The nation summoned the head of the U.S. Embassy over allegations that three Americans tied to President Trump were running “covert influence operations” in Greenland.
Struggling National Parks: Amid deep cuts by the administration, more than 90 parks have reported problems like lost revenue and cuts to emergency services.
FEMA: Employees at the agency were suspended after they signed a letter to Congress that claimed cuts made by the administration had reversed much of the progress made in disaster response since Hurricane Katrina.
Justice Dept.: Prosecutors are said to be investigating whether F.B.I. officials tried to hide or secretly destroy documents that might cast doubt on the earlier inquiry into Russia’s attempt to help Trump in the 2016 election.
Lisa Cook: In trying to fire the Fed board member, Trump is setting up another test of how far the Supreme Court will let him go in eroding checks and balances.
DOGE: Members of the cost-cutting effort uploaded a copy of a Social Security database to a vulnerable cloud server, putting the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans at risk, according to a whistle-blower complaint.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/opinion/donald-trump-economy-intel-fed.html
Opinion
What’s Next, Comrade Trump?
Credit: Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
Listen to this article · 5:57 minutes
New York Times
[Mr. Rattner, a contributing Opinion writer, served as counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration.]
Perhaps we should have seen this coming.
In his first term, Donald Trump was not shy about using the bully pulpit of the presidency to attack any institution that interfered with his uniquely distorted economic philosophy. He roundly criticized the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, for raising interest rates. He harangued Harley-Davidson for moving production and jobs offshore to avoid the effects of his trade war. He threatened Boeing over cost overruns in building new Air Force Ones and gave America a preview of his weaponized tariffs.
Those skirmishes pale in comparison to the interference and even extortion of Trump 2.0., a set of actions that at times bear resemblance to China’s state-directed capitalism.
Mr. Trump is muscling his way into our economy in ways that are alien to traditional Republican principles, alien even to what more interventionist Democrats have argued for, and wildly at odds with any sensible notion of how the relationship between government and business should be managed.
Most dramatically, he is now attempting to fire a member of the Fed’s Board of Governors, Lisa Cook, an action of dubious legality that could have seriously negative consequences for our economy. Just days ago he forced Intel, the struggling semiconductor company, to give the U.S. government a nearly 10 percent stake in the company in return for grants it had received in the Biden administration. (That was after demanding the resignation of Intel’s chief executive earlier this month and then changing his mind a few days later.)
I don’t know of any case, at least in my lifetime, of the government taking equity in a company simply because it could. Add these to the long list of ways that Mr. Trump is undermining the rule of law, one of the most important principles that undergirds our economic success.
When it comes to the private sector, the government certainly has an important role. Prudent regulation and tax policy are central to curbing the potential excesses of capitalism. When we are lagging in a critical industrial sector with national security implications, as we are in semiconductor manufacturing, legislation like the CHIPS and Science Act, which aimed to strengthen America’s semiconductor industry by providing billions in subsidies, can play a helpful role.
When markets fail, as they did during the financial crisis, Washington should bridge that gap.
In early 2009, as Barack Obama assumed the presidency, the automobile industry was on the verge of disaster (in contrast to today’s more benign conditions). I was asked by that administration to lead an auto task force with clear instructions to approach the problem as we would any commercial investment — but with a bias toward saving these iconic companies at a time when the economy appeared to be in free fall.
Over the ensuing months, the 14-member task force, mostly with private sector experience, conducted the due diligence and performed the analyses we had been trained to do in the private sector, which we regularly presented to Mr. Obama and his aides. Our recommendations were thoroughly debated within the most senior circles of the White House before the president made the final decisions in March. By summer, the companies had been restructured through the bankruptcy process and emerged smaller, leaner and largely shorn of debt.
And even though the government received a majority interest in the automaker in return for nearly $50 billion in assistance, we took no board seats or any special rights. “Our goal was to get G.M. back on its feet, maintain a hands-off approach and get out quickly,” Mr. Obama said at the time. That allowed the company to focus successfully on its core mission of selling cars and making a profit. Then the government fully divested its ownership interest.
That approach — only stepping in during a crisis and minimizing the government’s involvement — stands in stark contrast to the way Mr. Trump is managing his interventions. His shoot-from-the-hip style lurches from one extreme to another, deploying the government’s power in extraordinary ways that diminish the predictability and order that business craves from Washington.
His capriciousness is particularly visible in the semiconductor industry. In addition to his Intel invasion — a permanent stake rather than the temporary ownership we took in G.M. — Mr. Trump has also been busy burrowing into Nvidia, the world’s largest semiconductor company, whose chips are critical to the artificial intelligence boom. In April, Mr. Trump essentially banned Nvidia from exporting its H20 chips to China, only to relax those rules after the company agreed to turn over 15 percent of those revenues to the government. (That may well prove to violate the constitutional ban on taxing exports.)
Along similar lines, Mr. Trump didn’t allow Nippon Steel’s proposed acquisition of U.S. Steel to go through until the government was granted a “golden share” giving Washington a veto over a broad array of corporate actions, including employee salaries and changing the company’s name.
Meanwhile, the repeal of key provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act pushed by Mr. Trump has already resulted in the cancellation of new projects in the automobile electrification ecosystem. His tariffs are costing those companies dearly — G.M. recently said that the tariffs would slice $4 billion to $5 billion from its profits this year; Ford estimates its profits would be hit by $2 billion.
Trade has been Mr. Trump’s favorite playground for his version of industrial policy, with tariffs being a weapon of choice. He has compared the United States to a “giant department store,” with him as the manager. “I own the store and I set the prices, and I’ll say, ‘If you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay,’” he told Time magazine in April.
According to Axios, the White House has created a scorecard that rated 553 companies and trade associations based on their support for Mr. Trump’s signature tax and spending package, suggesting that companies that were insufficiently supportive could suffer retribution.
All of that can reasonably be called extortion.
The Latest on the Trump Administration:
- Denmark: The nation summoned the head of the U.S. Embassy over allegations that three Americans tied to President Trump were running “covert influence operations” in Greenland.
- Struggling National Parks: Amid deep cuts by the administration, more than 90 parks have reported problems like lost revenue and cuts to emergency services.
- FEMA: Employees at the agency were suspended after they signed a letter to Congress that claimed cuts made by the administration had reversed much of the progress made in disaster response since Hurricane Katrina.
- Justice Dept.: Prosecutors are said to be investigating whether F.B.I. officials tried to hide or secretly destroy documents that might cast doubt on the earlier inquiry into Russia’s attempt to help Trump in the 2016 election.
- Lisa Cook: In trying to fire the Fed board member, Trump is setting up another test of how far the Supreme Court will let him go in eroding checks and balances.
- DOGE: Members of the cost-cutting effort uploaded a copy of a Social Security database to a vulnerable cloud server, putting the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans at risk, according to a whistle-blower complaint.
KAMALA WAS RIGHT...
