No official announcement was made of the end of the long-enduring republic, which was launched in 1789. No autopsy was scheduled.
The proximate cause of death was America’s rapid decline in democratic governance. In March 2025, the director of Varieties of Democracy, a Sweden-based think tank, cautioned that the U.S. was on the verge of losing its status as a democratic republic.
The American democratic republic is survived by a country of the same name, the United States of America, now a presidential dictatorship.
When we were finishing up the last touches on the Democracy Report three years ago, Russia launched its full-scale, illegal invasion of Ukraine. The war is still going on. But back then, the alliance backing this young, aspiring democracy was solid and included the United States of America.
AS WE ARE finishing up this year’s Democracy Report, recently inaugurated President Trump is voting against NATO allies in the UN joining with autocracies like North Korea, Russia, and Sudan. Military support to Ukraine was just cut off, and the words coming out of the Trump administration echo Kremlin rhetoric. European leaders are scrambling to mount a sufficient response. The world is going through another convulsion.
On page 14 of the report there is a ranking of the countries, USA still in the most glowing category of Liberal Democracies based on 2024 assessment.
The latest update to Boox Palma put an AI icon on its homescreen. I'm not sure what to make of it. Never was it my plan to have much besides ebooks and Termux+Emacs there.
Interim DC attorney Ed Martin has written a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation — the organization behind Wikipedia — that calls into question its status as a nonprofit entity... Martin alleges that Wikipedia is “allowing foreign actors to manipulate information and spread propaganda,” including by “rewriting” historical events and through “other matters implicating the national security and the interests of the United States.”
Martin is known for thinly justified legal threats against media organizations. In recent days, Martin has sent letters to the New England Journal of Medicine, the CHEST Journal, and Obstetrics and Gynecology, accusing them of being “partisan in various scientific debates.”
Your trade adviser, Peter Navarro, says 90 deals in 90 days is possible. We're now 13 days into the point from when you lifted the reciprocal, the discounted reciprocal tariffs. There's zero deals so far. Why is that?
No, there’s many deals.
When are they going to be announced?
You have to understand, I'm dealing with all the companies, very friendly countries. We're meeting with China. We're doing fine with everybody. But ultimately, I've made all the deals.
Not one has been announced yet. When are you going to announce them?
I’ve made 200 deals.
200 deals when there were not even that many countries on his tariffs list. While trying to top Peter Navarro, Trump outdid himself! Truly impressive.
You said you would end the war in Ukraine on Day One.
Well, I said that figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration, because to make a point, and you know, it gets, of course, by the fake news [unintelligible]. Obviously, people know that when I said that, it was said in jest, but it was also said that it will be ended.
Well what’s taking so long? When do you think it will be ended?
Well, I don’t think it’s long. I mean, look, I got here three months ago. This war has been going on for three years. It's a war that would have never happened if I was president. It's Biden's war. It’s not my war. I have nothing to do with it.
From a figurative Day One to a literal "I have nothing to do with it." Standing ovations.
The president of Finland to the one side of Donald and Melania, the president of Estonia to the other. What to make of this? Probably that nobody else wants to be anywhere near that couple.
(Well, the actual reason is the alphabetic order of the countries in French, still the international language of diplomatic decorum: Estonie, États-Unis, Finlande, France. Macron is just outside of the picture next to the president of Finland.)
FBI Director Kash Patel announced on social media the arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan, who he said “intentionally misdirected” federal agents away from a man they were trying to take into custody at her courthouse.
“Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since, but the Judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public,” Patel wrote.
Court documents detailing the case against the judge were not immediately available, and the Justice Department didn’t immediately have a comment Friday.
Forecasts for global growth have been revised markedly down compared with the January 2025 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Update, reflecting effective tariff rates to levels not seen in a century and a highly unpredictable environment.
Without naming his name, IMF has declared Trump a global threat.
Feds Mistakenly Order Estonian HashFlare Fraudsters to Self-Deport Ahead of Sentencing
“It is time for you to leave the United States,” an email to Potapenko and Turogin dated April 11 read. “DHS is terminating your parole. Do not attempt to remain in the United States - the federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately.”
The email, included with the letter filed last week, threatened both men with “criminal prosecution, civil fines, and penalties and any other lawful options available to the federal government” if they stayed in the country. It resembles emails that undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens alike have received over the past few days.
This is not administrative error. It is administrative terror, known from early Bolshevist times.
Christo Grozev began to put his spycraft up on Youtube. I know him from Alexey Navalny's channel where Grozev already laid it all out in interviews in Russian. The assassin brigade responsible for the Salisbury hit also poisoned Navalny.
Heh, he even says "Dissolve the Supreme Court entirely if they push." Of course, lucky for the Supreme Court, they do not push. They only emit paperwork and when you ignore the paperwork, they may or may not emit some more.
Among conservative talkers it is nowadays mandatory to be overtly and double-down positively fascist or at least lie with a happy smile for the God-King. Gone are the good old Rush Limbaugh days when there was no God-King and it sufficed to be viciously anti-Democrat with no positive programme.
By the way, I had to look up who this Jesse Kelly dude was. My intake of post-turn-of-the-millennium American political commentary is apparently patchy. And I probably am not going to fix it, because the commentary has become worthless and the way to fix it is to stop having any more of it.
Poco prima delle 10 del mattino, il cardinale Kevin Farrell ha annunciato con dolore la morte di Papa Francesco, con queste parole: «Carissimi fratelli e sorelle, con profondo dolore devo annunciare la morte di nostro Santo Padre Francesco. Alle ore 7:35 di questa mattina il Vescovo di Roma, Francesco, è tornato alla casa del Padre...».
“National Socialism demands that the needs of German workers no longer be supplied by Soviet slaves, Chinese coolies, and Negroes,” [Nazi Party chief economist Gottfried] Feder wrote. Germany needed German workers and farmers producing German goods for German consumers. Feder saw “import restrictions” as key to returning the German economy to the Germans. “National Socialism opposes the liberal world economy, as well as the Marxist world economy,” Feder wrote. Our fellow Germans must “be protected from foreign competition.”
Even though Hitler’s own foreign minister, Konstantin von Neurath, was concerned that the strategy would spark a trade war, and could drive up the price of imported eggs by 600 percent, Feder’s tariffs fit into Hitler’s larger vision for “liberating” the German people from the shackles of a globalized world order.
Hans Joachim von Rohr, who worked at the Reich’s nutrition ministry, went on national radio to explain the logic of Hitler’s tariff strategy. “The products that Germany lacks must be made more expensive; then farmers will produce them in sufficient quantities,” Rohr explained. “And if foreign competition is kept at bay by tariffs and the like, city residents will prefer domestic production.” Rohr offered lard—“Schmalz”—as an example.
The primary targets of the Hitler tariffs—the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands—were outraged by the sudden suspension of favored-nation trading status on virtually all agricultural products, as well as on textiles, with tariffs in some cases rising 500 percent. With its livestock essentially banished from the German market, Denmark, for example, was facing substantial losses. Farmers panicked. The Danes and Swedes threatened “retaliatory measures,” as did the Dutch...
Hitler launched his trade war on the second Friday of his chancellorship. That evening, he appeared in the Berlin Sportpalast, the city’s largest venue, for a rally in front of thousands of jubilant followers. It was his first public appearance as chancellor, and it served as a victory lap. Hitler dispensed with the dark suit he wore in cabinet meetings in favor of his brown storm-trooper uniform with a bright-red swastika armband.
Hitler had two key differences from Trump. One, he was principled, i.e. he did not do on-again, off-again, ramp-up-and-then-postpone tariffs. Second, even though his understanding of economy is said to have been primitive, he did not do the stupidest idiotic Trumpite nonsense blanket tariffs, so evidently he had available and listened to sound advice on this point.
As Allan Lichtman, the elections predictor, says, "Republicans have no principle and Democrats have no spine." It only remains to realise how deep the Republican lack of principle is, namely absolutely bottomless. The fact that they tout some given principle while acting against the same principle every step of the way, e.g. "fair elections" requiring voter IDs to prevent illegal immigrants from voting while no illegal immigrant ever has cast a single vote and every single election fraudster is a Republican (both crying foul and directly tampering with election results is evidently in their party culture), this barely scratches the surface of what it means to be a Republican.
Besides, the Republican lack of principle applies historically all the way back at least to "I'm not a crook" Nixon who plainly was a crook. It should also be obvious enough that the legacies of Reagan and Bushes are net negative in every aspect you choose to examine.
The nation's founders set up a system of government in the Constitution with three co-equal branches, a design intended to have the executive, legislative and judicial branches serve as a check on the power of the others.
In reality, the actual checks of balances (and appearance of democracy) have the shape of two-party system in USA. All branches of government are permeated by hyperpartisanship. Everybody speaks of "conservative" and "liberal" judges, media outlets, universities, even businesses and brands — everything is judged on partisan basis.
Trump calls judges "liberal" or "Obama-appointed" whenever he does not like the rulings. And calls for their impeachment. He shows open contempt and scorn for other branches of the government or institutions in general. There is even a theory for it:
Trump is also aiming to weaken checks within the executive branch, according to legal experts, including by firing the inspectors general and the heads of various agencies designed by Congress to have a measure of independence from a president's direct control. Some of Trump's broad assertions of power are in line with what is called the "unitary executive" theory. This conservative legal view sees the president as possessing vast authority over the executive branch - even when Congress has sought to impose limits such as protecting the heads of independent agencies from firing without cause.
There is an aspect that I think always made it easier for USA to go authoritarian: The head of state and the head of government are the same person by the constitution. In every other country the president and prime minister are different posts, so there is more maneuvering to be done when you want to make the regime authoritarian, but in the constitution of USA dictatorial powers were always there for the taking.
[Checking Wikipedia:] Hitler had at least nine months of maneuvering with and around other party leaders and politicians in 1932. Hindenburg opposed him, but finally appointed him the chancellor in January 1933 after other candidates did not get parliamentary support. Reichstag fire occurred in February 1933, ushering in emergency measures and suppression of communists. New elections, rigged by Hitler's brownshirts, took place in March and the Ermächtigungsgesetz passed the parliament (making the parliament irrelevant) the same month with Hitler promising that Hindenburg would retain his powers. In August Hindenburg died and Hitler took his post to himself, becoming Führer und Reichskanzler.
In comparison, Trump literally became the dictator on day one of his second term. Due to hyperpartisan polarisation in the Congress with the majority on his side, Trump does not need an Ermächtigungsgesetz. And there is no other senior politician to be pushed aside. The Congress gave up its powers at the very moment when Trump took office, as evidenced by non-action when Trump paused the normal budget flow, cancelled USAID and issued the executive order against birthright citizenship (all at least partly legislative matters, none of it within the executive powers). And now he is busy siding with Putin (having obviated Nato), declaring and postponing 100+% tariffs, deporting doesn't-care-who, he declares law firms and media outlets treasonous, ignores court orders and lies about their content. And he golfs every weekend with Saudis and oligarchs who pay to golf with him (blatant conflict of interest that nobody is calling out). Is there anything more to be added to make his power more complete? I guess not. At the point when you arbitrarily start targeting own citizens for no reason, citizens who only minded their own lives thus far, it's totalitarian tyranny.
Lisa Anderson, a physician from Cromwell, Connecticut, told NBC Connecticut on Wednesday that she recently received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security telling her, “It is time for you to leave the United States."
But Anderson, 58, was born in Pennsylvania and is a U.S. citizen.
Anderson has been carrying her U.S. passport on her at all times since receiving the email and is seeking an immigration attorney.
I will have to look up how long it took Hitler to turn totalitarian against own citizens. It certainly must have taken at least a year or two, whereas with Trump we are still in less than a 100 days.
Oh, sorry, I remember now that Trump had a prior four-year stint. And Americans looked at it and thought, Yup, more of that thank you very much. And "They are eating the pets!" certainly helped it along.
If there is someone out there who still does not think of Americans as brainwashed xenophobes, it is long overdue to get a reality check. The fact that they have no overview of who their citizens are makes it worse, not better.
“The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court,” the justices said early on Saturday.
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas publicly dissented.
This is a different order, not about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, but about a group of Venezuelans in a detention center in Texas. Some say this would be more significant because - The order was issued by SCOTUS before the deportation - It is about an entire class of detainees, not about a single individual
So the argument goes that if Trump's administration violates this one, then it is finally a true constitutional crisis at hand.
I'd say no, i.e. if Trump disobeys (and for sure he will) there will still not be enough critical mass to realise that the coup already happened, and if Trump obeys, it won't alleviate the constitutional crisis. Trump's administration is getting away handily lying about every single easily verifiable fact in Garcia's case, leaving enough people with the impression that either Garcia was illegal, deportation was followed due process just about enough, or if not, it cannot be reversed, or SCOTUS ruled in the government's favour at least on some points, and whichever way it be, clearly SCOTUS is not doing anything to anybody in the Trump administration, so when some in the government say that they are obeying the court's decision, then they probably are.
Trump's administration will get away even more handily with disobeying this one, for example by beginning to claim some distinctions within the group of detainees, distinctions which would justify some of them to be deported, and then just deport all of them because the halt was temporary or whatever. And the decision is not even 9-0, so there is plenty more wiggle room.
Edit: Suppose Trump's contempt of court gets really really serious so that U.S. marshals have to step in to enforce SCOTUS decisions. Who are U.S. marshals? Part of executive branch, not judicial, so obviously they will not step in no matter how serious Trump's contempt of court becomes. And by the way, how can it get any more serious when it is already total?
At the end of this little clip, Trump can be heard saying "Believe me." This by itself makes it all beyond laughable. But there are more serious reasons why it is beyond laughable.
I happen to know the law. Literally the only way for Trump to remove Jerome Powell is to SWAT him. And that's going to be illegal. So the only way to remove Jerome Powell as the head of the Fed is for Trump to break the law.
I'm not saying Trump cannot do it. Trump breaks the law every day, egregiously. It's a piece of cake for Trump.
I also happen to know how economy works. It is tanking for several important Trump-made reasons. Again, this is no problem from Trump's point of view. A tanking economy does not prevent Trump from tanking it more.
The case of deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia went all the way up to SCOTUS and SCOTUS ruled 9-0 in the judge's favour, i.e. Kilmar Abrego Garcia should not have been deported and should be returned. However, Trump administration reads the ruling as 9-0 in the government's favour. The doublespeak and ultraprojection is absolute.
Note: Everything Stephen Miller says here is wrong, the truth is often directly opposite to what he says, starting with "I have to correct you on every single thing that you said because it was all wrong" and definitely on every single fact of the case, including but not limited to that the original judge had compelled them to invade El Salvador, that the deportee was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador, that the deportee is a gang member, illegal, had been previously ordered deported etc. Absolutely every statement is a lie; in court depositions where they are under oath, they state the opposite.
In Soviet Union under Brezhnev institutionalised lying was less blatant than it is right now in USA under Trump. And lying is actually the least of the worries. Any intellectually half-curious person can see through it and find out the facts. The bigger worry is the deportations and detentions that the commentators tend to describe as "sloppy" which is unfortunately in agreement with Trump administration's term "administrative error" that they used in court hearings. But these deportations and detentions are actually deliberate government terror. USA is not "on the verge of a constitutional crisis" or "on the way towards a dictatorship". The coup already happened and now it's the new unconstitutional regime. Jan6 was a rehearsal of Kristallnacht and now it's a steady stream of government-led pogroms.
This is no longer some occasionally excusable Hitlerjugend talk you have there. You are a totalitarian brownshirt automaton, fully trained in non-thinking.
According to a press release announcing the potentially history-making detection, the JWST spotted the telltale chemical ‘fingerprints’ of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), in the exoplanet’s atmosphere, a detection that may be “the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.”
“Given everything we know about this planet, a Hycean world (a habitable ocean-covered world underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere) with an ocean that is teeming with life is the scenario that best fits the data we have,” said project leader and the lead author of the study outlining the discovery, Professor Nikku Madhusudhan from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy.
whatever intelligence you share with USA goes straight to Putin
As always, you start with a snippet and then leap to the furthest conclusion your imagination can give you.
"Leap"... The "leap" that Trump's administration cares about protecting intelligence at all is entirely on your side. Yup, trust the the guy who piles national secrets in his bathroom...
Kellogg suggested to carve up Ukraine in the manner of West Berlin, as follows:
General Keith Kellogg, a leading figure in US efforts to end the three-year war, suggested that British and French troops could adopt zones of control in the west of the country as part of a “reassurance force”, with Russia’s army in the occupied east. Between them would be Ukrainian forces and a demilitarised zone.
[...]
"You could almost make it look like what happened with Berlin after World War Two, when you had a Russian zone, a French zone, and a British zone, a U.S. zone," [Kellogg] said.
Later Kellogg protested on Elon's Twitter "The Times article misrepresents what I said. I was speaking of a post-cease fire resiliency force in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty. In discussions of partitioning, I was referencing areas or zones of responsibility for an allied force (without US troops). I was NOT referring to a partitioning of Ukraine." Conclusion: Nothing was misrepresented. Partitioning Ukraine into occupation/peacekeeping zones after the ceasefire is still partitioning.
Where should Europeans stand in this? USA is not giving Europe a seat at the table, much less permitting any initiative. But Europe, particularly Western Europe, never took any either way. The initiative is there for the taking. Just take it. But no, Europe was always atrocious at handling its own conflicts and is atrocious at it even now.
The best the European Commission has come up for now is to use burner phones to mitigate the espionage risk that Trump's USA poses.
“The transatlantic alliance is over,” an EU official told the Financial Times.
Well, duh. And the right way to handle this fact is to do the obvious right thing in the Ukraine conflict and put Russia to its place. No chance that someone half a globe away would do it even remotely correctly.
But I get what Western Europeans are afraid of: When the threat of Russia is minimised, Eastern Europe will feel emboldened, and a diplomatically emboldened Eastern Europe is perceived as a far bigger threat[1] to Western Europe than Russia's military threat. In the mind of Western Europe, Eastern Europe must remain a servile buffer zone.
1 Imagine how strong a powerhouse a truly independent Poland or Ukraine would be.↵
The "leap" that Trump's administration cares about protecting intelligence at all is entirely on your side. Yup, trust the the guy who piles national secrets in his bathroom... 
