Christina Pagel – “Mapping out 69 actions that President Trump has taken in the last twelve weeks to undermine democracy, undermine the rule of law, attack enemies, suppress dissent and control information. Thomas Jefferson probably never said “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”, but that doesn’t make it less true. Since President Trump’s second term started 12 weeks ago, I’ve been keeping track of the actions of his administration as best I can. I’ve previously mapped actions across five broad authoritarian categories and dug a little deeper into some aspects, particularly his attacks on science and universities . Today I want to show how his administration is directly undermining the key pillars of democracy. The data tells the story. Of the 192 actions I’ve tracked over the first 12 weeks, here I’ve mapped 69 of them across five themes that are each corrosive to democracy:
- Weakening democratic checks and balances
- Weaponising state power against personal ‘enemies’
- Undermining the rule of law
- Suppressing dissent
- Controlling information
The actions (and accompanying dates and links) are available in this googlesheet, and a high resolution PDF of the Venn Diagram is available here. Below I consider each of these themes in turn.”
