President Trump
I Can’t Stop Killing These Alleged Venezuelan Drug Smugglers!!!

Published October 14, 2025 1:20 PM PDT

Throughout his presidential campaign and after his win, Donald Trump has maintained a very pro-religion, pro-Christian and pro white American stance. However, two of those positions are now under question as the US president continues his relentless efforts at bringing the country’s population under his control, even if that entails the use of force. 

In recent times, Donald Trump’s efforts at cracking down on the immigrant population in the US have been met with severe criticism, with victim groups and others siding with them pushing back through protests. Sometimes these demonstrations take a violent turn with the aggressors, in this case, ICE agents deployed by Trump, using physical force or firearms. There are several videos available online that show the representatives of the government body using pellets and pepper balls to target protesting individuals. 

Recently, a video has been going around on social media that has enraged people, including a few Republican supporters. The clip in question is of Reverend David Black, who stood in front of an ICE facility in Chicago and chanted prayers. The disturbing recording sees him opening his arms to chant a prayer as ICE agents standing on top of a building continue to fire at him with pepper balls. He took several shots in and around his face, including a few on his head, which eventually knocked him down. He was immediately taken to the hospital, where he suffered severe respiratory issues.

Black, speaking on the incident during an interview, spoke about his motivation and intention for being at the location on that day. He said:

“I invited them to repentance. I basically offered an altar call. I invited them to come and receive that salvation, and be part of the kingdom that is coming.”

As noted earlier, the incident drew significant criticism from the masses. People on social media platforms, especially X, tore Trump and the MAGAs apart for attacking a reverend. One person wrote:

“Remember when MAGA said they were pro-religion?”

Others also hopped into the conversation and demanded answers from Trump and his administration for attacking religious servants.

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Of course, the big news for this week is that the Federal government is officially shut down for the foreseeable future. What that means for the battle for queers and trans rights at the current moment is somewhat complicated, and I’m sure there will be more to report on that soon (I have also included an article that discusses this in the “Last Bits” section here). For right now, I’m going to focus on what has happened.

I know it is a rare occasion for this newsletter to begin with some positive news, but this week, I feel like it’s imperative that I do.

Some of you might have seen over the last few months that many LGBTQ authors, musicians, visual artists, arts organizations, and other people working in the arts spaces received letters of rejections to their applications to the Federal grant program run by National Endowment of the Arts grant proposals they submitted. In response to this and to the Trump administration’s executive order putting a total pause on grant proposals that “promote gender ideology,” the ACLU along with four plaintiffs — the Rhode Island Latino Arts, the National Queer Theater, The Theater Offensive, and the Theatre Communications Group — sued Federal officials for violating the First Amendment, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and the Fifth Amendment by adhering to the order.

On September 19, the case was heard in the Rhode Island District Court by Senior U.S. District Court Judge William E. Smith, and like so many other U.S. District Court judges as of late, Judge Smith ruled that the Trump administration’s executive order is in direct violation of these laws. The court ordered the Trump administration to “vacate and set aside [their] current plan to implement the Executive Order.” What will happen in relation to the proposals that have already been rejected remains to be seen at this point, but this is a win for First Amendment rights — one that will likely impact some of the other executive orders Trump signed earlier this year.

Some Good News For Once

Bipartisan bill seeks to reinstate national suicide hotline for LGBTQ+ youth. You read that correctly. Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin and Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski have teamed up to co-author a bill that seeks to bring back the hotline the Trump administration cut funding to earlier this year. When the bill was announced, Baldwin said: “We are in the middle of a mental health crisis, and the 988 lifeline saves lives, plain and simple. There is absolutely no good reason that Donald Trump took away this specialized help for our LGBTQ youth. Mental health does not see partisan lines or geography.” We’ll track how it makes it way through Congress.

Federal judge orders 500 health science grants at UCLA restored, rebuffing Trump’s suspensions. Another blow to the Trump administration’s attempts at cutting funding to major research organizations, and one that will likely have reverberating effects over the coming months.

Transgender patients fight Justice Department subpoena seeking their UPMC records. As we’ve seen over the last few months, lots of university and state hospitals with comprehensive medical programs focused on trans youth and trans people have been capitulating to the Trump administration by either shutting down entirely or halting specific services. In response to the Trump administration’s attempt at accessing the medical records of trans patients at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, trans patients who are or have been treated at the clinic are taking matters into their own hands by holding direct actions at UPMC in protest of the administration’s insistence that their records should be released to the Federal government.

News I Wish I Didn’t Have to Report

GOP Lawmakers, including Nancy Mace, say trans people should be institutionalized following Charlie Kirk death. I don’t take anything these people say seriously, but I do feel as if this kind of rhetoric should be firmly on our radar as we fight anti-trans bigotry in our communities.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams targets transgender student bathroom access. This guy is desperately trying to stay relevant in a moment when no one cares about him or wants to hear from him. He called for this bathroom ban, and then a week later, he ended his bid for reelection as mayor of New York City. A lot of hot air coming from the mouth of someone who knows he doesn’t have a shot at public office anymore.

Trump administration to hold back grants from NYC, Chicago, Fairfax schools over trans bathroom policies. We’ve seen how state Circuit Courts generally respond to these kinds of attacks by the Trump administration — mostly, they have been ruling that these kinds of funding halts are unconstitutional — so I have a feeling the same thing will happen here. But again, this is something to be aware of as we continue to sharpen our axes for the battle ahead.

Woman undresses at a California school board meeting to protest transgender bathroom policies. A Moms for Liberty organizer got weird as hell at a school board meeting — what’s new, right? Mostly, I’m including this because these people are absolute freaks, and I think we need to keep calling that out.

Last Bits

Black trans woman Midori Monet crowned Miss International Queen 2025 in historic win for USA. The Miss International Queen pageant is the largest beauty pageant by and for trans women contestants, so let’s take a moment to say CONGRATULATIONS MIDORI!

Teachers on the Frontlines of LGBTQ Erasure. This is a wonderful feature on queer and trans teachers and cishet allies who are taking a stand against people trying to ban queer and trans content from their classrooms. I know I’m biased as an educator myself, but I love that these kinds of features are happening.

The government is shut down. What it means for the LGBTQ+ appropriations fight. Thank you to Erin Reed for this informational guide. If you’re anxious about what might go down now that the majority of the Federal government isn’t operating for a while, you should absolutely read this piece.

And in case you missed it, Gabe Dunn wrote On Being Labeled a Terrorist in Transphobic America for us this week.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!

President Donald Trump’s administration has demonstrated little ability to maintain a unified narrative on Jeffrey Epstein. For months, the White House has been dealing with the fallout from the Justice Department’s decision to not release materials related to the investigation into Epstein, the wealthy financier and convicted sex offender who died by suicide in a Manhattan federal jail in 2019. In July, following widespread outrage after a few of Trump’s top aides backed themselves in a corner, the administration settled on silence as a strategy. Now, as a new PBS/NPR/Marist poll shows 90% of Americans want all or some of the Epstein files released, one of Trump’s top Cabinet officials is suggesting that there is potentially scandalous information being hidden from the public.

On Wednesday’s episode of the New York Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast, ​​Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told host and columnist Miranda Devine that Epstein, his former Manhattan neighbor with whom he shared a townhouse wall, was the “greatest blackmailer ever.” Then the secretary grew even more blunt: “That’s how he had money.” 

Lutnick’s interview presents a significant narrative jolt because it comes from inside the Trump orbit and directly conflicts with the administration’s public claims about the Epstein files. Describing Epstein as “gross,” Lutnick told Divine about the first time he claims to have visited his neighbor’s home. “I say to him, ‘Massage table in the middle of your house? How often do you have a massage?’” Lutnick recalled. “And he says, ‘Every day.’ And then he gets, like, weirdly close to me, and he says, ‘And the right kind of massage.’” 

That’s when Epstein revealed his hand, Lutnick claimed. “‘They get a massage,’ that’s what his M.O. was,” the secretary said of Epstein’s approach to his associates. “‘Get a massage, get a massage,’ and what happened in that massage room, I assume, was on video.”

“So what happened to those videos? Why is there now such a dearth of information when, you know, Donald Trump’s people are running the FBI and the DOJ?” Devine asked.

“I assume, way back when, they traded those videos in exchange for him getting that 18-month sentence, which allowed him to have visits and be out of jail. I mean, he’s a serial sex offender. How could he get 18 months and be able to go to his office during the day and have visitors and stuff? There must have been a trade,” Lutnick speculated, referencing Epstein’s sentence after his 2008 sweetheart plea deal in Florida. (The prosecutor who offered Epstein that secret plea deal, Alex Acosta, was eventually named as Trump’s first term labor secretary.) As the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week, the nation’s largest financial institutions kept ties with Epstein until the end. 

Since the most recent Epstein firestorm erupted in July, Trump appears to have tried all manner of distractions and diversions to keep the latest revelations off the front pages. The administration has militarized Washington, D.C., and launched operations in blue cities including Memphis, Portland and Chicago. Trump has attacked free speech in the wake of MAGA activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination and pressured his Justice Department to go after his political enemies. Now, his own commerce secretary has upended the administration’s strategy of evasion, which has at times been quite effective, by naming the elephant in the room — or, in this case, on the National Mall. (His comments came the day before an art installation originally titled “Best Friends Forever” reappeared on the National Mall after it was removed last week. The statue, now renamed “Why Can’t We Be Friends?,” depicts Trump and Epstein clasping hands and skipping merrily.)

Lutnick’s remarks make it clear that the scandal, despite being overshadowed in recent weeks by Kirk’s murder and international events, is still on the minds of many on the right. Sixty-seven percent of Republicans support releasing all the Epstein files, according to the new PBS poll. Although Devine declared the Epstein furore to be “overblown” in July, she nonetheless felt the subject to be sufficiently worthy of coverage more than two months later as to warrant confronting the commerce secretary about it in an interview.

Lutnick made “a complete unforced error” with his revelation, Wired Magazine’s Jake LaHut told NBC News. As a sitting Cabinet official and former neighbor of Epstein, the secretary’s story places him at odds with the public posture of DOJ and FBI officials. It seemingly backs up Attorney General Pam Bondi’s initial claim of an “Epstein client list,” while simultaneously undermining FBI Director Kash Patel’s conflicting testimony that no credible evidence of blackmail or a client list exists. 

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During a tense Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Sept. 16, Patel testified that his agency had “no credible information” to suggest Epstein trafficked girls to friends or associates. But as Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., noted during that hearing, when U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviewed longtime Epstein collaborator Ghislaine Maxwell in July, a transcript shows she said some of the “cast of characters” who surrounded Epstein are now “in [Trump’s] Cabinet.” Blanche, who used to be President Trump’s personal attorney, failed to follow up. And the White House has walked back at least one earlier claim that Trump had nothing to do with Epstein files, with an administration official recently acknowledging that Trump’s name appears in the Epstein files, but admitting no wrongdoing. Trump himself said he had a falling out with Epstein because he “stole” Virginia Giuffre from his Mar-a-Lago spa when she worked there as a teenager. It was Maxwell who offered Giuffre a job as Epstein’s masseuse, which led to years of sexual abuse.

Lutnick’s comments appear to be creating tension in the White House, Aswain Suebsaeng reported for Zeteo: 

“That f**king dumba*s,” one of the senior Trump administration officials told Zeteo on Wednesday, after seeing a clip of Lutnick riffing on Epstein. “I’ve worked with him and can tell you he doesn’t think he did anything negative…That’s not how he thinks. He just talks and talks, and doesn’t care what unhelpful bullshit comes out.”

But Lutnick was careful in one area. When asked by Devine what Trump himself made of his experience with Epstein, the secretary quickly changed the subject. Still, his podcast appearance was enough to pique the interest of congressional leaders. 

“We know there are a lot of people [who] have information within the administration that could be helpful to our investigation,” Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., a top member of the House Oversight Committee, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday. “We need to have Howard Lutnick in front of the committee,” Garcia said, adding that he would “100%” support a subpoena for Lutnick. The call to subpoena Lutnick was echoed on Thursday on MSNBC by Schiff. 

The secretary’s remarks come at a critical time for Trump. The House of Representatives is one vote away from the release of the Epstein files. House Speaker Mike Johnson, however, is receiving criticism for seemingly slowwalking the swearing-in of recently elected Democratic Rep. Adelita Grijalva of Arizona, who has pledged to provide the decisive final vote. 

It’s unclear how long the government shutdown will last, and with the House in recess for another week, it will likely be awhile before any action will be taken. But Lutnick’s comments — and Devine’s interest — make it clear the scandal of Trump’s Epstein connections won’t be going away any time soon.

President Donald Trump has “determined” that the United States is engaged in a formal armed conflict with “unlawful combatants” in drug cartels, in a move that further escalates the already-deadly situation in the southern Caribbean.

In a confidential notice sent to several congressional committees, the New York Times reports that Trump has classified drug cartels as “nonstate armed groups,” accusing them of  facilitating “an armed attack against the United States.”  

The determination of the armed conflict comes after three airstrikes on alleged drug smuggling boats from Venezuela by U.S. forces in September. The highly controversial strikes killed 17 people, who were labeled by the Trump administration as “terrorists” without direct evidence.

“Based upon the cumulative effects of these hostile acts against the citizens and interests of the United States and friendly foreign nations, the president determined that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations,” the notice read.   

Sen. Jack Reed, D- R.I., the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Forces Committee, accused Trump of waging “secret wars.”

“Drug cartels must be stopped,” Reed wrote on X, “but declaring war & ordering lethal military force without Congress or public knowledge – nor legal justification – is unacceptable.”

Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, told the Times that “the president acted in line with the law of armed conflict to protect our country from those trying to bring deadly poison to our shores, and he is delivering on his promise to take on the cartels and eliminate these national security threats from murdering more Americans.” 

Trump has not named any specific cartels or drug trafficking organizations, nor has his administration clarified the commitment of U.S. forces in the southern Caribbean.

On Monday, it was reported that White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller is overseeing the airstrikes as an advisor to the Homeland Security Council, in a great expansion of his powers in the Trump administration.

Roughly 750,000 federal workers are expected to be furloughed, some potentially fired by Trump’s Republican administration. Many offices will be shuttered, perhaps permanently, as Trump vows to “do things that are irreversible, that are bad” as retribution. His deportation agenda is expected to run full speed ahead, while education, environmental and other services sputter. The economic fallout is expected to ripple nationwide.

“We don’t want it to shut down,” Trump said at the White House before the midnight deadline.

But the president, who met privately with congressional leadership this week, appeared unable to negotiate any deal between Democrats and Republicans to prevent that outcome.

This is the third time Trump has presided over a federal funding lapse, the first since his return to the White House this year, in a remarkable record that underscores the polarizing divide over budget priorities and a political climate that rewards hard-line positions rather than more traditional compromises.

Plenty of blame being thrown around

The Democrats picked this fight, which was unusual for the party that prefers to keep government running, but their voters are eager to challenge the president’s second-term agenda. Democrats are demanding funding for health care subsidies that are expiring for millions of people under the Affordable Care Act, spiking the costs of insurance premiums nationwide.

Republicans have refused to negotiate for now and have encouraged Trump to steer clear of any talks. After the White House meeting, the president posted a cartoonish fake video mocking the Democratic leadership that was widely viewed as unserious and racist.

What neither side has devised is an easy offramp to prevent what could become a protracted closure. The ramifications are certain to spread beyond the political arena, upending the lives of Americans who rely on the government for benefit payments, work contracts and the various services being thrown into turmoil.

“What the government spends money on is a demonstration of our country’s priorities,” said Rachel Snyderman, a former White House budget official who is the managing director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank in Washington.

Shutdowns, she said, “only inflict economic cost, fear and confusion across the country.”

Economic fallout expected to ripple nationwide

An economic jolt could be felt in a matter of days. The government is expected Friday to produce its monthly jobs report, which may or may not be delivered.

While the financial markets have generally “shrugged” during past shutdowns, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis, this one could be different partly because there are no signs of broader negotiations.

“There are also few good analogies to this week’s potential shutdown,” the analysis said.

Across the government, preparations have been underway. Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, headed by Russ Vought, directed agencies to execute plans for not just furloughs, as are typical during a federal funding lapse, but mass firings of federal workers. It’s part of the Trump administration’s mission, including its Department of Government Efficiency, to shrink the federal government.

What’s staying open and shutting down

The Medicare and Medicaid health care programs are expected to continue, though staffing shortages could mean delays for some services. The Pentagon would still function. And most employees will stay on the job at the Department of Homeland Security.

But Trump has warned that the administration could focus on programs that are important to Democrats, “cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”

As agencies sort out which workers are essential, or not, Smithsonian museums are expected to stay open at least until Monday. A group of former national park superintendents urged the Trump administration to close the parks to visitors, arguing that poorly staffed parks in a shutdown are a danger to the public and put park resources at risk.

No easy exit as health care costs soar

Ahead of Wednesday’s start of the fiscal year, House Republicans had approved a temporary funding bill, over opposition from Democrats, to keep government running into mid-November while broader negotiations continue.

But that bill has failed repeatedly in the Senate, including late Tuesday. It takes a 60-vote threshold for approval, which requires cooperation between the two parties. A Democratic bill also failed. With a 53-47 GOP majority, Democrats are leveraging their votes to demand negotiation.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said Republicans are happy to discuss the health care issue with Democrats — but not as part of talks to keep the government open. More votes are expected Wednesday.

The standoff is a political test for Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who has drawn scorn from a restive base of left-flank voters pushing the party to hold firm in its demands for health care funding.

“Americans are hurting with higher costs,” Schumer said after the failed vote Tuesday.

House Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers home nearly two weeks ago after having passed the GOP bill, blaming Democrats for the shutdown.

“They want to fight Trump,” Johnson said Tuesday on CNBC. “A lot of good people are going to be hurt because of this.”

Trump, during his meeting with the congressional leaders, expressed surprise at the scope of the rising costs of health care, but Democrats left with no path toward talks.

During Trump’s first term, the nation endured its longest-ever shutdown, 35 days, over his demands for funds Congress refused to provide to build his promised U.S.-Mexico border wall.

In 2013, the government shut down for 16 days during the Obama presidency over GOP demands to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Other closures date back decades.

___

Associated Press writers Matt Brown, Joey Cappelletti, Will Weissert, Fatima Hussein and other AP reporters nationwide contributed to this report.

The Trump administration might be fond of calling the energy transition the “green new scam,” but that isn’t stopping it from seeking a significant stake in what promises to be the largest lithium mine in the Western Hemisphere.

In exchange for renegotiating the repayment period of a $2.26 billion Department of Energy loan, the Trump administration is asking for as much as 10% equity in Lithium Americas, a company in which GM is a major investor.

Reuters first reported the news Tuesday. “President Trump supports this project. He wants it to succeed and also be fair to taxpayers,” a White House official told the news organization. “But there’s no such thing as free money.”

The move would be the latest in a string of negotiations that have given the U.S. government stakes in Intel and MP Materials.

Lithium Americas is developing the Thacker Pass mine in Nevada. The first phase would produce enough lithium to make as many as 800,000 electric vehicles per year. President Trump approved the permit for the project at the tail end of his first term, and the loan was awarded by the DOE’s Loan Program Office under President Biden. 

GM bought a 38% stake in Lithium Americas last year for $625 million, a deal that also gave the automaker the right to buy the entirety of the first phase of production and 20 years of the second phase. In total, that would be enough for 1.6 million EVs for the next two decades.

The Trump administration is reportedly asking GM to guarantee those purchases, even as it works to thwart automakers’ transition to EVs.

In her latest book “The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies,” political scientist Susan C. Stokes traces the recent erosion of democracies around the world, including the United States under President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. 

“In earlier eras,” she writes, “the main threat to democracy was the military coup, a threat confined to new democracies in poor countries. Now we face the prospect of democracy eating away at itself from within, and doing so in some wealthy and seemingly established systems. And whereas coups came as sudden explosions, impossible to hide, democratic backsliding has had a stealthy, gradual, slow-drip quality, making it harder for the population to realize what is happening until the process is well underway.”

Stokes, who serves as the Blake Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and directs the Chicago Center on Democracy at the University of Chicago, sees Trumpism as not just an American crisis, but a global one. 

I recently spoke with Stokes to better understand the ongoing collapse of American democracy and how this reflects a much larger global dynamic. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You just finished a book on global autocracy and our embattled democracies. Given the escalating political and social crisis in the United States — especially over the last few weeks — how are you feeling and trying to make sense of this all?

I’ve felt best when I am working with other people to try to push back, even in little ways. We may not have succeeded in these efforts, but it was invigorating to be around people who feel just as strongly as I do about the threats to our country’s democracy and civil society and to use whatever skills we have to try to make a difference. When we are isolated in such times as these, we feel much worse. I’ve felt the worst when I’ve felt isolated.

People ask me all the time what I think will happen with the age of Trump and what comes next. I tell them that these are the good times compared to what comes next: Enjoy them. What are you telling the people in your life?

I tell them that we now have an administration, with Trump back in the White House, that is basically authoritarian, but it is operating in a society that is still democratic. I also tell them there are realistic scenarios in which Trump sinks very low in public opinion and comes to be seen as a failed president. If this were to happen, Trump and his MAGA movement’s hold on the Republican Party would loosen, and they could lose elections badly enough that efforts to distort or steal them would be unlikely to succeed,

This scenario is by no means inevitable, but Trump’s insulation from wise counsel, his reckless treatment of the economy and other irresponsible behavior could result in such an outcome.

Blind optimism is not helpful for those Americans who want to save American democracy. But nor is it the case that democracy in our country is a lost cause. Moreover, pessimism can be immobilizing. The end of American democracy is not a fait accompli under Trump — yet.

How is America like other countries that have experienced the collapse of their democracies? How is it different?

I completed my book in 2024. It includes a table that explains the would-be autocrats’ “playbook” — the targets they take aim at [such as] the press, courts, opposition parties, etc. and gives examples of the kinds of actions that each target has experienced in various countries around the world. I divided these actions between “milder” and “more severe” actions or strategies. Actions by Donald Trump and his administration in his first term were typical of the playbook but generally milder than in several other countries. For example, with regard to the press, some backsliding governments beat up on the press verbally, as did Trump. Others elsewhere in the world closed down major publications and even turned a blind eye to the killing of journalists.

Now, as of mid-2025, some actions of the U.S. government under Trump appear even more extreme than in other eroding democracies around the world.

Given how quickly and how far the shift toward autocracy has gone under the second Trump administration, I am beginning to favor terms like “democratic breakdown” over “erosion” or “backsliding.” The latter terms suggest a gradual process. There is nothing gradual about [the] autocratization under Trump II.

Have scholars and the commentariat been too complacent about democratic backsliding under Trump? What does the data and other evidence tell us about the rise of autocracy and authoritarian populism and forms of illiberalism around the world? What are the trends?

[D]uring the first Trump administration, some scholars and commentators insisted that the country was safe from autocratization. This was understandable in a sense, given the well-known stealth with which democratic backsliders often act. (All stealth has gone by the wayside under Trump II.) And it is also the case that — again, in Trump I — scholars and commentators sometimes voiced more dire predictions than what actually happened.

The events of Jan. 6, 2021, sparked more clarity and — for a time — consensus around the idea that Trump was at least fully autocratic in his intentions and would take drastic action to carry those intentions out. But after he briefly retreated from the scene, there were some debates about whether the United States had returned to its normal state of democracy, or whether we dodged a dangerous bullet and experienced some good luck in avoiding a further descent into autocracy.

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The first eight months of Trump II have changed all of that. Those who deal in facts and who are paying attention are fairly uniformly terrified for the future of American democracy. There is much disagreement among experts about how to try to claw our way back to democracy in this country, but little serious disagreement about the dangerous state of affairs at present.

Trump has been described as putting the United States in…the orbit of autocratic and authoritarian regimes such as Russia and Hungary. Trump and the American right have literally modeled their attempts to end multiracial pluralistic democracy — and their assaults on civil society — on [Viktor] Orbán’s Hungary. 

Democracy-eroding leaders around the world come in basically two ideological flavors: Right-wing ethnonationalists or left-wing populists. (Though not all right-wing ethnonationalists or left-populists attack their democracies if they rise to power.) The right-wing ethnonationalist backsliders mobilize electoral support for themselves by vilifying minorities of various kinds, especially those with relatively little power or electoral clout. The despised Other is often the migrant or refugee, to whom many evil intentions and actions are imputed. They are supposed to be criminals, rapists; they want to steal your social benefits; they don’t understand “our” way of life; they eat the “real” people’s pets, etc. And the vilification spills over onto domestic minorities: Muslims in Modi’s India and in Orbán’s Hungary, for example.

A liberal tolerance of difference goes out the window in such settings.

In a shining example of how democratic systems and the rule of law punished an autocrat, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was just convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison for his role in an attempted coup that was inspired by Jan. 6. What do these recent events in Brazil potentially mean for the global autocratic project?

In some ways the Bolsonaro case represents a re-democratizing path forward for countries that have experienced democratic backsliding. Bolsonaro himself will never again be able to run for any public office [in Brazil]. The example of this double accountability may act as a deterrent for other Brazilian leaders who might want to follow his examples.

But of course, nothing is ever easy. Brazil, like many eroding democracies, is extremely polarized. Bolsonaro’s prosecution and the guilty [verdict] are interpreted on the pro-Bolsonaro side of the divide as evidence of improper manipulation of criminal justice to silence a political opponent of the now-ruling party. This is the interpretation championed by international allies of the former Brazilian president — most notably, Donald Trump. Never mind that the fairly aggressive judge in this case, Alexandre de Moraes, is linked to a conservative political party, not President [Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s] Workers Party — and there is no love lost between de Moraes and Lula.

In all likelihood, holding a former autocratizing leader to account will always involve trade-offs between keeping them away from power and allowing for a perception among their supporters that the other side has no commitment to democracy or the rule of law.

Trump admires strongmen like Bolsonaro and the leaders of El Salvador and Argentina. There are many “little Trumps” all over the world. Bolsonaro and [Argentinian President Javier Milei] have also been feted by Republicans and conservatives at meetings such as the Conservative Political Action Conference. Why are these autocratic alliances between the American right and their foreign counterparts so important?

Autocratic leaders draw inspiration and strategy ideas from one another. Trump has inspired leaders like Bolsonaro and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. But the admiration goes in the other direction, as well — Trump has taken not just inspiration but strategy advice from international autocrats.

Trump’s attempt at a national-level gerrymander is exactly what Orbán did in 2011, thus allowing his Fidesz Party to avoid losing many parliamentary seats in 2014, even though its vote share declined [from] 2010.

[Trump] attributed to Vladimir Putin the idea of moving away from mail-in ballots. Trump said that Putin told him that fair elections were impossible with this voting method. The irony of taking advice from the Russian dictator about the conduct of free and fair elections did not appear to bother [him].

Trump recently visited the United Kingdom. Trump himself is unpopular in the UK, but Trumpism and other forms of right-wing authoritarian populism are not. Can you explain some of the dynamics at work there?

Trump’s tariff policies, his inconsistent support of Ukraine and perceived tilt toward Russia, as well as his reversal of climate policies are all unpopular in the UK. 

[He] is more popular on the British right than on [the] left. Conservative Party leaders and voters are more positive about him, more so those from the “Brexit,” anti-immigrant wing of the party. Trump is more popular still among supporters of the Reform Party, the political party formed by Nigel Farage, one of the key proponents of Brexit [and an] opponent of migrants in the UK…

Internecine conflicts on Britain’s far right might get in the way of the Reform Party’s path to victory in British national elections, which will have to be held by mid-2029 at the latest. Though much can happen in the meantime, the current Labour government’s performance, under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has been lackluster. The Conservatives were voted out decisively in 2024, after 14 years in power, and lack strong popular support at the moment. The Reform Party is leading in many polls. Its victory would bring to office a leadership that shares many policy orientations and uncertain commitment to democracy, like its allies in the MAGA GOP.