The Five Pillars Of Trumpian Repression

Via Lawfare – Benjamin Wittes has categorized the authoritarian moves by Trump so far, and they fall into similar themes as the above “autocratic legal playbook”:

1. attack on the government’s own power to spend money;
2. internal retributions and restructurings within government itself—most importantly, in the power agencies: DoD, FBI, and DOJ;
3. the overt creation of a zone of impunity for political allies and friends;
4. non-criminal legal pressures on a variety of universities, law firms, news media outlets, and others;
5. willingness to deploy liberally overt threats of criminal investigation or prosecution.