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The deluge of eye-opening, antidemocratic policies that we’ve witnessed in just the first 50 days of his presidency should be considered nothing short of a perverse escalation of the recent past.
Four years ago, I published Subtle Tools, a book on the erosion of American democratic norms in the face of what came to be known as the Global War on Terror. Both what had been done in the name of “national security” in response to the 9/11 attacks and how it had been done—through the willing neglect of procedural integrity, the exploitation of all-too-flexible norms, a remarkable disregard for transparency, and a failure to call for accountability of any sort—left the country wide open to even more damaging future abuses of the rule of law.
And—lo and behold!—now, that future is all too distinctly here. What happened in the first quarter of this century is already being weaponized in a startling fashion in the second era of Donald Trump. In fact, the deluge of eye-opening, antidemocratic policies that we’ve witnessed in just the first 50 days of his presidency should be considered nothing short of a perverse escalation of the recent past. Think of it, in fact, as—if you don’t mind my inventing a word for this strange moment of ours—the “perversification” of war-on-terror era law and policy, which might once have been hard to imagine in this country.
While there are already all too many examples of that very sort of perversification, let me just focus on several that could prove crucial when it comes to the future of our imperiled democracy.
Among the numerous anti-democratic trends of this century, state-sponsored racism has been a constant concern. Of the many low points in the response to 9/11, the unleashing of government policies of racial and ethnic discrimination stands out. Fearing a follow-up attack, law enforcement targeted Muslim Americans, surveilling mosques, and casting a startlingly wide net of suspicion with a sweeping disregard for civil liberties. That approach was only strengthened by the militarization of police forces nationwide in the name of targeting Arabs and Muslims. In 2002, the government even introduced the NSEERS program, a “Special Registration” requirement mandating that all males from a list of 24 Arab and Muslim countries (as well as North Korea) register and be fingerprinted. In the words of the American Civil Liberties Union, the program amounted to “a discriminatory policy that ran counter to the fundamental American values of fairness and equal protection.”
A dangerous template for discrimination based on race, religion, or national origin was thereby set in place. In his first term in office, Donald Trump promptly doubled down on that Islamophobic trend, even though his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, had revoked the registration requirement. By Executive Order 13769, Trump authorized a ban on the entry into the U.S. of citizens from seven Muslim countries, an order that would be reined in somewhat by the courts and finally revoked by then-President Joe Biden.
The discrimination enshrined by federal authorities in law and policy after 9/11 opened the way for a far more widespread governmental embrace of racial and ethnic discrimination now underway.
Nor, in Trump’s first term, was discrimination limited to those from Arab and Muslim countries. As the Costs of War project has pointed out, the Islamophobia of the war on terror years had set a racial-profiling precedent and example for the more broadly racist policies of the first Trump administration. “The exponential surveillance since 9/11 has also intensified the criminalization of marginalized and racialized groups… and has increasingly targeted protest movements such as Black Lives Matter.” Yes, Trump did indeed go after Black Lives Matter protesters with a vengeance during his first term, even unleashing armed federal agents without insignia to tear gas, beat, and detain such protesters in Portland, Oregon.
While Obama would end the Special Registration program and Biden would revoke the Muslim ban, no preventive measures were undertaken to guard against future racist policies and, all too unfortunately, we see the results of that today.
Trump 2.0 has already escalated discriminatory policies, focusing on protecting white males at the expense of people of color and women. In fact, his very first executive orders included several measures cracking down on asylum-seekers and closing off legal avenues to citizenship, as well as a brazen decree aimed at eradicating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) throughout the country. Executive Order 14173 (“Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity”) was issued on January 21, 2025, the very day he took office. It ordered organizations and entities—from government offices and the U.S. military to schools, businesses, and more—to end their DEI policies “within 120 days” or risk losing government funding.
Recently, making good on its threats, the Trump administration canceled $400 million of federal funding in the form of grants and contracts to Columbia University as a sign of disapproval of that university’s supposed tolerance of pro-Palestinian protests, “described,” as National Public Radio reported, “as the school’s failure to police antisemitism on campus.” Nine other universities are believed to be under similar scrutiny.
Meanwhile, according to The New York Times, Trump is planning to issue a new travel ban, including a “red list” of countries whose citizens will be prohibited from entering the United States and an “orange list” of those whose citizens would, in some fashion, be curtailed if not completely barred from entry. As yet, the specifics remain unknown.
In other words, the discrimination enshrined by federal authorities in law and policy after 9/11 opened the way for a far more widespread governmental embrace of racial and ethnic discrimination now underway.
Secrecy was likewise baked into the government’s response to the war on terror, often to keep what would have been obvious abuses of the law well hidden. Whether it was the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”—the phrase employed by the administration of former President George W. Bush for acts of straightforward torture—or mass surveillance, the authorization for the targeted killing of an American citizen, or the implementation of other policies that deviated from accepted law and practice, all of that and more was initially kept well hidden from the American public.
Now, many have described the brazen upheavals decreed by the Trump administration as being the very opposite of secrecy—as, in fact, “saying the quiet part out loud.” In reality, however, in these first days of his second term in office, Trump and crew have taken secrecy to a new level, replacing it with a broad policy of erasure and invisibility. In fact, despite the administration’s pledge of “radical transparency” in areas like spending, a hostile onslaught against the written record has prevailed.
This determination to bury the record was apparent during the first Trump administration. He repeatedly asserted his right, for instance, not to document his meetings with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. In 2017, he reportedly confiscated notes that were taken at a meeting with Putin. In 2019, at the G-20 in Buenos Aires, he met Putin without either a translator or a note-taker present. The Washington Post reported, that “U.S. officials said there is no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump’s face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader at five locations over the past two years.” In other words, on a matter of top national security concern—U.S.-Russian relations—a “cone of seclusion” was created, effectively leaving it to the two presidents to make decisions in secret. (Meanwhile, in his first term in office, Trump allegedly flushed down the toilet certain records relevant to the classified documents case against him.)
In his onslaught against record-keeping and the public’s right to know, the National Archives has become a prime target. Trump’s battle with the archives had its origins in his legal struggle over the classified documents he was alleged to have kept in his possession in violation of the law after his first administration, even supposedly destroying security camera footage taken at Mar-a-Lago that showed boxes of those documents being moved. Now, the president has fired the U.S. archivist, replacing a professional academic with Marco Rubio, despite his duties as secretary of state.
His outright refusal to keep a record of his administration’s activities is also reflected in his insistence that the records of the Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) fall under the Presidential Records Act, which applies to the records of the president and vice president, and which comes with the guarantee that they can be withheld from the public for up to 12 years after he leaves office. The act also allows for the disposal of records, pending the approval of the national archivist.
In a further example of denying information as a form of politics, Trump’s Office of Professional Management ordered the removal of gender-related content from its websites (as well as the erasure of gender-identifying pronouns from e-mail signatures and an end to all gender-related programs and grants). This led to the removal of pages from the Census.gov website, as well as from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and military websites, and the replacement of the acronym LGBTQ+ with LGB. Under court order, some of these webpages have been put back up, even if with this defiant note:
Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children, by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation, and to women, by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality, and therefore the administration and this department rejects it.
In other words, the Trump administration’s claims of legitimacy for its purge of information remain strong. The legacy of state-sanctioned secrecy and a parallel burying of the record, inextricably tied to the post-9/11 era, has already found a secure footing in the second Trump presidency.
Time and again in the war on terror, the Department of Justice and the courts deferred to the federal government in the name of national security. As a 2021 Brennan Center report noted, national security deference was apparent in decisions not to hear cases due to “states secret” claims, as well as in decisions that prioritized over civil-liberties guarantees and human-rights considerations what government lawyers argued were the constitutionally granted powers of the president in national security matters.
Under Trump, the second time around, it’s already clear that there’s going to be a full-scale assault on the legitimacy of the legal system. Witness the administration’s attacks on judges whose decisions have gotten in the way of his agenda. When a judge ordered the restoration of public health data that had been removed from government websites, he was summarily castigated by Elon Musk as “evil” and someone who “must be fired.” Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has already moved to squelch independent decision-making by immigration court judges, threatening them with nothing short of dismissal should they rule against the president’s prerogatives.
Then there are the attacks on law firms that have opposed Trump. Recently, for instance, security clearances were removed for lawyers at the law firms of Perkins Coie, which represented Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the 2016 election, and Covington Burleigh, which represented Jack Smith, who investigated Trump in the Biden years. Lawyers from those firms were also banned from federal buildings. And don’t forget the all-out attempt to go after officials who investigated and prosecuted January 6 cases.
The idea of an independent Justice Department has been severely damaged, with the promise of so much more to come.
More often than not, the significant transformations of law and policy that grew out of the response to 9/11 were relegated to the pages of history with little or no accountability. The Senate, under Sen. Diane Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) leadership, did produce a report on the CIA’s use of torture. It detailed despicable acts of cruelty, and ultimately concluded that such techniques, decreed to be legal by the Department of Justice, were “not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.” And immediately upon taking office in 2009, then-President Barack Obama issued an executive order officially ending the use of torture. But he was decidedly against holding any officials accountable for what had occurred, preferring, as he so memorably put it, to “look forward, not backward.” In addition, Obama refused to call torture a “crime,” labeling it a mistake instead.
Today, in more mundane matters, the distaste for accountability has been institutionalized throughout the government. In his first term in office, Donald Trump dismissed or replaced five inspectors general, officials assigned to departments throughout the executive branch of government to monitor waste, abuse, and fraud. Almost immediately upon taking office this time around, he dismissed “roughly 17” of them. For the moment, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which, from its creation, never included an inspector-general position, is now under review by the Department of Treasury’s inspector general.
Trump’s aversion to accountability clearly reflects a desire to protect his own efforts to totally control executive policy. It should, however, also serve as a striking reminder of the aversion to accountability that followed the legalization and uses of torture in the post-9/11 years, the fabricated decision to go to war in Iraq, the mass surveillance of Americans in that era, and so much more. All of this set in place a grim template for the second Trump era—the notion that no one is ultimately accountable for abusing the law when their actions have been ordered (or simply approved) by the president.
Given the magnitude of the most recent antidemocratic actions by Donald Trump and his team, blaming them on the slippery slope created during the war on terror years may seem like a distinct overreach. Yet, given the dangerous excesses we’re now witnessing, it’s worth remembering just how vulnerable the loss of certain norms of legality and accountability in those years left this country—and how sadly little we seem to have learned from that era.
Racism, a lack of deference for the courts, the failure to hold individuals and organizations accountable for informally rewriting the nation’s laws, the pervasive embrace of secrecy, and an unwillingness to erect strict guardrails to prevent the future manipulation of both laws and norms—all those realities of the war on terror years created a distinctly undemocratic template, however different in scale, for this Trumpian moment of ours. An unwillingness to be accountable or to circumvent secrecy during the war on terror led the country straight into today’s quagmire.
Today’s horrific moment should, in fact, be considered—to return to that word of mine one last time—a true perversification of past misdeeds, made all too possible by a failure in the post-9/11 years to take measures to prevent their recurrence.
Growing support for Palestine means that more U.S. voters will base their future political decisions on how the U.S. engages with Israel and its disregard for Palestinian rights.
It is crucial for any American administration to recognize that, regardless of political agendas, the views of the American public regarding the situation in Palestine and Israel are undergoing a significant shift. A critical mass of opinion is rapidly forming, and this change is becoming undeniable.
Paradoxically, while Islamophobia continues to rise across the U.S., sentiments supporting Palestinians and opposing Israeli occupation are steadily increasing.
In theory, this means that the pro-Israeli media's success in linking Israel's actions against the Palestinian people to the so-called "war on terror"—a narrative that has demonized Islam and Muslims for many years—is faltering.
Palestine may not be the sole measure by which the Trump administration will be judged, nor the only factor shaping future voting patterns. Yet, it is undoubtedly a crucial test.
Americans are increasingly viewing the situation in Palestine as a human rights issue, and one that is deeply relevant to domestic politics. A recent Gallup poll underscores this shift.
The poll, released on March 6, was conducted between February 3 and 16. It found that American support for Israel is at its lowest point in 25 years, while sympathy for Palestinians has reached its highest level. Having 46% of Americans supporting Israel and 33% supporting Palestinians would have seemed inconceivable in the past, when the plight of Palestine and its people was largely overlooked by the general public.
Even more remarkable is that this shift continues to gain momentum, despite the fact that mainstream media and American politicians have been more biased than ever, promoting a dehumanizing discourse of Palestinians and unprecedented, uncritical support for Israel.
While the growing shift in favor of Palestine—particularly the genocide in Gaza, which played a role in influencing political outcomes in several states during the last presidential election—had gone largely unnoticed by the Biden administration, it's clear that the dissatisfaction with the government's position remains unchanged.
The previous administration approved significant military aid to Israel, topping $17.9 billion in the first year alone, enabling its genocidal war in Gaza, resulting in over 160,000 casualties over a span of 15 months.
Yet, this blatant disregard for Palestinian lives and rights persisted under the new administration of President Donald Trump, who appointed some of the most staunchly anti-Palestinian, pro-Israel figures to key positions in his government.
Trump did this despite making repeated, though often contradictory, promises to end the war and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Instead, the U.S. president approved the release of a shipment of heavy MK-84 bombs and passed a nearly $3 billion arms sale to Israel.
Trump also introduced a new U.S. policy that solely focused on "taking ownership" of Gaza and displacing its population. Although this position was inconsistently articulated, Trump ultimately, on March 14, seemed to reverse it altogether. This left many wondering whether U.S. foreign policy was truly independent or simply a reflection of Israel's influence and its Washington lobby.
Unlike Biden, whose support for Israel has been consistent, Trump's stance has been confusing and contradictory. The U.S. news portal Axios reported on March 5 that talks between the U.S., led by Adam Boehler, and Hamas had taken place in Doha. In an interview with CNN four days later, Boehler made the striking statement that U.S. and Israeli foreign policies should be seen as separate. "We're the United States. We're not an agent of Israel," he said.
However, as analysts began mulling over this unprecedented language, it was soon revealed that Boehler was removed from his position, and the traditional, unwavering support for Israel quickly returned.
As U.S. policymakers continue to swing between their unwavering commitment to Israel and the "America first" rhetoric, they must keep in mind the following.
First, the American public is increasingly aware of events in Palestine, so masking Israel's violations of Palestinian rights under the guise of "Israel's right to defend itself" no longer suffices.
Second, U.S. and Israeli interests are not identical: The U.S. seeks geopolitical dominance followed by stabilization and so-called "containment," while Israel thrives on provocations, destabilization, and long-lasting conflicts.
Third, Palestine has become a domestic issue in the U.S., and the debate on Palestine and Israel is no longer one-sided. Growing support for Palestine means that more U.S. voters will base their future political decisions on how the U.S. engages with Israel and its disregard for Palestinian rights.
Fourth, crackdowns on dissent, arrests of activists, and funding cuts will only deepen the polarization around this issue, rather than fostering an open, informed, and productive debate about a matter of great importance to millions of Americans. Such actions are quickly eroding the reputation of the U.S. as a democratic state and undermining confidence in its commitment to a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
Palestine may not be the sole measure by which the Trump administration will be judged, nor the only factor shaping future voting patterns. Yet, it is undoubtedly a crucial test. If the contradictions persist, and the U.S. continues to provide unwavering military support for Israel, Palestine could become the defining issue that contributes to the unraveling of U.S. foreign policy, not only in the Middle East but around the world.
It is not too late for this trajectory to shift, or for some degree of balance to emerge. The lives of millions are at stake.
While cruelty can be contagious, tyrants fall not just because people oppose them, but because, deep down, most of us long for a world where respect is earned through decency, not domination.
When I was 10 or 11, I joined up with a group of girls at summer camp to single out a tall, gawky campmate who had reached puberty much earlier than the rest of us. Ganging up on Ilene was a way to bond with the other girls, to reassure myself that I wasn’t an undesirable outsider like her. There was a brief, intoxicating sense of power in it that quickly curdled into guilt when her mom came to speak to the camp counselor about her daughter’s misery.
While I’m embarrassed by this memory, I think under the right circumstances almost all of us are capable of being cruel. It often arises when we’re repulsed by our own insecurity or weakness. We then project it onto others so we can avoid feeling bad about ourselves.
Cruelty is also a tool of power. From authoritarian rulers to internet trolls, cruelty is often disguised as strength, when instead it reveals a profound weakness—an inability to engage with others in good faith. Right now we see it playing out in the White House, as U.S. President Donald Trump tries to assert his control through fear, modeling the dictators he coddles. “Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president,” explains journalist Ezra Klein. Terrorists use terror because they know it’s the only tool they have.
When cruelty becomes fashionable—when it is seen as strength rather than a moral failing—societies descend into darkness.
As a child of Holocaust survivors, the president’s public displays of callousness chill me. His proud, unapologetic heartlessness reminds me how humans are capable of unspeakable brutality. Yale University psychology professor Paul Bloom describes cruelty as even worse than dehumanization. Dehumanization is what enables soldiers to enter into battle and kill without moral paralysis. By contrast, Bloom writes, “Cruelty is when you act fully aware of the humanity of the persons you are mistreating or humiliating. In fact, that’s the whole point.”
This sadistic streak was fully evident when Trump and Vice President JD Vance ganged up on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, making him grovel for an empty deal and publicly humiliating him for being insufficiently submissive. That the meeting was even televised made it feel like a gladiator fight in the Colosseum. Red meat for the masses. A signal that cruelty is not only acceptable, but to be celebrated. “This is going to be great television,” said Trump, smiling at the cameras as the meeting ended.
And that's what really makes this so dangerous. Because history shows us that cruelty has a seductive pull. The Nazis weren’t an anomaly; they were an extreme manifestation of a tendency that has existed throughout human history. When cruelty becomes fashionable—when it is seen as strength rather than a moral failing—societies descend into darkness. And cruelty, when normalized, begets more cruelty. One sees it in how families often pass down abusive behavior over generations or how everyday Germans behaved under Hitler during World War II. “If you and I were in Nazi Germany,” says Bloom, “we’d like to think we’d be the righteous ones, we’d be the heroes. But we might just be regular old Nazis.”
Ultimately though, while cruelty can be contagious, tyrants fall not just because people oppose them, but because, deep down, most of us long for a world where respect is earned through decency, not domination. Through every dark time in history, there is always a counterforce—a fundamental human longing for justice and decency—that helps bring down oppressive regimes. In the end, cruelty is a learned behavior, but it’s also a choice. It’s easy to be an asshole, especially under duress, while compassion takes practice and intention. If we recognize our own capacity to be cruel, we can opt to counter it or at least refuse to nourish it.
But it’s not that easy. When I hear about the slashing of programs that will result in the death and suffering of millions or how trans people and immigrants are being scapegoated to serve as distractions from billionaire plunder or when Musk says that “empathy will be the downfall of western civilization,” I feel murderous. It makes me feel cruel and stirs a desire for retribution. Yet, if I let the rage take over, I have fallen right into Elon’s trap.
Recently, I was talking with my best friend from high school about Israel when she told me that Muslims aren’t like us, that you couldn’t think of them as people. My gut response was to berate and shame her. But instead, I chose to hold back until I could give more thought to my response. Two days later she called me to tell me that her partner was gravely ill. We still haven't been able to talk about her troubling words, but now I have a better idea of what I will say. I will ask her to share the pain behind her anger. I’m not sure what made her utter the words she used, but I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with Muslims.
When we do talk, I hope she can acknowledge her misplaced resentment and that we can repair our relationship. I hope I’m able to extend her some compassion and not lash out. I will remind myself that the world won’t get better by giving in to my worst instincts. If we are to defy the power of cruelty, we must choose—again and again—to respond with something better.