Category: Politics

As a candidate last year, Donald Trump promised retribution against his perceived enemies. As president, he is doing that.

At the Department of Justice, a “Weaponization Working Group” has a long list of Trump’s perceived enemies to investigate. At the FBI, director Kash Patel has conducted a political purge, firing the highest officials at the bureau and thousands of FBI agents who investigated alleged crimes by Trump as well as investigated participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riots.

It marks the first time since J. Edgar Hoover’s 48-year reign as FBI director that the FBI has targeted massive numbers of people perceived to be political enemies.

Trump’s recent fury showed how much he expects top officials in federal law enforcement to carry out his retribution.

He was enraged when Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, decided there was insufficient evidence to charge two people Trump regards as enemies: former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“I want him out,” Trump angrily told reporters on Sept. 19, 2025. Siebert resigned, although Trump claimed he had fired him.

Trump’s most recent demands for retribution came soon after top adviser Stephen Miller’s vow to prosecute leftists in the “vast domestic terror movement” – that the administration blames, without evidence, for Charlie Kirk’s assassination – using “every resource we have.”

As the director of the FBI, Patel will likely be in charge of the investigations of perceived enemies generated by the Department of Justice and the White House. He already has sacrificed the bureau’s independence, making it essentially an arm of the White House.

This isn’t the first time an FBI director has been driven by a desire to suppress the rights of people perceived to be political enemies. Hoover, director until his death in 1972, operated a secret FBI within the FBI that he used to destroy people and organizations whose political opinions he opposed.

A burglary’s revelations

Hoover’s secret FBI was revealed, beginning in 1971, when a group of people called the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI office and removed files.

This group suspected Hoover’s FBI was illegally suppressing dissent. Given Hoover’s enormous power, they thought it was unlikely any government agency would investigate the FBI. They decided documentary evidence was needed to convince the public that suppression of dissent – what they considered a crime against democracy – was taking place.

In my book “The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI,” I describe how these eight people decided to risk imprisonment and break into the FBI’s office in Media, Pennsylvania.

The files they stole and made public confirmed the FBI was suppressing dissent. But they revealed much more: Hoover’s secret FBI and the startling crimes he had committed. These secret operations had become so extensive that they eventually diminished the bureau’s capacity to carry out its core mission: law enforcement.

Hoover, one of the most admired and powerful officials in the country, had secretly conducted a wide array of operations directed against people whose political opinions he opposed.

The files revealed that agents were instructed to “enhance paranoia” and make activists think there was an FBI agent “behind every mailbox.” Questioning Vietnam war policy could cause anyone, even a U.S. senator, Democrat J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, to be placed under FBI surveillance.

It was the revelation of Hoover’s worst operations, COINTELPRO – what Hoover called The Counter Intelligence Program – that made Americans demand investigation and reform of the FBI. Until the mid-1970s, there had never been oversight of the FBI and little coverage of the FBI by journalists, except for laudatory stories.

‘Almost beyond belief’

The COINTELPRO operations ranged from crude to cruel to murderous.

Antiwar activists were given oranges injected with powerful laxatives. Agents hired prostitutes known to have venereal disease to infect campus antiwar leaders.

Many of the COINTELPRO operations were almost beyond belief:

· The project conducted against the entire University of California system lasted more than 30 years. Hundreds of agents and informants were assigned in 1960 to spy on each of Berkeley’s 5,365 faculty members by reading their mail, observing them and searching for derogatory information – “illicit love affairs, homosexuality, sexual perversion, excessive drinking, other instances of conduct reflecting mental instability.”

· An informant trained to give perjured testimony led to the murder conviction of Black Panther Geronimo Pratt, a decorated Vietnam War veteran. He served 27 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. He was exonerated in 1997 when a judge found that the FBI concealed evidence that would have proved Pratt’s innocence.

· The bureau spied for years on Martin Luther King Jr. After it was announced King would receive the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, Hoover approved a particularly sinister plan that was designed to cause King to commit suicide.

· What one historian called Hoover’s “savage hatred” of Black people led to the FBI’s worst operation, a collaboration with the Chicago police that resulted in the killing of Chicago Black Panther Fred Hampton, shot dead by police as he slept. An FBI informant had been hired to ingratiate himself with Hampton. He came to know Hampton and the apartment very well. He drew a map of the apartment for the police on which he located “Fred’s bed.” After the killing, Hoover thanked the informant for his role in this successful operation. Enclosed in his letter was a cash bonus.

· Actress Jean Seberg was the victim of a 1970 COINTELPRO operation. In a memo, Hoover wrote that she had donated to the Panthers and “should be neutralized.” Seberg was pregnant, and the plot, approved personally by Hoover – as many COINTELPRO plots were – called for the FBI to tell a gossip columnist that a Black Panther was the father. Agents gave the false rumor to a Los Angeles Times gossip columnist. Without using Seberg’s name, the columnist’s story made it unmistakable that she was writing about Seberg. Three days later, Seberg gave birth prematurely to a stillborn white baby girl. Every year on the anniversary of her dead baby’s birth, Seberg attempted suicide. She succeeded in August 1979.

There was wide public interest in these revelations about COINTELPRO, many of which emerged in 1975 during hearings conducted by the Church Committee, the Senate committee chaired by Sen. Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat.

At this first-ever congressional investigation of the FBI and other intelligence agencies, former FBI officials testified under oath about bureau policies under Hoover.

One of them, William Sullivan, who had helped carry out the plots against King, was asked whether officials considered the legal and ethical issues involved in their operations. He responded:

“Never once did I hear anybody, including myself, raise the questions: ‘Is this course of action which we have agreed upon lawful? Is it legal? Is it ethical or moral?’ We never gave any thought to that line of questioning because we were just pragmatic. The one thing we were concerned about: will this course of action work, will it get us what we want.”

Ethical? Legal?

The future of the new FBI under Patel and Trump is unclear, especially in light of the president’s known tolerance for lawlessness, even violence. His gifts of clemency and pardons to Jan. 6 rioters are evidence of that.

As for Patel, fired FBI Officials stated in their recent lawsuit over those dismissals that Patel had told one of them it was “likely illegal” to fire agents because of the cases they had worked on, but that he was powerless to resist Trump’s demands.

The recent statements from both Trump and top aide Miller suggest the FBI’s independence, and broader constitutional requirements that the administration remain faithful to the law, are meaningless to them. They suggest that, like Hoover, they would criminalize dissent.

What will happen at the FBI after the internal purge ends? Will retribution fever wane? Will Patel refocus on the bureau’s chief mission, law enforcement? And will the questions asked in Congress in 1975, as the bureau was being forced to reject Hoover’s worst practices, be asked now: Is what we are doing ethical? Is it legal?

Betty Medsger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Congress faces a deadline of Oct. 1 to adopt a spending measure to keep the federal government open. Various reporters will be interviewing serious people saying serious things in the basement corridors of the U.S. Capitol. There will also be political posturing, misrepresentation and either braggadocio or evasion. Politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed congressional expert Charlie Hunt, a political scientist at Boise State University, about the now-perennial drama over spending in Congress and what’s very different about this year’s conflict.

In the past, how did Congress pass budgets so that government could keep operating?

Typically, you would get an actual passage of a full budget for a year. But in the last 20 or 30 years or so, since we’ve become a more polarized country with a polarized Congress, we have a lot of what are called continuing resolutions, or CRs.They’re stopgap measures – not the full budget – and don’t tend to make a lot of changes on a lot of the spending priorities that Congress has.

Continuing resolutions usually just extend current levels of spending for a short time so that the two parties can continue negotiating. But as negotiations over long-term budgets have tended to fail more and more, these CR’s are becoming more common, and Congress almost never passes a full budget on a yearly basis at this point.

What’s the role of the president here?

The president has the power to veto any piece of legislation, and that includes the federal budget. Essentially, what majorities in Congress need when they are going into a budget fight is either the president’s implicit sign-off on whatever they pass, or they need enough votes to override the president’s veto.

Congress and the presidency right now are both held by Republicans, they’re in pretty deep alignment, so that’s not as much of a concern this time. It’s really just what Trump wants that needs to be a part of this legislation, and if there’s something in it that he really doesn’t like, then Congress needs to go back to the drawing board and the Republicans need to find out a way to get that into the bill.

What is driving each party in these negotiations?

Two different things are at work here. One is that Congress, as I mentioned, is really polarized. The two parties are farther apart from each other than they used to be. So the average Democrat and the average Republican aren’t going to agree as much on policy priorities and funding priorities than they did, say, in the 1980s or 1970s or before that.

The other thing is that Congress in recent decades has been more closely divided than they have been in the recent past, say, the last century. In both chambers, House and Senate, it’s very rare for one party or the other to have some massive majority. You need a majority of 60 in the Senate to have a chance at passing most legislation, for example, and this big a majority hasn’t happened since 2009. That’s something President Obama enjoyed with the Democrats for just a short period of time.

Since then, there have been very closely divided chambers in Congress, and that means that you need, at least in the Senate, some bipartisanship in order to pass that 60-vote threshold to break a filibuster. That’s what’s really gumming up the works right now. Democrats don’t feel like they’re being included in negotiations, and so they’re not likely to agree to a Republican-only budget in the Senate.

What is different about the 2025 budget fight than previous ones?

A lot of the dynamics are still the same. You still have partisan fighting. And you still have some divides within the two parties that I think are worth mentioning. One example: There was a Senate vote just the other day on one of these budget resolutions, and a couple of Republicans voted with the Democrats. So for some of these more deficit-hawk Republicans, that concern is still playing a role.

What’s new this time around is this element of rescissions. This is a tool that’s been available since the 1970s in which presidents ask Congress to rescind spending that they had allocated. This is what happened earlier this year with the rescissions on public broadcasting – NPR and PBS – that got a lot of attention, as well as on USAID. Trump said he wanted to cut funding for public broadcasting – the GOP in the Senate and House voted to let him. They didn’t need 60 votes in the Senate for a rescission, either. Just a majority for this move.

So in this case, Democrats are looking at this and thinking, “Why should we negotiate, if you’re just going to rescind that later on without our consent?” That’s a major element that’s changed. While it’s a power that has been in place for a while, Trump and the Republicans have been really willing to wield that.

Do you see this rescission power being exercised with every budget or continuing resolution that Congress passes?

This is a pretty serious breach of what we call Congress’ “power of the purse.” That spending power is set out in Article 1 of the Constitution. It is a key power, maybe their most important power and point of leverage they have in going back and forth with the president and making sure the executive branch doesn’t accrue too much power.

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Read more:
Congress, not the president, decides on government spending − a constitutional law professor explains how the ‘power of the purse’ works

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But if this rescission authority is going to be used in this way going forward, where basically any spending priority that the president doesn’t want or doesn’t want to fund is going to be subject to rescission, then Congress doesn’t really have the power of the purse, right? They have a president who is going to veto anything that doesn’t live up to their expectations, or they can just sign it and then ask for these rescissions later.

The key thing here is that President Trump currently has in Congress a set of Republicans in both the House and the Senate who are willing to do virtually anything he wants and are subject to a lot of the political pressures in their districts that put him in office in the first place. So if they don’t go along with rescissions, they’re going to face the wrath of their Republican voters in their district.

That’s one thing that’s really changed in the last 30 years that I think gives the president a lot more authority in these matters, and makes rescission such a powerful tool that did not exist before.

Charlie Hunt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

In his second term as president, Donald Trump has deployed U.S. military forces in rarely used roles in domestic law enforcement.

Besides sending military troops to Los Angeles to counter protests over immigration raids, Trump sent the National Guard to patrol the streets of Washington, D.C., claiming crime in the city is “out of control.”

As a political scientist who studies civil-military relations, I recognize the fundamental problems of militarizing domestic law enforcement, which the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits.

Militarizing law enforcement risks using excessive force against civilians by troops trained for warfare. And it undermines a constitutional principle, enshrined in the Bill of Rights, that limits the coercive power of the state against its citizens.

A more menacing problem, however, is politicizing the military through association with partisan politics. That erodes public trust in the armed forces.

With continued militarization of law enforcement, the United States is entering largely uncharted waters.

But in other countries, including Chile and Argentina, this is familiar territory. There, established democracies broke down in the 1970s into military dictatorships.

In the years before these breakdowns, the militaries in both countries were broadly opposed to meddling in politics.

However, civilian elites could not resolve their own governance failures. They exacerbated civil unrest and economic instability and successfully encouraged the military to intervene.

Trump administration tactics

Three Trump administration tactics mirror those of officials in Chile and Argentina who politicized their militaries.

The first is priming the public to focus on exaggerated threats to society. Trump administration officials have sought to “liberate” Los Angeles. They have touted arrests of the “… Worst of the Worst Criminal Illegal Aliens” in Los Angeles.

Priming the public this way establishes a danger so great that ordinary – civilian – resources are an insufficient response. Military resources become the solution.

Emblematic of this tactic is Trump’s executive order deploying the National Guard to Washington, D.C. He falsely declared a “crime emergency” in the capital so great as to “undermine critical functions of Government and thus the well-being of the entire Nation.”

The D.C. deployment has opened the door to Guard deployments in other cities. Deployment to multiple cities has the potential to normalize the presence of troops in communities nationwide.

Latin American conditions in the 1970s were far more dire. Yet there, too, rather than find political solutions, elected leaders sounded alarms and looked to the military.

The months before Chile’s coup in 1973 were marked by rationing, strikes and street protests.

That led the opposition-dominated lower house of Congress to pass a resolution calling on the military to “put an end to” the government of President Salvador Allende, whom they lacked sufficient votes to constitutionally impeach.

Although Congress and Allende had months to work for compromise solutions to the nation’s problems, both remained intransigent. With the resolution, Congress handed the military a blank check to intervene. The military took over just three weeks later.

Using the military as backup

A second tactic is to place military forces in prominent missions as backup for nonmilitary personnel. The expectation is that they will reinforce each other seamlessly.

The Trump administration’s deployment of Marines in Los Angeles required that they protect federal immigration agents without engaging in law enforcement. In practice, however, lines may not be so clear.

Military troops may be tasked into law enforcement support operations where they directly confront civilians. This happened in Los Angeles, where Marines detained a civilian who had entered an unauthorized zone. Such detention is by law the job of local law enforcement.

Yet more worrisome is when federal troops back up operations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE, created after 9/11 to support domestic anti-terrorism efforts and enforce federal immigration laws, has broad territorial jurisdiction. It also has greater enforcement power and fewer use-of-force limitations than police. Its most striking methods – masked agents, arrests without court warrants – have brought comparisons to Nazi Germany’s Gestapo secret police.

At least 19 states have authorized National Guard deployments to collaborate with ICE in targeting illegal immigration. All this raises the question of what ICE methods military troops may absorb through the collaboration.

Argentina reflects a worst-case scenario of how the military can absorb practices from nonmilitary agents that erode its professionalism.

In the two years before the 1976 coup, the army was prepared to counter two guerrilla groups – Montoneros and ERP – that orchestrated bombings and attacked police and military installations. Yet senior officers were deeply divided over any collaboration with the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, a paramilitary group created by the civilian government that eliminated the government’s rivals.

The military repeatedly resisted the government’s requests to work with the AAA, considering it a loose cannon and competitor aligned with the police. As political violence escalated, public support for the military to take the lead in counterinsurgency grew.

The growing crisis galvanized an interventionist sector in the military, enabling the 1976 coup. Once in power, it adopted the AAA’s horrific methods, including enforced disappearance and clandestine murder. In short, the military eliminated the group and adopted its death squad methods.

Demanding political litmus tests

The third tactic may be the most debilitating within the military itself. It involves publicly shaming and firing military personnel for allegedly being woke.

The Trump administration seeks to eradicate wokeness from the military. Firings initially targeted officers at the highest ranks. Yet any misstep that can be deemed political – such as contradicting the president’s claims with intelligence assessments – appears to qualify for removal.

Yet while seeking to eliminate diversity, the tactic is likely to encourage a culture of institutional policing and concealment. This erodes military norms of merit-based promotion and professional trust.

In both Chile and Argentina, it was professedly apolitical officers who led the coups of the 1970s. Chile’s Gen. Augusto Pinochet and Argentina’s Gens. Jorge Rafael Videla and Roberto Viola had established reputations as officers opposed to intervention.

Yet while their appearance of being apolitical facilitated promotion to the highest ranks, it was no guarantee of moderation.

On the eve of the coup in Chile, the CIA reported uncertainty that Pinochet would “actively support” other leaders of the coup in the military.

Yet two months later, Pinochet had not only taken charge but was plotting to eliminate rival officers by arrest and even assassination. He also created a specialized intelligence agency to carry out political repression.

Similarly, Argentina’s Videla and Viola were long viewed as moderates. The CIA reported that Argentine officials and business leaders preferred Videla lead the coup, believing his moderate stance would leave political parties and labor organizations “unchanged.”

Yet after coups brought them to power, they endorsed repression and presided over the shuttering of all representative institutions. Systematic repression through extrajudicial executions and thousands of enforced “disappearances” followed.

The dangers of a partisan military

To be sure, none of these tactics destine the United States to democratic breakdown or military takeover. But Americans ignore the partisan use of the armed forces at their peril.

Fortunately, for Argentina and Chile there was a pathway out of dictatorship. But it took decades of concerted work by democratic leaders and citizens to restore full rule of law and rebuild democratic institutions.

To this day, their armed forces remain tainted by the weight of their misrule and repression some 50 years ago. This is not a path that other democracies can afford to take.

Kristina Mani does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Protests are becoming a routine part of public life in the United States. Since 2017, the number of nonviolent demonstrations has almost tripled, according to researchers with the nonprofit Crowd Counting Consortium.

And more people are joining than ever. The Black Lives Matter marches in 2020, after George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, have been described as the largest nonviolent mobilization in U.S. history. The No Kings protests against Trump administration policies on June 14, 2025, were not far behind, with between 2 million and 4.8 million Americans protesting nationwide

What explains this surge of protest activity?

My research shows that polarization – the extent to which people dislike members of the opposing party – is a key driver. Today political polarization, as reflected by the ratings Americans give to the political parties, continues to be at its highest level since political scientists began using the measure in 1964.

I am an expert on political behavior, and my work analyzes how polarization shapes public life. In a recent article published in the journal Social Forces, I analyzed surveys conducted between 2014 and 2021 that asked Americans whether they had joined protests connected to Black Lives Matter, the climate movement or the tea party, the small-government movement that was active in the early 2010s.

These surveys, which include over 14,000 respondents, make it possible to see what separates people who protest from those who stay home.

The data points to a clear pattern: Anger at the other side motivates protest. People who rated the opposing party more negatively at one point in time were much more likely to take part in demonstrations in the years that followed.

Dislike for the other side spurs action

Importantly, I found that partisan animosity was a strong motivator for taking part in protests, even after taking people’s feelings about the issues into account. In the surveys, respondents were asked detailed questions about their views on the movements’ topics: for example, whether white Americans enjoyed advantages that Black Americans did not, or how serious a problem they thought climate change was and whether it was caused by human activity.

This allowed me to calculate how much protest activity was due to partisan anger and how much was simply a result of policy concerns. The results surprised me.

For the two higher-profile movements – Black Lives Matter and the tea party – partisan animosity mattered for protest a little more than half as much as people’s feelings about racial inequality or government spending, respectively. For climate protests, the effect of partisan anger was even greater. How people felt toward the “other side” mattered 2½ times more for their decision to protest than did concern about climate change.

This finding matters because it shows that polarization is not just about what people think. It also changes how they participate in politics.

What’s known as “affective polarization,” or the tendency for partisans to dislike and distrust each other, has already been shown to affect how people view U.S. political parties and their willingness to be friends across party lines. My study showed that this kind of division also increases people’s real-world engagement with politics.

When partisans feel threatened or angry at the opposing side, they don’t just complain about it. They organize, hit the streets and march.

More division, more marches

The polarized nature of protest also helps explain why some of today’s protests address multiple issues. The No Kings protests in June 2025, for instance, challenged a number of actions, including funding cuts to social programs, ICE deportations and the deployment of troops in Los Angeles.

But the “King” in question was always clear: President Donald Trump. Protesters may not have shared identical or extreme views on every issue, but they were united by their opposition to Trump.

Protest has long been an infrequent activity, but that’s changing. In the 2020 American National Election Study, nearly 1 in 10 Americans said they had joined a protest in the past year, the highest figure recorded on that survey since the question was first asked in 1976.

That level of participation makes protest one of the most visible ways Americans now engage in politics. As polarization remains high, there is every reason to expect it will continue – starting with another nationwide No Kings protest planned for Oct. 18, 2025.

The author has attended public events for social movements mentioned in this article. These experiences did not involve any funding, employment, or formal affiliation, and the analysis presented here is guided by academic standards of objectivity and evidence-based research.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Following unprecedented threats from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, major affiliate station owners Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting pressured Disney’s ABC to pull Jimmy Kimmel’s show off the air over his comments related to Charlie Kirk’s killing.

The suspension is a harbinger of what could happen under a fundamental restructuring of U.S. media that will take place if the proposed Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery merger is approved by the Trump administration.

The deal, first revealed on September 11, 2025, would erase one of the five remaining movie studios and concentrate oversight of two of the country’s most prominent newsrooms – CNN and CBS, both targets of the Trump administration’s ire – under one owner with strong ties to Donald Trump.

Based on research from the Global Media & Internet Concentration Project, our analysis shows that Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery would gain control of more than a quarter of the US$223 billion U.S. media market, along with influence over film, television, streaming and the cloud infrastructure upon which digital media increasingly depends.

The combined entity would acquire nearly half of the cable television market, including HBO and CNN. The merger would nearly double Paramount’s share of the video streaming market, uniting HBO Max, Paramount+ and Discovery.

By combining two major Hollywood film studios, it would also capture nearly one-third of the film production market.

This is exactly the type of merger that U.S. antitrust agencies have historically scrutinized because of concerns that excessive market concentration gives too much power to a few companies.

In media markets, such concerns are pronounced: Concentration threatens media diversity and increases the risk of media bias and ideological manipulation.

A mega-conglomerate like Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery would control a vast share of U.S. viewership. Subject to pressure from or, worse, alignment with the Trump administration, the merged company could promote and protect the administration’s interests.

Cloud control

By combining media production and valuable brands such as Harry Potter, DC Comics and Barbie, the merged giant would gain great negotiating power with competing streaming companies, advertisers and distributors. The merged companies could also secure more lucrative streaming deals, better licensing windows and higher per subscriber and ad rates with cable providers.

The 2023 Hollywood writers and actors strikes opposed the exploitative impact of streaming and AI on creative workers’ compensation. The new media giant would wield significant bargaining power over those media workers.

The merger’s potential detrimental impact extends beyond film and television industries.

Paramount is helmed by David Ellison, and the merger is backed by his father, Larry Ellison. Ellison senior owns the world’s fifth-largest cloud provider, Oracle.

Cloud providers are the critical infrastructure for streaming platforms, ferrying digital content from streamers to viewers. As streaming becomes the dominant mode of media consumption, the Ellison family’s control over this infrastructure could give Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery another lever of power over its competitors.

Diversity denied

With potential size and reach to rival Disney and Comcast’s NBC Universal, Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery could become another massive media outlet with right-wing ties.

The proposed deal follows the Trump administration’s $1.1 billion cuts in public media funding. These cuts – affecting PBS, NPR and more than 1,500 affiliated local news stations across the country, all accused by Trump of “partisan bias” – effectively accelerate the ongoing demise of local, independent news.

Concurrently, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corp. has settled its dynastic succession, ensuring Fox remains a core channel for the American right.

If the merger is approved, Fox Corporation, the conservative Sinclair Broadcasting and Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery would control one-third of all U.S. media.

This consolidation would further cement the partisan media model driving deepening political polarization in the U.S., as public and local news media lose funding. The deal also would undermine already declining media independence, fundamental to holding the powerful – whether corporations or politicians – to account.

Wielding regulation

The Trump administration has not shied away from using antitrust law and communications regulation to exercise political control over media.

Before initiating its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount was acquired by David Ellison’s Skydance Media. Ahead of the government’s merger review, amid regulatory signals it could affect the review process, Paramount-owned CBS paid $16.5 million dollars to Donald Trump to settle a lawsuit Trump filed based on allegations of “deceptive” editing of an interview with his political opponent Kamala Harris. Editing of interviews is a standard editorial practice.

Shortly after, the merger was approved by the FCC with strict political conditions: hiring an ombudsman to oversee CBS’s reporting and eliminating all of the network’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

David Ellison accepted these conditions, promising to eliminate all of Paramount’s U.S.-based DEI programs. For the ombudsman role, he hired Kenneth Weinstein, former CEO of the conservative Hudson Institute and ambassador to Japan under the first Trump administration.

Since then, the Paramount CEO also has pursued Bari Weiss, a prominent conservative voice, to guide “the editorial direction” of the CBS news division. Ellison’s moves signal that editorial independence at CBS, and soon perhaps CNN, may be subject to ideological oversight.

Meanwhile, Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison, has ties to Donald Trump going back to the first Trump administration. The New York Times in an April 2025 profile said that Ellison “may be closer to Mr. Trump than any mogul this side of” Elon Musk.

The senior Ellison has been playing a key role in negotiations over the future ownership of TikTok. His ties to Trump run deep enough to likely make him one of the main beneficiaries of the TikTok deal currently in negotiation between the United States and China.

Trump has shown an appetite for coercing media companies. For instance, ABC settled a Trump lawsuit in late 2024 with a $15 million donation to the as-yet-unbuilt Trump Library.

By placing two major news outlets in the hands of a family with ties to Trump, the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger would facilitate such control.

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Read more:
ABC’s and CBS’s settlements with Trump are a dangerous step toward the commander in chief becoming the editor-in-chief

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What Orbán did – but faster

This is the “Hungarian model” on speed.

Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s authoritarian leader, spent a decade asserting increasing control over that nation’s media.

The Trump administration is poised to accomplish the same in less than a year – and at greater scale.

In addition to helping allies buy a growing share of U.S. media, in his first eight months Trump also has managed to score conciliatory overtures from the nation’s tech billionaires, who fired fact-checkers at major social media platforms, curbed moderation of hateful content and asserted rigid editorial control over the op-ed pages at The Washington Post, one of the country’s most prominent newspapers.

If the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger is approved and Larry Ellison joins Andreessen Horowitz as part of the impending TikTok deal, a movie studio, CBS, CNN, Fox, 185 Sinclair-owned TV stations and a major social media platform will have owners with strong ties to Trump.

We believe the promised benefits of a Paramount-Warner Bros. Disovery merger, including lower streaming prices, pale next to the damage it would do to media diversity and pluralism.

By acquiring greater control over film production, TV and streaming, the merger would dramatically reconfigure the very media institutions that shape U.S. culture and politics.

The Trump administration’s review of this merger may further cement the administration’s political control over the U.S. media.

This story has been updated to reflect developments in the status of Kimmel’s show.

Pawel Popiel receives funding from funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Dwayne Winseck receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Hendrik Theine receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Sydney Forde receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

House Democrats are going on the offense with tariffs and shutdown politics in swing districts, dropping TV ads against 10 vulnerable Republicans as Congress barrels toward an October government shutdown.

House Majority Forward, a nonprofit aligned with House Democratic leadership, is spending $3 million on broadcast TV and digital ads attacking Republicans on cost-of-living increases and cuts to Medicaid. Details of Tuesday’s ad buy were shared first with POLITICO.

“They promised to lower prices, but you’re not imagining it — Republican tariffs are making everything more expensive,” one of the ad’s narrator says, over flashing images of grocery items. “Juan Ciscomani voted to let Trump make tariffs even worse and voted to make healthcare even more expensive. Now, Republicans in Congress are threatening to shut down the government, causing economic chaos.”

Ciscomani, a Republican member first elected in 2022, holds an Arizona House seat that Donald Trump also narrowly won last year.

The ads come as Congress faces a government shutdown stalemate, after the Senate rejected dueling short-term government funding proposals from both parties on Friday.

They also preview Democrats’ attack lines against Republicans ahead of the midterms. Public polling finds most Americans disapprove of Trump’s tariff policies. But Republicans maintain an edge over Democrats when voters are asked who they trust more on the economy, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll released over the weekend.

In addition to Ciscomani, the ads go after Reps. David Valadao of California, Gabe Evans of Colorado, Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn of Iowa, Tom Barrett of Michigan, Mike Lawler of New York, Rob Bresnahan and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin.

The ad airing against Van Orden features a Wisconsin-based influencer, Kate Duffy. Styled after a social media post, it will air vertically on broadcast TV, a first for the group.

​Politics

Disney announced “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will resume airing on Tuesday, ending Kimmel’s short-lived suspension following comments the host made on his show about the killing of Charlie Kirk.

In a statement released Monday, Disney said it suspended Kimmel last week “to avoid inflaming a tense situation.” The company received intense pressure from Trump allies, including Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, over Kimmel’s comments.

“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” Disney said in the statement. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive.”

“We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday,” the statement continued.

Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which operates nearly 40 ABC affiliates, said Monday evening that it will preempt Kimmel’s show on its stations when the show returns.

Kimmel’s suspension set off a wave of criticism from leaders in both parties who were concerned about political censorship.

Prior to Kimmel’s suspension, Carr condemned Kimmel’s comments and suggested that media companies who receive licensing from the FCC have “an obligation to operate in the public interest.”

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said last Wednesday in an interview.

Hours later on Wednesday, Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcasting Group, two of the nation’s largest owners of local television stations, said they would preempt tapings of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” because of Kimmel’s comments. Nexstar Media Group is currently pursuing a billion-dollar merger with Tegna that would require FCC approval.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A handful of prominent Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, warned that Carr could set a dangerous precedent and urged the Trump administration to be careful in pressuring a private company to influence its speech.

Democratic leaders in Washington and hundreds of artists and celebrities joined in condemning Kimmel’s suspension.

FCC commissioner Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat in the agency’s leadership, welcomed Kimmel’s return to air and praised Americans who criticized the suspension.

“I am glad to see Disney find its courage in the face of clear government intimidation,” she said.

Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for Turning Point USA, encouraged Nexstar and Sinclair to keep their pledge to preempt Kimmel when his show returns.

“Disney and ABC caving and allowing Kimmell back on the air is not surprising, but it’s their mistake to make,” Kolvet said in a social media post Monday. “Nextstar and Sinclair do not have to make the same choice.”

​Politics

In a classic work on the modern presidency originally published in 1960, political scientist Richard Neustadt wrote that the American public “expects the man in the White House to do something about everything.”

These expectations, Neustadt argued, far exceeded the president’s ability to actually control outcomes.

More recently, political journalist John Dickerson, author of “The Hardest Job in the World,” noted that presidents typically have people demanding that they pay attention to about 250 problems at one time. But, quoting a productivity expert, Dickerson points out that priorities are like arms: “If you have more than two, you’re either crazy or lying.” The implication: Presidents have to shed 248 of those pressing concerns.

I study the American presidency. The research in the field, including my own, suggests that typically the politics of presidential attention is driven by two considerations.

The first comes down to delegation: As Barack Obama was fond of saying, no easy problem gets to the president’s desk. Presidents typically focus on the problems that no one else – not state or local governments, the bureaucracy or Cabinet secretaries – can deal with.

The other consideration is whether the issue is a winning one. Neustadt emphasizes this in his study of presidential power: Presidents enhance their reputations by winning conflicts, not losing them.

There are also plenty of examples of presidents wading into highly conflicted areas and alienating supporters or suffering policy defeats, including George W. Bush’s unsuccessful attempts to tackle the “third rail” of Social Security reform, and Bill Clinton’s failed efforts to enact health care reform.

As a result, presidents are typically expected to be focused on national security, economic management and other key issues that have to be handled at the national level. They are expected to only sparingly wage battles of will with leaders outside government – in the arts, business or education – and with state-level politicians who lie outside the president’s direct control.

Amid the many other ways he’s departed from American political tradition, President Donald Trump has turned these assumptions upside down. That has important implications for how Americans understand the scope and reach of presidential power.

Like most aspects of American politics, the presidency has become more defined by partisan politics over time. Trump has taken this evolution to a new level, rejecting the traditional role of statesman or a spokesperson for the whole nation.

Instead, he has adopted the role of partisan political warrior – and that means he is using the power of his office in areas and in ways previously considered off-limits to the president.

Hosting, decorating and critiquing clothing ads

Recently, President Trump reported that he might host the Kennedy Center Honors in December. He also reportedly had a strong hand in choosing the center’s honorees, a task normally undertaken over months and with public input.

He’s also been heavily involved in the redecoration of the White House, waged war on wind turbines and posted online about the controversy over actress Sydney Sweeney’s ad for American Eagle jeans.

His administration has issued detailed demands of numerous universities, wading directly into curriculum, personnel policies and the frequent target of diversity, equity and inclusion programs. While much of this effort has gone through the Department of Education, the president himself has issued executive orders and posted online about specific universities.

Traditionally, presidents have been especially hesitant to dive into areas where education intersected with difficult cultural conflicts. One of the most significant examples is the way that presidents reacted, from the 1950s through the 1970s, to Supreme Court orders mandating school desegregation.

To put it bluntly, presidents did not want to face the political dilemmas associated with enforcing the court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.

As I note in my book “Backlash Presidents,” presidents are rarely eager to upend the racial status quo, even when they recognize its injustice.

Dwight Eisenhower, who was president when the Supreme Court issued the Brown decision, felt the decision placed new strain on the federal government to get involved in social relations and local issues. The feeling was bipartisan; Eisenhower’s presidential successor, Democrat John F. Kennedy, didn’t want to take a lead role in enforcing desegregation either.

Both, at different times, did eventually use federal force and power to uphold the law. Eisenhower mobilized the National Guard to protect Black students integrating a Little Rock, Arkansas, high school in 1957, and Kennedy in 1963 took similar action to protect Black students integrating schools in Alabama.

But federalism, which divides powers between national and state government, provided presidents with a strategically useful barrier to any further presidential action, allowing the two presidents to say that they were treading carefully because education was up to the states.

Obviously, this was a different time and context – the Department of Education didn’t exist yet, so there was not a clearly defined federal role in public education. But it represents an example of how presidents have typically looked to use structures such as federalism to leave tough issues to others and avoid political fallout.

It’s personal with Trump

Focusing attention on foreign policy and national security is less likely to stoke opposition. Those are areas where presidents have more latitude and can expand their power even more.

Presidents have traditionally not engaged in direct conflict with individual governors, industry leaders or university presidents if they can help it. They’ve engaged in policy battles, but generally not personal ones.

Trump’s approach has been very different.

With Department of Justice investigations and public criticism, his administration has targeted specific law firms and individuals whom Trump dislikes. The president has issued executive orders about the “forced use” of paper straws.

Is Trump’s attention on the personal a problem for the nation?

Presidents have been challenged for being too focused on minor issues and details, including Jimmy Carter, whose attention to things such as the schedule of the White House tennis courts drew scorn from critics.

Some presidents have been criticized as too quick to delegate to others, as was Ronald Reagan, who was seen as inattentive to important details. George W. Bush likewise was knocked for delegating too much, especially in crucial areas of foreign policy and intelligence.

Diving deeply into partisan politics

But Trump’s shifting of presidential priorities signals a much deeper political change.

First, some of these actions have also been directly related to cultural conflict – the fights with universities over DEI polices, commenting on the Sydney Sweeney ad.

Trump is hardly the first president to elevate a hot-button cultural issue for political gain – George W. Bush famously promoted a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage leading into his 2004 reelection campaign.

But presidents have traditionally seen more costs than benefits associated with campus speech issues or race questions that could be handled elsewhere.

A February 2025 article in The Root, whose motto is “Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude,” points to “five ridiculously petty actions” from the administration. All are related to race or LGBTQ symbols or visuals, such as the removal of references to LGBTQ Americans from government websites and the removal of a Spanish-language version of the White House website.

Another related aspect of the logic behind this shift in presidential attention is that the political constraints that limited past administrations, such as fear of alienating voters or stirring controversy, do not seem to concern this one. It suggests that the president and his team are not worried about the opinions of people who might disagree with their cultural stances.

This change also represents a departure from the more traditional statesmanship version of the presidency. The Trump administration and the president who heads it have chosen to dive deeply into, rather than rise above, politics.

Julia R. Azari has received (in the past) funding from the Truman Library Institute, the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation