This Trump move should terrify us — because it's been done before

By Betty Medsger, Professor Emeritus of Journalism, San Francisco State University.

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 director of the FBI, Patel will likely be in charge of the investigations of perceived enemies generated by the DoJ 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?

These groups can beat Trump — does he want to be embarrassed?

Beth Gazley, Professor of Nonprofit Management and Policy, Indiana University.

Following the Sept. 10, 2025, death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah, the Trump administration signaled that it intends to expand investigations into “leftist groups” for possible links to the suspect.

Kirk, who was 31 when he died, founded and led Turning Point USA, a conservative nonprofit that counted hundreds of thousands of young Americans among its members. Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah man, is accused of killing Kirk with a single bullet at a crowded outdoor debate. Robinson was, according to many accounts, raised by Republican parents in a conservative community. Although Robinson reportedly had recently adopted different political views, his precise motives remain unclear.

The Conversation U.S. asked Beth Gazley, an Indiana University scholar of nonprofits, local governance and civil society, to explain the significance of the Trump administration’s response to Kirk’s death in terms of free speech and nonprofit norms.

What are the Trump administration’s allegations?

High-ranking members of the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, are accusing certain progressive organizations of encouraging violence against right-wing public figures and suggesting they played a role in Kirk’s death.

Miller, for example, has likened those groups to “a vast domestic terror movement.”

Vance has said the government will “go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence,” in a reference to nonprofits he alleges are supporting illegal activities.

President Donald Trump has blamed Kirk’s death on “a radical left group of lunatics” that doesn’t “play fair.” He has stated that they are “already under major investigation,” although no such probe has been disclosed to date.

Trump has raised the possibility of criminal charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as the RICO statute, which is typically used to prosecute gangs and organized crime rings.

But, to be clear, the Trump administration has not yet produced evidence to support any of its allegations of wrongdoing by nonprofits and their funders.

What organizations are being targeted?

Some conservative media outlets and Trump administration members have singled out specific nonprofits and funders.

Their targets include billionaire George Soros, whose Open Society Foundations are among the country’s largest philanthropies, and the Ford Foundation, another of the nation’s top grantmakers. The outlets and officials claim that both foundations allegedly provided money to as-of-yet unnamed groups that “radicalized” Tyler Robinson and led to what the White House has called “organized agitation.”

Another target is the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that regularly reported comments Kirk made disparaging Black, LGBTQ+ and other people.

The Ford Foundation is among more than 100 funders that signed onto an open letter posted to the Medium platform on Sept. 17, in which they objected to these Trump administration’s attacks. Open Society Foundations also signed the letter, and, in a post on the X platform, it denied the specific allegations directed at it by the Trump administration. The Southern Poverty Law Center has posted its own denial on Facebook.

Most but not all of the organizations Trump and his officials have accused of wrongdoing are charitable nonprofits and foundations. These organizations operate in accordance with the rules spelled out in Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. tax code.

What can count as a charitable activity is defined very broadly due to the language that Congress approved over a century ago. It includes public policy advocacy, a limited amount of direct lobbying, social services and a broad range of other activities that include running nonprofit hospitals, theaters and universities. Churches and other houses of worship count as U.S. charities too.

The rights of nonprofits are also protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which entitles them to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and the right to assemble and “petition the government for a redress of grievances” – which cements their right to participate in public policy advocacy.

Obviously, institutions – including nonprofits – and the people who lead them can’t promote criminal activity or incite political violence without breaking the law. U.S. Supreme Court precedents have set the bar very high on what counts as an incitement to violence.

Are there any precedents for this?

The Republican Party has previously attempted, and failed, several times in the past few years to expand the executive branch’s power to deregister charities for partisan purposes.

Most recently, GOP House members drafted an amendment that was cut from the final version of the big tax-and-spending bill Trump signed on July 4.

But many nonprofit advocates remain concerned about the possibility of the Trump administration using other means to limit nonprofit political rights.

Under the Bill of Rights, the U.S. has strong protections in place that shield nonprofits from partisan attacks. Still, there are some precedents for attempts to repress them.

The Johnson Amendment to a tax bill passed in 1954 is a well-known example. This law ended the ability of 501(c)(3) charities, private foundations and religious organizations to interfere in political campaigns.

Despite strong support from the public and the nonprofit sector for keeping it in place, the Trump administration has attempted to repeal the Johnson Amendment. What is largely forgotten is that Lyndon B. Johnson, then a member of Congress, introduced the measure to silence two conservative charities in his Texas district that supported his political opponent.

The Republican Party has also claimed in recent years that conservatives have been victims of efforts to suppress their freedom to establish and operate charitable nonprofits. A notable case was the GOP’s accusation during the Obama administration that the Internal Revenue Service was unfairly targeting Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny. Following years of outrage over that alleged partisanship, however, it later turned out that the IRS had applied extra scrutiny to progressive groups as well.

Some political observers have suggested that the Trump administration’s inspiration for targeting certain nonprofits and their funders comes from what’s going on in other countries. Hungary, Russia, Turkey and other countries have punished the activities of their political opponents and nongovernmental organizations as crimes.

What do you think could ultimately be at stake?

The economic and political freedoms that are the bedrock of a true democracy rely on a diversity of ideas. The mechanism for implementing that ideal in the U.S. relies heavily on a long-standing Supreme Court doctrine that extends constitutional rights to individuals and organizations alike. Nonprofits, in other words, have constitutional rights.

What this means for American society is a much greater proliferation of nonprofit activity than you see in many other countries, with the inevitable result that many organizations espouse unpopular opinions or views that clash with public opinion or the goals of a major political party.

That situation does not make their activities illegal.

Even Americans who disagree with the missions of Turning Point USA or the Southern Poverty Law Center should be able to agree that both institutions contribute to what Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas once called the “market place of ideas” necessary for an open democracy.

Is it easy to see what donors fund and what nonprofits do with their money?

This situation leaves open the question of whether the public has a right to know who is bankrolling a nonprofit’s activity.

Following the money can be frustrating. Federal law is somewhat contradictory in how far it will go to apply democratic ideals of openness and transparency to nonprofit activity. A key example is the long-standing protection of donor privacy in U.S. law, a principle that conservatives generally favor.

The courts have established that making a charitable gift is a protected free speech activity that entitles donors to certain privacy rights. In fact, the most recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling related to charitable giving, handed down in 2021, upheld a conservative nonprofit’s right to strip donors’ names from reporting documents.

This privacy right extends to foundations: They can decide whether to disclose the names of their grant recipients. Still, all nonprofits except churches need to make some disclosures regarding their finances on a mandatory form filed annually.

Looking forward, organizations that advocate for the charitable sector as a whole, such as the National Council of Nonprofits, are closely following the efforts of the Trump administration. Their role is to remind the public that nonprofits on both the right and left side of the political spectrum have strong advocacy rights that don’t disappear when bad things happen.

Jimmy Kimmel's rights weren't violated — but ABC could sue Trump and win

By Wayne Unger, Associate Professor of Law, Quinnipiac University.

The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has sparked a wave of political commentary.

There were the respectful and sincere comments condemning the killing.

Former President Barack Obama said, “What happened was a tragedy and … I mourn for him and his family.” Former Vice President Mike Pence said, “I’m heartsick about what happened to him.”

But Kirk’s killing also elicited what many saw as inappropriate comments. MSNBC terminated commentator Matthew Dowd after he said, “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” American Airlines grounded pilots accused of celebrating Kirk’s death.

Perhaps the most notable reaction to remarks seen as controversial about the Kirk killing hit ABC comedian Jimmy Kimmel. His network suspended him indefinitely after comments that he made about the alleged shooter in Kirk’s death.

Countless defenders of Kimmel quickly responded to his indefinite suspension as an attack on the First Amendment. MSNBC host Chris Hayes posted the following on X: “This is the most straightforward attack on free speech from state actors I’ve ever seen in my life and it’s not even close.”

But is it?

Free speech? It depends

The First Amendment limits government officials from infringing one’s right to free speech and expression.

For example, the government cannot force someone to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or salute the American flag, because the First Amendment, as one Supreme Court justice wrote, “includes both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all.”

And government cannot limit speech that it finds disagreeable while permitting other speech that it favors.

However, the First Amendment does not apply to private employers. With the exception of the 13th Amendment, which generally prohibits slavery, the Constitution applies only to government and those acting on its behalf.

So, as a general rule, employers are free to discipline employees for their speech — even the employees’ speech outside of the workplace. In this way, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) correctly said on X, “Free speech doesn’t prevent you from being fired if you’re stupid and have poor judgment.”

This is why Amy Cooper’s employer, an investment firm, was free to terminate her following her 2020 verbal dispute in New York’s Central Park with a bird-watcher over her unleashed dog. She called the police, falsely claiming that the bird-watcher, a Black man, was threatening her life. The incident, captured on video, went viral and Cooper was fired, with her employer saying, “We do not condone racism of any kind.”

This is also why ABC was able to fire Roseanne Barr from the revival of her show, Roseanne, after she posted a tweet about Valerie Jarrett, a Black woman who had been a top aide to President Obama, that many viewed as racist.

But as a scholar of constitutional law, I believe Kimmel’s situation is not as straightforward.

Threat complicates things

Neither Cooper’s employer nor Barr’s employer faced any government pressure to terminate them.

Kimmel’s indefinite suspension followed a vague threat from the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr. As complaints about Kimmel’s statement exploded in conservative media, Carr suggested in a podcast interview that Kimmel’s statements could lead to the FCC revoking ABC affiliate stations’ licenses.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said.

But the Supreme Court has been crystal clear. Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.

In a 2024 case, National Rifle Association v. Vullo, a unanimous Supreme Court plainly said that the government’s threat of invoking legal sanctions and other coercion to suppress speech it doesn’t like violates the First Amendment. That principle is so profound and fundamental that it got support from every member of an often bitterly divided court.

A threat to revoke broadcast licenses would almost certainly be seen in a court of law as a government action tantamount to coercion. And Carr’s public comments undoubtedly connect that threat to Kimmel’s disfavored comments.

If the FCC had indeed moved to strip ABC affiliates of their licenses to broadcast because of what Kimmel said, ABC and its parent company, Disney, could have sued the FCC to block the license revocations on First Amendment grounds, citing NRA v. Vullo.

But the network seemingly caved to the coercive threat instead of fighting for Kimmel. This is why so many are decrying the Kimmel suspension as an attack on free speech and the First Amendment — even though they might not fully understand the law they’re citing.

How we know the right is more deadly than the left

By Art Jipson, Associate Professor of Sociology, and Paul J. Becker, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton.

After the Sept. 10, 2025, assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump claimed that radical leftist groups foment political violence in the U.S., and “they should be put in jail.”

“The radical left causes tremendous violence,” he said, asserting that “they seem to do it in a bigger way” than groups on the right.

Top presidential adviser Stephen Miller also weighed in, saying left-wing political organizations constitute “a vast domestic terror movement.”

“We are going to use every resource we have … throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again,” Miller said.

But policymakers and the public need reliable evidence and actual data to understand the reality of politically motivated violence. From our research on extremism, it’s clear that the president’s and Miller’s assertions about political violence from the left are not based on facts.

Based on our own research and a review of related work, we can confidently say that most domestic terrorists in the U.S. are politically on the right, and right-wing attacks account for the vast majority of fatalities from domestic terrorism.

Political violence rising

The understanding of political violence is complicated by differences in definitions and the recent Department of Justice removal of an important government-sponsored study of domestic terrorists.

Political violence in the U.S. has risen in recent months and takes forms that go unrecognized. During the 2024 election cycle, nearly half of all states reported threats against election workers, including social media death threats, intimidation and doxing.

Kirk’s assassination illustrates the growing threat. The man charged with the murder, Tyler Robinson, allegedly planned the attack in writing and online.

This follows other politically motivated killings, including the June assassination of Democratic Minnesota state Rep. and former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband.

These incidents reflect a normalization of political violence. Threats and violence are increasingly treated as acceptable for achieving political goals, posing serious risks to democracy and society.

Defining ‘political violence’

This article relies on some of our research on extremism, other academic research, federal reports, academic datasets and other monitoring to assess what is known about political violence.

Support for political violence in the U.S. is spreading from extremist fringes into the mainstream, making violent actions seem normal. Threats can move from online rhetoric to actual violence, posing serious risks to democratic practices.

But different agencies and researchers use different definitions of political violence, making comparisons difficult.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security define domestic violent extremism as threats involving actual violence. They do not investigate people in the U.S. for constitutionally protected speech, activism or ideological beliefs.

Domestic violent extremism is defined by the FBI and DHS as violence or credible threats of violence intended to influence government policy or intimidate civilians for political or ideological purposes. This general framing, which includes diverse activities under a single category, guides investigations and prosecutions.

Datasets compiled by academic researchers use narrower and more operational definitions. The Global Terrorism Database counts incidents that involve intentional violence with political, social or religious motivation.

These differences mean that the same incident may or may not appear in a dataset, depending on the rules applied.

The FBI and DHS emphasize that these distinctions are not merely academic. Labeling an event “terrorism” rather than a “hate crime” can change who is responsible for investigating an incident and how many resources they have to investigate it.

For example, a politically motivated shooting might be coded as terrorism in federal reporting, cataloged as political violence by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, and prosecuted as homicide or a hate crime at the state level.

Patterns in incidents and fatalities

Despite differences in definitions, several consistent patterns emerge from available evidence.

Politically motivated violence is a small fraction of total violent crime, but its impact is magnified by symbolic targets, timing and media coverage.

In the first half of 2025, 35 percent of violent events tracked by University of Maryland researchers targeted U.S. government personnel or facilities — more than twice the rate in 2024.

Right-wing extremist violence has been deadlier than left-wing violence in recent years.

Based on government and independent analyses, right-wing extremist violence has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of fatalities, amounting to approximately 75 percent to 80 percent of U.S. domestic terrorism deaths since 2001.

Illustrative cases include:

The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, an earlier but still notable example, killed 168 in the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history.

By contrast, left-wing extremist incidents, including those tied to anarchist or environmental movements, have made up about 10 percent to 15 percent of incidents and less than 5 percent of fatalities.

Examples include the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front arson and vandalism campaigns in the 1990s and 2000s, which were more likely to target property rather than people.

Violence occurred during Seattle May Day protests in 2016, with anarchist groups and other demonstrators clashing with police. The clashes resulted in multiple injuries and arrests. Also in 2016, five Dallas police officers were murdered by a heavily armed sniper who was targeting white police officers.

Hard to count

There’s another reason it’s hard to account for and characterize certain kinds of political violence and those who perpetrate it.

The U.S. focuses on prosecuting criminal acts rather than formally designating organizations as terrorist, relying on existing statutes such as conspiracy, weapons violations, RICO provisions and hate crime laws to pursue individuals for specific acts of violence.

Unlike foreign terrorism, the federal government does not have a mechanism to formally charge an individual with domestic terrorism. That makes it difficult to characterize someone as a domestic terrorist.

The State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list applies only to groups outside of the United States. By contrast, U.S. law bars the government from labeling domestic political organizations as terrorist entities because of First Amendment free speech protections.

Rhetoric is not evidence

Without harmonized reporting and uniform definitions, the data will not provide an accurate overview of political violence in the U.S.

But we can make some important conclusions.

Politically motivated violence in the U.S. is rare compared with overall violent crime. Political violence has a disproportionate impact because even rare incidents can amplify fear, influence policy and deepen societal polarization.

Right-wing extremist violence has been more frequent and more lethal than left-wing violence. The number of extremist groups is substantial and skewed toward the right, although a count of organizations does not necessarily reflect incidents of violence.

High-profile political violence often brings heightened rhetoric and pressure for sweeping responses. Yet the empirical record shows that political violence remains concentrated within specific movements and networks rather than spread evenly across the ideological spectrum. Distinguishing between rhetoric and evidence is essential for democracy.

Trump and members of his administration are threatening to target whole organizations and movements and the people who work in them with aggressive legal measures — to jail them or scrutinize their favorable tax status. But research shows that the majority of political violence comes from people following right-wing ideologies.

Charlie Kirk's own tactics fueled political hostility — this is how it ends

By Lee Bebout, Professor of English, Arizona State University.

Shortly following the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, many politicians and pundits were quick to highlight the importance of civil discourse.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called for an “off-ramp” to political hostilities, while California Gov. Gavin Newsom released a statement condemning political violence. He lauded Kirk’s “commitment to debate,” adding, “The best way to honor Charlie’s memory is to continue his work: engage with each other, across ideology, through spirited discourse.” Political commentator Ezra Klein wrote, “You can dislike much of what Kirk believed and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way.”

With so many Americans consuming political content via siloed social media feeds and awash in algorithms that stoke outrage, these ideals may seem quaint, if not impossible.

Clearly, murder is a no-go. But what does it mean to practice politics “the right way?” How can people engage “across ideology” in a “spirited” way?

Well, one way to not practice politics the right way is to limit the other side from having a voice of authority. Since 2016, the organization Kirk co-founded, Turning Point USA, has hosted the Professor Watchlist. The online database generated harassment campaigns against professors, leading to calls for firings, hate mail and death threats. To be sure, the left has not been without its own excesses of harassment in recent years.

Kirk was also known for going to college campuses and speaking to students: entering the lion’s den and affably challenging audiences to “change my mind.”

To me, the impulse to shut down the other side, combined with the “change my mind approach” to debate, has only exacerbated political polarization and entrenchment. Instead, I propose a few different ways of thinking about conversations with people whose views differ from your own.

The fantasy of swiftly changing minds

In my forthcoming book, Rules for Reactionaries: How to Maintain Inequality and Stop Social Justice, I explore the language strategies used to advance white supremacy and anti-feminism across U.S. politics and culture.

Deliberative democracy is the idea that decision-making and governance are arrived at through thoughtful, reasoned and respectful dialogue. This may take the shape of debates in Congress or robust questioning in town halls. But deliberative democracy also shapes the way all neighbors or citizens treat each other, whether on the street or at the dinner table.

I contend that a big stumbling block that prevents the U.S. from tackling its biggest problems is how Americans conceptualize deliberative democracy: There’s a fantasy that people’s minds can be easily changed, if only they’re given certain information or hear certain arguments.

In the 1990s, this was epitomized through former President Bill Clinton’s Initiative on Race, a program that he framed as a vehicle for social and political transformation. Clinton believed that an advisory board of experts could foster a meaningful national dialogue and produce necessary healing.

In response, conservative political figures objected both to the need for a conversation in the first place and to the makeup of the committee leading it.

By the time Clinton’s second term ended, the initiative quietly disappeared, only to be mentioned in passing in Clinton’s memoir. Yet with each subsequent racial flash point, from the arrest of Henry Louis Gates in 2009 to the murder of George Floyd, calls resurfaced for the national conversation. But race remains a politically and culturally salient issue.

Similarly, many Americans view friends, relatives and colleagues as targets for conversion. Because of the nature of my research, I often get a version of this question from my students: “How do you change someone’s mind if they say they’re a socialist?” Or they may frame it as, “I’ve got Thanksgiving with my family coming up, and my Uncle Johnny is so transphobic. How do I convince him to support trans rights?”

Cultural theorist Lauren Berlant would describe these encounters as moments of cruel optimism. There’s the belief that what you’re about to do is good and worthy. But time and again, you’re met with feelings of futility and frustration.

When debating politics, many people crave a chance to engage with someone they disagree with. There’s the hope of changing hearts and minds. But few minds — if any — change that quickly, and approaching these conversations as small windows of opportunity ends up being their downfall.

Opening minds instead of changing them

There are more fruitful approaches to conversation than merely trying to best someone in an argument by deploying buzzwords or “gotcha!” moments.

Rather than trying to immediately change someone’s mind, what if you entered a conversation with the goal of simply planting seeds? This approach transforms the dialogue from an attempted conversion into a legitimate conversation, wherein you’re merely offering your partner something to consider after the fact.

Another strategy involves remembering that conversations often have multiple audiences.

Consider the Thanksgiving dinner with Uncle Johnny. What if, instead of focusing on trying to convert him, the speaker recognized that there were other listeners at the table? Perhaps they could rethink their encounter not as converting an opponent, but as modeling to relatives how to have a conversation about one’s values with a loved one whom they vehemently disagree with. Or perhaps the speaker could recognize that a cousin at the table may be closeted, and take it upon themselves to model how to push back against transphobia.

In both cases, the conversion of Uncle Johnny ceases to be the objective. Civic dialogue and persuasion remain.

Change is slow but never futile

If the U.S. is going to heal its civic life through dialogue, I think it will require Americans to not just speak with those they disagree with, but to listen to them as well.

Krista Ratcliffe, a scholar of rhetoric at Arizona State University, has written about her concept of “rhetorical listening.” Listeners, she argues, must not simply be attuned to the words a speakers says, but also to the life experiences and ideologies that shape those words.

Rhetorical listening means avoiding the urge to one-up the opponent or convert the unwashed masses. Instead, you’re entering into dialogue from a position of curiosity, with a willingness to learn and grow.

Many people believe that the U.S. is at an inflection point. Will families and friendships continue to be torn apart? Will greater political polarization lead to more violence? Often it feels hopeless.

Like Sisyphus, many Americans probably feel like they continue to push a boulder up a hill, only for it to roll down the other side. The error would be for Americans to be surprised when the boulder rolls back down — shocked that there was no progress and that everyone has to start over again.

While the Sisyphean task of deliberative democracy requires that citizens push the boulder day in and day out, they should also recognize that as they push, the weight of the boulder as it’s collectively pushed will gradually and imperceptibly alter the terrain.

Moreover, as the French philosopher Albert Camus once wrote, it’s important to “imagine Sisyphus happy” — to continue to seize what joy can be had as this hard work plods along.

'This will not end here': how political violence comes in waves

The fatal shooting of prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, 2025, has brought renewed attention to the climate of political violence in America. Kirk’s death reflects a sizable increase in threats against officeholders and politicians at the local and federal level.

Alfonso Serrano, a politics editor at The Conversation, spoke with University of Massachusetts Lowell scholar Arie Perliger after Kirk’s shooting. Perliger studies political violence and assassinations and spoke bluntly about political polarization in the United States.

Serrano: What were your initial thoughts after Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting?

Perliger: It was a bit unusual that the attack was not against an elected official. Rarely have we seen political assassinations that are aimed at the nonprofit political landscape. Usually those people are not deemed important enough.

Secondly, and it’s something I see a lot in my research, political assassinations come in waves. We see that not only in the United States but other countries.

I’ve looked at political assassinations in many democracies, and one of the things I see in a fairly consistent manner is that political assassinations create a process of escalation that encourages others on the extreme political spectrum to feel the need to retaliate. And that is my main concern. That this process creates legitimization and acceptance, that it provides the sense that this is an acceptable form of political action. This will not end here.

In 2024, there were two attempts to assassinate Donald Trump. Then, in early 2025, the residence of Gov. Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania was firebombed on Passover, and within months the U.S. witnessed the killing of Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, among other acts of political violence. The U.S., of course, is not immune to political violence, as we saw in the 1960s. But what stands out about this latest wave?

The data shows that there’s a substantial increase in the level of threats against officeholders at the local and federal level. What’s different now is we see an increased support in political violence from both sides of the political spectrum. Consistently, almost a quarter of the public is willing to support political violence in some form, or see that as a legitimate form of political action.

And as we see an increased political polarization, and the increased demonization of political rivals, we see the decline and disappearance of political discourse and policymaking. The bipartisan political process in Congress in the past few years has been almost nonexistent. And that spills over to the public, where the other (political) side is seen as a one-dimensional figure that is a threat.

We’ve had political polarization in the U.S. in the past, but usually it was around a specific issue like civil rights in the 1960s and the Vietnam War. But this time there is no specific issue that we can say, “If we solve this, we solve the political polarization.” The problem is that there’s no space for convergence from both sides where they can work together, so there’s no bridges they can rely on to come together.

Does it strike you that Kirk’s assassination occurred on a college campus? It seems as if college campuses have become a flash point of violence in the U.S.

Campuses are becoming more and more contentious spaces. They were always intellectual hubs where political views were debated intensively. Activism was always part of campus life. But what we’ve seen in the past year is that campus life has become in some cases more violent. And the fact that Kirk was killed on a campus is, I think, heartbreaking because campuses symbolize a place where you can engage in political debate in a way that encourages intellectual exploration.

What’s happened in the past year is that campuses are not those spaces anymore. Yes, we still see political activism, but it’s the activism that doesn’t leave any room for actual debate. It’s just two sides that are completely hostile to each other and unwilling to hear each other.

Trump on Wednesday night blamed the media and the “radical left” for language used to describe people like Kirk. He said this rhetoric is “responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.” Any thoughts?

I agree that language and rhetoric impact people’s behavior. I’ve seen that again and again in my studies, that the discourse of political figures impacts the way people think of the legitimacy of violence. Of course, we need to understand the context here, which is that Trump himself was willing to pardon thousands of people who engaged in political violence.

So, on the one hand, I agree with him that political leaders should be responsible for how they discuss political issues. It’s important for them to convey that political discourse can be constructive. However, we need to acknowledge that our own government, in many cases, sends signals that provide encouragement and support that legitimize violence. I think it’s important for politicians on both sides to be consistent in understanding that the way they discuss their political rivals is important.

You’re an expert on the history of political assassinations. How do countries untangle themselves from waves of political violence?

Political leaders need to insist on working together. There are lots of policy areas where politicians can work together. When we see that people can work together within the political system, that sends an important message, that there is a space where we can work together. The second thing is trying to think about how the U.S. can restructure part of the political process to ensure that there is a real competition of ideas, to incentivize a constructive, productive approach that will legitimize those who are willing to engage in constructive policymaking.

Any last thoughts?

As part of my work, I track the most extremist online social media accounts, and what we see right now is a strong sense that this assassination is being celebrated by parts of the left. And that has created an escalation of language from those in the extreme right social media ecosystem. There is much more willingness to discuss issues of retaliation, an actual civil war.

And that’s my biggest worry. If you look at social media, what we see is that both sides embrace this kind of rhetoric that really concerns me. More than ever, I’ve seen calls for retaliation and a strong sense that the other side is unwilling to show any sympathy to what happened. Emotions are running very high, and I’m very worried about what may happen in the next few weeks.

Washington's warning about America's doom is finally coming true

By Robert A. Strong, Washington and Lee University and University of Virginia.

The United States will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the country’s founding document, in 2026. Twenty years later, America will celebrate the 250th anniversary of President George Washington’s Farewell Address, which was published on Sept. 19, 1796.

The two documents are the bookends of the American Revolution. That revolution began with the inspirational language of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote much of the Declaration of Independence; it ended with somber warnings from Washington, the nation’s first president.

After chairing the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and serving eight years as president, Washington announced in a newspaper essay that he would not seek another term and would return to his home in Mount Vernon. The essay was later known as the “Farewell Address.”

Washington began his essay by observing that “choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene” while “patriotism does not forbid it.” The new nation would be fine without his continued service.

But Washington’s confidence in the general health of the union was tempered by his worries about dangers that lay ahead — worries that seem startlingly contemporary and relevant 229 years later.

Focus on the domestic

Washington’s Farewell Address is famous for the admonitions “to steer clear of permanent alliances” and to resist the temptation to “entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition.”

Important as those warnings are, they are not the main topic of Washington’s message.

During the four decades that I have taught the Farewell Address in classes on American government, I have urged my students to set aside the familiar issues of foreign policy and isolationism and to read the address for what it says about the domestic challenges confronting America.

Those challenges included partisanship, parochialism, excessive public debt, ambitious leaders who could come to power playing off our differences, and a poorly informed public who might sacrifice their own liberties to find relief from divisive politics.

Washington’s address lacks Jefferson’s idealism about equality and inalienable rights. Instead, it offers the realistic assessment that Americans are sometimes foolish and make costly political mistakes.

Rule by ‘ambitious, and unprincipled men’

Partisanship is the primary problem for the American republic, according to Washington.

“It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration,” he wrote. Partisanship “agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection” and can open “the door to foreign influence and corruption.”

Though political parties, Washington observes, “may now and then answer popular ends,” they can also become “potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

Washington’s fear that partisanship could lead to destruction of the Constitution and to the rule of “ambitious, and unprincipled men” was so important to him that he felt compelled to repeat the warning more than once in the Farewell Address.

Politicians’ ‘elevation on the ruins of public liberty’

The second time Washington takes it up, he says that “the disorders and miseries” of partisanship may “gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual.”

Sooner or later, he writes, “the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.”

So why not outlaw parties and rein in the dangers of partisanship?

Washington observes that this is not possible. The spirit of party “is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind.”

Americans naturally collect themselves into groups, factions, interests and parties because that’s what human beings do. It’s easier to be connected to local communities, states or regions of the country than to a large and diverse nation; even though that large and diverse nation is, by Washington’s assessment, essential to the security and success of all.

The central problem in American politics is not a matter of devious leaders, foreign intrigue or sectional rivalries — things that will always exist.

The problem, Washington warned, lies with the people.

Excesses of partisanship

By their nature, people divide themselves into groups and then, if not careful, find those divisions used and abused by individual leaders, foreign interests and “artful and enterprising” minorities.

Political parties are dangerous, but can’t be eliminated. According to some people, Washington observes, the competition between parties might serve as a check on the powers of government.

“Within certain limits,” Washington acknowledges, “this is probably true.” But even if the battles between political parties sometimes have a useful purpose, Washington worried about the excesses of partisanship.

Partisanship is like “a fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest instead of warming it should consume.”

Where is America today? Warmed by the fires of partisanship or consumed by the bursting of flames? George Washington suggested that provocative question more than two centuries ago on Sept. 19, 1796. It’s still worth asking.

  • Robert A. Strong is an Emeritus Professor of Politics at Washington and Lee University and is a Senior Fellow at the Miller Institute. He has published work in American foreign policy, national security issues and the presidency, including books on Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter and modern American foreign policy decisions. He has published articles and op-eds on a variety of contemporary political and international topics.

The GOP CDC assault began long before RFK's Senate car crash

By Jordan Miller, Teaching Professor of Public Health, Arizona State University.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), long considered the nation’s — if not the world’s — premier public health organization, is mired in a crisis that not only threatens Americans’ health but also its very survival as a leading public health institution.

The degree of this crisis was on full display during Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Sept. 4, 2025, testimony before the U.S. Senate.

In the hearing, Kennedy openly criticized CDC professionals’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic, saying “the people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving.”

Kennedy’s hearing came on the heels of a contentious week in which Kennedy fired the CDC director, Susan Monarez, spurring 12 members of the Senate Finance Committee — 11 Democrats and independent Bernie Sanders — to call on Kennedy to resign from his position.

At least four top CDC leaders resigned following Monarez’s ouster, citing pressure from Kennedy to depart from recommendations based on sound scientific evidence.

I am a teaching professor and public health professional. Like many of my colleagues, the disruption happening at the CDC in recent months has left me scrambling to find alternate credible sources of health information and feeling deeply concerned for the future of public health.

The CDC’s unraveling

These leadership shakeups come on the heels of months of targeted actions aimed at unraveling the CDC’s structure, function and leadership as it has existed for decades.

The turmoil began almost as soon as President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, when his administration enacted sweeping cuts to the CDC’s workforce that health experts broadly agree jeopardized its ability to respond to emerging health threats.

Trump used executive orders to limit CDC employees’ communication with the public and other external agencies, like the World Health Organization.

Within weeks, he ordered as much as 10 percent of the overall workforce to be cut.

Soon after, Kennedy — who was newly appointed by Trump — began undoing long-standing CDC institutions, like the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing all 17 of its members in a move that was widely denounced by health experts.

Critics pointed to a lack of qualifications for the new committee members, with more than half never having published research on vaccinations and many having predetermined hostility toward vaccines.

In June, more than 20 authoritative organizations, including the National Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatrics, expressed serious concerns for the health impacts of overhauling the advisory committee.

Monarez’s removal

Public health leaders had cheered the July confirmation of Monarez as the CDC’s new director, seeing her nomination as a welcome relief to those who value evidence-based practice in public health. Monarez is an accomplished scientist and career public servant.

Many viewed her as a potential voice of scientific wisdom amid untrained officials appointed by Trump, who has a track record of policies that undermine public health and science.

In her role as acting director, to which she was appointed in January, Monarez had quietly presided over the wave of cuts to the CDC workforce and other moves that drastically reshaped the agency and weakened the country’s capacity to steward the nation’s health.

Yet Monarez had “red lines” that she would not cross: She would not fire CDC leadership, and she would not endorse vaccine policies that ran contrary to scientifically supported recommendations.

According to Monarez, Kennedy asked her to do both in an Aug. 27 meeting. When she refused, he asked her to resign.

Her lawyers pushed back, arguing that only the president had the authority to remove her, stating: “When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted.”

Ultimately, the White House made her dismissal official later that evening.

Agency in turmoil

Further exemplifying and deepening the crisis at the agency, on Aug. 8, a gunman who had expressed anger over COVID-19 vaccinations opened fire on CDC headquarters, killing a police officer.

Many health workers attributed this directly to misinformation spread by Kennedy. The shooting amplified tensions and made tangible the sense of threat under which the CDC has been operating over the tumultuous months since Trump’s second term began. One employee stated that “the CDC is crumbling.”

Public health experts, including former CDC directors, are sounding the alarm, speaking out about the precariousness of the agency’s position. Some are questioning whether the CDC can even survive.

Crisis of trust

Even before the most recent shock waves, Americans said they were losing trust and confidence in CDC guidance: In April, 44 percent of U.S. adults polled said that they will place less trust in CDC recommendations under the new leadership. This would undoubtedly undermine the U.S. response if the country faces another public health challenge requiring a rapid, coordinated response, like COVID-19.

In addition to installing new members on the vaccine advisory committee, Kennedy abruptly changed the recommendations for flu and COVID-19 vaccines without input from the CDC or the vaccine advisory committee, and contrary to data presented by CDC scientists.

Public health professionals and advocates are now warning the public that vaccine recommendations coming from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices may not be trustworthy. They point to the lack of credibility in the review process for the new committee, the fact that members have made statements contrary to scientific evidence in the past, and failure to apply an evidence-to-recommendations framework as compromising factors. Critics of the committee even describe a lack of basic understanding of the science behind vaccines.

Health impacts are being felt in real time, with health care providers reporting confusion among parents as a result of the conflicting vaccine recommendations. Now, those who want to be vaccinated are facing barriers to access, with major retailers placing new limits on vaccine access in the face of federal pressure. This as vaccination rates were already declining, largely due to misinformation.

The end result is an environment in which the credibility of the CDC is in question because people are unsure whether recommendations made in the CDC’s name are coming from the science and scientists or from the politicians who are in charge.

Filling the gaps

Reputable organizations are working to fill the void created by the CDC’s precariousness and the fact that recommendations are now being made based on political will, rather than scientific evidence.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Gynecology have both released recommended vaccination schedules that, for the first time, diverge from CDC recommendations.

And medical organizations are discussing strategies that include giving more weight to their recommendations than the CDC’s and creating pathways for clinicians to obtain vaccines directly from manufacturers. These measures would create workarounds to compensate for CDC leadership voids.

Some states, including California, Oregon, Washington and New Mexico, are establishing their own guidance regarding vaccinations. Public health scientists and physicians are attempting to preserve data and surveillance systems that the Trump administration has been removing. But independent organizations may not be able to sustain this work without federal funding.

What’s at stake

As part of its crucial work in every facet of public health, the CDC oversees larger-scale operations, both nationally and globally, that cannot simply be handed off to states or individual organizations. Some public health responses — such as to infectious diseases and foodborne illnesses — must be coordinated at the national level in order to be effective, since health risks are shared across state borders.

In a health information space that is awash with misinformation, having accurate, reliable health statistics and evidence-based guidelines is essential for public health educators like me to know what information to share and how to design effective health programs. Doctors and other clinicians rely on disease tracking to know how best to approach treating patients presenting with infections. The COVID-19 pandemic made clear the importance of laboratory science, a unified emergency response and rapid distribution of effective vaccines to the public.

One of the strengths of the American system of governance is its ability to approach challenges – including public health – in a coordinated way, having a federal level of cooperation that unifies state-level efforts.

The CDC has been the nation’s preeminent public health institution for more than eight decades as a result of its vast reach and unparalleled expertise. Right now, it’s all sitting at a precarious edge.

This ruthless rightwing group will control the Supreme Court for years to come

By Paul M. Collins Jr. and Tim Komatsu, UMass Amherst.

During the 2016 presidential election campaign, candidate Donald Trump took the unprecedented move of releasing a list of his potential Supreme Court nominees.

But Trump didn’t assemble this list himself. Instead, he outsourced the selection of his judicial appointments to leaders of the Federalist Society, an organization in the conservative legal movement.

As Trump explained in a 2016 interview, “We’re going to have great judges, conservative, all picked by the Federalist Society.”

This was a strategic decision by Trump. By turning to the Federalist Society, he was able to court conservative and evangelical voters who may have been otherwise uneasy with supporting the former New York City real estate mogul.

In his first presidential term, Trump appointed three justices affiliated with the Federalist Society – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett – in addition to hundreds of lower federal court judges. Federalist Society affiliates are current or former members of the organization, as well as individuals who interact with the group, such as by attending Federalist Society events, but who may not claim membership.

We are political science scholars who recently published research in a peer-reviewed journal showing that Supreme Court justices affiliated with the Federalist Society are more conservative and more consistently conservative than other justices, meaning they seldom deviate from their conservative voting behavior.

Our research suggests that, despite Trump’s recent criticism of the organization and its leadership, justices affiliated with the Federalist Society will advance the conservative legal agenda decades into the future. But this won’t always involve supporting Trump’s agenda.

Here’s what you should know, and why it matters.

The Federalist Society

The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies was founded in 1982 with the goal of providing intellectual spaces for conservative law students who felt their views were dismissed by the legal field. It has grown tremendously over the past 40 years. Today, it boasts more than 200 chapters and over 70,000 members.

Unlike other conservative public interest groups, it does not advocate for specific issue positions. Instead, it promotes its goals primarily through education and networking.

The Federalist Society’s educational mission is pursued chiefly in law schools. That’s where it trains the next generation of lawyers in the approaches and goals of the conservative legal movement. This includes promoting the judicial philosophy of originalism — the idea that the best way to interpret the U.S. Constitution is according to how it was understood at the time of its adoption.

Originalism is often used to justify conservative outcomes.

For example, Justice Clarence Thomas, a prominent member of the Federalist Society, has called for using originalism to reconsider Supreme Court precedents involving the right to contraception, same-sex marriage and same-sex consensual relations.

The Federalist Society network also connects junior members with more senior members, helping young lawyers obtain prestigious clerkships and positions in government and the legal profession. These lawyers tend to associate with the Federalist Society throughout their careers.

Federalist Society affiliates learn that promoting the group’s interest is also a way of promoting their self-interests as they move up in the legal world.

For Supreme Court justices, this networking has tangible benefits. For instance, Justice Samuel Alito accepted a luxury fishing vacation in 2008 organized by Leonard Leo, the former executive vice president and current co-chair of the Federalist Society. The estimated cost of the fishing trip was more than $100,000.

And Thomas was treated to decades of high-end vacations and private school tuition for his grandnephew — whom he raised as a son — by billionaire businessman Harlan Crow, a Federalist Society donor.

In short, the Federalist Society is a network of lawyers and judges who share a conservative outlook on the world and aspire to etch the conservative agenda into law through judicial decisions.

Our research

Our research sought to answer two interrelated questions. Are justices affiliated with the Federalist Society more conservative than nonaffiliated justices, and are they more consistently conservative?

To illustrate this, consider former Justice David Souter, whom President George H.W. Bush appointed in 1990 and who had no connections to the Federalist Society. Despite being a Republican appointee, Souter often voted with the court’s liberal members, such as upholding abortion rights in 1992. In 2005, he wrote the majority opinion in a ruling that prevented the Ten Commandments from being displayed in courthouses and public schools.

To determine whether justices affiliated with the Federalist Society are different from even other judges appointed by Republican presidents, we examined almost 25,000 votes cast by Supreme Court justices between 1986 and 2023. We started with 1986 because that’s when the first justice affiliated with the Federalist Society – Antonin Scalia – joined the high court.

We classified votes as conservative or liberal according to a well-established methodology. For example, conservative votes support the restriction of reproductive freedom, are anti-business regulation and generally disfavor policies that promote the rights of vulnerable populations, such as the LGBTQ+ community. Liberal votes do the opposite.

We found that justices connected to the Federalist Society are about 10 percentage points more likely to cast a conservative vote than other justices, even other justices appointed by Republican presidents. And they are more consistent in their voting behavior, seldom casting votes that go against their conservative values.

Lasting impact

These findings have important implications. Justices on the modern Supreme Court serve for about a quarter-century on average. And every current Republican-appointed member of the court is affiliated with the Federalist Society.

This means that Americans are likely to see justices affiliated with the Federalist Society advance the agenda of the conservative legal movement for decades to come. This has already happened in recent decisions that curtailed reproductive freedom, eliminated affirmative action in college admissions and expanded the powers of the president, including immunizing the president from criminal prosecution.

President Trump has recently had a high-profile breakup with the Federalist Society, calling Leo a “sleazebag” and expressing his disappointment with the organization.

Trump’s outburst followed a ruling by the U.S. Court of International Trade that blocked his sweeping tariff program against China and other nations. This happened despite one of Trump’s first-term judicial appointees sitting on the panel.

Notwithstanding this acrimony, this term will give justices affiliated with the Federalist Society the opportunity to further solidify the conservative agenda. Cases involving LGBTQ+ rights and federal elections are on the docket. And the court will be adding other important issue areas as it fills out its caseload for the 2025-26 term, which starts on the first Monday in October.

These men's fitness groups are hives of white supremacist rage

By Art Jipson, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton.

Small local organizations called Active Clubs have spread widely across the U.S. and internationally, using fitness as a cover for a much more alarming mission. These groups are a new and harder-to-detect form of white supremacist organizing that merges extremist ideology with fitness and combat sports culture.

Active Clubs frame themselves as innocuous workout groups on digital platforms and decentralized networks to recruit, radicalize and prepare members for racist violence. The clubs commonly use encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram, Wire and Matrix to coordinate internally.

For broader propaganda and outreach they rely on alternative social media platforms such as Gab, Odysee, VK and sometimes BitChute. They also selectively use mainstream sites such as Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok, until those sites ban the clubs.

Active Club members have been implicated in orchestrating and distributing neo-Nazi recruitment videos and manifestos. In late 2023, for instance, two Ontario men, Kristoffer Nippak and Matthew Althorpe, were arrested and charged with distributing materials for the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division and the transnational terrorist group Terrorgram.

Following their arrests, Active Club Canada’s public network went dark, Telegram pages were deleted or rebranded, and the club went virtually silent. Nippak was granted bail under strict conditions, while Althorpe remains in custody.

As a sociologist studying extremism and white supremacy since 1993, I have watched the movement shift from formal organizations to small, decentralized cells — a change embodied most clearly by Active Clubs.

White nationalism 3.0

According to private analysts who track far-right extremist activities, the Active Club network has a core membership of 400 to 1,200 white men globally, plus sympathizers, online supporters and passive members. The clubs mainly target young white men in their late teens and twenties.

Since 2020, Active Clubs have expanded rapidly across the United States, Canada and Europe, including the U.K., France, Sweden and Finland. Precise numbers are hard to verify, but the clubs appear to be spreading, according to The Counter Extremism Project, the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center and my own research.

The clubs reportedly operate in at least 25 U.S. states, and potentially as many as 34. Active U.S. chapters reportedly increased from 49 in 2023 to 78 in 2025.

The clubs’ rise reflects a broader shift in white supremacist strategy, away from formal organizations and social movements. In 2020, American neo-Nazi Robert Rundo introduced the concept of “White Nationalism 3.0” — a decentralized, branded and fitness-based approach to extremist organizing.

Rundo previously founded the Rise Above Movement, which was a violent, far-right extremist group in the U.S. known for promoting white nationalist ideology, organizing street fights and coordinating through social media. The organization carried out attacks at protests and rallies from 2016 through 2018.

Active Clubs embed their ideology within apolitical activities such as martial arts and weightlifting. This model allows them to blend in with mainstream fitness communities. However, their deeper purpose is to prepare members for racial conflict.

'You need to learn how to fight’

Active Club messaging glorifies discipline, masculinity and strength — a “warrior identity” designed to attract young men.

“The active club is not so much a structural organization as it is a lifestyle for those willing to work, risk and sweat to embody our ideals for themselves and to promote them to others,” Rundo explained via his Telegram channel.

“They never were like, ‘You need to learn how to fight so you can beat up people of color.’ It was like, ‘You need to learn how to fight because people want to kill you in the future,’” a former Active Club member told Vice News in 2023.

These cells are deliberately small — often under a dozen members — and self-contained, which gives them greater operational security and flexibility. Each club operates semi-autonomously while remaining connected to the broader ideology and digital network.

Expanding globally and deepening ties

Active Clubs maintain strategic and ideological connections with formal white supremacist groups, including Patriot Front, a white nationalist and neofascist group founded in 2017 by Thomas Rousseau after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Active Clubs share extremist beliefs with these organizations, including racial hierarchy and the “Great Replacement” theory, which claims white populations are being deliberately replaced by nonwhite immigrants. While publicly presenting as fitness groups, they may collaborate with white supremacist groups on recruitment, training, propaganda or public events.

Figures connected to accelerationist groups — organizations that seek to create social chaos and societal collapse that they believe will lead to a race war and the destruction of liberal democracy — played a role in founding the Active Club network. Along with the Rise Above Movement, they include Atomwaffen Division and another neo-Nazi group, The Base — organizations that repackage violent fascism to appeal to disaffected young white men in the U.S.

Brotherhood as a cover

By downplaying explicit hate symbols and emphasizing strength and preparedness, Active Clubs appeal to a new generation of recruits who may not initially identify with overt racism but are drawn to a culture of hypermasculinity and self-improvement.

Anyone can start a local Active Club chapter with minimal oversight. This autonomy makes it hard for law enforcement agencies to monitor the groups and helps the network grow rapidly.

Shared branding and digital propaganda maintain ideological consistency. Through this approach, Active Clubs have built a transnational network of echo chambers, recruitment pipelines and paramilitary-style training in parks and gyms.

Club members engage in activities such as combat sports training, propaganda dissemination and ideological conditioning. Fight sessions are often recorded and shared online as recruitment tools.

Members distribute flyers, stickers and online content to spread white supremacist messages. Active Clubs embed themselves in local communities by hosting events, promoting physical fitness, staging public actions and sharing propaganda.

Potential members first see propaganda on encrypted apps such as Telegram or on social media. The clubs recruit in person at gyms, protests and local events, vetting new members to ensure they share the group’s beliefs and can be trusted to maintain secrecy.

From fringe to functioning network

Based on current information from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, there are 187 active chapters within the Active Club Network across 27 countries — a 25 percent increase from late 2023. The Crowd Counting Consortium documented 27 protest events involving Active Clubs in 2022-23.

However, precise membership numbers remain difficult to ascertain. Some groups call themselves “youth clubs” but share similar ideas and aesthetics and engage in similar activities.

Active Club members view themselves as defenders of Western civilization and masculine virtue. From their perspective, their activities represent noble resistance rather than hate. Members are encouraged to stay secretive, prepare for societal collapse and build a network of committed, fit men ready to act through infiltration, activism or violence.

Hiding in plain sight

Law enforcement agencies, researchers and civil society now face a new kind of domestic threat that wears workout clothes instead of uniforms.

Active Clubs work across international borders, bound by shared ideas and tactics and a common purpose. This is the new white nationalism: decentralized, modernized, more agile and disguised as self-improvement. What appears to be a harmless workout group may be a gateway to violent extremism, one pushup at a time.

This stunning finding shows Trump is destroying his own support

By Tatishe Nteta, Adam Eichen, Alexander Theodoridis, Jesse Rhodes, and Raymond La Raja, UMass Amherst.

Has President Donald Trump survived the latest and most serious firestorm of controversy over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal? Or has the Trump administration’s handling of the release of information concerning the prosecution of a convicted child sex trafficker, Trump’s former friend, hurt the president?

A number of journalists, pointing to recent public opinion polls, have claimed that the scandal has hurt Trump. Others have argued that the public has largely moved on and the Epstein controversy no longer presents a political liability for Trump.

But both of these conclusions are based on limited polling about the Epstein controversy and thus may be premature.

Our recent University of Massachusetts Amherst national poll includes particularly detailed questions about the Epstein controversy and attitudes toward Trump, and thus provides fresh insights on how the controversy has affected public support for Trump.

We find that Trump’s handling of the Epstein controversy has done significant damage to his standing, particularly among his core supporters.

'Fumbling the matter’

Americans are paying close attention to the prolonged Epstein controversy. Our polling finds that three in four respondents have heard, read or seen “a lot” or “some” about Epstein.

Moreover, most believe that Trump is fumbling the matter.

Seven in 10 Americans believe that Trump is handling the matter “not well.” This includes pluralities of Trump’s most loyal supporters: 43 percent of Republicans, 43 percent of conservatives, and 47 percent of those who voted for him in 2024.

When we drill down on the 47 percent of 2024 Trump voters who disapprove of Trump’s handling of the Epstein controversy, we find significant cracks in the MAGA facade. Among members of this group, 28 percent now disapprove of Trump as president.

When we take demographics, ideology, partisanship and assessments of the economy into account, disapproval of Trump’s handling of the release of the Epstein files is still associated with an increase in disapproval of Trump.

Voter regret

Even more significantly, we find that among 2024 Trump voters, negative views of Trump’s handling of the Epstein files are associated with an increased desire to make a different choice if the 2024 election could be rerun.

More specifically, among Trump voters who believe that the president has mishandled the release of the Epstein files, more than one quarter – 26 percent – indicate that they would not vote for Trump if they had the opportunity to vote again in the 2024 election.

While there are no election do-overs, it is clear that the Epstein scandal has hurt Trump among his base of voters.

Much can happen between now and the midterm elections in November 2026, of course.

But if Trump fails to satisfy his political base, perceptions among Trump voters that he has mishandled the controversy could reduce enthusiasm and participation in the elections. Even if the share of Republicans alienated by the Epstein controversy is relatively small, this could hurt Republicans in close contests.

With over a year to go, the facts on the ground will likely change. But as of today, the controversy over the release of the Epstein files remains relevant. Whether the president responds in a manner that satisfies his voters is a question that could have important political consequences.

It's a complicated time to be a white Southerner

By James M. Thomas, University of Mississippi

Historian Nell Painter remarked in 2011, “Being white these days isn’t what it used to be.”

For the past decade, wave upon wave of protests against police violence and mass incarceration have drawn the public’s attention toward the continued significance of America’s color line, the set of formal and informal rules that maintain white Americans’ elevated social and economic advantages.

Meanwhile, an explosion of popular literature scrutinizes those rules and places white people’s elevated status in sharp relief.

How are white people making sense of these tensions?

In his 1935 publication “Black Reconstruction in America,” sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois described the “public and psychological wage” paid to white workers in the post-Reconstruction era on account of their being white. Today those “wages of whiteness” remain durable as ever. Nearly 60 years removed from the high water mark of the Civil Rights movement, its aims have not been met.

White people still enjoy better jobs, health care, housing, schooling and more.

I’m a sociologist of race and racism. My team of graduate student researchers and I have spent the past four years interviewing white people to understand how they make sense of their white racial status today. We concentrated our efforts among white people living in the U.S. South because that region is seen as more responsible for shaping what it means to be white, and the social and economic advantages of being white, than any other.

There is not much research on how white people think about what it means to be white. Meanwhile, popular and scholarly treatments of white Southerners as overwhelmingly conservative and racially regressive abound.

Some white Southerners we spoke with fit those tropes. Many others do not. Overall, we found white Southerners across the political spectrum actively grappling with their white racial status.

As Walter, 38, from Clarksdale, Mississippi, told us, “It’s a complicated time to be a white Southerner.” We use pseudonyms to protect anonymity.

Crises cast a long shadow

The Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci defined a crisis as a historical period in which “the old is dying and the new cannot be born.” Within this space between, Gramsci argued, “morbid phenomena of the most varied kind come to pass.”

Many people we spoke with lived through the defining ruptures of the 20th century that forever changed the South, and America too: the formal demise of Jim Crow rule, violent and bloody struggles over integration, and the slow, uneven march toward equal rights for all Americans.

Still others came of age against the backdrop of the defining shocks of this new century: 9/11 and the war on terrorism, Hurricane Katrina, the racial backlash to the election of Barack Obama, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

For some, the political rise of Donald Trump and his willingness to traffic in racist rhetoric constituted a crisis, too. “He embodies everything that is immoral,” said Ned, 45, from Vardaman, Mississippi. The town Ned is from is named for James K. Vardaman, former governor of Mississippi who once declared that “if it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy.”

Taken together, these crises cast a long shadow of uncertainty over white people’s elevated social position and anchor how white Southerners understand their white racial status.

Resistance to desegregation

Miriam, 61, from Natchez, Mississippi, grew up under the last gasps of Jim Crow. She recalled her parents pulling her from public school and sending her to a nearby private school shortly after the Supreme Court’s 1969 Alexander v. Holmes ruling, which ordered the immediate desegregation of Southern schools.

Her new school was one of hundreds of “segregation academies” founded across the South in the aftermath of the court’s ruling.

“You didn’t go over there, by the Black school,” Miriam recalled. “You stayed over by the white school. … I remember as a kid that made quite an impression.”

Reflecting on what it means to be a white Southerner today, Miriam drew from these experiences living under the region’s long shadow of segregation.

“There’s been so much hatred and so much unpleasantness. I want to do everything I can to make relations better,” she said. “I think that is part of being white in the South.”

Daryl, 42, a self-described conservative, lived in several Southern communities as a child, including Charlotte, North Carolina, in the mid-1980s as the city wrestled with its court-ordered school busing program. Daryl recalled his parents and other white people complaining about the poor quality of newly integrated schools, including telling him “stories of things like needles on the playground.”

Daryl rarely, if ever, talked with his own parents about race, but he broaches these topics with his own children today.

A self-described “childhood racist,” Daryl draws from his experiences to frame his conversations with his own children. “I remind them that there used to be this day where this was OK, and this is how things were thought of,” he says.

‘Good reason to be mad’

The region’s history also includes more contemporary crises.

Lorna, 34, is a registered Republican from Marion, Arkansas. She described how recent protests against police violence are affecting her understanding of America’s color line.

“I feel like Black people are mad or angry. They’re tired of violence and, you know, profiling,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s just in the South. I think it’s all over the United States. And they have a good reason to be mad.”

Kenneth, 35, lives in Memphis. Like Lorna and others, Kenneth’s sense of what it means to be white has been shaped by more recent crises, including the racial backlash to Obama’s elections in 2008 and 2012 that motivated Trump’s election in 2016.

Reflecting on these episodes, Kenneth believes he has an obligation as a white Southerner to become more informed about “the legacy of racism in the South and the impact that it still has today.”

Becoming more informed, Kenneth says, “will cause me to reflect on how I should think about that, and what, if anything, I should do differently now.”

Uncovering what’s minimized or ignored

Our interviews reveal a range of beliefs and attitudes among white Southerners often discounted or dismissed altogether by more popular and scholarly treatments of the region.

Contrary to research that finds white people minimizing or ignoring their elevated social status, the white Southerners we spoke with showed a profound awareness of the advantages their white racial status affords them.

“I have to admit I’m glad I’m white,” said Luke, 75, from Melber, Kentucky. “Because in the United States you probably have a little advantage.”

Our research also shows that how white people make sense of who they are is also a matter of where they are.

Places – and not just Southern ones – are imbued with ideas and beliefs that give meaning and significance to the people within them. The region’s history of racial conflict, meanwhile, renders the “wages of whiteness” more plain to see for white Southerners in ways we are only beginning to understand.

Put plainly: Place matters for how race matters.

Emphasizing this more complicated understanding of race and place allows for a more complete account of the South, including how the unfolding racial dramas of the past several decades continue to shape the region and its people.The Conversation

James M. Thomas, Professor of Sociology, University of Mississippi

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Trump thinks this issue is a vote winner — 25 states disagree

By Hilary Lustick, Associate Professor of Education, UMass Lowell.

It’s been about six months since the U.S. Department of Education sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to all schools that receive federal funding, warning them that they could risk losing this money if they promote what the department calls “pervasive and repugnant” racial preferences.

The letter, among other things, reversed previous presidents’ positions on how diversity, equity and inclusion influences schools’ disciplinary measures. It advised schools to, within two weeks, begin to eliminate all discipline protocols rooted in DEI, on the grounds that this work is discriminatory against white students.

Trump also issued an executive order, “Reinstating Commonsense School Discipline Policy,” in April 2025, doubling down on the letter.

Trump’s letter and executive order exert an unusual level of influence over how schools can decide the best way to teach and, when necessary, discipline students. It also cuts against recognized research that Black, Latino and Native American students are disciplined more frequently and harshly than white and Asian students.

I am an educational scholar who has spent the past 13 years analyzing school discipline policy. While previous administrations have issued “Dear Colleague” letters to schools, Trump’s is the first that frames itself as though it were law — setting a potential new precedent for the executive branch to issue educational mandates without the approval of the judicial or congressional branches of government.

While all but two states have responded to Trump’s letter, about half of them have said they are not going to comply with its terms — despite the administration’s threat of cutting funding if they do not follow the guidance.

Understanding DEI in education

Equity-oriented education, or diversity, equity and inclusion, refers to an ideology and programming that intend to ameliorate patterns of racial inequality. In the context of discipline in schools, DEI strategies could include teachers having conversations with children about their behavior, rather than immediately suspending them.

Research shows that these techniques can help reduce racial discipline gaps in academic achievement and disciplinary outcomes.

The Obama administration in 2014 recognized this research in its own “Dear Colleague” letter to schools. The administration advised schools to either reform their discipline practices toward nonpunitive alternatives to suspension or risk being investigated for discrimination.

The first Trump administration rescinded this letter in 2018.

Then, in 2023, the Biden administration released a document along the same lines as Obama’s letter.

Trump’s February 2025 letter grouped all of these recommendations under the banner of “DEI” and argued that such practices are discriminatory, privileging students of color over white and Asian students.

In his April executive order, Trump reiterated that if schools did not eliminate DEI, they would be out of compliance with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin,

Public school districts regularly have to issue a certificate of compliance to the government showing that their work is in line with Title VI.

While the Trump administration characterizes DEI as “smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline,” it does not define exactly what constitutes DEI programming.

This puts school districts at risk of losing funding if they maintain any initiatives related to racial equality.

Legal concerns

The executive office and members of Congress typically issue “Dear Colleague” letters, which are not legally binding, to advise schools and others on policy.

Yet Trump’s letter was written like a mandate and reinforced by an executive order, which is legally binding.

Some scholars are calling the letter an “overreach” of legal authority.

In the spring of 2025, I analyzed states’ responses to Trump’s letter and executive order.

Two states, Iowa and Tennessee, had not yet provided public responses.

Twenty-three states complied with the administration’s directive by signing the letter as of May 30. Some, like Oklahoma, not only certified the letter but also passed state laws banning DEI policies and programs.

The remaining 25 states refused to certify the letter, asserting that they already complied with Title VI and that their policies are not discriminatory.

In addition, 19 of those 25 states sued the Trump administration over the letter in April, culminating in a court injunction later that month that temporarily released states from having to comply with its demands.

I noticed that many states that refuted Trump’s letter used the same exact words in their responses, signaling a concerted effort to resist Trump’s directives. States that did not sign on to the letter but objected to its intent generally resisted on legal grounds, ethics or both.

Most states that rejected it grounded their refusal to sign Trump’s letter in federal law. They cited the Civil Rights Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act, which protects states from having to file redundant paperwork. Because these states already certified compliance with Title VI, this argument goes, they should not have to do so again under Trump’s directive.

Education commissioners from a few states, including Illinois and Minnesota, also cited specific language used by Betsy DeVos, Trump’s former education secretary in his first term, who supported DEI policies.

Charlene Russell-Tucker, the education commissioner for Connecticut, also pointed out that in order for the federal government to cancel DEI programming, it would have to first legally change the definition of Title VI.

Resisting on other grounds

Some education officials also argued that their DEI work is ideologically necessary for providing supportive learning environments for all students.

Patrick Tutwiler, Massachusetts’ interim education commissioner, wrote in an April 16 letter, for example, that “Massachusetts will continue to promote diversity in our schools because we know it improves outcomes for all of our kids.”

Other officials displayed more subtle resistance. Randy Watson, Kansas’ education commissioner, for example, affirmed the state’s “commitment to comply with all Federal statutes,” including Title VI — but did not explicitly address Trump’s “Dear Colleague” letter.

Similarly, Kentucky informed the Department of Education of its compliance with federal law, while simultaneously encouraging local districts to continue diversity, equity and inclusion work.

Mississippi’s state department of education pointed out that school districts operate independently, so the state cannot force policies on them. However, Mississippi signaled compliance by citing a new state law banning DEI and confirmed that each of its individual school districts have already certified compliance with federal laws.

More pushback

It is not yet clear what might follow the April court injunction, which largely prevented the Department of Education from cutting federal funding to schools that continued their DEI-related programs and policies.

While the Trump administration has made major cuts to the Department of Education, it has not announced that states refusing to certify the letter will lose funding.

This is the first time an administration is issuing such a direct threat to withhold K-12 funding, placing schools in an unknown place, without a clear blueprint of how to move forward.

Here's why Trump can't stop the shift to electric cars

By Alan Jenn, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Davis.

The U.S. government is in full retreat from its efforts to make vehicles more fuel-efficient, which it has been waging, along with state governments, since the 1970s.

The latest move came on July 29, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it planned to rescind its landmark 2009 decision, known as the “endangerment finding,” that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare.

If that stands up in court and is not overruled by Congress, it would undo a key part of the long-standing effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.

As a scholar of how vehicle emissions contribute to climate change, I know that the science behind the endangerment finding hasn’t changed. If anything, the evidence has grown that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet and threatening people’s health and safety. Heat waves, flooding, sea-level rise and wildfires have only worsened in the decade and a half since the EPA’s ruling.

Regulations over the years have cut emissions from power generation, leaving transportation as the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

The scientific community agrees that vehicle emissions are harmful and should be regulated. The public also agrees, and has indicated strong preferences for cars that pollute less, including both more efficient gas-burning vehicles and electric-powered ones. Consumers have also been drawn to electric vehicles thanks to other benefits such as performance, operation cost and innovative technologies.

That is why I believe the EPA’s move will not stop the public and commercial transition to electric vehicles, but it will make that shift harder, slower and more expensive for everyone.

Putting carmakers in a bind

The most recent EPA rule about vehicle emissions was finalized in 2024. It set emissions limits that can realistically only be met by a large-scale shift to electric vehicles.

Over the past decade and a half, automakers have been building up their capability to produce electric vehicles to meet these fleet requirements, and a combination of regulations such as California’s zero-emission-vehicle requirements have worked together to ensure customers can get their hands on EVs.

The zero-emission-vehicle rules require automakers to produce EVs for the California market, which in turn make it easier for the companies to meet their efficiency and emissions targets from the federal government. These collectively pressure automakers to provide a steady supply of electric vehicles to consumers.

The new EPA move would undo the 2024 EPA vehicle-emissions rule and other federal regulations that also limit emissions from vehicles, such as the heavy-duty vehicle emissions rule.

The possibility of a regulatory reversal puts automakers into a state of uncertainty. Legal challenges to the EPA’s shift are all but guaranteed, and the court process could take years.

For companies making decade-long investment decisions, regulatory stability matters more than short-term politics. Disrupting that stability undermines business planning, erodes investor confidence and sends conflicting signals to consumers and suppliers alike.

A slower roll

The Trump administration has taken other steps to make electric vehicles less attractive to carmakers and consumers.

The White House has already suspended key provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that provided tax credits for purchasing EVs and halted a US$5 billion investment in a nationwide network of charging stations.

And Congress has retracted the federal waiver that allowed California to set its own, stricter emissions limits. In combination, these policies make it hard to buy and drive electric vehicles: Fewer, or no, financial incentives for consumers make the purchases more expensive, and fewer charging stations make travel planning more challenging.

Overturning the EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding would remove the legal basis for regulating climate pollution from vehicles altogether.

But U.S. consumer interest in electric vehicles has been growing, and automakers have already made massive investments to produce electric vehicles and their associated components in the U.S. — such as Hyundai’s EV factory in Georgia and Volkswagen’s Battery Engineering Lab in Tennessee.

Global markets, especially in Europe and China, are also moving decisively toward electrifying large proportions of the vehicles on the road. This move is helped in no small part due to aggressive regulation by their respective governments. The results speak for themselves: Sales of EVs in both the European Union and China have been growing rapidly.

But the pace of change matters. A slower rollout of clean vehicles means more cumulative emissions, more climate damage and more harm to public health.

The EPA’s proposal seeks to slow the shift to electric vehicles, removing incentives and raising costs — even though the market has shown that cleaner vehicles are viable, the public has shown interest, and the science has never been clearer. But even such a major policy change can’t stop the momentum of those trends.

If Trump wins this court case it's game over for free speech

By Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin, Boise State University.

President Donald Trump is again attacking the American press – this time not with fiery rally speeches or by calling the media “the enemy of the people,” but through the courts.

Since the heat of the November 2024 election, and continuing into July, Trump has filed defamation lawsuits against 60 Minutes broadcaster CBS News and the Wall Street Journal. He has also sued the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll just before the 2024 election that Trump alleges exaggerated support for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and thus constituted election interference and fraud.

These are in addition to other lawsuits Trump filed against the news media during his first term and during his years out of office between 2021 and 2025.

At the heart of Trump’s complaints is a familiar refrain: The media is not only biased, but dishonest, corrupt and dangerous.

The president isn’t just upset about reporting on him he thinks is unfair. He wants to redefine what counts as libel and make it easier for public officials to sue for damages. A libel suit is a civil tort claim seeking damages when a person believes something false has been printed or broadcast about them and so harmed their reputation.

Redefining libel in this way would require overturning the Supreme Court’s 1964 ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, one of the most important First Amendment legal rulings in American constitutional history

Trump made overturning Sullivan a talking point during his first campaign for president; his lawsuits now put that threat into action. And they raise the question: What happened in Sullivan, and why does it still matter?

What Sullivan was about

As chair of a public policy institute devoted to strengthening deliberative democracy, I have written two books about the media and the presidency, and another about media ethics. My research traces how news institutions shape civic life and why healthy democracies rely on free expression.

In 1960, the New York Times published a full-page advertisement titled “Heed Their Rising Voices”. The ad, which included an appeal for readers to send money in support of Martin Luther King Jr. and the movement against Jim Crow, described brutal and unjust treatment of Black students and protesters in Montgomery, Alabama. It also emphasized episodes of police violence against peaceful demonstrations.

The ad was not entirely accurate in its description of the behavior of either protesters or the police.

It claimed, for instance, that activists had sung “My Country ’Tis of Thee” on the steps of the state capitol during a rally, when they actually had sung the national anthem. It said that “truckloads of police armed with shotguns and tear-gas” had “ringed” a college campus, when the police had only been deployed nearby. And it asserted that King had been arrested seven times in Alabama, when the real number was four.

Though the ad did not identify any individual public officials by name, it disparaged the behavior of Montgomery police.

That’s where L.B. Sullivan came in.

As Montgomery’s police commissioner, he oversaw the police department. Sullivan claimed that because the ad maligned the conduct of law enforcement, it had implicitly defamed him. In 1960 in Alabama, a primary defense against libel was truth. But since there were mistakes in the ad, a truth defense could not be raised. Sullivan sued for damages, and an Alabama jury awarded him $500,000, equivalent to $5,450,000 in 2025.

The message to the press was clear: criticize Southern officials and risk being sued out of existence.

In fact, the Sullivan lawsuit was not an isolated incident, but part of a broader strategy. In addition to Sullivan, four other Montgomery officials filed suits against the Times.

In Birmingham, public officials filed seven libel lawsuits over Times reporter Harrison Salisbury’s trenchant reporting about racism in that city. The lawsuits helped push the Times to the edge of bankruptcy. Salisbury was even indicted for seditious libel and faced up to 21 years in prison.

Alabama officials also sued CBS, the Associated Press, the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies’ Home Journal – all for reporting on civil rights and the South’s brutal response.

Supreme Court decision

The jury’s verdict in favor of Sullivan was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court in 1964.

Writing for the court, Justice William Brennan held that public officials cannot prevail in defamation lawsuits merely by showing that statements are false. Instead, they must prove such statements are made with “actual malice”. Actual malice means a reporter or press outlet knew their story was false or else acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

The decision set a high bar.

Before the ruling, the First Amendment’s protections for speech and the press didn’t offer much help to the press in libel cases.

After it, public officials who wanted to sue the press would have to prove “actual malice” — real, purposeful untruths that caused harm. Honest mistakes weren’t enough to prevail in such lawsuits. The court held that errors are inevitable in public debate and that protecting those mistakes is essential to keeping debate open and free.

In essence, the court ruling blocked government officials from suing for libel with ulterior motives.

King and other civil rights leaders relied on a strategy of nonviolent protest to expose injustice through public, visible actions.

When protesters were arrested, beaten or hosed in the streets, their goal was not chaos — it was clarity. They wanted the nation to see what Southern oppression looked like. For that, they needed press coverage.

If Sullivan’s lawsuit had succeeded, it could have bullied the press away from covering civil rights altogether. The Supreme Court recognized this danger.

Another key element of the court’s reasoning was its distinction between public officials and private citizens.

Elected leaders, the court said, can use mass media to defend themselves in ways ordinary people cannot.

“The public official certainly has equal if not greater access than most private citizens to media of communication,” Justice Brennan wrote in the Sullivan ruling.

Trump is a perfect example of this dynamic. He masterfully uses social media, rallies, televised interviews and impromptu remarks to push back. He doesn’t need the courts.

Giving public officials the power to sue over news stories they dislike could well create a chilling effect on the media that undermines government accountability and distorts public discourse.

“The theory of our Constitution is that every citizen may speak his mind and every newspaper express its view on matters of public concern and may not be barred from speaking or publishing because those in control of government think that what is said or written is unwise,” Brennan wrote.

“In a democratic society, one who assumes to act for the citizens in an executive, legislative, or judicial capacity must expect that his official acts will be commented upon and criticized.”

Why Sullivan still matters

The Sullivan ruling is more than a legal doctrine. It is a shared agreement about the kind of democracy Americans aspire to. It affirms a press duty to hold power to account, and a public right to hear facts and information that those in power want to suppress.

The ruling protects the right to criticize those in power and affirms that the press is not a nuisance, but an essential part of a functioning democracy. It ensures that political leaders cannot insulate themselves from scrutiny by silencing their critics through intimidation or litigation.

Trump’s lawsuits seek to undo these press protections. He presents himself as the victim of a dishonest press and hopes to use the legal system to punish those he perceives to be his detractors.

The decision in the Sullivan case reminds Americans that democracy doesn’t depend on leaders who feel comfortable. It depends on a public that is free to speak.

  • Sam Martin, Ph.D. is the Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs and Associate Professor at Boise State University. Her research focuses on political storytelling and civic identity. Martin has produced four books about American democracy including "Columns to Character: The Presidency and the Press in the Digital Age (2018) and "Decoding the Digital Church: Evangelical Storytelling and the Election of Donald J. Trump" (2021).

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