The United States is facing a constitutional crisis, one that if it is not resolved, will cement into place an authoritarian state.
The Trump administration has unilaterally revoked birthright citizenship, frozen federal spending, signed executive orders to dismantle over a dozen federal agencies, including shutting down and laying off the staff of the United States Agency for International Development and taking steps to do the same to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is in the process of abolishing others, including the Department of Education, has fired or placed on leave thousands of government employees subject to civil service protections and detained and threatened to deport people, including legal residents, based on their political views.
Donald Trump’s administration is faithfully following the autocrat’s playbook. Vladimir Putin took a year to take over Russian media and four years to dismantle Russia’s electoral system and judiciary.
Poland’s autocracy consolidated power even faster. In less than a year it destroyed its constitutional democracy. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who came to power in 2014, has jailed or purged journalists, academics and politicians who criticize his autocracy and turned the judicial system into an adjunct of his ruling Hindu nationalist party.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has jailed critics and decimated the country’s once vibrant press. He has seized control of Turkey’s major institutions, including its universities, to consolidate his dictatorship. Trump is following in these footsteps.
The concerted attacks on colleges and universities — Donald Trump’s administration has warned some 60 colleges that they could lose federal money if they fail to make campuses safe for Jewish students and is already pulling $400 million from Columbia University — has nothing to do with fighting anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism is a smoke screen, a cover for a much broader and more insidious agenda. The goal, which includes plans to terminate all programs of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), is to turn the educational system, as in Russia, Poland, India and Turkey, from kindergarten to graduate school, into an indoctrination machine.
Those who decry this assault, along with the ongoing genocide in Gaza, are being purged, including Professor Katherine Franke, who lost her position at Columbia University’s law school after 25 years for defending Columbia students’ right to protest in favor of a ceasefire in the Israeli military assault in Gaza and for Columbia University to divest from Israel.
She also condemned the spraying of pro-Palestinian protesters on the campus with a toxic chemical that left students hospitalized. The goal is to criminalize all dissent, to shut down any opposition to our fast emerging autocratic state. Joining me to discuss our constitutional crisis is Professor Katherine Franke.
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