Has it gotten this bad?

 

Buffoon Baboon..........

Billionaires, Wall Street CEOs join Trump China trip. What it signals.

A March report by the Brennan Center for Justice broke down how Trump and his family have profited handsomely this second White House term.

Palm Beach Post

President Donald Trump arrived in Beijing on May 13 with an entourage that looked more like a roster of candidates for Mar-a-Lago membership than the Foggy Bottom diplomatic corps.

Traveling with the president was a veritable Who's Who of American corporate elite and wealth, including the world's richest man, Elon Musk, and the outgoing CEO of one of the planet's most significant brands, Tim Cook of Apple.

During an Air Force One refueling stop in Alaska, the chief executive of Nvidia, which smashed market capitalization records at more than $5 trillion this May, joined the travel party. Also represented in Beijing is the president's own family enterprise, the Trump Organization.

Ahead of his arrival, Trump posted on social media that the Wall Street elite, including the chieftains of blue-chip titans Goldman Sachs, GE Aerospace, Qualcomm, were onboard for a specific purpose.

"I will be asking President Xi, a Leader of extraordinary distinction, to 'open up' China so that these brilliant people can work their magic, and help bring the People's Republic to an even higher level," the president wrote.

After landing in Beijing, Trump deplaned followed by his second-eldest son Eric and his wife Lara; Musk; and two Cabinet members, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.

The inclusion of Eric Trump, who runs the Trump Organization, also underscored a certain reality, analysts said — that the trip also is a business venture for the family. A March report by the Brennan Center for Justice broke down how Trump, who complained in his first term that the presidency cost him ample commercial opportunities, and his family have profited handsomely this go-around.

"Since taking office in January 2025, President Trump has pocketed an estimated $3 billion from his various business enterprises. His family is estimated to have raked in billions more," wrote Owen Bacskai and Daniel Weiner of the Brennan Center.

"Much of the money appears to be coming from foreign governments and others seeking to curry favor with the Trump White House."

The seemingly overwhelming presence of the 1 percenters in Beijing may seem surprising, but the White House indicated that commercial and economic objectives would be the summit's principal focus almost from the start.

Nicholas Burns, who was U.S. ambassador to the People’s Republic during the Biden administration, noted that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and not Rubio, led the planning for the summit's agenda from the U.S. side. Burns said he read that as a signal that economic and commercial issues will dominate the talks.

"I think economic and commercial issues will be the focus," Burns predicted during an April 30 talk at the LeMieux Center for Public Policy at Palm Beach Atlantic University.

Mike Froman of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote on May 8 that he expected commercial agreements for sales of more agriculture, specifically soybeans, and aircraft may well come out of the two-day talks. In fact, the Brian Sikes of Cargill and Kelly Ortberg of Boeing were also aboard Air Force One, according to Trump's post.

Froman also said the summit could produce the framework for the proposed Board of Trade, a standing body to manage imports and exports with China. The idea was offered by U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who was on Air Force One as well, in Paris two months ago.

Froman's concern is that the summit might leave thorny but consequential noncommercial issues unaddressed.

Those, he said, include reasserting U.S. support for Taiwan's independence, the mushrooming nuclear arms buildup as China seeks to reach 1,500 warheads by 2035, the geostrategic ramifications of artificial intelligence applications, and the threats from North Korea and Beijing's propping up Russian military's Ukraine invasion.

"In the meantime, leaving most of these issues unaddressed runs the risk that one or more of them will create a future conflict that cannot be swept under the rug," Froman wrote.

Brian Fonseca, who directs national security research at Florida International University, noted that the Trump 2.0 foreign policy in this administration is stressing "hard values over interests" across the globe.

"That is sort of the downplaying of things like democracy, democratic institutions, human rights, I think, in exchange for things that tie very squarely back to the American interests, serving here in the homeland as well," he said.

To that end, a summit agenda promoting U.S. economic interests appears consistent with the president's stated "America First" priorities.

Trump's trip to China comes amid an economic and technological rivalry with the Asian giant — a competition that is playing out in Florida and Palm Beach County, with debates in Tallahassee over what rights people have as artificial intelligence uses spread, as well as opposition to a data center outside West Palm Beach.

Not to mention, as former CIA intelligence officer Michele Rigby Assad warned last year, Beijing's espionage efforts from Cape Canaveral's space industry to the Sunshine State's military defense contractors and even to the president's home and private club in Palm Beach.

"The U.S.-China competition is going to be the defining competition of the 21st century," said John Mearsheimer, an international relations scholar at the University of Chicago, during a talk at FIU on May 6.

As a result, the United States continues to pivot away from the European-centric foreign policy that dated to its independence and beginnings as a constitutional democracy in the late 1700s. Instead, he and other analysts speaking at the Hemispheric Security Conference hosted by FIU this month said Washington has its sights set on China and East Asia as the regions of top concern.

Mearsheimer credited Trump with pursuing the change when he first took office in January 2017, and then hosted Xi at the Winter White House three months later. He added that despite the Obama administration signaling a radical shift in focus, it was the first Trump administration that actually followed through.

"It was Trump who did it," he said.

In an interview this month, Mearsheimer, one of the leading specialists on international affairs in the United States, said it is no coincidence that the new president's first guests at Mar-a-Lago were the late Japanese leader Shinzo Abe and Xi.

During the Xi meeting at the Winter White House, Trump famously informed his Chinese counterpart of a U.S. missile strike in Syria as a chocolate cake dessert was served.

Now, Mearsheimer said the Washington-Beijing "competition" is playing out on a variety of issues, including the digital stage.

"Today, the United States is involved in mortal combat with China on things like AI," he said.

That is what is behind the Trump administration's push for broad application of AI technologies, which led Gov. Ron DeSantis to call for a quasi-AI bill of rights for Floridians that the governor said would not conflict with Trump's aims.

It is also why the president desires the construction of massive data centers such as the Project Tango development in Palm Beach County.

Fonseca at FIU added that China plays an adversarial role in the U.S. backyard across the Western Hemisphere, too. Beijing, along with Moscow and Tehran, work to undermine democratic institutions and engage in "illicit transnational" criminality.

"I think those things continue to be really incredible, powerful threats that continue to plague the region," Fonseca said.

Just being normal......

Kash Patel and the Trump administration’s mockery of congressional hearings

Analysis by Aaron Blake

Top Trump administration officials have made it abundantly clear from Day One just how little regard they have for Congress, including and possibly especially its constitutional oversight duties.

Just look at former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “burn book” and her riff on the Dow at her February hearings, or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s over-the-top combative testimony of late. The general strategy seems to revolve around attacking lawmakers to avoid answering even straightforward questions about dicey subjects — even if the questioner is a fellow Republican.

But rarely has an appearance epitomized the administration’s utter disdain for accountability like FBI Director Kash Patel’s congressional hearing on Tuesday.

Members of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee pressed Patel on a number of questions about his stewardship of the FBI, including a recent report in the Atlantic that he has alarmed colleagues with his excessive drinking (he has denied these claims and sued the publication) and his exorbitant celebrating with the US hockey team after its Olympic win in Italy.

Things got particularly testy with Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who read an opening statement particularly critical of Patel and his alleged drinking habits.

When Patel got the chance to respond, he wasn’t content to deny the reporting. He tried to flip it back on the Maryland Democrat.

“The only person that was slinging margaritas in El Salvador on the taxpayer dollar with a convicted gangbanging rapist was you,” Patel told Van Hollen. “The only person that ran up a $7,000 bar tab in Washington, DC, at the Lobby Bar was you. The only individual in this room that has been drinking on the taxpayer dime during the day is you.”

Allies of President Donald Trump’s administration gobbled up the exchange and shared it far and wide on social media.

But there’s a problem with that Patel quote — four of them, in fact, all of which the FBI director managed to squeeze into just 20 seconds of testimony.

Patel’s allusion was to Van Hollen’s visit last year to El Salvador to check on the welfare of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Abrego Garcia is the undocumented immigrant from Van Hollen’s home state whom the Trump administration illegally deported to a brutal El Salvador prison.

Except:

• Abrego Garcia has not been convicted of being in a gang.
• He has not been convicted of rape.
• The “margaritas” that were placed in front of Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia during a photo op were apparently staged by El Salvador government officials. President Nayib Bukele is a close Trump ally.
• There’s no evidence of Van Hollen day-drinking using taxpayer funds in either the El Salvador or the Lobby Bar incident.

Patel on X soon posted an image from Van Hollen’s campaign finance reports showing a $7,128 bill from December 2025 at the Lobby Bar. But the bill was for general “catering,” which can mean food as well as alcohol, and Van Hollen said Tuesday that it was for a staff holiday party.

And regardless of what the money was spent on, it wasn’t “on the taxpayer dime”; It was campaign money.

(Lawmakers commonly host fundraising or staff events at restaurants or bars that can rack up large tabs and charge it to the campaign. That might be problematic, but not for the reasons Patel suggested.)

Even if Patel’s “taxpayer dime” reference was to the Abrego Garcia meeting rather than the campaign event, there is no evidence Van Hollen drank what was placed in front of him in El Salvador. In fact, he said back then, “Neither of us touched the drinks.”

Van Hollen at the hearing accused Patel of spreading an “urban legend in right-wing media.”

These are the kinds of facts the administration has butchered many times over, as they’ve sought to argue Abrego Garcia is a bad guy and that Democrats were too anxious to defend an undocumented immigrant. They’ve repeatedly suggested it was proven that Abrego Garcia was in a gang and had committed non-immigration crimes, even though it still hasn’t been.

(Abrego Garcia has been indicted for alleged human trafficking, but he hasn’t even been charged with alleged rape.)

But Patel isn’t just any administration official in this context. He’s the FBI director, and he’s testifying to Congress under penalty of perjury. But he’s saying things that could logically be understood to impugn others — both Abrego Garcia and Van Hollen.

All of which is contrary to Justice Department ethics, which state that officials aren’t supposed to make false statements about people or prejudge someone’s guilt.

(Bondi, too, has quite arguably violated these standards. When Abrego Garcia was indicted in June, she in a press conference cited claims Abrego Garcia had committed other heinous crimes that weren’t even included in the indictment.)

And it’s pretty evident that Patel didn’t just trip over his words in labeling Abrego Garcia a “convicted gangbanging rapist.” Later in his testimony, he again cited Van Hollen supposedly “drinking margaritas with felons,” even though Abrego Garcia, again, has not been convicted of a felony.

In a typical administration, testimony like this would lead to questions about Patel correcting the record and withdrawing his claims. Even shy of Patel fearing criminal prosecution, Republicans might insist on it to assert Congress’ role in overseeing the executive branch.

But nobody has any illusions about any kind of accountability for Patel. And the GOP-controlled Congress seemingly gave up on protecting its prerogatives and status as a powerful, separate branch of government when Trump was inaugurated a second time.

Indeed, Patel isn’t even the only top administration official to make false statements in congressional testimony over the past week.

Hegseth did so last Wednesday and Thursday, when he claimed that the Biden administration had sent the military to polling places in 15 states in 2024.

The government’s revered system of checks and balances has apparently broken down so much now that officials can say whatever they want in testimony, as long as it’s combative and pleases Trump.

Falling down the stairs was the best part....

Trump’s disappearing China hawks

The once vocal GOP wing that warned against making deals with Beijing has largely left the conversation ahead of Trump’s China summit.

By Jack Detsch, Katherine Long, Paul McLeary and Ari Hawkins

As the world’s two most powerful leaders prepare to meet, the usual chorus of Republican warnings about the perils of dealing with Beijing has disappeared.

The silence is a culmination of President Donald Trump’s stifling of GOP orthodoxy on China, which has washed away years of hawkish policy on everything from tech to defense.

He has green-lighted the sale of advanced AI chips to Beijing, even as Congress warned about espionage risks. He signed off on a deal to allow Chinese-founded TikTok to continue operating in the U.S., despite intelligence concerns. And his National Defense Strategy abandoned tough rhetoric on China for a more conciliatory tone as the administration focuses on protecting the homeland.

Now, as the president begins a high-stakes summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping — accompanied by tech executives, family members and Cabinet officials — Trump aims to make new deals on tech, trade and possibly even Taiwan. But senior Republicans inside the administration and on Capitol Hill have gone quiet, bowing to Trump’s vision for closer cooperation between once fierce rivals.

“Donald Trump is the key dove,” said Dan Blumenthal, a former Defense Department official under George. W. Bush and U.S.-China Economic and Security Review commissioner. “He wants stability. He’s just very impressed with Chinese power and doesn’t believe that we’re in any position at the moment to win a strategic competition.”

The shift from Trump’s first administration has been significant. The president, ahead of Wednesday’s summit, told reporters he would speak with Xi about U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. That would repudiate longstanding American policy that has held across seven previous administrations — including the first Trump term — that the U.S. does not consult with Beijing on weapons transfers to Taipei.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang hitched a last-second ride on Trump’s plane to Beijing, just months after the U.S. approved the company’s sales of H200 artificial intelligence chips to China. The move, lawmakers worry, could dent America’s lead in the AI race.

Within the White House, voices that would have argued against those changes are gone.

China hawks in Trump’s previous administration — from former national security adviser H.R. McMaster to John Bolton and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo — all had a seat at the table. They’ve been replaced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and White House AI adviser David Sacks, who have been quick to accommodate Trump’s newfound desire for deals with Beijing above all else. Sacks in particular has lobbied against bipartisan legislation pushing for tighter export controls on semiconductors.

The White House and Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment.

Still, there is a recognition within the upper echelons at the Pentagon that China remains the largest military threat facing the nation.

“It is a pacing threat, precisely that,” said Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s top research and engineering official, at POLITICO’s Global Security summit, using a defense term that describes how an opponent — in this case China — helps set the pace for American strategy and weapons development.

Michael, along with other Trump administration officials, has pressed for ways to counter Beijing, including efforts to reduce dependency on China’s supply of rare earths and drone technologies by backing American startups in those industries.

And some lawmakers still remain wary of Trump’s moves.

The president’s decision to approve sales of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, which was made a month following his last meeting with Xi in South Korea, was swiftly countered by a broad bipartisan push on Capitol Hill to limit exports of more advanced AI chips and expand congressional power over them. Several bills have advanced to the floor, but none has passed. Administration officials have since said none of those chips has actually been sold.

And since Trump’s first term, China has constructed seven major artificial islands in the South China Sea, built the world’s largest Navy and established an arsenal of long-range missiles.

“China was a main feature of the foreign policy of the first [Trump] administration,” said Ely Ratner, who led the Indo-Pacific Security Affairs office in the Pentagon under the Biden administration. “But the views within the administration are much more varied all around [in Trump’s second term]. All of this comes together to create this softer policy we see now, philosophically this group appears geared toward a more accommodationist approach to China.”

Many of the GOP’s China hawks appear to be standing behind Trump, despite previous concerns.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who has been involved in bipartisan efforts to crack down on China’s access to advanced chips, said Wednesday he backed exporting some U.S. tech to Beijing.

“If you can get into China and allow them some so that they’re using ours rather than creating their own, that gives us a technological advantage, even though they may be able to continue months behind us,” Rounds said in an interview.

Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who was part of a recent delegation visit to China, said he was “thrilled” that Huang would be in attendance. The CEO is “one of the greatest thought leaders” when it comes to chips, he said. “Jensen needs to be at the table.”

But when Trump sits down with Xi, it may not matter who has counseled him.

“The policy process is different with President Trump feeling much more confident, less willing to listen to his advisers,” said Blumenthal, the former Bush administration official. “There’s less input, and everybody who’s serving him knows that he’s going to make the decisions, particularly on China.”

Cuts $1.3 billion in Medicaid

White House cuts $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California

CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz has repeatedly targeted the state over hospice care.

By Robert King

The Trump administration is withholding $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to California for failing to combat fraud, escalating a feud with the state over its management of hospice care.

“The state of California has not taken fraud very seriously,” said Vice President JD Vance during a press conference Wednesday at the White House.

Though the administration has repeatedly criticized California’s fraud oversight, this is the first time the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has targeted payments to the state. In recent months it has withheld more than $300 million in Medicaid reimbursements to Minnesota for suspect claims.

Medicaid is a joint federal-state partnership. California has already paid providers serving the low-income patients in the program. CMS will not pay the federal government’s share unless the state meets the agency’s requirements for showing eligible patients actually received services. The state did not immediately return a request for comment on CMS’ action.

CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz said at the press conference the $1.3 billion is the agency’s largest deferral ever, though it’s a small portion of California’s total federal Medicaid funding. CMS reimbursed California more than $92 billion in fiscal 2024, according to the most recent data.

“We would like the state to come to the table to explain to us how these outlier payments have been generated,” he said.

Oz has repeatedly targeted hospice fraud in California, especially in Los Angeles. “There aren’t that many people dying in Los Angeles,” he said. “We believe half of the hospices in the entire area around Los Angeles are fraudulent.”

CMS recently suspended payments to 800 hospice facilities in California and less than 20 have complained, which Oz said means his agency is “on the right track.”

What’s next: CMS earlier on Wednesday announced a six-month moratorium on adding new hospice and home health providers to Medicare, which serves seniors.

The agency is also asking every state’s Medicaid fraud control unit to detail their actions combating fraud. Vance said units in some states are not doing enough to combat fraud, despite getting federal funding.

Residents sue Trump

Miami residents sue Trump, claiming Florida land gift for library unconstitutional

The suit from city residents and a nearby nonprofit alleges the land transfer of prime downtown real estate is illegal.

By Kimberly Leonard

City residents have sued to stop Donald Trump from receiving prime Florida real estate for his presidential library, claiming the land transfer violates the Constitution.

The lawsuit is being brought under the Emoluments Clause, which bars the president from accepting gifts, payments or other benefits from state, federal or foreign entities beyond an official salary. The land where the skyscraper library is set to be built — in a prime waterfront location downtown — was first transferred by Miami Dade College to the state. Then Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet gifted it to Trump’s library foundation.

The lawsuit targets Trump, his library foundation, DeSantis and members of the Florida Cabinet, as well as Miami Dade College. The 2.63 acres of land in question is valued at around $67 million, though some real estate experts have said it could be worth as much as $300 million given its bayfront location across from the city’s Kaseya Center arena. It’s also next to the Freedom Tower, a historic immigrant processing center that once welcomed Cuban refugees.

The lawsuit, from two Miami residents who live near the soon-to-be-constructed site and led by the Constitutional Accountability Center and Miami-based law firm Gelber Schachter & Greenberg, points out that Trump has told reporters he thinks the land could also serve as a hotel “with a beautiful building underneath and a 747 Air Force One in the lobby.”

“These statements, individually and collectively, make clear that President Trump intends to monetize this skyscraper, generating significant profit for himself and his family,” the lawsuit states.

Two of the residents listed as plaintiffs say the high-rise building would “compromise” their views and “materially worsen the living conditions in their neighborhood.” Another plaintiff is Dunn’s Overtown Farm, a nonprofit that wants to use the land for an urban farm, as well as a student in urban farming and nonprofit management.

This is the second lawsuit the library has faced. The first — which also involved Marvin Dunn, the owner of the urban farm nonprofit and an emeritus Florida International University professor — alleged that Miami Dade College violated open records laws by failing to give the public enough time to weigh in on the land transfer. The college held another vote and public hearing about the transfer, then voted again, which satisfied a circuit judge who’d temporarily put the transfer on hold.

Renderings of the presidential library released by Eric Trump are included in the new lawsuit. “Notably, the ‘TRUMP’ lettering at the top of the rendered skyscraper is identical to The Trump Organization’s logo and the signage used on Trump hotel properties across the world, including the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago and the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas,” the lawsuit states.

The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Asked to comment on the lawsuit, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle praised Trump as “one of the most consequential and successful presidents in American history” and “a leader who has fought tirelessly to deliver for the forgotten men and women of this country and Make America Great Again.”

“The Trump Presidential Library will be one of the most magnificent buildings in the world,” he continued, “and a living testament to the indelible impact President Trump has made on America and its people.”

Dam shame..........

Austrian jets intercept US military planes two days in a row

By Linus Höller

Austrian Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets scrambled two days in a row to intercept U.S. military aircraft, the government said.

The interceptions took place on May 10 and 11 and were related to modified PC-12 turboprop aircraft that the U.S. military uses primarily for signals intelligence and scouting operations. The U.S. designation for the aircraft is U-28.

Contrary to initial reporting in German-language media, no aircraft seems to have illegally violated Austrian airspace. The U.S. Air Force had filed for an overflight permit for two aircraft on May 10, but didn’t use it. When later that day two different USAF aircraft approached Austrian airspace unannounced, jets were scrambled to meet them - but they turned back before crossing the border, Austrian military spokesperson Michael Bauer said in a statement on X on Wednesday.

The U.S. refiled the overflight permit for the following day and used it then. The Austrian air force sent fighter jets to confirm that the aircraft overflying the airspace matched what had been approved. “Some things you have to see for yourself,” Bauer said in a reply on X

Austrian jets were scrambled in a “priority A intercept” on May 11, Bauer said on Tuesday, marking the highest urgency in the Austrian air force’s nomenclature.

Later reporting by the major Austrian daily Der Standard cited the Austrian government as saying that, as of Wednesday, the verdict was still out on whether the planes that overflew Austrian airspace were the ones for which a permit had been issued. No further details were provided on what was taking so long for the verification.

Austria is not a member of the NATO alliance and has perpetual neutrality enshrined in its constitution. Transits by foreign militaries - whether by land or by air - require prior approval and are generally granted only if they are unrelated to a war. Austria was the fifth European country to close its airspace to U.S. activity related to the war in Iran, with the country’s vice chancellor, Andreas Babler, saying that Austrians want “nothing to do with Trump’s politics of chaos and his war.”

The May 11 intercept reportedly took place over the Totes Gebirge mountain range in Upper Austria, over 60 kilometers from the German border. The American planes were met by Eurofighter Typhoons.

Swiss news portal “20 Minuten” first reported on the incursion and it was later confirmed by other German-language media, although initial reporting stated that unpermitted airspace violations had taken place - a claim that was refuted by the Austrian military on Wednesday

“This flight took place after an administrative error in the overflight clearance paperwork was corrected,” an official from U.S. European Command told Defense News in an email. “The United States continues to work closely with Austrian authorities on any questions regarding overflights and fully complies with Austrian laws and procedures.”

Publicly available reporting of unauthorized U.S. overflights is rare, and permissions are generally granted in peacetime. Austria’s location and geography - a thin sliver of land between major NATO allies Germany and Italy, and dividing northern from southern Europe - makes it a prime transit route. Neighboring Switzerland has similar neutrality policies.

The most remarkable precedent is a case in October 2002, when the U.S. attempted to smuggle two F-117A Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft through Austrian airspace by filing a flight plan only for the accompanying KC-10A tanker aircraft. Austrian Draken fighter jets identified the undeclared aircraft and Vienna later lodged a formal diplomatic complaint.

The recent incidents, too, will be addressed through diplomatic channels, Bauer said.

Competitive authoritarianism

Is the U.S. slipping into 'Competitive Authoritarianism?'

Frank Langfitt

What kind of political system do we have in America these days?

Some experts say the United States is no longer a liberal democracy, but operating under a system called "competitive authoritarianism."

For this installment of NPR's Word of the Week, we explore the term's origin story and how it is being applied in a way those who came up with it never imagined.

If you're not familiar with the term, here is a basic definition:

Competitive authoritarian countries have democratic rules and hold competitive elections, but the party in charge uses various tactics to tilt the electoral playing field in its favor to maintain power.

Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard who helped come up with the concept, explained it last year on NPR member station WAMU's show, 1A.

"Elected authoritarians, when they come to power, try to convert the state, which is supposed to be a neutral arbiter, into both a weapon and a shield," said Levitsky, who co-authored the book How Democracies Die. "It's a weapon to be deployed against political rivals, and it is a shield to protect themselves and to protect their allies who engage in authoritarian or illegal behavior."

Levitsky says Trump's pardoning of the people convicted in the January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol is a prime example.

Competitive authoritarianism is a pretty new term. Levitsky and Lucan Way – now a professor at the University of Toronto – came up with it in 2002 to describe systems in countries such as Serbia, Kenya and Peru.

"We never – when we coined this term 25 years ago – never imagined that we would apply it to the United States," said Levitsky.

But Levitsky says Trump is following a familiar playbook crafted by leaders such as former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"When we began to see the Justice Department go after people who were public critics of Trump, when we began to see lawsuits against (the) media or attacks on universities that are viewed as critical of the government," said Levitsky, "all these things are raising the cost of opposition."

To describe these kinds of political systems, Way and Levitsky initially came up with the phrase, "Contested Autocracy."

Way admits it was a "horrible" term. Then, in conversation, Way's faculty adviser, Harvard professor Timothy Colton, unwittingly provided a eureka moment. He misremembered the concept as "competitive authoritarianism."

"So, we thought, 'Oh my God,' that was it!" Way recalled.

Since President Trump took office last year, searches on Google Trends for competitive authoritarianism have spiked. It has also shown up in scores of publications, from the Ventura County Star in California to The Scotsman in Edinburgh and The Indian Express in Mumbai.

President Trump has repeatedly insisted he is not an autocrat.

"A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last August. "I don't like a dictator. I'm not a dictator."

Other scholars say the U.S. remains very much a democracy. They point out that despite Trump's repeated calls for late night host Jimmy Kimmel to be fired, he remains on the air. In addition, citizens routinely protest and criticize Trump and his policies online and on the streets.

Nor does competitive authoritarianism ensure permanent rule.

Just ask Orbán. The former Hungarian leader was widely seen as perfecting the competitive authoritarian playbook during his 16 years in power.

But a poor economy and rampant corruption took a toll. Last month, a unified opposition swept Orbán's party in a landslide.

NGC 188

The New General Catalog of star clusters and nebulae really isn't so new. In fact, it was published in 1888 - an effort by J. L. E. Dreyer to consolidate the work of astronomers William, Caroline, and John Herschel along with others into a useful single, complete catalog of astronomical discoveries and measurements. Dreyer's work was largely successful and is still important today, as this famous catalog continues to lend its "NGC" to bright clusters, galaxies, and nebulae. Take for example the star cluster known as NGC 188 (item number 188 in the NGC compilation). It lies about 6,000 light-years distant in the northern constellation Cepheus and represents a galactic or open star cluster. With an age of about 7 billion years, NGC 188 is old for an open cluster. Its old, evolved red giant stars have yellowish hues in this colorful, deep sky view. NGC 188 also enjoys the designation Caldwell 1 in a modern compilation of deep sky objects. Located well above the plane of the Milky Way and seen in the direction of planet Earth's north celestial pole, the ancient stellar group is known to some as the Polarissima Cluster.

Escaped the Abortion Trap

Trump Thought He’d Escaped the Abortion Trap

Now the Supreme Court is facing a blockbuster case that threatens to spin out of control.

Nina Martin

By all accounts, President Donald Trump really, really did not want abortion to become a major issue this election year. But here we are, six months before the midterms, and abortion pills are back at the Supreme Court, as the state of Louisiana and abortion drug manufacturers ask to fast-track oral arguments in what is shaping up to be a blockbuster case. Conservatives are invoking the Comstock Act. And Trump’s Food and Drug Administration has been AWOL, while its top official has been forced to resign.

The swift escalation of the showdown between Louisiana and the FDA over telemedicine abortion highlights just how little control Trump has over the abortion issue—both in terms of the timeline and the outcome. Meanwhile, the case is sparking confusion, uncertainty, and dread among patients, providers, and advocates across the US.

Just to recap how we got to this point. On May 1, the right-wing Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, siding with Louisiana, issued a nationwide order suspending FDA rules that allow the abortion drug mifepristone to be prescribed via telehealth and dispensed through the mail. A few days later, Justice Samuel Alito temporarily paused the order, and on Monday, he extended his stay until May 14.

The decision to take a few more days suggests that the full court is struggling to figure out its next steps in a case that could upend abortion access throughout the US—and possibly much sooner than many SCOTUS-watchers had thought likely.

All last week, justices were blasted with amicus briefs from parties with keen and conflicting interests in the outcome. Former FDA officials warned about the dire consequences of allowing states to upend drug regulations put in place years or even decades ago. Doctors and reproductive health advocates pointed to the mass of research from around the world showing that abortion pills are safe and effective, including via telemedicine.

Conservatives, meanwhile, repeatedly brought up the Comstock Act, a 150-year-old anti-obscenity statute that hasn’t been enforced for decades. Named for the 19th-century anti-vice crusader who championed it, Comstock made it a federal crime to mail or ship “any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception or procuring an abortion.” Reviving the law could end legal access to most abortions nationwide and possibly threaten other reproductive health care, such as IUDs. 

In its own brief to SCOTUS, Louisiana offered an audacious option: If justices don’t allow the Fifth Circuit suspension of mail-order mifepristone to take effect, they should put the case on the 2025-2026 docket and schedule oral arguments ASAP, so that a final decision could be made as soon as the end of June or the first days of July. Drug makers GenBioPro and Danco Laboratories also suggested the court should consider taking the full case on an expedited schedule. The current term already includes such hugely consequential issues such as birthright citizenship and Temporary Protected Status for asylum seekers.

The one interested party that did not weigh in was the federal drug agency Louisiana sued in the first place. Even though the Fifth Circuit’s order was directed at the FDA, GenBioPro and Danco filed the emergency appeals asking the Supreme Court to hit pause.

As of Tuesday, the FDA remained radio silent. “There’s a really long list of briefs, but nothing from the federal government on this,” says Naomi Cahn, a law professor at the University of Virginia. “And in a case that’s challenging the agency’s authority, that’s remarkable.”

Abortion historian Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, sees the FDA’s failure to speak up as yet more evidence that the Trump administration has backed itself into a very uncomfortable corner, caught between voters who overwhelmingly support reproductive rights and abortion opponents who are furious the president hasn’t worked harder on their behalf. “It’s clear,” she says, “that the Trump administration still doesn’t know what to do about this issue politically.”

The anti-abortion movement expected that when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, abortions would plummet across much of the US. The opposite has happened: In the four years since the Dobbs decision, the number of abortions has risen nationwide, including in states where abortion is almost entirely banned.

As abortion opponents have strategized to stop the flow of pills, they have focused much of their energy on attacking Obama- and Biden-era FDA rule changes for mifepristone, one of two drugs that make up the gold-standard abortion-pill regimen. Approved by the FDA in 2000, mifepristone was subject to extremely strict rules and placed in a program—known as Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, or REMS—normally reserved for the most dangerous drugs. Starting in 2016, some of those rules were relaxed, including a requirement for in-person prescribing and dispensing that was finalized in 2023. Now, almost two-thirds of abortions in the US happen with abortion pills, and nearly 30 percent occur by telemedicine.

The first sweeping assault on the FDA rules, in a 2022 case that also originated in the Fifth Circuit, ended when the Supreme Court ultimately held that the plaintiffs—anti-abortion doctors and medical organizations—didn’t have standing to sue. But the justices made no determination on the underlying issue—the FDA’s regulation of mifepristone—and left the door open to other plaintiffs who might have standing.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill tried her luck with a narrower lawsuit last fall, arguing that the Biden administration’s decision to permanently ditch the in-person dispensing requirement was “arbitrary,” “capricious,” and “avowedly political.” It was not based on sound science, she argued, but on the Democrats’ determination to thwart the effects of the Dobbs decision that handed abortion policy to the states. Murrill claimed that the telemedicine rule interfered with Louisiana’s right to regulate abortion as it sees fit, while making it too easy for women to be tricked or coerced into having abortions they don’t want.

The FDA responded, not by defending the 2023 rules, but by pointing to its own ongoing review of mifepristone’s safety, which Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and then-FDA commissioner Marty Makary announced last fall. At the time, Kennedy and Makary cited the Biden administration’s purported “lack of adequate consideration” before making the 2023 rules change; they also cited “recent safety concerns”—such as supposedly high rates of abortion pill complications—raised by the right-wing Ethics and Public Policy Center in a dubious study that has been widely debunked as junk science. In its court filings, the FDA argued that Louisiana’s lawsuit threatened to “short-circuit the agency’s orderly review” and should be put on hold. It also argued that Louisiana didn’t have standing to sue.

But the FDA study has been widely seen as a delaying tactic by a president reluctant to take a stand on abortion that might alienate voters. Trump has blamed many of his past political setbacks on abortion, and in his second term has avoided sweeping actions that would put the issue on the political front burner. For example, in defiance of the hopes of many conservatives, his Justice Department has declined to enforce the Comstock Act. His failure to take meaningful action to stop the flow of pills in the US has infuriated anti-abortion leaders. “Trump is the problem,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the influential president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told the Wall Street Journal last week. “The president is the problem.”

In the Louisiana case, the anti-abortion ideologues on the Fifth Circuit did what Trump officials have not. Using the FDA’s sham mifepristone review, and citing the statements by Kennedy and Makary about the Biden FDA’s “lack of adequate consideration,” they have set up the circumstances to potentially gut access to abortion pills. “You have the FDA conceding that there’s a question about whether they did this properly [on mifepristone],” says Sonia Suter, a law professor at George Washington University. “That only heightens the Fifth Circuit’s belief that the FDA had no authority to [get rid of the in-person dispensing rule] in the first place.” 

The FDA’s silence at the Supreme Court may well be construed to further bolster Louisiana’s case, Ziegler says. The state is arguing that the FDA’s actions—or lack thereof—show that the agency agrees that the 2023 rules change was problematic. “The court could easily use the FDA’s silence the way Louisiana is using it.”

But Makary’s resignation, or perhaps firing, on Tuesday—which abortion opponents and others have been pushing for some time—also highlights the agency’s wider “disarray,” says Drexel University law professor David Cohen. “They’ve been under a lot of pressure—threading this needle of defending the agency’s past actions [on mifepristone], while a lot of people within the Republican Party are upset about them.” Given the politics and the chaos, he says, “I wasn’t surprised they didn’t file anything.”

The central question raised by Alito’s extension of his stay against the Fifth Circuit is, why? SCOTUS “seems to be really struggling,” Suter says, “not so much with the legal questions, but with how what they do is going to affect the integrity of the court.” Battered by reporting about the court’s shadow docket, she says, justices “may be worried about looking like they’re rushing too much” to resolve the kinds of hugely consequential issues that the FDA case raises—not just about abortion, but also about the rights of states to second-guess federal drug regulation.

Yet Louisiana and mifepristone manufacturers have all indicated they want SCOTUS to take the case on its merits, perhaps on an expedited schedule during the current term. “Basically, they’ve said, We know what the district court is going to ultimately rule,” Suter says. “We know what the Fifth Circuit is going to ultimately rule…Why wait?”

If the Supreme Court does take the case, conservative groups have made clear they plan to use the opportunity to push the justices on the Comstock Act. At least two archconservatives—Alito and Clarence Thomas—have signaled they think the long-defunct statute remains the law of the land.

In one amicus brief filed last week, more than 100 Republican members of Congress accused the Biden-era FDA of flouting Comstock when it ended the in-person dispensing requirement. “The FDA cannot purport to authorize conduct criminalized under federal law,” the brief contends. “[T]hat would exceed its constitutional authority.”

The far-right nonprofit Advancing American Freedom, writing for dozens of other groups, argues that by failing to comply with Comstock, “the FDA has directly harmed Louisiana and undermined the exercise of its authority to prohibit abortion drugs.” 

Louisiana made similar arguments when it first sued the FDA last fall, but generally, Comstock has remained very much a background issue. The conservative briefs are aimed at “injecting” it back into the case—and further into mainstream discourse, says Amanda Barrow, senior staff attorney at the UCLA Law Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy. “It’s just an extremely anti-democratic argument,” she says. “. . . They’re trying to transform [Comstock] into a no-exceptions nationwide abortion ban that they could never convince modern voters to enact.”