Archives
Weekly Lists
Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things
subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.
March 26, 2025
Week 20 — The Return
This week we had two devastating examples of obeying in advance, both of which will reverberate in their respective fields. On Thursday, law firm Paul Weiss reached a settlement with Trump. This comes a week after a federal judge put a halt on a similar Trump executive order targeting Perkins Coie, warning the order could damage the integrity of the entire legal profession, and intimidate lawyers from taking cases that impact Trump or his interests. Shortly after Paul Weiss capitulated, Trump doubled down with an even more extreme order.
March 19, 2025
Week 19 — The Return
This week marks another inflection point in Trump’s pace of breaking norms, and unfortunately a turn for the worse.
For the first few weeks after Trump’s inauguration (Weeks 12–15), his pace of breaking norms was frenetic. The regime used terms like “flood the zone” and “shock and awe” to describe their efforts to overwhelm the system with actions, many of which seemed to be plucked out of the pages of Project 2025.
March 12, 2025
Week 18 — The Return
This week, the country’s angst and anger over mass firings, frozen federal funding, and cuts in entitlement programs converged on Elon Musk and his so-called DOGE. Republican lawmakers, who have encountered such severe pushback from their constituents back home that GOP leaders have advised them to no longer hold in-person events, met with Musk on Wednesday to discuss concerns. The next day, at his second cabinet meeting, Trump announced that cabinet secretaries, not Musk, would make decisions on staffing cuts. It was later reported by the Times that even at that meeting, Musk had heated confrontations with at least two cabinet secretaries.
March 05, 2025
Week 17 — The Return
Undoubtedly the biggest story of this week was a shocking, unprecedented, explosive meeting in the White House, which shook the world order. We have witnessed many stunning events during the Trump eras, but for me, other than Jan. 6, watching Trump and Vice President JD Vance bully and lambaste Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with cameras rolling, was an unimaginable, horrifying scene for the history books. In what Trump said would “be great television,” the event marked a shift in the world order, with the U.S. betraying nearly century-old alliances to chum with one of the most violent and villainous dictators of our time, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Not only did Trump betray Europe this week, he also picked a fight with two other close allies, Canada and Mexico, citing a so-called national emergency to impose tariffs, in defiance of a trade agreement he negotiated and signed during the first regime!
February 26, 2025
Week 16 — The Return
It’s just one giant grift! Color me not surprised that in this second regime Trump has almost completely blended his personal businesses interests with U.S. interests, as continues in this week’s list. Trump has always pushed boundaries until he faces pushback, and with a largely neutered Legislative Branch, ethics has become an afterthought. The notion of conflicts of interest has seemingly disappeared from our radar, not only for him, but also for his broligarchs.
February 19, 2025
Week 15 — The Return
Another frenzied week, a continuation of Trump’s efforts to flood the zone using Project 2025 as his roadmap to destruction. There were three major themes to Week 15: an error-ridden ‘Valentine’s Day Massacre’ of tens of thousands of federal workers, a remarkable shift in U.S. foreign policy, and a Watergate-like crisis at Trump’s Department of Justice over his effort to dismiss criminal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
February 12, 2025
Week 14 — The Return
This week several notable legal scholars concurred that our country is already in the midst of a constitutional crisis. Trump and his regime continued a frenzied pace of actions and orders, many of which are unconstitutional or illegal. To wit, this week’s list is full of lawsuits and appeals, and Trump and his regime have found themselves on the losing end of every single one of them!
February 05, 2025
Week 13 — The Return
This is the second week of pandemonium in the U.S., by design. The number of broken norms this week are comparable to well into year two of the first regime. Seemingly following Project 2025 as a script, Trump and his regime are moving at a breakneck pace, testing the bounds of lawlessness, and setting up a myriad of court cases that will ultimately head to the Supreme Court, likely establishing expansions to presidential powers. The importance of writing it all down in this project is more clear than ever — likely in reading this week’s broken norms, you will find you have missed a lot since you were deluged by information, and exhausted by outrage. That is by design — a tool in the toolkit for authoritarians — flood the zone, leave them feeling helpless.
January 29, 2025
Week 12 — The Return
If reading this week’s list feels frenetic, that is because it is capturing the mood of the country. The return of Trump marks the return of his chaos and dysfunction, as if America is living in some frenzied mode awaiting the next eruption. The regime invoked the notion of “flood the zone” and “shock and awe” (we all know how that turned out last time) to describe a daily, all-out blitz of orders and actions. The goal seemed to be to destabilize and overwhelm those who might seek to oppose him. The question for Trump and his acolytes, seemingly drunk on their conceit and grandiosity, will be: have they gone too far, too fast?
January 22, 2025
Week 11 — The Return
In his inauguration speech this week, Trump invoked a new “golden age,” but the reality of his incoming regime is more akin to a return of the Gilded Age. Week 11’s image captures the awkward oligarchs, at the same time heeled and venerated by Trump, as the country bears witness to power and wealth becoming even more concentrated among a chosen few.