The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism in American Politics

President Trump has raged at Bruce Springsteen for days, demanding investigations as retaliation against him for criticizing the president. This is easy to dismiss as the usual lunacy, but Rolling Stone reports that there’s a genuine idea at work here: Trump has long planned to use government agencies to constrain his opponents’ political activities, and that’s now under way. Indeed, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, staunch Trump ally Alina Habba, just brought charges against a House Democrat for trumped up reasons. Given all this, Trump’s fury at Springsteen suddenly looks a lot darker. So we talked to Rolling Stone writer Asawin Suebsaeng, co-author of that article. He explains how Trump is slowly escalating the use of investigatory power against political foes, what the GOP is doing to make this possible, and why the trend is deeply “chilling.”

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