President Trump is winning. an asymmetric struggle without precedent in American political history

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/opinion/trump-winning-imperial-presidency.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jE8.57yX.J3tHpT0eq5_E&smid=url-share


President Trump is winning.

Universities retreat under pressure, law firms submit to extortion, scientific and medical research funding has been decimated, federal employees face ideological purges, tariffs are imposed as political weapons, the military has become a domestic police force and the administration is demanding that cultural institutions mute or even eliminate criticism of the worst aspects of America’s past.

The president targets each constituency in isolation, leaving all divided and vulnerable.

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An 8,000-word report issued in April by the Center for American Progress, “Trump’s First 100 Days: Creating an Imperial Presidency That Harms Americans,” captured the scope of Trump’s teardown of American democracy.

“President Donald Trump,” the report’s two authors, Michael Sozan and Ben Olinsky, wrote:

is aggressively implementing a far-right, multipronged plan to create an imperial presidency. Acting far more aggressively than he did in his first term, Trump is casting aside the U.S. Constitution and federal laws, shattering long-established guardrails designed to protect the system of checks and balances and using government power to stifle dissent.

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It is an asymmetric struggle without precedent in American political history, creating a predicament for all those opposed to a president who acts without regard to law, constitutional limits or congressional authorization, who disdains due process, prosecutes political adversaries and weaponizes regulatory agencies to attack the media, academia, the legal profession and liberal democracy itself.