FBI directors wield awesome powers over the liberties of Americans. The unwritten rule governing their appointment—no dismissal except for compelling cause—bulwarked American law and freedom for half a century. Even first-term Trump dared not openly defy it. But second-term Trump is opening with a bid to junk it altogether. Much of the reporting on Trump’s announcement reveals a society already bending to Trump’s will: Something that was regarded as outrageously unacceptable in 2017—treating an FBI director as just another Trump aide—has been semi-normalized even before President-Elect Trump takes office.
— “A Constitutional Crisis Greater Than Watergate,” The Atlantic
A Skeptic’s View of the President’s Actions
In January, I tried to track Trump’s executive actions, but a handy website beat me to it. But with a new authoritarian at the helm, banal summaries don’t cut it. So now I’ve set up a ChatGPT task to do the heavy lifting: provide a brief analysis of each week’s presidential orders from a radical left perspective. No blind trust, no propaganda—just a bullshit detector for the modern age.