The assassination of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and media personality, is not the reason President Trump and his allies have pursued a crackdown on their critics in media and civil society. As terrible as Kirk’s killing was, it has become, for the administration, a pretext.
At no point have either Trump or JD Vance or any of their fellow travelers shown any particular concern for truth, fairness or accuracy. Recall that the vice president said, during the campaign, that he would fabricate stories — such as the false charge that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing and eating the pets of their white neighbors — if that is what it took to get the attention of the press. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance said.
At no point, in other words, has the White House concealed its desire to corral and discipline its critics. That was, and is, the goal of the president’s attacks on law firms, universities and news networks. The point is to beat them into submission — to nullify them as meaningful opponents or even force them to work for its ends. And so CBS News — whose parent company, Paramount, settled a lawsuit from Trump for $16 million — will now answer to both a MAGA commissar, Kenneth Weinstein, and a powerful ally of the regime, David Ellison, who owns a controlling stake in the company.
When Vance, hosting Kirk’s podcast for the first episode after Kirk’s death, threatened to bring the full force of the federal government to bear against liberal nonprofits and NGOs — in an effort to neuter any opposition from civil society — he was reiterating the longstanding policy of this administration to punish dissent, criminalize opposition and silence its critics with the force of the bully pulpit.
That the Trump administration and the MAGA movement are less interested in deliberation and governance than they are in domination and obedience should shape and structure our sense of this political moment. Calls for dialogue and discussion — for greater rates of encounter between the professional left and the professional right — make sense when there’s consensus over the character of the overall political order. If we all agree that we are part of a contest of equals — if we take the political equality of all groups and peoples for granted — then we can discuss any number of issues across ideological lines without rancor and needless division.
But if the aim of one faction is to dominate all the others — if the explicit goal is to curb the rights of its opponents and force them to submit to conditions of political inequality — then discussion is less useful than a willingness to defend liberal society in the face of tyranny and despotism.
As I was writing this newsletter, I saw that Trump had declared open season on anyone who dared to criticize him. “I have read someplace that the networks were 97 percent against me, I get 97 percent negative, and yet I won and easily,” he said on Thursday. “I would think maybe their license should be taken away.” His view, put simply, is that no one on television should be allowed to criticize him or give him bad publicity. And even if most of the president’s lawsuits are dead on arrival, there is still the chilling effect of legal action from the most powerful man in the world.
Here I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 address at Cooper Union, where he defends his opposition to the expansion of slavery. Responding to Southern critics who insisted that the Republican Party was a conspiracy to abolish slavery, Lincoln said that the truth of the situation was that there was nothing either Republicans or the entire North could say, short of outright submission to the slave South, that would calm Southern anger or assuage the South’s paranoia:
What will convince them? This, and this only: Cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly — done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated — we must place ourselves avowedly with them.
We can say something similar of our time. Neither Trump nor the MAGA right wants to discuss or deliberate; it wants to dominate. American politics is no longer a fight over policy; it is a fight over the character of the nation itself. The task of this moment, then, is to defend the old vision of a more perfect union — of a more democratic and egalitarian American republic — not hope that one can avoid the fight by having the right conversation.
What I Wrote
I wrote about the recent immigration raid at an electric battery factory in Georgia, and what it reveals about the Trump administration’s economic program:
In reality, this was a fantasy. Americans could have a strong, growing economy, which requires immigration to bring in new people and fill demand for labor, or they could finance a deportation force and close the border to everyone but a small, select few. It was a binary choice. Theirs could be an open society or a closed one, but there was no way to get the benefits of the former with the methods of the latter.
I joined my colleagues Michelle Cottle and David French on an episode of “The Opinions,” and the latest episode of my podcast with John Ganz is on the 1997 science-fiction action film “Starship Troopers.”
Now Reading
David Blight on civil war for The New Republic.
Christopher R. Browning on the illiberal tendency in American politics for The New York Review of Books.
Adam Serwer on the Trump administration’s flagrant assault on free speech for The Atlantic.
Cristian Farias on the political prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia for The New Yorker.
Joan Wallach Scott on the Red Scare for Boston Review.
Photo of the Week
I thought this was a fun diptych that I took using a digital half-frame camera that I’ve been using, on rental, for the last two weeks or so.
Now Eating: Black Bean and Chorizo Stew
A quick note for those of you who do not eat meat: I believe that this can work pretty well with a vegan chorizo, which you can find at most grocery stores. And if you eat meat but don’t eat pork, another sausage should work as well. Recipe comes from New York Times Cooking.
Ingredients
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2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
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1 large white onion, diced
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½ batch (12 ounces) homemade green chorizo (see recipe), or use another spicy fresh sausage
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¼ cup chopped cilantro stems, leaves reserved for serving
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7 cups cooked black beans (from 4 cans or 1 pound dried beans), drained
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1 (28-ounce) can diced plum tomatoes with their juices
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2 teaspoons kosher salt, more as needed
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Diced avocado, for serving
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Sliced scallion, for serving
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Lime wedges, for serving
Directions
Heat oil over medium heat in a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottom pot. Add onion and cook until softened, 5 to 10 minutes. Stir in chorizo and cilantro stems and cook 5 minutes over high heat, or until much of the liquid has evaporated.
Stir in beans, tomatoes and their liquid, and 1 cup water. Bring mixture to a boil over high heat; reduce to medium.
Partly cover pot and simmer until tomatoes have fallen apart, about 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes. Season with salt. Serve topped with avocado, scallion, cilantro leaves and lime wedges.
Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va.
The post The MAGA Movement Is Not a Debating Society appeared first on New York Times.
