1. United States
2. Ind.
3. Letter

From my friend who is managing to write more clearly than me right now. To be clear, political scientists have studied these concepts for years; we have data and measurements that may not be perfect, but aren’t willy nilly screaming random words. I personally haven’t studied other countries… but my colleagues have done so. My friend: My view is that we have been in a constitutional crisis from the moment DOGE started making budgetary decisions contrary to congressional statute. As of yesterday, however, we moved into full blown authoritarianism. There are degrees of authoritarianism. But yesterday it became clear that the regime is willing to defy court orders with the purpose of taking away the freedom of people in the country's jurisdiction without establishing that the facts that would justify taking away freedom under the law are present. That is called a due process violation. And it is very serious. The regime said that they are the final arbiter of fact and can utilize the strongest forms of state power (to take life, freedom, and property) without any judicial oversight. In addition, DOGE, an entity with shaky legal authority as a quai-state entity was able to physically break in to what I understand to be a privately operated entity (Institute of Peace) using the help of state security agents (FBI). The state can do that with a search warrrant but I have seen no reports that a warrant was presented. Those two items make me say that yesterday is the day that we officially crossed the threshold into authoritarianism. The current question is whether authoritarianism can be displaced before it becomes more entrenched. It is really important to know that well-developed authoritarian and totalitarian regimes like nazi Germany and North Korea may be our image of what it looks like. But we have already crossed initial thresholds. The clock is ticking to put a stop to it. More fully entrenched authoritarian regimes have whole legal structures that are in themselves authoritarian. Like it was illegal in Germany to live freely as a Jew. In a regime like ours that is in transition, violations of existing law are symptoms of authoritarianism. I want us to turn the bus around before we end up with a full on authoritarian legal framework.