The Big Chilling Effect
Our leaders are afraid to lead.
NYT (“‘People Are Going Silent’: Fearing Retribution, Trump Critics Muzzle Themselves“):
The silence grows louder every day.
Fired federal workers who are worried about losing their homes ask not to be quoted by name. University presidents fearing that millions of dollars in federal funding could disappear are holding their fire. Chief executives alarmed by tariffs that could hurt their businesses are on mute.
Even longtime Republican hawks on Capitol Hill, stunned by President Trump’s revisionist history that Ukraine is to blame for its invasion by Russia, and his Oval Office blowup at President Volodymyr Zelensky, have either muzzled themselves, tiptoed up to criticism without naming Mr. Trump or completely reversed their positions.
More than six weeks into the second Trump administration, there is a chill spreading over political debate in Washington and beyond.
People on both sides of the aisle who would normally be part of the public dialogue about the big issues of the day say they are intimidated by the prospect of online attacks from Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, concerned about harm to their companies and frightened for the safety of their families. Politicians fear banishment by a party remade in Mr. Trump’s image and the prospect of primary opponents financed by Mr. Musk, the president’s all-powerful partner and the world’s richest man.
“When you see important societal actors — be it university presidents, media outlets, C.E.O.s, mayors, governors — changing their behavior in order to avoid the wrath of the government, that’s a sign that we’ve crossed the line into some form of authoritarianism,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard and the co-author of the influential 2018 book “How Democracies Die.”
We have indeed seen all of those things.
Mr. Trump ran in 2024 promising retribution against his enemies and has quickly sent menacing signals from the White House. He revoked the security details of high-profile critics like Gen. Mark A. Milley, a retired Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman who faces death threats from Iran, and said he would pull the security clearances of lawyers at a prominent law firm who are representing Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated him.
One prominent first-term critic of Mr. Trump said in a recent interview that not only would he not comment on the record, he did not want to be mentioned in this article at all. Every time his name appears in public, he said, the threats against him from the far right increase.
On Capitol Hill, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a Republican, was wavering in his support for Pete Hegseth, Mr. Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, until the president threatened him with a primary and Mr. Tillis did a turnabout. (Mr. Tillis’s office said the senator was simply performing careful vetting.)
Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi told Mr. Zelensky in a meeting at the Hay-Adams Hotel last week that he was there with other senators “as a show of support.” But after Mr. Trump’s confrontation with Mr. Zelensky later that day, Mr. Wicker took down a social media post showing him shaking hands with the Ukrainian leader.
More than a half-dozen Republican defense hawks in the Senate — not a group usually shy about communicating its views — declined to comment for this article or did not respond to requests for comment about Mr. Trump’s statements on Ukraine or why other Republicans were not speaking out.
We know why. In the first Trump term, threats to endorse primary opponents were used. That’s hardball politics but well within longstanding norms. We are beyond that now.
Most of those who are speaking out are in protected positions at private institutions—but even that is taking a big risk given that federal grants are crucial almost everywhere in academia. Even elected Democrats in safe seats are afraid.
Representative Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat and a frequent critic of Mr. Trump, said the real fear among Republicans in the House who might otherwise voice criticism of the administration on some issues was violence against their families.
“I’m friends with a lot of these guys, and I had wrongly assumed that what was holding them back from speaking out against Trump was they were afraid of losing their jobs,” he said in an interview. “But what they’re afraid of is their own personal security. They tell me that their wives tell them, ‘Don’t contribute to us getting harassed at church or at the grocery store or at the club.’”
Mr. Swalwell, who receives plenty of threats himself, said that he spends hundreds of thousands of dollars of his campaign and office funds on security for his own family, and that his daughter recently included a member of his security detail in a drawing of her family for her kindergarten class.
Needless to say, rank and file Members of Congress should not require security details, much less their kindergarten-age children.
Senator Todd Young of Indiana is one Republican who has experienced browbeating from Mr. Musk for not staying in line. After Mr. Young asked tough questions last month at the confirmation hearing of Tulsi Gabbard, now Mr. Trump’s director of national intelligence, Mr. Musk said on social media that Mr. Young was a “deep state puppet.”
Mr. Musk soon deleted his post and said he had spoken to Mr. Young, whom he was suddenly calling “a great ally in restoring power to the people.” Mr. Young went on to confirm Ms. Gabbard, although in an interview last week he pointedly said he had not discussed her with Mr. Musk.
“I don’t think anyone should be afraid to register their convictions,” he said. “OK?”
Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat who is friendly with a broad group of Senate Republicans, said in an interview that “those who I have traveled with and worked with and prayed with and been involved with in foreign aid and foreign policy are struck by the swiftness, the forcefulness, the cruelty and the lack of organization of the cuts.”
Why do they not speak out? Mr. Musk, he said, has issued “a credible electoral threat” to finance primary opponents.
At lunch a couple of weeks back, a colleague—like myself a longtime Republican estranged from our former party for the last decade—reflected on how much the current environment reminded him of the Russian Revolution. He feared that the combination of the pardons of violent supporters of the President, Elon Musk’s unlimited funds and ownership of the platform formerly known as Twitter, and other factors amounted to a veritable Red Guard who would intimidate opponents.
We had already seen reluctant Senators strong-armed into voting for nominees they had spoken out against. They are almost certainly not going to vote to stop the President’s agenda, regardless of their view of the merits or legality.
That leaves it to the courts. What if the same tactics were used against federal judges?
The same tactics are being used against federal judges.
Link to the news piece: US judges alarmed over rise in violent threats as Trump and Musk lambast them
The time to act is now, before the state repression apparatus is in place.
Where does Kathy Griffin go to get her apology?
Totally tangential but I just finished Season 4 of Babylon 5. It tells the tale of the growing authoritarianism of Earth. Themes and storyline and dialogue is astonishingly close to today.
Not to discount the other items mentioned, but this really is a big deal that the national conversation has moved on from. He has demonstrated a willingness to support lawlessness in the name of political violence. And, specifically, political violence in his name.
And there can be no doubt that there are people out there willing to engage in such violence again, and they have some reasons to believe that they won’t face consequences.
The interesting thing is that the Democrat/Leftist protest racket can’t even weather less than two months of having their taxpayer funding interrupted.
Leaders afraid to lead are not leaders. A title or an office do not a leader make.
“When the people lead, the leaders will follow.”
– from Stripes
@Michael Reynolds: Right. They are ‘Marcos’ and ‘Lindseys’. Some even say that they are ‘concerned’.
Trump’s second term is looking to objectively be all the things that his sycophants claimed [during term1] were Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Confronting reality on reality’s terms, the derangement is the people who insist Trump is normal.
@JKB: I guess you need to change the subject.
The leftists have dominated the streets for so long they thought they had the right. January 6th terrified them. It didn’t teach them empathy though.
One thing is for sure: these posts identify which of our readers are pro-authoritarian and anti rule of law.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Yup, Fortune talking about the Left having a lack of empathy…honestly, that has to be the funniest thing I have read on this blog in many a year.
Fortune, you are not seeing what is right in front of your face, please look at the beam in your eye before you declare that your side has a monopoly on feeling empathy.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Why do you keep these people around? @Fortune‘s comment, for instance, isn’t normal political discourse.
To borrow somebody else’s analogy: there are a lot of sexual preferences that are totally fine, but that doesn’t mean you can’t draw the line at pedophilia.
And in case I am not making myself 100% clear: Fortune’s political convictions are morally equivalent to (child) rape. In both cases, there are no rules, no decency, there is just force.
@JKB:
The interesting thing is that … this is not interesting at all.
@Steven L. Taylor: He has a subject??? News to me. I thought these were all random outbursts. Sort of like Tourette’s Syndrome.
Apparently there’s a lot to be said for not only bribery, but also for political violence. Some commenters here seem jealous of some political violence they’ve seen and want in on the action.
On a different note, I am starting to think that waiting on the courts isn’t enough. I would like to consider a program of non-violent civil disobedience. Not sure what it would be, though.
@Jay L Gischer:
Yeah, Fortune seems to have had the equivalent of a Freudian slip on this site with his/her comments. He/She wants us to have some serious empathy for the January 6ers who wanted to hang Mike Pence and the person who was looking for Pelosi to shoot her in the friggin’ brain (I pulled this quote from a news site that may have substituted friggin’ for another more salty word).
Wow…just wow.
The blatant corruption would be breathtaking had it not been so predictable. Trump is an openly corrupt, delusional man who has never tried to hide his corruption or delusions. Accusing him of lying glosses over the far more serious issue of his mental disorder….his inability to discern reality. He sees fellow travelers in corrupt, murderous dictators and a drug-addled sociopath. His lust for a military beholden to his whims manifests itself in the J-6 thugs he pardoned who now know that they can wreak whatever violence and havoc they want to – or that he suggests – as long as they do it in the name of Trump. Republican congressmen and senators want an easy path to re-election more than they want to abide by their oath of office. The faceless bureaucrats are less of a problem than the spineless Republicans.
Not exactly sure what dominating the streets means but the right has been engaged in aggressive harassment and killings for quite a while. The protestors surrounding abortion clinics have been very aggressive and they occasionally bomb a clinic or shoot someone. The protestors, many of them carrying arms piled into state capitals around the country during covid. Then there are the actual Nazi rallies where they actually kill people.
But I am not really sure how that is pertinent to what James cites in this post. What he is talking about is, as I see it, really two things. First, it’s the use of govt power, especially in the form fo Trump and Musk, to shut down any opposition including from their own power. It’s much more explicit and harsh than what has been done in the past. Second, it’s the use of social media, like Twitter, TV, radio, churches to communicate and recruit people who will actively threaten anyone who doesnt actively support Trump. Note that in the article it’s mostly congresspeople who are afraid fo their own party members.
Reminds me a lot fo David French, who I suspect most people here wouldn’t like but I regularly read. When he decided to run against Trump he got lots of death threats against him and his family. Threats to rape the wife and kids. Picture or microwaves and jokes about Jewish ovens (he is Jewish). His family had adopted a black kid and they got ostracized for that and had to change churches. Anyway, this isn’t really about some protests. It’s about very targeted acts of intimidation mostly using govt power and influence.
Steve
Trump lies and bluffs so often it is very hard to know when he means it, and will stick with it when he encounters adversity.
If we are to make progress, we need to be out there, somehow. We need to be calling his bluffs. I don’t pretend this won’t get some people hurt.
We don’t all have to be out there on every front. There are at least five different fronts here. I am resolved to be out there on the trans front – this is a thing that is personal to me and I am the most motivated. If you are a government worker, or a friend of one, maybe DOGE is your thing.
If you are a lawyer, maybe the politicization of DOJ and FBI is your thing.
I’m good with that. I can respect James’ situation, this is not aimed at him.
However, I think “wait for the courts” is not a great idea. This has to be dealt with politically, via political action. Courts and law are subordinate to politics. Most of the time it doesn’t seem that way, I know, but they are.
@drj: Totally disagree. As long as people stick to their opinions, no matter whether you agree with them or not, and don’t lob insults, then I don’t really have a problem. If you don’t like what they say, then ignore them. That’s what I do at family gatherings. Family knows when I just stare at the floor or gaze into the distance and let the silence grown heavy that they are not going to get a response out of me.
@steve:
I may be misunderstanding you, but I’m positive David French is an evangelical Christian.
@inhumans99:
No, I wasn’t saying that at all, but I shouldn’t have to explain empathy.
@Scott:
You are extremely forgiving toward people who are shilling for the guy who is taking away your political rights.
Maybe that’s how we ended up in this mess in the first place.
@Fortune:
Not until you have it explained to you.
@Fortune:
Uh, I think you do, because I don’t think you know what it means.
@drj:
Indeed. What they are trafficking in is disinformation. It’s deliberate and nefarious.
@Steven L. Taylor:
[Lest the trolls take the thread off the rails and into the sewer, I’d like to get this conversation at least back to what I agree is a really big deal!]
It’s not just political violence in Trump’s name. Trump’s narcissistic predilection to shamelessly slap his name on everything is being leveraged by the GOP.
When the Republican Senators acquitted Trump of the J6 impeachment, I thought at the time that it was mostly cowardice. The GOP had the opportunity to rid themselves of the Bad Orange Man, but they were too afraid of his sycophantic base. But, from the Republicans refusal to participate in the J6 hearings through the acquiescence to Trump’s renomination, it’s become clear to me that I was wrong about exactly what these cowards were afraid of.
They don’t want to look bad “at church or at the grocery store or at the club.” They want authoritarian rule with all their hearts. They have an agenda for what the country should be, they don’t want to moderate, and they lack the conviction to honestly sell what they see as the benefits of what they want for the country to the American electorate. They need someone shameless like Trump, narcissistic like Trump, lawless like Trump, and fascist-inclined like Trump to do the dirty work of strong arming dissent and inciting violence in his name so it doesn’t fall to them to incite it themselves.
@Fortune:
I’m really struggling to understand the juxtaposition here. What does January 6th have to do with empathy–I mean based on my understanding of empathy.
Like we should understand that because people felt the election was stolen because their leaders lied to them we should feel sorry for them… and then what? Heck, if it’s feeling sorry for people whose leaders lied to them (which was definitely the case with the election of 2020), then I’d argue that MAGA people should have a lot of empathy for the democrats and liberals who learned that leaders were concealing Joe Biden’s deficiencies during the latter part of his term.
@Jay L Gischer: I’m thinking General Strike – the 15th of each month.
To start.
@JKB: Corruption is bad wherever we find it. Corruption on “our team” weakens us, and makes us less effective. I support the vigorous pursuit of corruption, regardless of political affiliation, but I do require evidence.
For instance, I’m all for the prosecution of Bob Menendez.
How about you?
@Tony W: That’s not bad. I like it. I support it. But given that I’m retired, I’m not gonna badger people who work for a living into it. It has to come from them.
Something I’ve thought about is seeking to put my taxes in escrow, to be paid when the US Gov also pays its congressionally-mandated bills.
@Fortune:
Someone was supposed to learn empathy from domestic terrorists who tried to overthrow our Constitution and spread shit on the walls of the Capitol???
Explain, toad.
Republican empathy and respect for freedom of speech:
So Republican representative Collins believes that Bishop Budde, an American Citizen who has committed no crime, should be forced out of the United States without any due process because he doesn’t like her comments to his Supreme Leader for Life and Chairman of the Republican Sex Workers Party Kim Jong Trump.
@CSK: I know nothing about French, but I’ve known from very early in life that being evangelical does not eliminate the possibility of being ethnically Jewish. Some people keep track of these details. I find them unimportant.
@Michael Reynolds: It’s one thing to go along because you’re afraid of being primaried. It’s quite another if you’re afraid your children are going to be killed.
@drj: The only way out of this mess is political. If we are to be successful, we need to win over some Trump voters. Demeaning them is not going to be effective. Nor is it particularly appropriate, given the low-level of information they consume.
I think we should seek to invite people to our side, not push them away. Bearing in mind, of course, that some will be blocked by their own sense of shame, which they will blame on us. All we can do is make sure it isn’t coming from us.
I dunno. I don’t think that politicians are especially leaders. In a democracy, they are supposed to be responsive to the will of the people, to their constituency. That’s not leader-like, not in the sense some mean it.
I think the leaders in a democracy are often not political office-holders, though sometimes they are office holders on a particular issue or set of issues.
@James Joyner: Indeed. But the GOP in Congress should have found their spines years ago. In 2008, 2016, on 1/6, in 2024… could they not see the writing on the wall? Could they not extrapolate where things were heading? Did they not talk amongst each other about these rather important things? I suspect the answer is no, they’re just lazy and were happy to bask in the attention and get their easy money while the rightwing machine slowly ground away at the decency of the party until there was nothing left. They never led, when they easily could’ve and when it would’ve mattered.
@Jay L Gischer:
There are, maybe, some people who should be given the benefit of the doubt.
Even so, people like Fortune, JKB, etc. are thieves who are out to take away your and your children’s rights and liberties because other people’s rights are inconvenient to them.
They know what they are doing, even if they are too cowardly to openly admit it.
As for me, people who openly try to steal from me can get fucked. Maybe more people should have that attitude.
@CSK: He is. I make it a point to read across the spectrum. Have a family firmly enmeshed in evangelicalism and highly supportive of Trump so I certainly hear from them. Anyway, I disagree with a lot fo what French writes but that doesnt mean he is always wrong and he is willing to criticize his own faction when he thinks they are wrong, he just doesnt think they are wrong often enough IMO. To his credit he has criticized his fellow travelers on the right for being so subservient to Trump, for the Christian nationalism and the total entwinement of faith and politics that evangelicals have promoted and he was very open about the abuse he and his family suffered from his own party when he dared to question the leader of the cult (of personality). Note that per the articles James cites that the penalties for not supporting Trump carte blanche are common and harsh.
Steve
I’ve noticed this dynamic from blogging. I’ve been blogging, off and on, since around 2005. When I first started, if I got threatening e-mails, it was inevitably from the Left (Michael Moore fans in particular). Sometime around 2008-10 or so, it shifted and has been from the Right ever since.
@James Joyner:
I want to be sensitive here, because I believe the threats are real and that the people making the threats have been empowered to threaten violence in order to intimidate allies into fealty to the king.
But, how much of “afraid your children are going to be killed” is covering one’s unwillingness to take a stand with the maximally sympathetic framework? The screaming Proud Boy in the picture you chose for this post is scary, no question. But, isn’t it also an easy excuse to bend the knee despite all your other professed values?
@drj: I have had real conversations in the past with JKB. Conversations in which I learned things I found valuable. I’m not sure what emotion is driving him at the moment.
So I will continue to engage with him on the premise that there is a human being in there. Honestly, he seems like he cares about similar things to me.
@Fortune: ” It didn’t teach them empathy though.”
Wait — you mean that watching a murderous and hate-filled mob storm our capitol, literally smearing shit all over it while threatening the lives of our elected representatives, didn’t teach leftists to have empathy for the thugs, creeps, psychos and morons who were attempting to overthrow an election?
What a bunch of meanies those leftists are! No wonder you felt compelled to take up trolling.
@James Joyner: “It’s one thing to go along because you’re afraid of being primaried. It’s quite another if you’re afraid your children are going to be killed.”
Yes, sure. But these are incredibly powerful elected officials. Why aren’t they speaking up against the thugs? For instance, Tom Tillis was dead set against Pete Hegseth. Then, apparently, the phone calls started. First from Elon, threatening a primary — which is fine — but then the physical threats against him and (I assume) his family. So he just completely sold out everything he claimed to believe in. Same with that Florida senator who’s an MD and was entirely against RFK Jr until the calls started coming.
So why wouldn’t they use the power they have? Why didn’t they confront the nominees in the hearing, saying they have been getting literal death threats and demanding to know who was behind them. Demanding that the nominees repudiate and denounce anyone making these threats.
And why didn’t they go to their colleagues in the senate and say “Trump’s stooges are literally threatening our lives. We need to send them a message now — not one nominee goes through until this shit stops.”
Instead, crickets. Caving. These guys are fucking cowards.
@wr:
I keep coming back to someone like Adam Kinzinger. He’s been getting threats to his family (he’s got a young child) for going on years now. He lost his seat in Congress. But, he’s held firm.
Shouldn’t we be honoring that conviction to principle rather than justifying the unwillingness to take a stand by using their power rather than desperately clinging to it?
@Matt Bernius: I don’t think you understand how hard it is to not be openly racist and bigoted for four years, and to have everyone think you’re a pathetic loser.
That’s the empathy that Fortune is talking about. Not for himself, of course, but for other people. Little people.
I have never understood why people were so enraged at Biden. I can see disagreeing with him, but to actually make one’s personality “Fuck Joe Biden” is pretty impressive — they’re reaching and they’re stretching in ways I can’t.
@Hal_10000:
I wonder if something happened then. Something terrifying. Some darkness in America coming to the forefront.
Nice piece from LGM. One of the Trump AG/DOJ people, Ed Martin, has been sending out letters to universities saying they wont hire their grads if they have been engaging in DEI practices. The law Dean responded saying that universities have a long established legal right under the first amendment to teach as they saw fit based upon their academic grounding. This would seem to me to be a pretty egregious impingement on free speech rights which are specifically aimed at keeping government, not private universities, from engaging in free speech.
Steve
@Jay L Gischer: There isn’t a whole lot I can do to resist except show up. I remember the Orange Revolution in Ukraine when a government was taken out because of huge street demonstrations and strong leaders like Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko. They won because people showed up. The aftermath was messy but it was politics not war and threats. It didn’t work so well in Belarus where the people were put down ruthlessly but I don’t think our present government is at the stage as that of Alexander Lukashenko. So, just show up.
@wr:
It’s early yet. I would not label them cowards. Just drives them back into the fold.
The Trump/Musk methods lead to a hard but brittle control. The people they force to knuckle under develop a hatred of the ones who are forcing them, but more than that they loath themselves for knuckling under. That self-loathing can become toxic, and if the day comes wherein they feel the conditions are right they strike out with a fury that shocks. Somewhere in safe places those guys are meeting up.
Do not expect a quick sudden break at the onset, that comes later when conditions are right, and if Musk and Trump are as reckless and stupid as we believe him to be those conditions are inevitable.
@Mr. Prosser: Speaking of Ukraine, here is an excerpt about the Maidan Revolution:
There is a charming reference there to the Berkut as “not police”.
@wr:
So much so that they won’t even use the power they have. One thing I have to begrudgingly admire about Trump is that he’s no placeholder. When he gets power, he uses it aggressively to get something done while he is in office.
Granted, what he does is abhorrent, but he’s doing *something*.
I never understood the motivation to seek office and then just sit there like a potted plant collecting checks.
Most of the elite opinion-shapers are in fact craven cowards.
Like how they spent years breathlessly describing cancel culture as akin to the Maoist Cultural Revolution when in fact it was nothing more than people making caustic remarks to them, or their being excluded from the right cocktail parties.
Their silence can be bought by nothing more than that.
@Jay L Gischer: I’ve never had real conversations with him, but I, too, used to believe that he and I shared some common interests, so I’m not going to ridicule your hope.
And I agree that there is a real human being in there. My inner Calvinist reminds me that there are real human beings inside the outer shells called “Trump” and “Musk” too. It’s a small consolation in all cases.
@just nutha:
Only if they’ve eaten some.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Surely most of the charges against violent insurrectionists are local, not federal. The Orange One can’t pardon those — can he?
@DrDaveT: The J6 folks? All federal, I would think.
@DrDaveT: Yeah, all the J6 stuff took place within the District of Columbia. There really isn’t any other authority than federal.