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?
