250 Years and 24: The Worst of Times, The Best of Times

I am in London, having finished a two day Civil-Military Relations Network workshop, our very first, on Command.  Run by Phil Lagassé, it considered from many angles and all over history what it means to command a military and who has the authority and such.  The moment resonated quite a bit for many reasons:

• that Phil couldn't get any Americans who specialize in this kind of stuff because they wanted to be home during the big annivesary
• that No Kings conflicts with the reality of the US being more monararchic than most constitutional monarchies (Phil's argument)
• my first time being in the place the US rebelled from in quite sometime, with the first visit to London was 39 years ago around this time.
• the utter incompetence of the Great American Fair creating much schadenfreude from a greater distance.

Dan Drezner has a great post about how things are awful now, but have been at every 50 year marker in US history. It is most instructive, especially given how much of a betrayal of the civil war was 1877.  I do remember 1976--the celebration, not so much the post-Watergate/Vietnam moment.  It was a big summer for me, as I went to summer camp for the first time two weeks after the bicentennial.  It was a strange summer for the US--an election year where one candidate was an unelected President who pardoned Nixon, who, in turn, committed what might be considered a typical day of Trump work.  

Drezner's piece has a note of optimism--that the US made some big leaps in progress in between 50 year markers.  I can't help but be more pessimistic in this moment.  As a friend put it, how can the US recover when the Republicans do not believe in democracy?  I worry that the GOP will do damage either in 2026 or in 2028 to subvert elections.  Given that they tried in 2020, that Trump pardoned those who sought to help him, that the court has given Trump immunity, why wouldn't they try to prevent the Dems from taking power.

I also worry that the Dems, if they get back into power, might not do what it takes--packing the court, admitting DC as a state, taxing the crap out of billionaires, breaking up the big tech companies, prosecuting the criminals of Trump 2.0.  The bright spot right now is that the Dem primaries are producing fighters who will push hard.  I do  hope that the rest of the Dems get the message.  I do believe that the 2028 primary election will involve dems outbidding each other to undo Trump's destruction, but I am not sure that enough fighters will be elected to support the changes that must be made.

I did hear from some folks who say that the Dems can't fight fire with fire, but giving into the GOP and being bipartisan helped get us here.  There will be no reforms without unpacking the court, and the Dems need to improve representation so that, yes, the GOP can't get back into power without expanding its appeal to beyond white folks and those betraying their groups (ethnic groups, religious groups, etc).  Who radicalized me?  Mitch McConnell.  

Anyhow, on the anniversary of 250 years of the US Declaration of Independence, I am most worried.

On the other hand, I was busy traveling so I missed posting about my 24th Canada Day in Canada.  Canada has been very, very good to me.  It rescued me from West Texas, where I would probably have been fired by now given attitudes there about academic freedom.  I have had much success here--fun books, heaps of grant-funded travel, several big grants to fund a series of terrific networks, two cool jobs, amazing access to folks in and near government, great colleagues, twenty years of awesome ultimate, much improvement on the slopes, and more.  

Canadian politics is not as broken as American politics, but, yes, we can see it from here.  Federalism is broken as the feds get blamed when the provincial leaders do their best to break pretty much everything.  The current government is pretty right wing for a center-left party--central bankers are not hippies, as it turns out.  But we have dodged having a Trump wannabe serve as Prime Minister--our own bad faith actor.   

ultimately, I place my hope on the fact that the US has always managed to recover from its lowest lows.  The majority of Americans support the right things (except for trans rights, as the demonizing of a fragile minority has gotten so much support from folks who shouldn't --NYT!), and the elections since Nov 2024 have been a rejection of Trump.  But I am not sure the institutions and the votes will matter... I hope so, but I am just not sure.

Sorry for this American birthday post being so depressing..... 

 

 

Sparse But Spectacular: APSA 2025

 The consensus in Vancouver was that every American Political Science Association annual meeting should be in Vancouver.  The weather was terrific, the views were amazing, the food was great, and it cost Americans about 25% less than they thought.  Usually, the APSA is somewhere on the east coast in a swamp with excessive heat and humidity.  Not this year.  

But the downside was that it was as smaller conference.  Why?  Some guesses:

•  Lots of American academics have lost funding due to their universities losing NIH funding and other federal $ streams.
• Those from American military academic institutions may not have been able to get permission to go since SecDef "Too Drunk to Function" Hegseth is opposed to all knowledge-related events.
• East coast bias--there are simply more schools on the east coast and Vancouver is far, far away.
• Border challenges--non-Americans working in the US may be concerned about what might happen when they try to return from the conference after APSA.
• Border challenges, part deux: Canada absolutely sucks in processing visas so many folks may not have gotten visas to come for the conference.
• And maybe a bit of an illusion given the spread of the event between two wings of the convention center and a handful of hotels.

Maybe it is a one-off, but I can't help but think of an academic conference career arc: that when I started, I barely knew anyone, and would walk around searching for a familiar face [again, folks don't buy it, but I am shy in large crowds of people I don't know].  Then, as time went on, I didn't have to search as much.  And then I could just stand still and have many interactions with so many people that I have met in previous jobs, workshops, conferences, and my dance card would be full even before I arrived.  And now with friends retiring or passing, and perhaps because of the aforementioned shrinking of APSA, I had more openings in schedule, far fewer familiar faces, and more time to exercise.

Still, it was a good and valuable experience.  I got good feedback on my paper, I talked to an editor about an edited volume project, I met with a co-author about our next survey, I met sharp emerging scholars and served as their discussant, participated in a panel memorializing Brandon Valeriano, and didn't do much tourism as I have been here before.

The big topic hanging over the event was the backsliding of the US into autocracy. The Charlie Kirk assassination happened immediately before the conference, so it was a focus, but the larger concerns focused on the decline of academic freedom (personified by Kirk), the odds of civil war in the near future, Trump's declining health, and how much comparative politics has to say at this moment to the Americanists who have not really been trained to think about autocracy.  The pace of events makes it easy to forget that just a week ago, we faced the real possibility of the Texas National Guard confronting Illinois authorities and the public.  

We have dodged a lot of bullets (sorry, Charlie), that reichstag fire type events are now like streetcars--coming along every few minutes, and our luck is running out.  The right wing is talking about using the Kirk killing to justify suppression/persecution of the left and that does not just mean the far left commies, but everyone pretty much but themselves.  I just read a great piece by Jeffrey Isaac that speaks to our moment and what he has to fear.  I did react to the Kirk killing by noting that political violence is bad and that Kirk incited political violence, noting my privilege to do so as a Canadian.  We have seen Americans lose their jobs because they spoke about Kirk's deplorable stances and activities including his systematic effort to crush academic freedom.  And now Isaac has me thinking a bit about fear and how none of us are immune from either violence or the cowardice of university administrations.

One of the topics of conversation at the conference was, of course, the events at Texas A&M where a lecture, their department chair, and their dean were all fired because they had the temerity to talk about gender in a way that might not be approved of by the Trump regime.  Given my six years in west Texas long ago, yeah, I sighed relief that I got out of there.  I am pretty sure I would have been fired by now.

Anyhow, it was great to see friends, learn about new research, and celebrate Brandon.  We shall see if there is much of an international crowd at the ISA in Columbus in March.  Time to go back home to teach and revise a grant application.

The Illegal Orders Frontier: One of Our Last Obstacles to Autocracy May Be Gone

 One of things that people told themselves, including me, is that one barrier between anocracy, a mixed political system, and full out autocracy would be that American troops would not follow illegal orders.  They are trained not to do so--that the lesson of Nuremberg and WWII is that one is not obligated to follow an illegal order.  Makes it hard but not impossible to deploy the US armed forces coercively against the American people.  

Well, we can kiss that bit of wishful thinking goodbye (to a degree, I hope, see below).  Why?  Well, in the past 24 hours or so, we have two bits of evidence that the line has been breached.  

1. The US armed forces attacked and destroyed a civilian vessel in international waters.  I am not a lawyer, but from all accounts, this is an illegal use of force.  The ship or boat was not a threat to American shipping, so self-defense was not in play. No attempt to stop the ship.  No state of hostilities.  Thanks to Jason Lyall for enumerating how much this was probably not legal. 
2.  A US court ruled that the use of Marines and National Guard in California was illegal.  It seemed pretty clear at the time there was no emergency (the Insurrection Act was not invoked), and that Marines and National Guard should not be part of immigration sweeps.  

Of course, one of the first things the Trump Administration did was fire the senior Judge Advocate Generals, so no one would throw a flag. So, this kind of stuff would be easier to do.

And that gets to the heart of things--who is to say an order is illegal. Ultimately, it is up to every single member of the armed forces, but they take their signals from their officers, and those officers take their signals from JAGs and from senior officers. As far as we can tell, the senior officers did not tell them that these were illegal orders.   Obedience is expected and given, and, again, that is quite normal in wartime and in regular operations.  But deploying troops against civilians should raise the hackles of those being asked to act in dubious ways.  

There may be a limit--Trump still does not know (nor do we) what the troops would do if asked to fire upon civilians. That might be a bridge too far.  I think if such an extreme order, or invading Canada for that matter, would come down, it would be divisive and lead to one of two outcomes: senior leaders push back as they fear the cohesion of the military would be at great risk with the possibility of soldiers firing upon soldiers OR the military actually does break apart as some follow illegal orders and shoot at unarmed civilians and others stand by or try to stop it.  

This all seems extreme, almost fantastical, but Trump is calling out southern National Guard units to operate in cities governed by Democrats (mostly Black Democrats).  The moment of greatest uncertainty--who shoots and who does not--may nearly be upon us.  And we just don't know what happens.  Maybe that uncertainty deters the Trump administration, but that would require some thought, a lack of arrogance, some self-awareness, and some caution.  Are these attributes that are common in Trump's administration?

Yes, Ron, we can panic now.  

Seriously, how to respond?  With overwhelming displays of public opposition.  Protests can induce a military into not following illegal orders.  I need to read more of that literature, but that really is our best hope.  Because we can't expect restraint from the Trump Administration, we can't expect the better angels to have an influence, because there are none among those in power.  Hegseth?  Please.  The senior officers who have survived the purges?  Not looking good.  The media?  They don't seem to appreciate the seriousness of this moment.  The Democratic politicians? Well, the Governor of Illinois, Pritzker, seems to have the right idea. But he needs the public beside him.

Is this wishful thinking?  

Of course, all those in the picture died to facilitate rebellion so.... there's that.

Sorry for the less than cheery thoughts on the first day of classes.  
 
 

American Autocracy: Let's Call It What It Is

 I was being interviewed yesterday by a media outlet about Trump's deployment of the National Guard in Washington, DC, and I guess I surprised the interview and myself a bit by referring to Trump as a dictator.  Since he himself has called himself that, why not?  Because it sounds crazy.  It is also the case that there is no single act or signal that tells us when a country has moved from democracy to autocracy.  Because our imaginations are driven by Nazi Germany and Communist Soviet Union and the like, it seems extreme to say that the US is an autocracy now.  But if we look at all kinds of other countries in history that are coded as non-democratic/autocratic, the similarities to the situation in the US should be appalling yet not so crazy.  

To be clear, I am not a regime type expert.  For that, check out the Competitive Authoritarian stuff by Levitsky and Way.  But I can't help but talk about this and write about as, well, the stakes are huge.  

Anyhow, there are lots of ways to measure this.  Check out http://brightlinewatch.org/ for surveys of academics rating various components of democracy and see where things stand.  I just want to list many but not all of the things Trump has done that are not merely unprecedented or alarming but autocratic--moves that are not just harmful to democracy but are those made by dictators.

1. Declaring emergencies where there are none, to justify tariffs, to justify the use of ICE, other federal law enforcement agencies, and the military to repress people... is just classic autocracy. 
2. Pardoning insurrectionists.  Giving one's loyal supporters a break is not just about thanking them for their service but informing everyone that political violence used on Trump's behalf will not be punished.
3. Using the Department of Justice against one's opponents.  Rule of law is fundamental to democracy and liberty, so using the law selectively to retaliate against opponents is more than just a wee bit problematic. Again, it send signals--that if you oppose Trump, you will pay with your freedom.
4. Using the military against the people. Do I have to elaborate on this one?
5. Gaming the next election--competitive authoritarianism is all about making political competition tilt radically to one side.  Of course, #voterfraudfraud has always been about this, so this is not new, but taken to new lows. 
6. Coercing the media. While a number of media outlets have been more or less acquiescent to Trump's autocratic moves, we have seen major media companies face extortion, paying Trump "compensation" for their news coverage which then deters further journalism.
7. Repressing academic freedom.  Oy, this cuts close to home.
8. Defying the courts.  So many court orders have either been ignored or subverted.  Just the story of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is enough to illustrate that. 
9. Usurping Congress's powers.  Refusing to spend money allocated by Congress, ending government agencies without Congressional approval (USAID, Education), and so on.   
10. Executive orders as decrees. An executive order is supposed to be a modification of the discretion the laws give to the executive, not to create new laws, toss out old ones, and all the rest.  Trump's wielding of executive orders in the manner he has done has been incredibly autocratic yet has become normalized.
11. Purging the military.  Such a classic authoritarian move--to gut the military of those who gained leadership roles through merit to replace with lackeys.  This will undermine the effectiveness of the American military.  So much for lethality.   
12. Taking ownership stakes in companies.  I thought liberty meant private firms, not state ownership. Oops.  Where are the libertarians?
13.  Most importantly, the arbitrary use of power.

This has all happened and is continuing to happen.  We have a regime in power that is acting beyond the constitution, that has thoroughly subverted the rule of law, and, yes, a leader with a cult of personality who refers to himself as a dictator.  We can call this competitive authoritarianism, we can call it autocracy, we can call it a dictatorship, we can call it fascism, but we can't call the US a democracy now.  Getting it back is going to be really hard, and the norms that have been broken over the past eight years and especially the last eight months are going to be very hard to rebuild.

   

owers from other branches 

Sending the Feds to the Cities: How UnAmerican!

 To be clear, to say something is UnAmerican or not something we do is usually to ignore a history of doing that stuff.   Voter suppression?  American as hell.  Selective enforcement of the law?  Sure.  Concentration camps?  That's been done.  But when I woke this morning and saw images of a bunch of different kinds of feds--FBI, DEA, etc--going through the streets of DC with absolutely no goddamned reason to do so, it struck me as damn near unprecedented.

I invoked the Declaration of Independence, rather than the Constitution, because the US was founded on a variety of complaints, but one was the capricious use of armed force to oppress the populace.  While several grievances cover this, one seems most on target: ""He [King George] has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance." [see here].  

Of course, over the first and now second Trump terms, Trump has seen those grievances as a checklist of things to do.  But seeing the actual deployment of feds to bully the capital, because it is convenient, because it is symbolic, because it has a Black mayor and majority Black population is simply appalling.  It is not a distraction-- it is one of the main events on the descent into autocracy.  Backsliding is too slow of a description--in less than six months, Trump has plunged the US into autocracy.  This stuff is exactly why the colonists rebelled (along with, um, yeah, other motives) and created the United States of America.

Sure, any nationalism is contested--what its meaning is, who counts and who does not count as a member of that nation--but an essential nugget of American nationalism is some kind of notion of freedom from arbitrary rule, from the federal government exerting its power just to exert its power.  So, yeah, this is UnAmerican to the core, and all Americans should be appalled by it. That those who have spent the past fifty years yammering about the threat of the federal government and the need for guns will either be silent or cheer this on, well, that's a tell on what they really care about.  For the rest of us, we need to protest, we need to lobby, we need to figure out ways to stymie the Trump administration, and we need to pressure the Democrats to fight like there is no tomorrow.... because if this stuff becomes commonplace, there will be no tomorrow.  That is, this strategy and abuse of power can be used to keep Democrats from voting and then that is the whole ballgame.

Is the Rubicon One River Or Many?

 A friend on social media suggested that Trump has crossed multiple Rubicons, which got me thinking.

To start, the reference is to Caesar who sparked a civil war once he crossed the Rubicon river, which divided Gaul (France) from Rome.  So, when folks say someone crossed the Rubicon, it generally means they broke some major precedent, took an irrevocable step that challenges the existing order.  There is no going back, and it is the first step towards breaking the current order.

So, when did Trump cross the Rubicon?  He has taken so many transgressive steps that should have led to successful impeachment (except that does not work in systems where there are parties and the incumbent party has enough votes in the relevant bodies), to his not being on the ballot, to his not winning the election.   I think the focus here should be on transgressions that violate the constitution and turn the US into a competitive (or not so competitive) autocracy. 

So, we can quibble whether the following steps are crossing a minor Rubicon tributary or the main Rubicon river, but they are all transgressive enough that they do not so much cause the US to backslide towards autocracy but are actually pushing the US away from democracy (backsliding seems way too passive to me).:

1. Turning ICE into a secret police force that sends people abroad with no due process.
2. Impoundments.  Trump has taught us words that we did not really know (see emoulements), such as when a President refuses to spend money allocated by Congress.  I remember being shocked in Brazil when doing research there that their finance minister didn't have to spend money appropriated by their Congress.
3. Defying court orders.   
4. Emoulements galore.  Last time, Trump didn't pay a price for the modest (modest compared to now) corruption of foreigners spending heaps of money at his hotel near the White House. This time?  Oh my.  The Qatar Air Force One knock-off is so obviously corrupt and wrong, but the big money is involves insider trading and the crypto coin crap.
5. Empowering an illegal entity to close down government agencies, plunder the data those agencies save, and even destroy a so-called independent entity--the US Institute of Peace.  All of Musk's destruction is ultimately Trump taking a huge step across the main Rubicon river.  
6. Coercing law firms and universities to bend their knees.   
7. Firing senior officers because they were either not the right color or gender or because they were not sufficiently loyal to the man, not the office.   

I am sure I missed a few tributaries.  Pretty much all of these are impeachable offenses with the possible exception of the last one--as it can be a bit gray in theory anyway.  Which one is the widest Rubicon stream, that is the most irreversible, most responsible for turning the US into an autocracy?  It is a tough call, but the top two are definitely the impoundments for usurping Congress's power and the breaking due process.  

From here on out, there is no more crossing the Rubicon as Trump has crossed the river any way you, um, slice it.  He can and will do more damage, but we are on the other side now.  Not the side of civil war (although he is inciting political violence) but the side of autocracy.  We can go back, but it is going to be very, very difficult especially with so many actors (leading Democrats, the media, and the Supreme Court) not taking seriously what is happening.

Why This Time Will Be Worse

 Jeez, what a week.  And it will only get worse.  It seemed so obvious to me last summer/fall that Trump 2.0 would be worse and that enough people had memories of how bad Trump 1.0 was that enough people would vote against him.  Wishful thinking.  Anyhow, just one item typifies how bad this is and will get: the complete blocking of everything the National Institutes of Health does means cancer patients are already having their treatments stopped.  Trump's first week is already going to kill people who didn't have to die.  So, why will it be worse this time?

1. Trump is angrier and more resentful this time.  He has always been motivated by greed and grievance, but he is so much more pissed off at having lost four years ago and having to go through very humiliated legal proceedings (even if he didn't get the jail time he so much deserved).  
2. Trump and those wanting to use his power have had four years to scheme and much of this was done in public--Project 2025 is a checklist that they have been pretty damned faithful to in just one week.  If you want to know what this administration is going to do, skim it.  I assigned pieces to my US foreign policy class, and, yeah, it is a blueprint for doing awful, cruel things.
3. Trump thinks he has immunity and why not?  The Supreme Court protected him from being prosecuted for January 6th, judges he appointed protected him from the documents stuff, and so on.  I don't think he really was deterred by fear of consequences last time (it was always someone else who has paid for Trump's behavior), but this time, he has the green light.
4. Speaking of the courts, there will be much forum shopping to make sure the 5th Circuit gets the most important cases, and I think Trump is right that he can count on the Supreme Court to not get in his way.  The Birthright Citizenship case will be an early test--if the Court reinterprets the 14th amendment this time as badly as it did before over the Insurrectionist stuff, then we will know for sure that the Court will be helping Trump make everything worse.
5. Last time, various actors, such as Canada, used the American political system against Trump.  They threatened and enacted responses to Trump that would hurt key districts and states, forcing their Governors, Senators, and Representatives to put pressure on Trump and to vote against some of the worst stuff.  This time?  Those folks fear Musk and other actors that have lots of money to burn on primary candidates that oppose incumbents who might resist some of the Trump agenda.  As or more importantly, these politicians fear violence.  The pardoning of the J6 criminals sends a clear signal that actors can use violence on Trump's behalf and get away with it.  He has long signaled to his cultists to use violence against his opponents.  Now that he has immunity and is much more willing to pardon those who abet him, we live not in fear of the threat of political violence but we live in the reality of political violence.
6. Have I mentioned a thoroughly weaponized DoJ and FBI?  Oh my.
7. The media is not going to help much.  The LA Times and Washington Post have supplicated themselves to Trump's reign.  Social media in the form of Facebook and Twitter are doing Trump's bidding. Mainstream tv news just has no clue about how to handle this stuff.  Last week's SNL was on target--the media will chase every single crazy utterance and largely ignore the real harm Trump is doing to real people, including Trump voters.
8. Universities and corporations are obeying in advance despite scholars telling them that is the last thing they should do.

Damn, this is bleak.  Where is the hope?  What can we hope for?  MAGA assholes are not the only ones who learned from last time.  There will be plenty of resistance.  The economic pain and the failure of government services might just cause divisions within the MAGA universe.  Countries are not going to bend the knee as much as Trump thinks.  

But Americans are not used to autocracy, and we don't have a good playbook for responding to this stuff.  I will look to the scholars and activists who are building on the experiences of other countries and on the past, where American democracy was pretty limited.

So, this post is just about why things will be worse.  I hope to learn enough over the next few months to have a post on why things might get better.  But I am not in that headspace yet.

 

 

transmission belt

media

Previewing and Retrospecting: NATO, Values and Security

People have been asking me lately--what is the big deal with this international liberal order?  What has it ever done right? What has it ever given me? There are lots of pieces to it, but I am focused on NATO for obvious reasons, including my assignment at next week's Kingston International Conference on Security.

So, here's Mattis's quote from the NAC (North Atlantic Council) Defense Ministerial:

SecDef Mattis: For nearly 70 years the #NATO alliance has served to uphold the values upon which our democracies are founded.

— US Mission to NATO (@USNATO) June 8, 2018

and my reaction.

It was kind of nice, wasn't it? https://t.co/QYNzz6BLLe

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) June 8, 2018

I used to scoff at the usual NATO existential crisis stuff--that NATO needed a reason to exist in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, that there was some conflict within that might lead to the alliance breaking up, etc.  But now I am in the club of those who fear for NATO's future.  Why?  Trump.  It is that simple.  Putin actually did more for NATO unity in 2014 than anything else by making folks remember NATO's day job--keeping Europe peaceful and, as a result, prosperous.  But his gambles on Trump, on Brexit, on supporting right wing aspiring autocrats (Orban of Hungary, Erdogan of Turkey, etc) have worked out.

The alliance has worked and changed our conception of alliance not just because it is far more institutionalized than any other alliance past or present, but because all of it relied on largely shared values.  Not just democracy but democracy with embedded liberalism--that governments played a role in adjusting to international shocks, made easier by international cooperation.

And now is a splintered G-7 meeting due to Trump using "national security threat" to play a particularly problematic card--to impose tariffs on allies without the consent of Congress.  To be clear, this is the opt out card built into the agreements.  He does not really believe that these countries or their exports to the US are any kind of threat, but he does not believe in norms, rules or the future. So, Trump has used this exception, antagonizing everyone except maybe the Italians (their own populist election results are handy for self-destruction). 

So endeth the shared values.  Orban has already promoted illiberal democracy, and Trump would too if he could articulate anything (note that Gorka is back, and Gorka is a living embodiment of Orban's illiberal democracy).  True, Trump is not the US, but he is, alas, 40% of it, and the GOP seems ok with selling out American values for tax cuts and court seats.  So, even if/when the Democrats come into power, they will not be able to reassure the Europeans and the Canadians.  After all, this big split is the most significant ... since the last Republican president and the misconceived Iraq war of 2003. 

So, how can NATO provide security by reassuring nervous members and deterring adversaries?  The lack of common values undermines NATO credibility--will the US show up if Russia does something?  Perhaps not since Trump is now trying to get Russia back into the G8 despite everything Russia has done since seizing Crimea.

NATO isn't dead, and I hope to see signs of life when I go to the expert side party at the summit next month. But NATO is far from healthy, and I worry that we soon look back at those 70 years Mattis speaks of and wistfully remember the good old days.  Maybe the good old days weren't as good as they seem, as Billy Joel reminds us, but they were better than the days before that--WWI, WWII and all that. 

Now We Are Talking Attacks on Academic Freedom

The only real surprise about Viktor Orban's attack on Central European University is that it has taken him this long.  Orban has been creeping/dragging Hungary towards autocracy for years now, way ahead of Trump and way ahead of Erdogan.  Central European University was founded and funded by George Soros, the bete noire and then some of all anti-semitic conspiracy theories.  So, opposing CEU plays to that crowd, but the university is a threat to Orban more because it is where folks engage in and train critical thinking. Just as Erdogan targeted Turkey's universities in a big way, Orban is targeting the most prominent university in Hungary.

The legislation aimed against CEU is being opposed around the world.  I signed this letter, although my name is not on the list for some reason. The APSA has put out a statement, as has the ASN.  Other folks are also making statements.  However, I am not optimistic as Orban has a majority in his legislature, and having the world arrayed against him is probably a bonus for him.  Justifies his autocracy, his fear-mongering.  The real threat to Hungary is the EU, but it is hard for that institution to sanction members.  My friends who understand the EU can explain better than I can, but neither NATO nor the EU were built in ways to punish members.  Conditionality--setting conditions for good behavior--only applies to applicants, if at all.  So, while I have not given up all hope, I will keep an eye out for jobs for my friends who work there, because, I am afraid, they are going to need them.