'The Midst of an Authoritarian Takeover'

The Chronicle of Higher Education last week published an interview with Lee Bollinger, presently professor of law at Columbia Law and formerly president of Columbia (2002-2023) and the University of Michigan (1996-2002). In that interview, Bollinger described America's present condition as

the midst of an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government. It’s been coming and coming, and not everybody is prepared to read it that way. The characters regarded as people to emulate, like Orban and Putin and so on, all indicate that the strategy is to create an illiberal democracy or an authoritarian democracy or a strongman democracy. That’s what we’re experiencing. Our problem in part is a failure of imagination. We cannot get ourselves to see how this is going to unfold in its most frightening versions. You neutralize the branches of government; you neutralize the media; you neutralize universities, and you’re on your way.

See Evan Goldstein and Len Gutkin, ‘We’re in the Midst of an Authoritarian Takeover’ (Lee Bollinger on Trump, Columbia, and why capitulation won’t work'), March 11, 2025.

Bollinger is correct — the president is an authoritarian, the majority party in both chambers of the Congress is an authoritarian party, and the U.S. Supreme has twice — first in Trump v. Anderson, 144 S.Ct. 662, 218 L.Ed.2d 1 (2024) and then in Trump v. United States, 144 S.Ct. 2312, 219 L.Ed.2d 991 (2024) — set the foundation for authoritarian rule under Trump.

This is the condition of the United States in her two-hundred forty-ninth year.

There is no libertarianism, true to fundamental tenets, however varied, that could find otherwise.