America's descent into the suppression of dissent -- Christina Pagel

[erronis]

https://christinapagel.substack.com/p/americas-descent-into-the-suppression

Tracking the Trump administration's actions across four domains of suppressing dissent.

One of the most obvious hallmarks of an authoritarian regime is the suppression of dissent. This month we have seen the Trump administration deploy the National Guard and the Marines against protesters in Los Angeles, arrest or repress Democratic lawmakers, and threaten to invoke the Insurrection Act. But this is only the latest culmination in an escalating campaign to suppress dissent across four distinct fronts, and it’s worth reflecting on how we got here and what might happen next.

Four ways to suppress dissent

I’ve been tracking Trump’s actions since his inauguration in January 2025, and so far I have logged 93 actions that I consider to be acting to suppress dissent. I believe they fall into four main domains of suppression:

1. to make it harder for people to know what there is to dissent to, but undermining press freedom (21/93 actions, 23%)

2. to make it harder for people to defend themselves against the state by systematically weakening the independence of law enforcement, attacking law firms who bring cases against the state, and attacking judges who rule against the state (16/93 actions, 17%)

3. to target perceived prominent enemies of the state directly (both individuals and organisations) to prevent them becoming a focus for stimulating dissent and to discourage others from taking a stand (27/93 actions, 31%)

4. to suppress protests, to punish protesters or to punish others who are directly dissenting (29/93 actions, 29%)

Viewed as a whole, the administration’s domains of suppressing dissent operate like concentric rings: first undermining the media that informs the public, then hollowing out the courts that protect the public, next targeting prominent individuals who could organise the public, and finally deploying force to control the public.

The administration has been using all of them, but their use of each tactic over time is changing.

Escalation of actions across the domains

Below, I’ve plotted the number of each of the four types by each month of the presidential term since 20 January to show the emerging story.



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[erronis]

1. Adding another closing paragraph:

What might come next? If the trajectory continues to worsen, we might see the administration shift from crackdowns against specific protests to more institutionalised repression. This might take the form of legislation to criminalise broad categories of protest, or introducing enhanced surveillance powers into routine law enforcement, or pre-authorising rapid-deployment protocols for the military in any jurisdiction deemed ‘at risk.’ By the midterms – still almost 18 months away - those measures could be supplemented by voter-suppression tactics masked as ‘security enhancements,’ while further judicial, regulatory and media checks on executive power are weakened. In effect, the current playbook is laying the groundwork for a permanently securitised state in which dissent itself becomes a state-policed privilege rather than a protected right.