This Week in Democracy – Week 52: A Year of Abuses, Violence, Corruption, and Outright Fascism
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Alien and Sedition Acts
11 min read
The article mentions Venezuelan men being deported under this act. Understanding this 1798 law, its historical uses during wartime, and its controversial modern application provides crucial legal context for the immigration enforcement actions described.
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Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
14 min read
Minnesota and Illinois lawsuits cited the 10th Amendment to argue federal immigration operations violated state sovereignty. Understanding this amendment's history and federalism debates illuminates the constitutional tensions at the heart of these legal challenges.
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Congressional oversight
1 min read
The article describes Rep. Omar being denied an oversight visit to an ICE facility and new policies restricting congressional access. Understanding the constitutional basis, history, and mechanisms of congressional oversight helps readers grasp why these restrictions are constitutionally significant.
52 Weeks. 52 weeks of Donald Trump’s assault on democracy. 52 weeks of attacking Americans, immigrants, and people worldwide. 52 weeks of assailing free speech, due process, and a free press. 52 weeks of making the world less safe.
When we at Zeteo started this project a year ago, we promised to keep track of all of the attacks Trump and his cronies made on the US democratic and constitutional order, despite the president’s attempt to distract, to “flood the zone,” to overwhelm. It wasn’t easy. Our small team worked tirelessly to ensure we didn’t miss a day. Our producers, editors, and fact checkers scoured government websites, officials’ social media, news reports, and court records, to not only document the attacks on democracy that made the front page, but also to highlight the actions that didn’t get the coverage it would have received under any other president.
Our goal: To ensure there would be a historical record of this dark time; to not normalize Trump and his administration’s extreme rhetoric and actions; and to provide a resource for anyone struggling to keep track of many, many ways the administration is threatening their rights.
While we wish there was no need for this project, we are incredibly proud of this work. What we produced is unlike any other piece of journalism published by mainstream and independent media alike. If you put the 52 weeks of ‘This Week in Democracy’ together, it would include more than 3,740 items totalling over 168,000 words. Each week averaged more than 73 bullet points. Week 10 – the week of Signalgate and when Rümeysa Öztürk was detained by plainclothes ICE agents over an op-ed – had the longest list, nearly 100 items.
Moving forward, ‘This Week in Democracy’ will look different. Starting next week, we will highlight only the single worst attack on democracy for each day. It will hit your inbox on Fridays, not Saturdays. Zeteo, however, remains committed to documenting, in detail, the growth of authoritarianism in the US – through the important reporting of our politics team, Mehdi’s hard-hitting interviews, the smart analysis of our contributors, and via our new morning newsletter, ‘First Draft’ (have you signed up for that yet?).
If you’re not
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