Politics
How Trump Is Inspiring Wannabe Authoritarians Everywhere
When President Joseph R. Biden Jr. convened democracy summits at the White House in 2021 and 2023, he pointedly disinvited President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a man he had once described an “autocrat” who deserved to be driven from office by voters.
On Tuesday, President Trump offered a much rosier assessment of the Turkish president, even as protesters filled the streets following the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul, Mr. Erdogan’s chief political rival.
“A good leader,” the president said of Mr. Erdogan during a meeting of his ambassadors at the White House. He made no mention of the arrest or the protests.
Since taking office 66 days ago, Mr. Trump has turned a central precept of American diplomacy on its head. He is embracing — rather than denouncing — fellow leaders who abandon democratic principles. The longstanding bipartisan effort to bolster democratic institutions around the globe has been replaced by a president who praises leaders who move toward autocracy.
And Mr. Trump’s own actions — taking revenge against his political rivals, attacking law firms, journalists and universities, and questioning the authority of the judiciary — are offering new models for democratically elected leaders in countries like Serbia and Israel who have already shown their willingness to push the boundaries of their own institutions.
“There’s a great emboldening,” said Rosa Balfour, the Europe director for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “What Trump says reverberates strongly here. But also what the United States does not do. It does not punish or condemn any attempt to undermine rule of law or democracy. There are no repercussions.”
Jane Harman, a former member of Congress and former president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, noted that Mr. Erdogan and other leaders around the world had been “drifting away” from democratic principles for years.
In 2016, a faction in Mr. Erdogan’s government attempted a coup to overthrow him. Since then, he has tightened control of the presidency by attacking the media, political opponents, the courts and other institutions.
“This has become a very different world, but I don’t think Trump started it, and I don’t think Trump is going to end it either,” Ms. Harman said. And she noted that in at least a few places, Mr. Trump’s return to power had prompted some voters to question the authoritarian leanings of candidates and parties.
“Think Germany,” she said, referring to recent elections in the country. “The far right has risen in popularity, but it didn’t win. And the backlash to Trump might have been part of the momentum that held it back.”
Mr. Trump is not the first president to tolerate less-than-democratic actions from allies when they deemed it necessary.
Mr. Biden offered a fist-bump to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, even as he blamed him for the murder of the columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Mr. Biden also worked with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, who has increasingly cracked down on dissent in his country, and — at times — with Mr. Erdogan.
But Mr. Trump’s election has coincided with actions by elected leaders that appear to depart from the kind of democratic principles that America stood for.
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu no longer needs to contend with Mr. Biden’s opposition to a long-planned overhaul of the courts, which many Israelis view as an attempt to control and politicize the judiciary. In 2023, Mr. Biden told reporters that Mr. Netanyahu “cannot continue down this road” of judicial changes.
Now, with Mr. Trump in office, the Israeli leader faces no such pressure. This month, he fired the chief of the country’s domestic intelligence agency, a move seen as undermining its independence. Later, the cabinet approved a vote of no confidence in the country’s attorney general, prompting fresh accusations that Mr. Netanyahu is curbing the independence of the justice system, purging officials he considers disloyal.
On Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu’s allies in Parliament voted to give themselves more power over the selection of the country’s judges. The vote came after the prime minister gave a speech echoing Mr. Trump and saying that the action meant that “the deep state is in danger.”
“The U.S. is not going to put any pressure whatsoever on Netanyahu to respect the democratic institutions of his own country,” Ms. Balfour said. “Netanyahu feels that he has impunity in that respect.”
In Serbia, President Aleksandar Vucic has spent years attacking the media and other political opponents. Last month — as Mr. Trump dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development — Mr. Vucic sent police to raid organizations in his country, some of which had received money from the now largely shuttered American agency.
Authorities in Mr. Vucic’s government cited Mr. Trump’s actions in the United States as justification for moving against the organizations, including the Centre for Research, Transparency and Accountability and Civic Initiatives. They quoted Elon Musk, the multibillionaire who is running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, who claimed, without evidence, that USAID was a “criminal organization.”
Two weeks after the raids in Serbia, Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, traveled to Belgrade, the country’s capital, to interview Mr. Vucic for his podcast. In the interview, Mr. Vucic complained that he, like the American president, is opposed by “an entire liberal establishment from Washington and New York and L.A. going against you.” He said the raids of the nongovernmental organizations were designed to root out corruption and financial mismanagement.
Mr. Trump Jr. fawned over Mr. Vucic, describing what he called “an embrace of common sense, an embrace of law and order, of a shared national sense of identity.” He criticized protesters angry about Mr. Vucic’s recent actions.
“I’m sure the media will cover them only one way,” Mr. Trump Jr. said. “And now there’s seemingly evidence that they are all tied in some form to the same left-wing actors here in America. That same propaganda machine.”
The president’s son is not the only one echoing his father’s language.
Last week, after Mr. Erdogan’s government jailed the mayor of Istanbul, one of Mr. Trump’s senior diplomatic envoys spoke positively about Turkey’s leader during an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“Really transformational,” Steve Witkoff said of a recent telephone call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdogan. “There’s just a lot of good, positive news coming out of Turkey right now as a result of that conversation.”
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University, said Mr. Trump’s words and actions — and those of his surrogates — are being watched by other leaders. She said the president’s lack of condemnation of Mr. Erdogan following the arrest of the Istanbul mayor would have been noted by authoritarian-leaning presidents and prime ministers.
“The moves of Trump in this same direction,” she said, “embolden foreign leaders who know the U.S. is now an autocratic ally and there will be no consequences for repressive behavior.”
He has a new, carefully groomed beard. He bantered with bros for hours on an irreverent comedy podcast. And on Tuesday, he criticized the Trump administration through an appeal to patriotism in a state early on the presidential nominating calendar.
Pete Buttigieg is inching back into the Democrats’ spotlight this spring with a series of appearances that have prompted speculation about how one of the party’s most evidently ambitious politicians might spend the lead-up to 2028.
With Democrats still searching for a direction and a standard-bearer after November’s loss to President Trump, supporters of Mr. Buttigieg, a smooth-talking former mayor from Indiana who served as the transportation secretary in the Biden administration, hope he might take up that mantle.
Without ever uttering Mr. Trump’s name, Mr. Buttigieg, in front of a veteran-heavy crowd of more than 1,600 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, assailed the president’s efforts to cut the Department of Veterans Affairs and his broader handling of the country. He implored attendees to exert “peaceful but energetic” pressure on their representatives to block cuts to federal agencies and tax breaks for the wealthy. And he expressed optimism that people would resist Mr. Trump and restore faith in democracy.
“There is a parade of horribles emanating from this White House,” said Mr. Buttigieg, 43. But, he added, “the American people bow to no king.”
Mr. Buttigieg’s town hall in Iowa, sponsored by VoteVets, a progressive veterans group, was his most notable involvement yet in the Democratic shadow primary race, with prominent governors and members of Congress competing for attention as they weigh 2028 presidential bids.
They have been busy: Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the party’s 2024 vice-presidential nominee, held a town hall in Iowa in March and plans to attend state party conventions this month in California and South Carolina, which is expected to host an early primary. Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois ramped up 2028 speculation with a fiery speech last month in New Hampshire, another state traditionally at the front of the primary calendar. Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona held an event last week in Pennsylvania, a top battleground state.
And Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who has been less obvious about 2028 signaling but is seen as a possible contender, has been traveling the country alongside Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont to rally supporters against the influence of big money in politics.
VoteVets is an ally of Mr. Buttigieg, a former Naval intelligence officer who deployed to Afghanistan, but the group is also close with other potential 2028 contenders with military experience, including Mr. Walz and Mr. Gallego.
Mr. Buttigieg, for his part, has shown particular interest in how Democrats can win back the overlapping mix of working-class voters, men and disenchanted Americans who gravitated to Mr. Trump’s vision of upending the establishment last November.
At the town hall in Iowa, he offered no hints as to his ultimate political aspirations, though he did remind attendees of his past success in the Hawkeye State.
During one previous trip, “I was sort of winning the Iowa caucus,” he said casually, scratching his head as though reluctant to brag. “Run again!” someone yelled from the crowd. Mr. Buttigieg just chuckled.
Whether Mr. Buttigieg can successfully reach beyond the highly engaged voters who tune into MSNBC and read traditional news — the people who would attend a midweek political event in a non-election year — could determine whether he stands out in what is expected to be a crowded primary field.
Mr. Buttigieg has been explicit about his goal of reaching the apolitical voters who have said they feel the Democratic Party has become too focused on elites. Fielding questions from attendees on Tuesday about how the party could regain voters’ trust, he suggested it needed to have “some tough conversations.”
Democrats, Mr. Buttigieg said, must devise more proactive policy plans, rather than just defining themselves in opposition to Mr. Trump. And the party needed to “connect everything we believe, everything we say, everything we do, to everyday life,” he said.
Mr. Buttigieg also acknowledged his party had done a poor job last year by insisting that the economy was doing well by traditional metrics even as voters were consistently expressing financial frustration, comparing it to minimizing the angst of an angry spouse. “How does that go over?” he asked.
Speaking with reporters after the event, Mr. Buttigieg was less definitive about whether Democrats had erred in supporting President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the re-election bid that he ultimately abandoned over concerns about his age.
Asked whether he had seen Mr. Biden experience cognitive decline last year — something Mr. Biden has pushed back against in recent interviews — Mr. Buttigieg did not answer directly. He did say that when he and Mr. Biden dealt with a bridge collapse in Baltimore last spring, “the same president that the world saw addressing that was the president that I was in the Oval with.”
Would the party have been better off if Mr. Biden had not run for re-election?
“Maybe,” Mr. Buttigieg allowed. “Right now, with the benefit of hindsight, I think most people would agree that that’s the case.”
Zach Wahls, a Democratic state senator in Iowa who is considering a run for U.S. Senate, said Mr. Buttigieg was “trying to meet voters where they are, and I think that is one of the most important things for the Democratic Party to do going forward.”
“His ability to communicate in an authentic, in-depth way is what really gets through to people who may not otherwise be superpolitical or who are frustrated with both parties,” Mr. Wahls added.
That was a sentiment echoed by attendees on Tuesday, who said they appreciated Mr. Buttigieg’s straightforward way of speaking.
“He doesn’t talk that political speech,” said Chris Bzdill, 55, of Cedar Rapids. “He understands that not everybody may agree with his view, but he’s going to give people an idea of where he stands. He’s not going to sit on the fence.”
The Iowa Republican Party had a different perspective on Mr. Buttigieg’s event. In a statement, it said Mr. Trump was improving access to health care for veterans while cutting wasteful spending at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and offered a contrasting take on Democrats from local veterans themselves.
“Mayor Buttigieg and Democrats want to rewrite history, but veterans across Iowa know the truth: President Trump put them first,” Wayne Kreutner, an Air Force veteran in the Cedar Rapids area, said in the statement. “Joe Biden and the Democrats put politics first.”
Mr. Buttigieg first burst onto the national scene in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary as the little-known mayor of South Bend, Ind., population 100,000. He quickly gained acclaim for his sharp debate lines and cogent communication skills, but ultimately faded as Mr. Biden consolidated his support.
Lately, Mr. Buttigieg has been more visible, addressing college students at the University of California, Santa Barbara; getting laughs with Stephen Colbert on his late-night show; and appearing on the “Flagrant” comedy podcast, which bills itself as delivering “unruly hot takes” and opposing political correctness.
Mr. Buttigieg, who now lives in Michigan with his husband and two children, was considered a contender for the open Senate and governor races there, but he bowed out of both contests in March, fueling more speculation about a presidential run.
Mr. Wahls, a friend of Mr. Buttigieg’s who attended the town hall, said before the event that he was eager to see Mr. Buttigieg’s new beard in person. “Beard looks good!” he wrote in a text.
But did he think it could be some sort of careful political calculation, planned to better appeal to the everyman voter? “I don’t know,” Mr. Wahls replied. “Every man’s relationship with his facial hair is a little different; I won’t speculate.”
Politics
House Republicans face down Dem attacks, protests to pull all-nighter on Trump's 'big, beautiful bill'
Three key committees in the process of putting together President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” are expected to work through the night to advance their respective portions of the Republican agenda.
The House Agriculture Committee, the Energy & Commerce Committee and the Ways & Means Committee are all holding meetings aimed at advancing key parts of Trump’s bill.
Sources told Fox News Digital they expected the Energy & Commerce and Ways & Means meetings, which began on Tuesday afternoon, to last upwards of 20 hours each. The Agriculture panel’s markup is also expected to last into Wednesday.
Democrats on each committee, meanwhile, have prepared a barrage of attacks and accusations against GOP lawmakers looking to gut critical welfare programs.
ANTI-ABORTION PROVIDER MEASURE IN TRUMP’S ‘BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL’ COULD SPARK HOUSE GOP REBELLION
President Donald Trump is pushing House Republicans to get his budget bill over the line. (Getty Images)
Sparks flew early at the Energy & Commerce Committee meeting with protesters both inside and outside the room repeatedly attempting to disrupt proceedings – with 26 people arrested by Capitol Police.
Protesters against Medicaid cuts, predominately in wheelchairs, remained outside the budget markup for several hours as representatives inside debated that and other critical facets under the committee’s broad jurisdiction.
Inside the budget markup, Democrats and Republicans sparred along party lines over Medicaid cuts. Democrats repeatedly claimed the Republican budget proposal will cut vital Medicaid services.
Many Democrats shared how Medicaid services have saved their constituents’ lives and argued that millions of Americans could lose coverage under the current proposal.
Meanwhile, Republicans accused Democrats of lying to the American people about Medicaid cuts – a word Kentucky Republican Rep. Brett Guthrie, Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, deterred his colleagues from using. Tensions arose when the word was repeated as Democrats called it a mischaracterization of their testimonies.
Republicans have contended that their bill only seeks to cut waste, fraud, and abuse of the Medicaid system, leaving more of its resources for vulnerable populations that truly need it.
That committee was tasked with finding $880 billion in spending cuts to offset Trump’s other funding priorities. Guthrie told House Republicans on a call Sunday night that they’d found upwards of $900 billion in cuts.
Democrats have seized on Republican reforms to Medicaid, including heightened work requirements and shifting more costs to certain states, as a political cudgel.
At one point late in the evening, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., made an appearance at the Energy & Commerce panel’s meeting.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries showed up to the Energy & Commerce Committee hearing. (Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“I just want to mention our Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is here because of his concern about Medicaid. Thank you,” the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said.
But tensions remain between moderate Republicans and conservatives about the level of cuts the committee is seeking to the former Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act green energy tax subsidies.
The meeting at the Ways & Means Committee, the House’s tax-writing panel, had relatively little fanfare but was equally contentious as Democrats attempted to offer amendments to preserve Affordable Care Act tax credits and changes to the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap.
At one point, Reps. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, and Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., got into a heated exchange over SALT, with Suozzi pushing Van Duyne on whether she’d ever been to New York.
Van Duyne earlier called Texas a “donor state” in terms of taxes, arguing, “We should not have to pay to make up for the rich folks in New York who are getting raped by their local and state governments.”
Suozzi later pointed out Van Duyne was born and went to college in upstate New York – leading to audible gasps in the room.
Van Duyne said there was “a reason” she left.
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“We’re sorry you left New York, but in some ways it may have worked out better for all of us,” Suozzi said.
The SALT deduction cap, however, is still a politically tricky issue even as House lawmakers debate what Republicans hoped would be the final bill.
The legislation would raise the $10,000 SALT deduction cap to $30,000 for most single and married tax filers – a figure that Republicans in higher cost-of-living areas said was not enough.
Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., threatened to vote against the final bill if the new cap remains.
As the committee’s marathon meeting continued, a group of blue state Republicans are huddling with House GOP leaders to find a compromise on a way forward.
Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., hinted at tensions in the meeting when he posted on X that Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., a member of the SALT Caucus and Ways & Means Committee, “wasn’t involved in today’s meeting” because her district required “something different than mine and the other most SALTY five.”
Malliotakis had told Fox News Digital she was supportive of the $30,000 cap. She’s also the only member of the SALT Caucus on the critical tax-writing panel.
Rep. Beth Van Duyne got into a heated back-and-forth with Rep. Tom Suozzi.
The Agriculture Committee, which began its meeting on Tuesday evening, saw Democrats waste no time in accusing Republicans of trying to gut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), colloquially known as food stamps.
Rep. Adam Gray, D-Calif., accused Republicans of worrying that “somebody is getting a meal they didn’t deserve or kids are getting too fat” instead of more critical issues.
Republicans, like Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, touted the bill’s inclusion of crop insurance for young farmers, increasing opportunity for export markets, and helping invest in national animal disaster centers aimed at preventing and mitigating livestock illness.
He also said Republicans were working to “secure” SNAP from waste and abuse.
House and Senate Republicans are working on Trump’s agenda via the budget reconciliation process, which allows the party in power to sideline the minority by lowering the Senate’s threshold for passage to a simple majority, provided the legislation at hand deals with spending, taxes or the national debt.
Trump wants Republicans to use the maneuver for a sweeping bill on his tax, border, immigration, energy and defense priorities.
Two sources familiar with the plan said the House Budget Committee intends to advance the full bill, the first step to getting the legislation to a House-wide vote, on Friday.
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Office said Tuesday that President Trump’s tariff policies will reduce revenue in California by $16 billion through next year.
Despite personal income tax and corporate tax receipts in the state coming in $6.8 billion above projections through April, the Newsom administration is predicting that overall revenue will be lower than they could have been from January 2025 through June 2026 because of the economic impact of Trump’s tariffs.
The governor released the new information, which his team dubbed the “Trump Slump,” on the eve of the presentation of his revised 2025-26 state budget plan, seeking to blame the president for California’s expected revenue shortfall. His office has not released any additional figures about the state budget.
Newsom is expected Wednesday to project a deficit for California in the year ahead with Medi-Cal costs exceeding expectations, including his signature policy to provide free healthcare coverage to low-income undocumented immigrants. The new shortfall comes in addition to $27.3 billion in financial remedies, including $16.1 billion in cuts and a $7.1-billion withdrawal from the state’s rainy day fund, that lawmakers and the governor already agreed to make in 2025-26.
The deficit marks the third year in a row that Newsom and lawmakers have been forced to reduce spending after dedicating more money to programs than the state has available to spend. Poor projections, the ballooning cost of Democratic policy promises and a reluctance to make long-term sweeping cuts have added to the deficit at a time when the governor regularly touts California’s place as the fourth-largest economy in the world.
Trump implemented a series of tariffs on all imported goods, higher taxes on items from Mexico, Canada and China, and specific levies on products and materials such as autos and aluminum, in April. The president has backed down from some of his tariffs, but Newsom alleges that the policies and economic uncertainty will lead to higher unemployment, inflation, lower GDP projections and less capital gains revenue for California.
California filed a lawsuit last month contending that Trump lacks the authority to impose tariffs on his own. On Tuesday, the state said it will seek a preliminary injunction to freeze the tariffs in federal court.
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