The new target in Trump's war on criticism

Robert Reich
24 September
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a visit to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 13, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

As I noted yesterday, Trump has declared war on all criticism of him. Hopefully, he’s overreaching and sowing the seeds of his demise, as I predicted. But for now we’re on a slippery authoritarian slope.

Who’s his next target? Several possibilities come to mind, in rough order of their authoritarian consequences:

1. He’ll pull federal funding from any university whose faculties criticize him or whose students demonstrate against him. This would be a follow-on from his current efforts to pull federal funding from universities whose faculty or students say things he doesn’t like about Gaza, DEI, or American history.

2. He’ll mount defamation lawsuits against any media company that criticizes him. This would be the logical next step after his lawsuits against TheNew York Times and Wall Street Journal for publishing articles that he alleges defamed him, and after his threats to revoke the broadcast licenses of networks that criticize him.

3. He’ll demand that the attorney general prosecute any public figure who criticizes him. This is a possible follow-up to his demand that the attorney general criminally prosecute former FBI director James Comey, Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, and New York attorney general Letitia James.

4. He’ll call for the arrest of anyone who publicly criticizes him. Here we finally come to unbridled authoritarianism — the kind we see in Putin’s Russia, Xi Jinping’s China, or Kim Jong Un’s North Korea. It’s clear Trump can’t abide public criticism. At some point he’ll demand the arrest of anyone who engages in it.

So, today’s Office Hours discussion question: Who or what is Trump’s likeliest next target for suppressing criticism of him?

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

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