While corporate America stayed silent, a small wine importer risked his business to challenge Trump’s tariffs By Elisabeth Buchwald

 

When President Donald Trump announced plans to raise the nation’s effective tariff rate to levels not seen since 1930 last year, most CEOs were silent. They’d seen how opposing the president’s ambitions – let alone his signature economic policy – could prove even more costly than the policies he enacted.

With billions in annual revenue at stake, the leaders of multinational corporations generally stood still. But Victor Schwartz, the owner of small New York-based wine importer VOS Selections, took a giant step up.

Schwartz became the face of the fight to overturn Trump’s most sweeping tariffs — and he won, in a case that was decided by the Supreme Court on Friday.

He was initially hesitant to take on such a prominent role, he told CNN in an interview after the verdict on Friday.

“It was one thing to join the case, but then to be the lead plaintiff really gave me pause,” Schwartz said.

He stepped into that role after a family member put him in touch with the Liberty Justice Center, a libertarian-leaning nonprofit public-interest law firm. The Liberty Justice Center was preparing to challenge the unprecedented use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to unilaterally impose the tariffs — and after speaking with dozens of other small businesses, the group selected Schwartz as the lead plaintiff. 

 With corporate America largely on the sidelines, Schwartz said he felt like the “last line of defense” in putting a stop to the tariffs he viewed as a grave violation of executive powers and a threat to his family-run business. 

 So on April 14, 2025, the Liberty Justice Center filed the case titled VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump. It was eventually consolidated with similar cases filed by 12 states and Learning Resources, an educational supply company.

He was victorious in the end, with the Supreme Court ruling that Trump’s sweeping emergency tariffs are illegal. But Schwartz’s win came at a personal cost. 

 “I am under constant attack through text, email and I can’t stop it,” he said. “It’s a little ugly. I guess it could be uglier. We keep our doors locked at the office.”

‘We can’t just raise our prices’

Schwartz’s business imports wine and spirits from 16 countries. He is no stranger to the nation’s complex tariff code and how quickly rates can change, especially when Trump is in office. For instance, at one point last year, Trump threatened a 50% tariff on products from the European Union.

The economic environment now, especially in my industry, certainly is very unhealthy,” he said. “We had to go through every item in our book over since ‘Liberation Day,’ I think, at least four times.” (Trump coined April 2, 2025, the day he unveiled his now-overturned tariffs, as “Liberation Day.”) 

 “We can’t just raise our prices, and we just can’t pay it, unlike big companies that can just write a check,” he added. Since April, he estimates he’s had to pay at least six figures in tariffs.

The victory for Schwartz could mean he and other importers may be due hefty refunds totaling at least $134 billion, according to US Customs and Border Protection tariff revenue data as of December 14. But it remains to be seen exactly how that would work. 

 Meanwhile, Friday’s verdict won’t stop Trump from pushing other kinds of tariffs. Already, the president signed a 10% global tariff on Friday under a separate trade law and hinted at several other remedies aimed at restricting imports. 

 Schwartz said he’s worried about the other tariffs Trump could impose, but at least they would be much more restricted in scope and have time limits. 

 Fighting with the world’s most powerful person

The risk of going up against the world’s most powerful man wasn’t lost on Schwartz. 

 

“We try to tamp down our fear but still recognize the challenges of what’s out there,” Schwartz said.

Even big corporations have gotten backlash for pointing out the costs of Trump’s tariffs. Amazon drew the administration’s ire following reports that the e-commerce giant planned to display how tariffs were impacting prices.

But after speaking with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Trump said the company wouldn’t move forward with that. (A company spokesperson at the time, however, told CNN the move “was never a consideration for the main Amazon.”)

For Schwartz, positive support from other businesses all over the country and across the political spectrum has kept him going through the criticism. 

 Similarly, Rick Woldenberg, CEO of Learning Resources, has taken a lot of pride in challenging the Trump administration’s tariffs.

“The math was simple: I could not afford the tax that they wanted to hit me with,” Woldenberg told CNN. Unlike Schwartz, however, he’s had to cover his own legal fees, which totaled “seven figures.”

“I wanted my name in this lawsuit. I didn’t do anything wrong,” Woldenberg said. 

 Piggybacking on small businesses

Alan Morrison, who was the lead attorney in a case that challenged the blanket steel tariffs Trump put in place during his first term, understands why so many businesses have shied away from this kind of face-off. 

 

“He threatens individual companies. He grants exceptions. All of this makes people feel very vulnerable,” Morrison said.

With the lawsuit Morrison led, large corporations got the benefit of “sitting back and waiting to see what happens” in the current tariff litigation.

In this case though, thousands of corporations, including Costco, have preemptively sued the US government in an effort to secure their stake in a refund without having to put their reputation on the line as Schwartz and Woldenberg have.

Schwartz doesn’t mind that corporate America can benefit from the risk he took: “So it takes a little match to start the fire. Okay, I’ll take that. I’m not going to feel badly about that. I’m going to feel proud about that.”

To celebrate the victory, Schwartz said he’ll be opening up an old bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

FBI boss Kash Patel defends Winter Olympics celebration with USA team by Madeline Halpert

 

FBI Director Kash Patel has defended his trip to the Winter Olympics in Italy after footage of him celebrating with the USA hockey team drew online criticism.

In a post on X, Patel told "very concerned media" he was "extremely humbled" to be with the men's team after their victory over Canada in Milan.

Footage showed the FBI chief drinking a beer and cheering with the players in a locker room on Sunday.

Shortly before the celebration, Patel had posted on X that the FBI was "dedicating all necessary resources" to investigating how an armed man tried to enter President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Secret Service agents fatally shot the alleged intruder. 

 Patel wrote on social media on Sunday: "Yes, I love America and was extremely humbled when my friends, the newly minted Gold Medal winners on Team USA, invited me into the locker room to celebrate this historic moment with the boys- Greatest country on earth and greatest sport on earth."

 

His trip came during a busy time for the US Department of Justice, under which the FBI is the main investigative agency.

The US Department of State issued a shelter-in-place warning on Sunday for American citizens in parts of Mexico because of unrest after local authorities killed a drug cartel leader.

The FBI is also helping in the search for Nancy Guthrie, the mother of NBC News anchor Savannah Guthrie, who has been missing for more than three weeks.

Public flight data showed Patel took a government plane last Thursday from Joint Base Andrews near Washington DC to a US Air Force base in Italy.

The FBI last week denied Patel was on a personal trip, saying it was planned months ago.

The agency said it had a major role in Olympic security and that Patel was meeting Italian law enforcement officials and the US ambassador to Italy.

Congressman Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat, described Patel's Olympic trip as "grift and corruption".

"Your taxpayer dollars funding the FBI director's Italian vacation," he posted on X.

Xochitl Hinojosa, a former justice department spokeswoman under President Biden, posted on X that "our FBI Director thinks he's a frat bro".

Patel himself has previously come under scrutiny for his use of FBI jets.

Last November, he reportedly used the FBI's plane to fly to Pennsylvania and see his country music star girlfriend Alexis Wilkins perform.

Congressional Democrats said in December they were investigating reports that Patel flew on an FBI jet to a hunting resort in Texas and a golfing trip in Scotland.

Patel once criticised his predecessor as FBI Director, Christopher Wray, for using the agency's jet for personal travel.

FBI directors are banned from flying commercially for security reasons, but must reimburse the government for personal use of the plane at the price of an airline ticket. 

 

A Republican plan to overhaul voting is back. Here's what's new in the bill by Benjamin Swasey

 

A Republican voting overhaul is back on Capitol Hill — with an added photo identification provision and an altered name — as President Trump seeks to upend elections in a midterm year. Opponents say the legislation would disenfranchise millions of voters.

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act — now dubbed the SAVE America Act — narrowly passed the U.S. House last week, with all Republicans and one Democrat backing the bill.

Its approval came about 10 months after House Republicans last passed the SAVE Act.

The measure, which would transform voter registration and voting across the country, faces persistent hurdles in the GOP-led Senate due to Democratic disapproval and the 60-vote threshold to clear the legislative filibuster. Some Republicans have called for maneuvering around the filibuster to pass the legislation, but GOP leadership has been cool to the idea.

 The overhaul would require eligible voters to provide proof of citizenship — like a valid U.S. passport, or a birth certificate plus valid photo identification — when registering to vote. The new iteration adds a requirement that voters also provide photo ID when casting their ballot.

"This bill takes a strong piece of legislation, the SAVE Act, and makes it even stronger in the SAVE America Act," Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., chair of the Committee on House Administration, said in prepared remarks on Capitol Hill last week.

It's already illegal for non-U.S. citizens to vote in federal elections, and proven instances of fraud — including by noncitizens — are vanishingly rare.

But Steil and other Republicans say current law, which requires sworn attestation of citizenship under penalty of perjury, is not strong enough, and documentary proof is needed.

 Some states already take steps to verify citizenship for newly registered voters. And three dozen states also require voters to show an ID to cast a ballot, with some mandating it be a photo ID, while others allow additional options, such as a bank statement.

Democrats and voting rights advocates say the new SAVE Act is even worse than the prior iteration, and that the legislation's two main identification requirements would make voting notably more difficult for tens of millions of Americans who don't have easy access to necessary personal documentation. About half of Americans didn't have a passport as of 2023, for instance.

 

The measure's provisions would take effect immediately, a prospect that opponents see as placing an unfair burden on voters and election officials right before millions are set to cast midterm ballots, and without extra funding. Those election officials would also face criminal penalties, including imprisonment, for registering voters without proof of citizenship.

The bill's prospects appear slim in the Senate, even as Trump and members of his administration ramp up public messaging in favor of the overhaul — often by pointing to polling that shows 8 in 10 Americans support the proof-of-citizenship and photo ID provisions.

 Trump tried to overturn his 2020 election loss and has long railed baselessly about corrupt elections, and many of the president's opponents see the push for the SAVE bill as intertwined with his efforts to raise doubts about voting and interfere with this year's midterms.

Michael Waldman, head of the Brennan Center of Justice, which advocates for expanded voting access, described the measure as "Trump's power grab in legislative garb."

Trump raised alarms by suggesting recently that Republicans should "nationalize" elections, and last week he teased a new executive order, writing on social media: "There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!"

The U.S. Constitution grants states and Congress control over election rules, and a 2025 executive order from Trump, which sought to require proof of citizenship for voter registration, has been halted by federal judges who say the order's provisions exceed a president's authority.

 Here are four new items in the new SAVE Act:

1. The photo ID provision only lists valid U.S. passports, driver's licenses, state IDs, military IDs and tribal IDs as acceptable. Voters who do not present one must vote provisionally and return in three days with an ID, or sign an affidavit that says they have "a religious objection to being photographed." 

 

Notably, people who don't vote in person must also submit a copy of a valid photo ID.

2. The legislation includes new guidelines for name discrepancies in proof-of-citizenship documents. That includes, per the bill, "an affidavit signed by the applicant attesting that the name on the documentation is a previous name of the applicant." 

This nods at one criticism of the measure, which is that tens of millions of women changed their name after getting married, and so their current names don't match their birth certificate.

3. The measure provides exemptions for absent service members and their families.

 4. The bill requires each state to submit its voter list to the Department of Homeland Security for comparison with the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system.

The Trump administration has overhauled SAVE, turning it into a de facto national citizenship system. Despite privacy and data accuracy concerns, a number of states have eagerly used the new SAVE tool to try to identify and remove noncitizens on their voter rolls. But SAVE has erroneously flagged U.S. citizens too.

 

ICE not only looks and acts like a paramilitary force – it is one, and that makes it harder to curb by Erica De Bruin

 

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As the operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement have intensified over the past year, politicians and journalists alike have begun referring to ICE as a “paramilitary force.”

Rep. John Mannion, a New York Democrat, called ICE “a personal paramilitary unit of the president.” Journalist Radley Balko, who wrote a book about how American police forces have been militarized, has argued that President Donald Trump was using the force “the way an authoritarian uses a paramilitary force, to carry out his own personal grudges, to inflict pain and violence, and discomfort on people that he sees as his political enemies.” And New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie characterized ICE as a “virtual secret police” and “paramilitary enforcer of despotic rule.”

All this raises a couple of questions: What are paramilitaries? And is ICE one?

Defining paramilitaries

As a government professor who studies policing and state security forces, I believe it’s clear that ICE meets many but not all of the most salient definitions. It’s worth exploring what those are and how the administration’s use of ICE compares with the ways paramilitaries have been deployed in other countries.

The term paramilitary is commonly used in two ways. The first refers to highly militarized police forces, which are an official part of a nation’s security forces. They typically have access to military-grade weaponry and equipment, are highly centralized with a hierarchical command structure, and deploy in large formed units to carry out domestic policing.

These “paramilitary police,” such as the French Gendarmerie, India’s Central Reserve Police Force or Russia’s Internal Troops, are modeled on regular military forces. 

 The second definition denotes less formal and often more partisan armed groups that operate outside of the state’s regular security sector. Sometimes these groups, as with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, emerge out of community self-defense efforts; in other cases, they are established by the government or receive government support, even though they lack official status. Political scientists also call these groups “pro-government militias” in order to convey both their political orientation in support of the government and less formal status as an irregular force.

 

They typically receive less training than regular state forces, if any. How well equipped they are can vary a great deal. Leaders may turn to these informal or unofficial paramilitaries because they are less expensive than regular forces, or because they can help them evade accountability for violent repression.

Many informal paramilitaries are engaged in regime maintenance, meaning they preserve the power of current rulers through repression of political opponents and the broader public. They may share partisan affiliations or ethnic ties with prominent political leaders or the incumbent political party and work in tandem to carry out political goals.

In Haiti, President François “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s Tonton Macouts provided a prime example of this second type of paramilitary. After Duvalier survived a coup attempt in 1970, he established the Tonton Macouts as a paramilitary counterweight to the regular military. Initially a ragtag, undisciplined but highly loyal force, it became the central instrument through which the Duvalier regime carried out political repression, surveilling, harassing, detaining, torturing and killing ordinary Haitians.

Is ICE a paramilitary?

The recent references to ICE in the U.S. as a “paramilitary force” are using the term in both senses, viewing the agency as both a militarized police force and tool for repression.

There is no question that ICE fits the definition of a paramilitary police force. It is a police force under the control of the federal government, through the Department of Homeland Security, and it is heavily militarized, having adopted the weaponry, organization, operational patterns and cultural markers of the regular military. Some other federal forces, such as Customs and Border Patrol, or CBP, also fit this definition.

The data I have collected on state security forces show that approximately 30% of countries have paramilitary police forces at the federal or national level, while more than 80% have smaller militarized units akin to SWAT teams within otherwise civilian police.

The United States is nearly alone among established democracies in creating a new paramilitary police force in recent decades. Indeed, the creation of ICE in the U.S. following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is one of just four instances I’ve found since 1960 where a democratic country created a new paramilitary police force, the others being Honduras, Brazil and Nigeria. 

 

ICE and CBP also have some, though not all, of the characteristics of a paramilitary in the second sense of the term, referring to forces as repressive political agents. These forces are not informal; they are official agents of the state. However, their officers are less professional, receive less oversight and are operating in more overtly political ways than is typical of both regular military forces and local police in the United States.

The lack of professionalism predates the current administration. In 2014, for instance, CBP’s head of internal affairs described the lowering of standards for post-9/11 expansion as leading to the recruitment of thousands of officers “potentially unfit to carry a badge and gun.”

This problem has only been exacerbated by the rapid expansion undertaken by the Trump administration. ICE has added approximately 12,000 new recruits – more than doubling its size in less than a year – while substantially cutting the length of the training they receive.

ICE and CBP are not subject to the same constitutional restrictions that apply to other law enforcement agencies, such as the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure; both have gained exemptions from oversight intended to hold officers accountable for excessive force. CBP regulations, for instance, allow it to search and seize people’s property without a warrant or the “probable cause” requirement imposed on other forces within 100 miles, or about 161 kilometers, of the border.

In terms of partisan affiliations, Trump has cultivated immigration security forces as political allies, an effort that appears to have been successful. In 2016, the union that represents ICE officers endorsed Trump’s campaign with support from more than 95% of its voting members. Today, ICE recruitment efforts increasingly rely on far-right messaging to appeal to political supporters.

Both ICE and CBP have been deployed against political opponents in nonimmigration contexts, including Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon, in 2020. They have also gathered data, according to political scientist Elizabeth F. Cohen, to “surveil citizens’ political beliefs and activities – including protest actions they have taken on issues as far afield as gun control – in addition to immigrants’ rights.”

In these ways, ICE and CBP do bear some resemblance to the informal paramilitaries used in many countries to carry out political repression along partisan and ethnic lines, even though they are official agents of the state.

Why this matters

An extensive body of research shows that more militarized forms of policing are associated with higher rates of police violence and rights violations, without reducing crime or improving officer safety.

Studies have also found that more militarized police forces are harder to reform than less-militarized law enforcement agencies. The use of such forces can also create tensions with both the regular military and civilian police, as currently appears to be happening with ICE in Minneapolis.

The ways in which federal immigration forces in the United States resemble informal paramilitaries in other countries – operating with less effective oversight, less competent recruits and increasingly entrenched partisan identity – make all these issues more intractable. Which is why, I believe, many commentators have surfaced the term paramilitary and are using it as a warning.

Why corporate America is mostly staying quiet as federal immigration agents show up at its doors by Alessandro Piazza

 

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When U.S. Border Patrol agents entered a Target store in Richfield, Minnesota, in early January, detaining two employees, it marked a new chapter in the relationship between corporate America and the federal government.

Across the Twin Cities, federal immigration enforcement operations have turned businesses into sites of confrontation — with agents in store parking lots rounding up day laborers, armed raids on restaurants and work authorization inspections conducted in tactical gear.

Some retailers report revenue drops of 50% to 80% as customers stay home out of fear. Along Lake Street and in East St. Paul, areas within the Twin Cities, an estimated 80% of businesses have closed their doors at some point since the operations began.

Then came the killing of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the latter of which came a day after widespread protests and a one-day business blackout involving over 700 establishments.

The response of corporate America to those killings was instructive — both for what was said and left unsaid. After the Pretti killing, more than 60 CEOs from Minnesota’s largest companies — Target, 3M, UnitedHealth Group, U.S. Bancorp, General Mills, Best Buy and others — signed a public letter organized by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. The letter called for “peace,” “focused cooperation” among local, state and federal officials, and a “swift and durable solution” so that families, workers and businesses could return to normal.

What it didn’t do was name Pretti, mention federal immigration enforcement or criticize any specific policy or official. It read less like moral leadership and more like corporate risk management. 

 

As a researcher who studies corporate political engagement, I think the Minnesota CEO letter is a window into a broader shift. For years, companies could take progressive stances with limited risk — activists would punish them if they remained silent on an issue, but conservatives rarely retaliated when they spoke up. That asymmetry has collapsed. Minneapolis shows what corporate activism looks like when the risks cut both ways: hedged language, no names named and calls for calm.

A shifting pattern

In 2022, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, corporate America was remarkably quiet compared with its vocal stances on LGBTQ+ rights or the war in Ukraine.

The explanation: Companies tend to hedge on issues that are contested and polarizing. In my research with colleagues on companies taking stances on LGBTQ+ rights in the United States, I’ve found that businesses frame their stances narrowly when issues are unsettled — focusing on workplace concerns and internal constituencies like employees rather than broader advocacy. Only after issues are legally or socially settled do some companies shift to clearer activism, adopting the language of social movements: injustice, moral obligation, calls to action. 

 

By that logic, the Minnesota CEOs’ caution makes sense. The Trump administration’s federal immigration enforcement policy is deeply contested. There’s no clear legal or social settlement in sight.

But something else has changed since 2022 — something that goes beyond any particular issue.

For years, corporate activism operated under a favorable asymmetry that allowed them to stake out public positions on controversial topics without much negative consequence.

That is, activists and employees pressured companies to speak out on progressive causes, and silence carried real costs. Meanwhile, conservatives largely subscribed to free-market economist Milton Friedman’s view that the only social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. They generally didn’t demand corporate stances on their issues, and they didn’t organize sustained punishment for progressive corporate speech.

That asymmetry has collapsed

During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, corporations rushed to declare their commitments to racial justice, diversity and social responsibility. Many of those same companies have since quietly dismantled diversity, equity and inclusion programs, walked back public commitments and gone silent on issues they once called moral imperatives. It appears that their allegedly deeply held values were contingent on a favorable political environment. When the risks shifted, the values evaporated.

The turning point may have been Disney’s opposition to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law in 2022. The company faced criticism from employees and activists for not doing enough – and then fierce retaliation from Florida’s government, which stripped Disney of self-governing privileges it had held for 55 years.

In other high-profile examples, Delta lost tax breaks in Georgia after ending discounts for National Rifle Association members following the Parkland shooting. And Bud Light lost billions in market value after a single social media promotion that featured Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer.

Conservatives learned to play the game that progressive activists invented. And unlike consumer boycotts, government retaliation carries a different kind of weight.

 

Minneapolis reveals the new calculus

What makes Minneapolis distinctive is that the federal government isn’t a distant policy actor debating legislation in Washington. It’s a physical presence in companies’ daily operations. When federal agents can show up at your store, detain your employees, raid your parking lot and audit your hiring records, the calculation about whether to criticize federal policy looks very different than when the worst-case scenario is an angry tweet from a politician.

Research finds that politicians are less willing to engage with CEOs who take controversial stances – even in private meetings – regardless of local economic conditions or the politicians’ own views on business. The chilling effect is real. As one observer noted, Minnesota companies communicated through industry associations specifically “to avoid direct exposure to possible retaliation.”

“De-escalation,” then, has become the corporate buzzword of choice because, as one news report in The Wall Street Journal noted, it “sounds humane while remaining politically noncommittal.” It points to a process goal – reduce conflict, restore order – rather than a contested diagnosis of responsibility.

This is the triple bind facing businesses in Minneapolis: pressure from the federal government on one side, pressure from activists and employees on the other, and the economic devastation from enforcement itself — comparable in some areas to the COVID-19 pandemic — crushing them in the middle. It’s a situation that rewards silence and punishes principle, and most companies are making the predictable choice.

And yet the situation within companies is also full of internal tensions, whether they’re companies headquartered in Minnesota or not. At tech company Palantir, which holds contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, employees took to internal Slack channels after Pretti’s death to express that they felt “not proud” to work for a company tied to what they described as “the bad guys.” Similar sentiments could be seen at elsewhere, where rank-and-file employees expressed far more vocal outrage than their bosses.

What comes next

The Minnesota CEO letter is what corporate political engagement looks like when the risks run in every direction: no injustice framing, no attribution of blame, no names named — just calls for stability and cooperation.

As a local Minneapolis writer put it in an op-ed: “Stand up, or sit down … because the Minnesotans who are standing up? We don’t recognize you.”

It’s not cowardice, exactly. It’s what the research predicts when an issue is contested and the costs of speaking cut both ways.

But it does mean Americans shouldn’t expect corporations to lead when government power is directly at stake. The conditions that enabled corporate activism on LGBTQ+ rights — an asymmetry where speaking out was relatively low-risk — don’t exist here.

Until the political landscape shifts, the hedged statement and the cautious coalition letter are the new normal. Corporate activism, it turns out, might always have been more about positioning than principle.

Even with Trump’s support, coal power remains expensive – and dangerous by Hannah Wiseman/Seth Blumsack

 

As projections of U.S. electricity demand rise sharply, President Donald Trump is looking to coal – historically a dominant force in the U.S. energy economy – as a key part of the solution.

In an April 2025 executive order, for instance, Trump used emergency powers to direct the Department of Energy to order the owners of coal-fired power plants that were slated to be shut down to keep the plants running.

He also directed federal agencies to “identify coal resources on Federal lands” and ease the process for leasing and mining coal on those lands. In addition, he issued orders to exclude coal-related projects from environmental reviews, promote coal exports and potentially subsidize the production of coal as a national security resource.

And in February 2026, Trump ordered the U.S. military to increase its purchases of electricity from coal-fired power plants.

But there remain limits to the president’s power to slow the declining use of coal in the U.S. And while efforts continue to overcome these limits and prop up coal, mining coal remains an ongoing danger to workers: In 2025, there were five coal-mining deaths in West Virginia and at least two others elsewhere in the U.S.

 A long legacy

Until 2015, coal-fired power plants generated more electricity than any other type of fuel in the U.S. But with the rapid expansion of a new type of hydraulic fracturing, natural gas became a cheap and stable source for power generation. The prices of solar and wind power also dropped steadily. These alternatives ultimately overcame coal in the U.S. power supply.

 

Before this change, coal mining defined the economy and culture of many U.S. towns – and some states and regions, such as Wyoming and Appalachia – for decades. And in many small towns, coal-related businesses, including power plants, were key employers.

Coal has both benefits and drawbacks. It provides a reliable fuel source for electricity that can be piled up on-site at power plants without needing a tank or underground facility for storage.

But it’s dirty: Thousands of coal miners developed a disease called black lung. The federal government pays for medical care for some sick miners and makes monthly payments to family members of miners who die prematurely. Burning coal also emits multiple air pollutants, prematurely killing half a million people in the United States from 1999 through 2020.

Coal is dangerous for workers, too. Some coal-mining companies have had abysmal safety records, leading to miner deaths, such as the recent drowning of a miner in a sudden flood in a West Virginia mine. Safety reforms have been implemented since the Big Branch Mine explosion in 2010, and coal miner deaths in the U.S. have since declined. But coal mining remains a hazardous job.

 A champion of coal

In both of his terms, Trump has championed the revival of coal. In 2017, for example, Trump’s Department of Energy asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to pay coal and nuclear plants higher rates than the competitive market would pay, saying they were key to keeping the U.S. electricity grid running. The commission declined.

In his second term, Trump is more broadly using powers granted to the president in emergencies, and he is seeking to subsidize coal across the board – in mining, power plants and exports.

At least some of the urgency is coming from the rapid construction of data centers for artificial intelligence, which the Trump administration champions. Many individual data centers use as much power as a small or medium city. There’s enough generation capacity to power them, though only by activating power plants that are idle most of the time and that operate only during peak demand periods. Using those plants would require data centers to reduce their electricity use during those peaks – which it’s not clear they would agree to do.

So many data centers, desperate for 24/7 electricity, are relying on old coal-fired power plants – buying electricity from plants that otherwise would be shutting down.

 

Limits remain

Despite the Trump adminstration’s efforts to rapidly expand data centers and coal to power them, coal is more expensive than most other fuels for power generation, with costs still rising.

Half of U.S. coal mines have closed within the past two decades, and productivity at the remaining mines is declining due to a variety of factors, such as rising mining costs, environmental regulation and competition from cheaper sources. Coal exports have also seen declines in the midst of the tariff wars.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s recent effort to follow Trump’s orders and lease more coal on federal lands received only one bid – at a historically low price of less than a penny per ton. But in fact, even if the government gave its coal away for free, it would still make more economic sense for utilities to build power plants that use other fuels. This is due to the high cost of running old coal plants as compared to new natural gas and renewable infrastructure.

Natural gas is cheaper – and, in some places, so are renewable energy and battery storage. Government efforts to prevent the retirement of coal-fired power plants and boost the demand for coal may slow coal’s decline in the short term. In the long term, however, coal faces a very uncertain future as a part of the U.S. electricity mix.

Concerns over autocracy in the U.S. continue to grow by Frank Langfitt

 As the United States heads toward the midterm elections, there are growing concerns among some political scientists that the country has moved even further along the path to some form of autocracy. 

 Staffan I. Lindberg, the founding director of Sweden's V-Dem Institute, which monitors democracy across the globe, says the U.S. has already crossed the threshold and become an "electoral autocracy."

Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and co-author of How Democracies Die, agrees.

"I would argue that the United States in 2025-26 has slid into a mild form of competitive authoritarianism," Levitsky said. "I think it's reversible, but this is authoritarianism."

Under competitive authoritarianism, countries still hold elections, but the ruling party uses various tactics — attacking the press, disenfranchising voters, weaponizing the justice system and threatening critics — to tilt the electoral playing field in its favor.

 

Levitsky cited what he considers two strikingly autocratic moments that occurred in September. First, the Trump administration threatened ABC's parent company, Disney, following Jimmy Kimmel's comments on the killing of Charlie Kirk.

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way," Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, warned.

A week later, President Trump proposed that U.S. generals use American cities as training grounds for their troops.

"We're under invasion from within," Trump said to a gathering of military brass in Quantico, Virginia. "No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don't wear uniforms."

 

Levitsky said this is the kind of language dictators in South America used in the 1970s — leaders like Augusto Pinochet in Chile.

A smaller number of scholars reject the portrayal of Trump as a would-be autocrat. They say he is expanding executive power to address the excesses of his predecessor, former President Joe Biden.

Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, says Trump is pressuring news organizations and universities to address problems with liberal bias.

"There are legitimate objections that have been raised by the Trump administration," said Turley, the author of Rage and the Republic. "That does not justify some of the means, but there is a long-standing need for a debate within these institutions."

 

Other political scientists say the U.S. system of government is battered but still democratic. Kurt Weyland, who researches democracy and authoritarianism at the University of Texas at Austin, says he's increasingly confident that the U.S. can withstand Trump's sweeping attempt to expand executive power.

Weyland said that for the first months of his second term, Trump was like a "steamroller" and faced little containment or opposition. But Weyland, who wrote Democracy's Resilience to Populism's Threat: Countering Global Alarmism, says that has changed.

For instance, Kimmel was yanked off the air but soon returned and continues to routinely mock Trump. Weyland also said the president's attempt to tilt the electoral playing field through mass redistricting hasn't worked out as he might have hoped.

"If the guy had succeeded in seriously skewing [future] elections in the House, that would've gone to the core of democracy," said Weyland, "but he didn't. He got barely anything."

Weyland also said federal agents shooting two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis last month was disastrous for the president. Border czar Tom Homan said last week that the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota is ending. Weyland thinks the public blowback to the killings limits Trump's ability to deploy such aggressive tactics going forward.

 The next big test for American democracy could come in November's midterms. The Trump administration is suing states to hand over voter data, which worries Kim Scheppele, a Princeton University sociologist who has studied the authoritarian tactics of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

In 2014, Orbán's government messaged Hungarian voters living in the United Kingdom to go to one polling place and then switched to a different location on Election Day.

"They disenfranchised almost all the Hungarians in the U.K., most of whom were oppositional to Orbán," says Scheppele.

This month, Steve Bannon, a close Trump ally, proposed that the administration deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to polling places to root out undocumented migrants trying to vote — which is statistically rare.

 White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she'd never heard the president discuss such a plan — and federal law prohibits it.

But Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College, worries that such a move would drive down participation by people of color and naturalized citizens who fear harassment by ICE. If ICE were deployed, Nyhan hopes it would spark even more people to vote.

"But even contemplating that kind of interference is, I think, a really substantial threat," said Nyhan. "The way Election Day works in this country, there are no do-overs."