Kim Lane Scheppele argues that Trump is following Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian model, consolidating power in the executive branch, bypassing checks and balances, and attacking democratic institutions. She highlights Trump’s ties to Orbán, including through Project 2025, which was influenced by Hungarian think tanks. Orbán has used similar tactics in Europe, strengthening far-right movements and undermining democratic norms. Trump’s rapid executive actions aim to reshape government before opposition can respond, mirroring Orbán’s strategy of breaking institutions before courts or political resistance can intervene.

https://truthout.org/video/trump-embraces-authoritarian-playbook-of-hungarian-dictator-viktor-orban/

Dall’inizio del XX secolo fino al 2008, l’aumento del Pil pro capite è stato più o meno lo stesso per gli Stati uniti e l’Eurozona. Da allora, tuttavia, il divario è aumentato in modo significativo. È avvenuto quando le economie dell’eurozona hanno scelto di attuare dure politiche di austerità, con un conseguente forte calo relativo. Anche in questo caso, dopo la pandemia da Covid 19, le politiche espansive in Europa sono state meno incisive che negli Stati uniti, il che ha determinato un’altra divergenza. Se l’Europa si sta allontanando dagli Stati uniti in termini di Pil pro capite, non è perché ci stiamo muovendo verso nuovi indicatori di ricchezza o nuove ambizioni ecologiche. È semplicemente perché siamo meno coerenti dal punto di vista della gestione macroeconomica. Riconoscere questo problema, come fa il rapporto di Draghi, è un passo importante. Identifica la necessità di maggiori spese e investimenti. Tuttavia, quando si entra nei dettagli di ciò che il rapporto propone, dubito che si possa arrivare a esiti positivi. Per esempio, sostiene che l’Europa manca di competitività, ma non è così. In realtà, l’Europa è molto competitiva: nel complesso, ha un’eccedenza commerciale. Quindi, nel confronto con gli Stati uniti, il problema dell’Europa non è che ha bisogno di una maggiore competitività, ma piuttosto di una maggiore produttività, che non è la stessa cosa. Questo è legato alle politiche di innovazione e allo sviluppo delle imprese. È molto importante sottolineare questa differenza.

Un’altra questione fondamentale è che molti paesi europei hanno adottato standard neoliberali più rigidi rispetto agli Stati uniti, soprattutto in materia di politica fiscale. In Germania c’è il «freno al debito», che fa parte della Costituzione e che blocca un approccio fiscale più attivo. Ciò contribuisce alla mancanza di dinamismo dell’economia tedesca. Anche la politica europea della concorrenza rappresenta un ostacolo a qualsiasi tipo di solida politica industriale. Sebbene ci siano stati alcuni cambiamenti a livello di discorso pubblico, ci vorrà tempo per abbandonare il paradigma che si è instaurato nel corso dei decenni. La relazione di Draghi non affronta gli aspetti legati al quadro dell’integrazione europea e non si intravede un percorso chiaro verso la trasformazione di tale quadro, il che è molto preoccupante.

Draghi osserva come l’Europa abbia mancato la trasformazione digitale. Non solo negli Stati uniti, ma anche in Cina e persino in Russia, ci sono forti imprese tecnologiche nazionali che forniscono servizi di tipo nuovo. In Europa non ci sono aziende che forniscono questi servizi, il che significa che gli Stati, le aziende e i cittadini europei sono sottomessi a interessi aziendali di difficile regolamentazione perché hanno sede all’estero. L’approccio adottato finora dall’Ue, incentrato sulla protezione dei dati a livello individuale, non è all’altezza di questa sfida, che richiede un ambizioso progetto pubblico per fornire servizi digitali di base a livello locale e proteggere la sovranità degli Stati europei. A un livello più fondamentale, le politiche economiche su entrambe le sponde dell’Atlantico non dovrebbero puntare ad accelerare la spirale produttivista-consumistica, ma promuovere una trasformazione degli stili di vita, con servizi pubblici più forti e garantendo una rete di sicurezza per la popolazione e un riequilibrio del nostro rapporto con la natura.

https://jacobinitalia.it/che-ce-dopo-il-neoliberismo/

A new report from World Weather Attribution links the recent Los Angeles wildfires to climate change, stating that rising global temperatures have increased the likelihood of such fires by 35% and their severity by 6%. Vulnerable populations were disproportionately affected. The report coincides with California lawmakers introducing Senate Bill 222, which would allow individuals and insurers to sue fossil fuel companies for wildfire damages. The bill’s author, State Sen. Scott Wiener, argues that the industry must pay for disasters fueled by its products. The proposal mirrors New York’s “Superfund” law and could serve as a model for federal legislation.

https://truthout.org/articles/report-climate-crisis-significantly-increased-likelihood-of-los-angeles-fires/

For my American friends

https://projects.propublica.org/claimfile/

"I won’t beat around the bush. Microsoft Office doesn’t make it easy to opt out of this new AI privacy agreement, as the feature is hidden through a series of popup menus in your settings:On a Windows computer, follow these steps to turn off “Connected Experiences”:

File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options > Privacy Settings > Optional Connected Experiences > Uncheck box: “Turn on optional connected experiences”"

https://medium.com/illumination/ms-word-is-using-you-to-train-ai-86d6a4d87021

"These enduring, midcentury systems aren’t worthwhile because they’re old—they’re worthwhile because they work. The bureaucracies that Trump-Musk-Vought are working so aggressively to dismantle deliver money to institutions that provide food and shelter, prevent corporations from exploiting workers, restrain financial institutions from operating with complete impunity, and on and on. They undergird civil society. The people harmed by Trump’s and DOGE’s assaults represent a group of people far larger than the handful of goons trying to bring everything down. For any of this to matter, that group of people will need to assert itself."

https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/doge-nation/

According to reports, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that “the goal for 2025 is to demolish more than the Palestinians build in the West Bank.” This comes as the Israeli government is reportedly building almost 1,000 additional housing units in the Efrat settlement close to Jerusalem.

The additional units built for settlers in Efrat would increase the settlement’s size by 40% and block development in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem. The roughly 100 existing settlements in the West Bank host around 500,000 Israeli settlers and are considered illegal under international law.

Sunday’s comments from Smotrich reflect his longstanding hopes for Israeli absorption of the West Bank and the nixing of a two-state solution. He published a lengthy plan in 2017 in this regard entitled “One Hope.”

“We need to and can go back to the post-1948 days, regarding both Israeli Arabs and the Arabs of Judea and Samaria,” he outlined in the plan, the first phase of which is called “Victory Through Settlement.” This, he explained, ”will be realized via a political-legal act of imposing sovereignty on all Judea and Samaria, and with concurrent acts of settlement: the establishment of cities and towns, the laying down of infrastructure as is customary in ‘little’ Israel and the encouragement of tens and hundreds of thousands of residents to come live in Judea and Samaria. In this way, we will be able to create a clear and irreversible reality on the ground.”

"The Arabs of Judea and Samaria will be able to conduct their daily life in freedom and peace, but not to vote for the Israeli Knesset at the first stage” as a way to “preserve the Jewish majority in decision-making in the state of Israel.” He vehemently denies that this system resembles apartheid.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/smotrich-calls-for-more-settlements/

Over the weekend, the Trump administration appeared to begin the process of rolling back enforcement of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the “Magna Carta” of federal environmental law. In a filing submitted February 16, administration officials announced an interim rule titled “Removal of National Environmental Policy Act Implementing Regulations.”

NEPA requires all federal agencies to consider the environmental impact of their work, including by submitting new contracts and permits to rigorous environmental assessments and public comment. Signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970 amid growing pollution concerns, NEPA was the nation’s first major environmental law, predating the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Project 2025 — the conservative policy agenda authored by Trump’s former aides — said that the government is “abusing” NEPA, and has called for severely limiting the law.

https://jacobin.com/2025/02/nepa-federal-environment-law-trump/

In historical terms, the event we are witnessing is an attempt at Gleichschaltung. The Nazi term is usually translated “coordination,” sometimes “consolidation” or “streamlining.” In this phase of totalitarianism, the Movement, now elected to power, uses its hold on the legitimate authority of the state to try, illegitimately, to align neutral, nonpartisan, or independent institutions with the extra-state Movement, forging an obligation to the Leader rather than to the constitutional state.

The task of coordination is to reshape, refound, purge, and, by all means foul and fair, shake the underlying basis of institutions and install new, arbitrary ones. Because institutions only subsist by their personnel, a Gleichschaltung should unnerve the committed participants in institutions, first within government and then in civil society, and mold minds toward constant doubt and adjustment. Personnel should feel that they require alignment with the leader, or acknowledgment of arbitrary or irrelevant Movement goals, simply to continue to work and to avoid baseless investigation or denunciation.

Next, history tells us, comes the effort to undermine the professional and non-political civil service. In 1933, the National Socialists undertook this part of Gleichschaltung with a “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.” Under its articles, the regime purged the civil service according to several different criteria. Some could be fired to reduce expenses and shrink the bureaucracy (Article 6), others because they could not be relied upon in their loyalty to the Nazi state (Article 4). And Jews were expelled from State employment because they were Jews (Article 3).

Odd as it may sound, the antidote to totalitarianism, recorded by those who lived through it, is associational life. De-atomization, and the creation of loyalties to other people that can’t be, or simply aren’t, coordinated with a regime. In a time of temptation to the bad, or to the worse, association is what lets people find the courage to refuse, and the practical standing to do so. If things get very bad, it is also associational life that helps people circulate information, hide, escape, and travel. Combinations of associations like churches, clubs, professional or activist societies, local government and local agencies, stretching from close-range to middle-range, are practically efficacious in kinds of details that can’t be seen from above, or aren’t seen until too late and are too banal to punish: accidentally failing to find or arrest someone, sponsoring and sheltering, and passing money

https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/the-fork-in-the-road/