Source: The Atlantic
by Quinta Jurecic
“Early last month, the White House convened a meeting of right-wing influencers for a livestreamed discussion of antifa and the danger they claim it poses. Over the course of the roundtable, President Donald Trump suggested that protests against him had been organized by mysterious funders, who he hinted could soon be in ‘deep trouble.’ He complained about television networks that were biased against him but praised CBS, whose parent company had recently been purchased by a Trump-friendly billionaire. And he touted an executive order that demanded the Justice Department bring charges for burning American flags. ‘We took the freedom of speech away,’ the president said. Like so many of Trump’s pronouncements, this was something of an exaggeration …. But Trump’s comment did reflect a deeper truth about his administration’s effort to force an abrupt contraction of American civic space.” (11/10/25)