Free Republic

What a difference twenty-four hours makes. Yesterday, President Donald Trump was walking back his recent criticisms of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, going as far as to say he could not believe that he had called Zelenskyy a “dictator.” Today, Trump held an acrimonious meeting with Zelenskyy that culminated in Ukrainian president being asked to leave the White House and a joint press conference being canceled. The Trump-Zelenskyy meeting before the press pool spray, which Vice President JD Vance joined, has no precedent. Heads of government generally do not bicker in front of the cameras. But in today’s meeting, Trump accused...

Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt advised pushing a "militant democracy" to ensure an "authoritarian figure" like former President Trump never rises to power again. In an op-ed for the New York Times, Levitsky and Ziblatt describe how they spent the last year "researching how democracies can protect themselves from authoritarian threats from within," lamenting how close Trump remains to getting a second term. "How could such an openly authoritarian figure have a coin flip’s chance of returning to the presidency? Why have so many of our democracy’s defenses seemingly broken down, and which, if any, remain?" they wrote....