{"id":155917,"date":"2025-07-05T22:28:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T22:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/if-the-us-president-threatens-to-take-away-freedoms-are-we-no-longer-free-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-07-05T22:28:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T22:28:07","slug":"if-the-us-president-threatens-to-take-away-freedoms-are-we-no-longer-free-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/if-the-us-president-threatens-to-take-away-freedoms-are-we-no-longer-free-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"If the US president threatens to take away freedoms, are we no longer free? – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump\u2019s dramatic escalation in threats to deport or arrest citizens \u2013 from the world\u2019s richest person to Democratic lawmakers \u2013 should be taken seriously, experts say
Threats of retribution from Donald Trump<\/a> are hardly a novelty, but even by his standards, the US president\u2019s warnings of wrathful vengeance in recent days have represented a dramatic escalation.
In the past week, Trump has threatened deportation, loss of US citizenship or arrest against, respectively, the world\u2019s richest person, the prospective future mayor of New York and Joe Biden\u2019s former homeland security secretary.
The head-spinning catalogue of warnings may have been aimed at distracting from the increasing unpopularity, according to opinion surveys, of Trump\u2019s agenda, some analysts say. But they also served as further alarm bells for the state of US democracy five-and-a-half months into a presidency that has seen a relentless assault on constitutional norms, institutions and freedom of speech.
On Tuesday, Trump turned his sights on none other than Elon Musk<\/a>, the tech billionaire who, before a recent spectacular fallout, had been his closest ally in ramming through a radical agenda of upending and remaking the US government.
But when the Tesla and SpaceX founder vowed to form a new party if Congress passed Trump\u2019s signature \u201cone big beautiful bill\u201d into law, Trump swung into the retribution mode that is now familiar to his Democratic opponents.
\u201cWithout subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,\u201d Trump posted on his Truth Social platform<\/a>, menacing both the billions of dollars in federal subsidies received by Musk\u2019s companies, and \u2013 it seemed \u2013 his US citizenship, which the entrepreneur received in 2002 but which supporters like Steve Bannon have questioned<\/a>.
\u201cNo more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.\u201d
Trump twisted the knife further the following morning talking to reporters<\/a> before boarding a flight to Florida.
\u201cWe might have to put Doge on Elon,\u201d he said, referring to the unofficial \u201cdepartment of government efficiency\u201d that has gutted several government agencies and which Musk spearheaded before stepping back from his ad hoc role in late May. \u201cDoge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn\u2019t that be terrible.\u201d
Musk\u2019s many critics may have found sympathy hard to come by given his earlier job-slashing endeavors on Trump\u2019s behalf and the $275m he spent last year in helping to elect him.
But the wider political implications are worrying, say US democracy campaigners.
\u201cTrump is making clear that if he can do that to the world\u2019s richest man, he could certainly do it to you,\u201d said Ian Bassin, co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy. \u201cIt\u2019s important, if we believe in the rule of law, that we believe in it whether it is being weaponized against someone that we have sympathy for or someone that we have lost sympathy for.\u201d
Musk was not the only target of Trump\u2019s capricious vengeance.
He also threatened to investigate the US citizenship of Zohran Mamdani<\/a>, the Democrats\u2019 prospective candidate for mayor of New York who triumphed in a multicandidate primary election, and publicly called on officials to explore the possibility of arresting Alejandro Mayorkas, the former head of homeland security in the Biden administration.
Both scenarios were raised during a highly stage-managed visit to \u201cAlligator Alcatraz\u201d, a forbidding new facility built to house undocumented people rounded up as part of Trump\u2019s flagship mass-deportation policy.
After gleefully conjuring images of imprisoned immigrants being forced to flee from alligators and snakes presumed to reside in the neighbouring marshlands, Trump seized on obliging questions from friendly journalists working for rightwing fringe outlets that have been accredited by the administration for White House news events, often at the expense of established media.
\u201cWhy hasn\u2019t he been arrested yet?\u201d asked Julio Rosas from Blaze Media, referring to Mayorkas, who was widely vilified \u2013 and subsequently impeached \u2013 by Republicans who blamed him for a record number of immigrant crossings at the southern US border.
\u201cWas he given a pardon, Mayorkas?\u201d Trump replied. On being told no, he continued: \u201cI\u2019ll take a look at that one because what he did is beyond incompetence \u2026 Somebody told Mayorkas to do that and he followed orders, but that doesn\u2019t necessarily hold him harmless.\u201d
Asked by Benny Johnson, a rightwing social media influencer, for his message to \u201ccommunist\u201d Mamdani \u2013 a self-proclaimed democratic socialist \u2013 over his pledge not to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) roundups of undocumented people if he is elected mayor, Trump said: \u201cThen we will have to arrest him. We don\u2019t need a communist in this country. I\u2019m going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation.\u201d
He also falsely suggested that Mamdani, 33 \u2013 who became a naturalized US citizen in 2018 after emigrating from Uganda with his ethnic Indian parents when he was a child \u2013 was in the country \u201cillegally\u201d, an assertion stemming from a demand by a Republican representative for a justice department investigation into his citizenship application. The representative, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, alleged that Mamdani, who has vocally campaigned for Palestinian rights, gained it through \u201cwillful misrepresentation or concealment of material support for terrorism\u201d.
The threat to Mamdani echoed a threat Trump\u2019s border \u201cczar\u201d Tom Homan made to arrest Gavin Newsom, the California governor, last month amid a row over Trump\u2019s deployment of national guard forces in Los Angeles to confront demonstrators protesting against Ice\u2019s arrests of immigrants.
Omar Noureldin, senior vice-president with Common Cause, a pro-democracy watchdog, said the animus against Mamdani, who is Muslim, was partly fueled by Islamophobia and racism.
\u201cPart of the rhetoric we\u2019ve heard around Mamdani, whether from the president or other political leaders, goes toward his religion, his national origin, race, ethnicity,\u201d he said.
\u201cMamdani has called himself a democratic socialist. There are others, including Bernie Sanders, who call themselves that, but folks aren\u2019t questioning whether or not Bernie Sanders should be a citizen.\u201d
Retribution promised to be a theme of Trump\u2019s second presidency even before he returned to the Oval Office in January. On the campaign trail last year, he branded some political opponents \u2013 including Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, and Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives \u2013 as \u201cthe enemy within\u201d.
Since his inauguration in January, he has made petty acts of revenge against both Democrats and Republicans who have crossed him. Biden; Kamala Harris, the former vice-president and last year\u2019s defeated Democratic presidential nominee; and Hillary Clinton, Trump\u2019s 2016 opponent, have all had their security clearances revoked.
Secret Service protection details have been removed from Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, who served in Trump\u2019s first administration, despite both being the subject of death threats from Iran because of the 2020 assassination of Qassem Suleimani, a senior Revolutionary Guards commander.
Similar fates have befallen Anthony Fauci, the infectious diseases specialist who angered Trump over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as Biden\u2019s adult children, Hunter and Ashley.
Trump has also targeted law firms whose lawyers previously acted against him, prompting some to strike deals that will see them perform pro bono services for the administration.
For now, widely anticipated acts of retribution against figures like Gen Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff of the armed forces \u2013 whom Trump previously suggested deserved to be executed for \u201ctreason\u201d and who expressed fears of being recalled to active duty and then court-martialed \u2013 have not materialised.
\u201cI [and] people in my world expected that Trump would come up with investigations of any number of people, whether they were involved in the Russia investigation way back when, or the election investigation, or the January 6 insurrection, but by and large he hasn\u2019t done that,\u201d said one veteran Washington insider, who requested anonymity, citing his proximity to people previously identified as potential Trump targets.
\u201cThere are all kinds of lists floating around \u2026 with names of people that might be under investigation, but you\u2019ll never know you\u2019re under investigation until police turn up on your doorstep \u2013 and these people are just getting on with their lives.\u201d
Yet pro-democracy campaigners say Trump\u2019s latest threats should be taken seriously \u2013 especially after several recent detentions of several elected Democratic officials at protests near immigration jails or courts. In the most notorious episode, Alex Padilla, a senator from California, was forced to the floor and handcuffed after trying to question Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, at a press conference.
\u201cWhen the president of the United States, the most powerful person in the world, threatens to arrest you, that\u2019s as serious as it gets,\u201d said Bassin, a former White House counsel in Barack Obama\u2019s administration.
\u201cWhether the DoJ [Department of Justice] opens an investigation or seeks an indictment, either tomorrow, next year or never is beside the point. The threat itself is the attack on our freedoms, because it\u2019s designed to make us all fear that if any one of us opposes or even just criticises the president, we risk being prosecuted.\u201d
While some doubt the legal basis of Trump\u2019s threats to Musk, Mayorkas and Mamdani, Noureldin cautioned that they should be taken literally.
\u201cTrump is verbose and grandiose, but I think he also backs up his promises with action,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen the president of the United States says something, we have to take it as serious and literal. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if at the justice department, there is a group of folks who are trying to figure out a way to [open prosecutions].\u201d
But the bigger danger was to the time-honored American notion of freedom, Bassin warned.
\u201cOne definition of freedom is that you are able to speak your mind, associate with who you want, lead the life that you choose to lead, and that so long as you conduct yourself in accordance with the law, the government will not retaliate against you or punish you for doing those things,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen the president of the United States makes clear that actually that is not the case, that if you say things he doesn\u2019t like, you will be singled out, and the full force of the state could be brought down on your head, then you\u2019re no longer free.
\u201cAnd if he\u2019s making clear that that\u2019s true for people who have the resources of Elon Musk<\/a> or the political capital of a Mayorkas or a Mamdani, imagine what it means for people who lack those positions or resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Donald Trump\u2019s dramatic escalation in threats to deport or arrest citizens \u2013 from the world\u2019s richest person to Democratic lawmakers \u2013 should be taken seriously, experts sayThreats of retribution from Donald Trump are hardly a novelty, but even by his standards, the US president\u2019s warnings of wrathful vengeance in recent days have represented a dramatic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":155918,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}