TRUMP REGIME

Hartmann Report - One of the most common characteristics of rule by an authoritarian who’s taken over a democracy is his use of unofficial civilian paramilitary groups and militia gangs to terrorize or even kill his political opponents.Back in the day, Hitler had his Brownshirts, Mussolini his Blackshirts. The practice has since become far more widespread — routine, almost — as we can see across multiple formerly democratic nations taken over — by election — during the past three decades:

— Putin uses a nationwide biker gang called the Night Wolves, who terrorize and often kill people who speak out against him. He also used the Wagner Group for these purposes against high-profile political and business targets.
— In India, Narendra Modi is supported by a rightwing gang known as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) which is alleged to even lynch Modhi’s religious critics.
— Rodrigo Duterte, in the Philippines, had a group known as The Death Squad who murdered his political opponents, usually claiming they were drug dealers (police killed the actual drug dealers).
— Erdoğan’s Turkish goons are called the Ülkü Ocakları, aka the Gray Wolves, who often burst into homes in the middle of the night to beat suspected dissidents and journalists.
— In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro had multiple rightwing groups who intimidated and killed people who offended him, the Escritório do Crime or Crime Office being the most notorious.
— Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro’s paramilitary rightwing thugs are a group called the Colectivos, famous for assaulting people in broad daylight, kidnappings, and even burning people out of their homes.
— In Hungary, Viktor Orbán relies on several civilian vigilante groups to terrorize gays, liberals, immigrants, and Roma people: The Hungarian Guard (Magyar Gárda), Outlaws' Army (Betyársereg), and the Legio Hungaria. More

 The Guardian - With Donald Trump threatening to impose steep tariffs upon his return to office this month, US firms are bracing for impact. But an analysis of Trump’s last presidency identified one way to boost their chances of avoiding the levies: donating to the Republican party. While the initial stage of the president-elect’s tariff agenda is designed to hit America’s largest trading partners – Canada, Mexico and China – it is US firms that pick up the bill, paying duties imposed on the goods they buy from these markets. Such additional costs can prove devastating.  The federal government typically allows a carefully selected group of businesses from paying such levies. Thousands of companies applied for exemptions, and permission to import items without paying a new tariff, during Trump’s first presidency.

An academic study of which applications were, and were not, successful found that firms were more likely to win approval if they had significantly donated to GOP campaigns. Firms that had significantly donated to Democratic campaigns were meanwhile less likely to win approval, the analysis found.