Tootfinder

Russian authorities increase restrictions on Telegram: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/16/russian-authorities-increase-restrictions-on.html

Republican offers authoritarian spin on quarantine for Minnesota
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/1/15/2363585/-Republican-offers-authoritarian-spin-on-quarantine-for-Minnesota

Help Us Stand Up to Authoritarianism: Become a Paid Subscriber This Holiday Season (Shikha Dalmia/The UnPopulist)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/help-us-stand-up-to-authoritarianism
http://www.memeorandum.com/251217/p96#a251217p96

The effort to create authoritarianism is more likely to lead to a breakup of the state than to a total regime change.
This end of the United States is possible, in part,
because our president and vice-president think that it is impossible.
Because they are inside a grift bubble, they push for authoritarianism in their own interest,
without reckoning with the possibility that their actions can wreck the country.
For them, America is a limitless passive resource…

The Grift Bubble
A Political Theory of American Collapse

"Wikidata-Enhanced Authority Records: A Project for Personal Names in SBN" https://doi.org/10.36253/jlis.it-677 [Artikel auf Italienisch]

I feel as though I should illustrate the difference that this one single constraint can make by two examples.
The rules of Simon Says are maximally authoritarian. You must perform any action ordered, with the only restriction that the authority must say "Simon says" first. Were you forced to stay in this system, it would be the most despotic autocracy possible. But it's not. It's a silly game because you can leave at any time.
Let's flip this and imagine a room. During a specific period of time you will have absolute control over everything in this room. In this room you have total freedom. This is not even the limited freedom, the coordinated freedom, the compromising freedom of civil society. You could, without consequence, perform any action you wish in this room. You could say anything, destroy or steal any object, order any individual to perform any action, kill any person in the room with you and take anything they own. This is the sovereign freedom, the absolute freedom, of dictators and kings. The only restriction is that you are not allowed to leave the room while you have this freedom. In fact, you really only have this level of freedom because the room is actually empty other than for you. I am, of course, talking about a form of torture still common in the US: solitary confinement.

"The Peters case represents an especially clear example of what I’ve come to see as the defining style of the second Trump administration: an incompetent form of authoritarianism that can best be described as “haphazardism.”
Haphazardism is authoritarianism without vision, a governing style defined by a series of individual attacks on democracy without any kind of overarching logic, strategic structure, or clear end state in mind. These attacks can do (and indeed have done) real d…

Reagan-Era Judge Calls Trump 'Authoritarian' As He Prepares To Block Deportations (Katelynn Richardson/The Daily Caller)
https://dailycaller.com/2026/01/16/reagan-era-judge-william-young-donald-trump-authoritarian/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260116/p109#a260116p109

I feel as though I should illustrate the difference that this one single constraint can make by two examples.
The rules of Simon Says are maximally authoritarian. You must perform any action ordered, with the only restriction that the authority must say "Simon says" first. Were you forced to stay in this system, it would be the most despotic autocracy possible. But it's not. It's a silly game because you can leave at any time.
Let's flip this and imagine a room. During a specific period of time you will have absolute control over everything in this room. In this room you have total freedom. This is not even the limited freedom, the coordinated freedom, the compromising freedom of civil society. You could, without consequence, perform any action you wish in this room. You could say anything, destroy or steal any object, order any individual to perform any action, kill any person in the room with you and take anything they own. This is the sovereign freedom, the absolute freedom, of dictators and kings. The only restriction is that you are not allowed to leave the room while you have this freedom. In fact, you really only have this level of freedom because the room is actually empty other than for you. I am, of course, talking about a form of torture still common in the US: solitary confinement.

This should be getting more attention
Lawsuit: DHS wants
“unlimited subpoena authority”
to unmask ICE critics
DHS is weirdly using import/export rules to expand its authority to identify online critics.
https://arstechnica.com…

Lawsuit: DHS wants “unlimited subpoena authority” to unmask ICE critics
DHS is weirdly using import/export rules to expand its authority to identify online critics.