The world is more divided than ever, but there’s still something (nearly) everyone agrees on: The U.S. is unloved.
The United States is becoming less popular globally in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, according to new data.
The 2025 Democracy Perception Index summarizes attitudes toward democracy, geopolitics and global power players, and canvassed more than 110,000 respondents across 100 countries.
From law firms and universities to the arts and the press, Trump has targeted these independent actors and tried to bend them to his worldview — willingly or not.
One by one, he is bending ostensibly independent actors under the weight of his power. So far, Trump has targeted the legal community, universities, the arts, career government employees and the press and brought them to heel in some measure, willingly or not. Law firms with even indirect ties to past investigations of Trump now face punitive measures that could put them out of business.
If Trump prevails by the end of his term, he’ll have influenced who votes in American elections and who does not, who gets to stay in America and who must leave, who pays off their student loans and who gets relief, who gets to question the president and who doesn’t.
He’s facing pushback, but working to sweep it away. A pliant Congress has largely forsaken its oversight role since Trump thundered back into office, leaving the courts as the main impediment to his ambitions. And Trump is challenging their authority with a resolve that has nudged the nation closer to a constitutional crisis than at any point in the last half century.
Pessimistic about government’s ability to hold Trump to account, one U.S. senator said a mass uprising may be the only means of derailing his plans.
“Ultimately, popular mobilization” is the only way to tame Trump, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said in an interview. The nation’s fate may come down to “the people on both the right and the left rising up in protest and demanding reform.”
Trump quickly works to concentrate power and muzzle critical voices
From law firms and universities to the arts and the press, Trump has targeted these independent actors and tried to bend them to his worldview — willingly or not.
When a protester was caught on video in January at a New York rally against Israel, only her eyes were visible between a mask and headscarf. But days later, photos of her entire face, along with her name and employer, were circulated online.
“Months of them hiding their faces went down the drain!” a fledgling technology company boasted in a social media post, claiming its facial-recognition tool had identified the woman despite the coverings.
She was anything but a lone target. The same software was also used to review images taken during months of pro-Palestinian marches at U.S. colleges. A right-wing Jewish group said some people identified with the tool were on a list of names it submitted to President Donald Trump’s administration, urging that they be deported in accordance with his call for the expulsion of foreign students who participated in “pro-jihadist” protests.
So it’s ok for extremist Jewish groups to show bias against the Palestinian people, who have suffered horribly the past two years? Supporting the Palestinian people does not mean that one supports Hamas and/or terror.
“If you’re here, right, on a student visa causing civil unrest … assaulting people on the streets, chanting for people’s death, why the heck did you come to this country?” said Eliyahu Hawila, a software engineer who built the tool designed to identify masked protesters and outed the woman at the January rally.
Eliyahu Hawila, software engineer and fake Jew
And who is Eliyahu Hawila? He is not Jewish, although he has pretended to be a Jew. More on that in separate post.
Private groups work to identify and report student protesters for possible deportation
President Donald Trump’s efforts to deport foreign students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations are getting help from private groups that use facial-recognition technology to identify masked protesters.
