"If you’ve studied history — and you know I have — that’s the moment when the hair on the back of your neck should stand up"

Steve Bannon told an audience: “And I will tell you right now, as God is my witness, if we lose the midterms … some in this room are going to prison – myself included.”

Now, it looks like Trump and the people around him are seriously considering declaring an emergency to let them seize control of this November’s elections, according to reporting yesterday in The Washington Post: “Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.”

Donald Trump and the lickspittles and criminals he’s surrounded himself with are in a panic. If Democrats take the House and/or Senate in this November’s elections, they’ll have the power of subpoena so the regime’s crimes and corruption will be laid out for everybody to see. Some could even go to prison, including Trump himself.

He’s been basically screaming, “Do something!!!” at Republicans for the past year. It started publicly with his demanding that Texas and then other Red states further gerrymander their elections to reduce the number of Democrats in the House.

In Red states they’re purging voters in Blue cities from the rolls like there’s no tomorrow, and the GOP is trying to recruit “election observers” to challenge signatures on mail-in ballots on an industrial level. As reporter Greg Palast pointed out, this is how Trump took the White House in 2024; if it hadn’t been for over 4 million (mostly Black) fully qualified US citizens being purged or having their ballots rejected after technical challenges, Kamala Harris would be our president today.

But given how badly Trump’s doing in the polls today, even all these efforts don’t look like they’ll be enough to keep the House and Senate in Republican hands. So now Trump toadies like Jerome Corsi (the creator of the Birther movement and the Swift Boat slurs, who’s been a guest on my program multiple times) have an idea: just imitate what Putin, Orbán, Hitler, and other dictators have done to hang onto power when they get unpopular: declare an emergency and use it to rig the election.

Yesterday, The Washington Post detailed how MAGA-aligned activists are now openly discussing manufacturing or exaggerating a national emergency to justify Trump’s agents in the federal government to interfere in this November’s elections.

These aren’t fringe anonymous trolls on some obscure message board; they’re people operating in proximity to the president of the United States. Corsi arguably destroyed John Kerry’s chances in 2004 and lit the Birther fuse that catapulted Trump into political fame. And they’re floating the idea that if normal democratic processes don’t produce the “right” outcome, they could help create a fake crisis to seize control of the election nationally.

If you’ve studied history — and you know I have — that’s the moment when the hair on the back of your neck should stand up. Because this isn’t new, creative, or even uniquely American: it’s straight out of the authoritarian playbook.

In 1933, Germany’s parliament building, the Reichstag, went up in flames at the hands of a mentally ill Dutch communist who was probably maneuvered into the act by the Nazis. Adolf Hitler declared it “proof” of an existential communist threat. Civil liberties were suspended overnight. Gone in the blink of an eye were freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the right to assemble as Hitler’s goons began to round up his political opponents and throw them into his new concentration camp at Dachau.

Elections were technically still held, but under conditions so distorted they no longer qualified as free or fair in any meaningful sense, and the so-called “temporary” emergency became Hitler’s legal bridge to a permanent dictatorship.

Similarly, in Turkey in 2016, elements of the military tried to pull off a coup against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan while he was out of town. Erdoğan declared a national state of emergency and then kept it in place permanently. Tens of thousands of protestors were arrested. Judges and teachers were purged from their jobs, and media outlets were closed down for being “fake news.”

While emergency rule was in effect, Turkey held an election that transformed its parliamentary democracy into a hyper-presidential system tailored to give virtually all federal power to Erdoğan himself. It was the end of democracy in Turkey.

Vladimir Putin’s rise offers another variation. In 1999, a series of apartment bombings killed hundreds of Russians and the Kremlin blamed Chechen terrorists. The attacks propelled Putin, then a relatively unknown prime minister, into the presidency on a wave of fear and fury.

Putin then declared a state of emergency that expanded his police powers, gave him tighter media control, and let him seize control of the elections process. In the years since then, elections in Russia have become ritual rather than reality. The ballots are printed every few years, and the votes are counted, but the outcome is never in doubt.

Viktor Orbán in Hungary shows yet another model. He declared a “state of crisis” over migration by Syrian refugees in 2015 and kept renewing it long after migration levels collapsed. During the COVID pandemic, he got the parliament to give him the authority to rule by decree on an indefinite basis; it’s still in effect.

As a result, elections still happen (there’s one coming up), but the media landscape was completely taken over by Orbán-friendly billionaires (see CBS, WaPo, LA Times, Fox “News,” Sinclair, Wall St. Journal, NY Post, and 1,500 rightwing radio stations). Orbán didn’t need to cancel Hungary’s elections; he simply reshaped the legal and political environment in which they happened.

There’s a common thread in all of this. The crisis wannabe dictators inevitably declare — real, exaggerated, or cynically manipulated — become the justification for seizing extraordinary powers. Those powers narrow dissent, intimidate opponents, and functionally rig the elections.

That’s why this shocking new reporting in The Washington Post is so alarming. When political actors like Corsi begin talking openly about declaring an emergency to override or interfere with elections, they’re not blowing smoke: they’re testing a classic dictator’s narrative.

They’re trying to figure out — and will learn from the national reaction to this Post reporting — whether they can persuade the public that normal election processes are too dangerous to trust. After all, in each of the cases I listed above, the machinery of democracy was used to hollow out democracy itself.

And they may not even have to manufacture an emergency: if Trump can sufficiently provoke Iran, they may activate their proxy network around the world and in the United States, and we could be facing a genuine crisis on the order of 9/11. This is one of the few ways to make sense of today’s massive military buildup in the Middle East.

The danger here isn’t just a fabricated catastrophe or a retaliatory strike by Iran, although those are pretty damn severe. It’s the normalization of the idea that if the electorate appears likely to choose “wrongly,” an emergency can justify changing the rules of democracy.

History shows us, over and over again, that when a nation loses its democracy to an aspiring autocrat, the language and strategy used is always the same. “The nation is under threat.” “The moment is an emergency.” “Normal rules must be suspended — just temporarily — to save the country.” And in every case, “temporary” turned out to be the most dangerous word of all.

We’re now at that moment where influential figures are publicly contemplating that path, and the lesson from history isn’t subtle. The real emergency, in a constitutional republic, begins when leaders like Putin, Orbán, Erdoğan and Trump — and their toadies like Corsi, Bondi, Noem, and Gabbard — decide that elections themselves are the problem.

Multiple observers have noted that this plan is grossly unconstitutional. But so were Trump’s tariffs (which also used IEEPA emergency authority as their rationale), and the Supreme Court let him run with them for almost a year before stopping him.

Similarly, ICE goons kicking in people’s front doors and smashing their car windows to drag them off without a judicial warrant is a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, but Trump’s agents continued to do it every day. Something being against the law or the Constitution has never stopped our convicted felon/rapist/insurrectionist president in the past.

This plot will only be stopped if it’s widely reported and an outraged public rises up in opposition. Call (202-224-3121) your elected representatives — Democratic and Republican — and let them know you’re onto this plot and won’t tolerate it. And that if they have any fidelity left to the Constitution and American values, they won’t either.

-Thom Hartmann

 

"Candidates vying for the Democratic presidential nomination will face a Herculean task but also an enviable opportunity"

It is no secret that a group of Democrats have their eyes on a 2028 presidential run. The many capable governors (e.g., JB Pritzker of Illinois, Gavin Newsom of California, Andy Beshear of Kentucky) are obvious contenders. But, just as no one had paid much attention to Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, or Barack Obama two-plus years prior to their successful presidential runs, there are contenders not presently on anyone’s radar screen who may vie for the nomination.

Whatever their name ID, 2028 contenders should spend their time wisely. That will require more than merely speaking out against the mad wannabe king’s domestic and international outrages or preparing (as Obama and Zohran Mamdani did) to viscerally engage the public, create a volunteer army, and activate people previously never political. Rather, 2028 hopefuls should start refining their vision if they want to run credible campaigns. Several big challenges deserve serious, extended reflection before announcing.

What to do about accountability: The failure to prosecute Trump criminally in time to avert his return to power does not mean Democrats must ignore the trail of corruption, constitutional outrages, and rank illegality he will leave behind. The 2028 contenders should start thinking now about how they want to handle Trump and his cohort of lawless democracy vandals.

Options from criminal to civil liability (including recovering ill-gotten gains) to court martial to disbarment should be on the table. But candidates should not get bogged down in prescribing the prosecutions and penalties to pursue against specific MAGA offenders. 

Pledging to engage a special prosecutor or series of prosecutors, tasking inspectors general with full reviews, and empaneling an esteemed commission of historians, lawyers, and former government officials to create an official account of the Trump-era outrages would be preferable (and not prejudge prosecutions). Thinking now about that serious challenge would help clear the decks for candidates’ campaign messages and governing agendas.

What to do about democracy: Running to “restore” democracy is the wrong approach. Trump has broken our Constitution and shown its fault lines. Considering a rebirth of (as Lincoln did at Gettysburg) or reinvention of democracy should occupy 2028 contenders’ time. With the aim of making our system more democratic/responsive and less captive to oligarchs, candidates might consider a game plan for each branch of government. (Fixation with the current filibuster as an excuse for not pursuing these items makes evident a refusal or lack of readiness to reinvent our democracy.)

The Supreme Court has disgraced itself and lost the public’s confidence. Nevertheless, institutional changes can repair it (e.g., expanding the court, setting term limits, installing an inspector general, instituting a mandatory ethics code, eliminating the shadow docket except in limited cases). The president, with help from Congress, can return the Court to its appropriate role to check the other branches and defend of our constitutional rights.

Candidates must also consider curbs on executive power — not a popular idea with presidents of either party. These can include (ideally, by legislation to make permanent) eliminating many “emergency powers,” limiting the Insurrection Action, putting teeth into both the Emoluments Clause and the Hatch Act, requiring financial disclosure for the president and vice president, abolishing recission authority, bolstering the independence of agencies (e.g., the NLRB, FTC), prohibiting political interference with the Justice Department, and strengthening the Freedom of Information Act.

The nominee will have to develop specific immigration policies but should not miss the opportunity to pledge wholesale reorganization/dismemberment of the Department of Homeland Security, which has bureaucratized the national security structure and created rogue, lawless immigration enforcements that have devolved into fascist street thugs. This should be a mainstream position. (Keep the Education Department, Dismantle DHS!)

The next president, aside from a policy agenda, will need to prepare massive democracy enhancement legislation. That can include updating/reinstituting the Voting Rights Act, setting up independent commissions to prevent gerrymandering and mid-decade redistricting, re-establishing workable causes of action (so-called Bivens cases) to hold federal officials liable for constitutional violations, imposing strict campaign finance rules (let a new Supreme Court revisit Citizens United), criminalizing phony elector schemes and other efforts to subvert elections, and granting statehood to D.C. The next president should not throw up his or her hands because of horrendous Roberts’ Court decisions. Pass the laws, litigate the cases, and push for a reformed court to overturn ill-conceived precedent.

What to do about foreign policy: One can only imagine what will remain of U.S. alliances and international stature in 2028. Contenders without extensive foreign policy experience should start traveling, studying, and planning for restoration of American leadership. Convincing allies ever to trust us and aggressors to ever respect us will be an uphill task but the 2028 nominee should be ready with an agenda that limits foreign adventurism, eschews imperialism, re-emphasizes international law, and repairs the post WWII world order. This will be a multi-decade process but has to begin somewhere. A good start: Immediately lifting any remaining Trump retaliatory and nonsensical tariffs, getting out of Venezuela, and recommitting to NATO.

What to do about oligarchy/concentration of wealth: American have never objected to getting rich. But they do object to billionaires getting wealthy at average Americans’ expense and using vast fortunes and outsized power to control government. Thinking through ways to empower workers and promote opportunity (e.g., subsidize childcare, remove barriers to unionization, increase minimum wage with a COLA) and devise an agenda for shared prosperity to appeal to a broad swath of Americans must be a high priority for 2028 contenders.

A good starting place would be Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s recent speech at the National Press Club calling that Democrats “acknowledge the economic failures of the current rigged system, aggressively challenge the status quo, and chart a clear path for big, structural change.” Warren is correct that there is no shortage of good ideas (universal childcare, tough anti-trust enforcement, crackdown on corruption, a fair taxation system, etc.). And while each contender will have specific proposals, the eventual nominee will need to convey their determination, as Warren put it, to “build an economy for everyone.”

Democratic candidates should embrace Americans’ ambition to get ahead and not be shy about celebrating the benefits of a well-regulated market economy. However, they must commit to ending the kind of predatory, crony capitalism that has made it harder and harder for average people to attain the American dream.

In short, “Democrats need to earn trust — long-term, durable trust — across the electorate,” as Warren put it. Trust, in this case, means demonstrating that they “actually understand what’s broken and … have the courage to fix it — even when that means taking on the wealthy and well-connected.”

Bottom Line: Candidates vying for the Democratic presidential nomination will face a Herculean task but also an enviable opportunity. To be ready, they need to prepare now and start accumulating a brain trust to help them think through not only an election but a path to a renaissance of democracy.

---

-Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian is reader-supported. To receive new posts, enable our work, help with litigation efforts, and keep the opposition movement motivated and engaged into 2026, please join the fight as a free or paid subscriber.

 (Illustration Credit: Vitalii Abakumov) 

The Subversion of the Next Election

 

Trump’s threat to cancel the midterm elections is not a feign. He attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election and said he would not accept the outcome of the 2024 election if he lost. He ruminates about defying the Constitution to serve a third term. He is determined to retain absolute control — buttressed by an obsequious Republican majority — in Congress. 

He fears, if he loses control of Congress, impeachment. He fears impediments to the rapid reconfiguration of America as an authoritarian state. He fears losing the monuments he is building to himself — his name emblazoned on federal buildings, including the Kennedy Center, his scrapping of free entry to National Parks on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and replacing it with his own birthday, his seizure of Greenland and who knows, maybe Canada, his ability to put cities, such as Minneapolis, under siege and snatch legal residents off the streets.

Dictators love elections as long as they are fixed. The dictatorships I covered in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans staged highly choreographed election spectacles. These spectacles were a cynical prop whose outcome was preordained. They were used to legitimize iron control over a captive population, mask the enrichment of the dictator, his family and his inner circle, criminalize all dissent and ban opposition political parties in the name of “the will of the people.”

When Saddam Hussein held a presidential referendum in Oct. 1995, the only question on the ballot was “Do you approve of President Saddam Hussein being the President of the Republic?” Voters marked ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ The official results saw Hussein win 99.96 percent of some 8.4 million votes cast. Turnout was reported at 99.47 percent. His counterpart in Egypt, the former general Hosni Mubarak, in 2005 was re-elected for a fifth consecutive six-year term with a more modest mandate of 88.6 percent of the vote. My less than reverential coverage of the elections held in Syria in 1991, where there was only one candidate on the ballot, President Hafez al-Assad, who reportedly got 99.9 percent of the vote, saw me banned from the country.

These spectacles are the model, I expect, for what comes next, unless Trump gets his deepest wish, which is to emulate Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia — whose security detail assassinated my colleague and friend Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul — and hold no elections at all.

Wannabe president-for-life Trump floats the idea of canceling the 2026 midterm elections, telling Reuters that, “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.” When President Volodymyr Zelensky informed Trump elections were not held in Ukraine because of the war, Trump gushed, “So you mean if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections? Oh, that’s good.”

Trump told The New York Times he regrets not directing the National Guard to seize voting machines after the 2020 election. He wants to abolish mail-in voting, along with voting machines and tabulators, which allow boards of elections to post results on election night. Better to slow the process down and like the Chicago political machine under Mayor Richard J. Daley, stuff boxes with ballots after the polls close to ensure victory.

Trump’s administration is prohibiting voter registration drives at naturalization centers. It is imposing nation-wide restrictive voter ID laws. It is reducing the hours that federal employees have to leave work and vote. In Texas, the new redistricting map blatantly disenfranchises Black and Latino voters, a move upheld by the Supreme Court. It is expected to eradicate five Congressional Democratic seats.

Our money-drenched elections, coupled with aggressive gerrymandering, mean few races for Congress are competitive. Recent redistricting has, so far, all but guaranteed the Republicans another nine seats in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio and six for the Democrats, five in California and one in Utah. Republicans intend to carry out more redistricting in Florida and Democrats plan a redistricting ballot initiative in Virginia. If the Supreme Court continues to gut the Voting Rights Act, then Republican redistricting will explode, possibly cementing into place a Republican victory whether the majority of voters want it or not. No one can call redistricting democratic.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United took from us any real input into elections. Citizens United permitted unlimited money from corporations and wealthy individuals to rig the election process in the name of protected speech under the First Amendment. It ruled that heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations is an application of the people’s right to petition their government.

Our most basic rights, including the freedom from wholesale government surveillance, have been steadily revoked by judicial and legislative fiat.

The “consent of the governed” is a cruel joke.

There are few substantial differences between the Democrats and Republicans. They exist to provide the illusion of representative democracy. The Democrats and their liberal apologists adopt tolerant positions on issues regarding race, religion, immigration, women’s rights and sexual identity, and pretend this is politics. The right wing uses those on the margins of society — especially immigrants and the phantom “radical left” — as scapegoats. But on all the major issues — war, trade deals, austerity, militarized police, the vast carceral state and deindustrialization — they are in lockstep.

“One cannot point to any national institution[s] that can accurately be described as democratic,” the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin noted in his book “Democracy Incorporated,” “surely not in the highly managed, money-saturated elections, the lobby-infested Congress, the imperial presidency, the class-biased judicial and penal system, or, least of all, the media.”

Wolin called our system of governance “inverted totalitarianism.” It paid outward fealty to the façade of electoral politics, the Constitution, civil liberties, freedom of the press, the independence of the judiciary, and the iconography, traditions and language of American patriotism, while it allowed corporations and oligarchs to effectively seize all of the mechanisms of power to render the citizen impotent.

The emptiness of the political landscape under “inverted totalitarianism” saw politics merge with entertainment. It fostered a ceaseless political burlesque, a politics without politics. The subject of empire, along with unregulated corporate power, endless war, poverty and social inequality, became taboo.

These political spectacles create manufactured political personalities, Trump’s fictitious persona, a product of “The Apprentice.” They thrive on empty rhetoric, sophisticated public relations, slick advertising, propaganda and the constant use of focus groups and opinion polls to loop back to voters what they want to hear. The vapid, issueless and celebrity-driven presidential campaign of Kamala Harris was a sterling example of this political performance art.

The assault on democracy, carried out by the two ruling parties, set the stage for Trump. They emasculated our democratic institutions, stripped us of our most basic rights and cemented into place the machinery of authoritarian control, including the imperial presidency. All Trump had to do was flick the switch.

The indiscriminate police violence familiar in poor urban communities, where militarized police serve as judge, jury and executioner, long ago handed the state the power to “legally” harass and kill citizens with impunity. It spawned the largest prison population in the world. This evisceration of civil liberties and due process has now been turned on the rest of us. Trump did not initiate it. He expanded it. Terror is the point.

Trump, like all dictators, is intoxicated by militarism. He is calling for the Pentagon’s budget to be raised from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion. Congress, in passing Trump’s One Big Beautiful Act, has allocated more than $170 billion for border and interior enforcement, including $75 billion for ICE over the next four years. That is more than the yearly budget for all local and state law enforcement agencies combined.

“When a constitutionally limited government utilizes weapons of horrendous destructive power, subsidizes their development, and becomes the world’s largest arms dealer,” Wolin writes, “the Constitution is conscripted to serve as power’s apprentice rather than its conscience.”

He goes on:

That the patriotic citizen unswervingly supports the military and its huge budget means that conservatives have succeeded in persuading the public that the military is distinct from government. Thus, the most substantial element of state power is removed from public debate. Similarly, in his/her new status as imperial citizen the believer remains contemptuous of bureaucracy yet does not hesitate to obey the directives issued by the Department of Homeland Security, the largest and most intrusive governmental department in the history of the nation. Identification with militarism and patriotism, along with the images of American might projected by the media, serves to make the individual citizen feel stronger, thereby compensating for the feelings of weakness visited by the economy upon an overworked, exhausted, and insecure labor force.

The Democrats in the next election — if there is one — will offer up least-worst alternatives while doing little or nothing to thwart the march toward authoritarianism. They will remain hostage to the demands of corporate lobbyists and oligarchs. The party, which stands for nothing and fights for nothing, could well hand Trump a victory in the midterms. But Trump does not want to take that chance.

Trump and his minions are energetically closing the last exit built into the system that prevents absolute dictatorship. They intend to orchestrate the sham elections familiar in all dictatorships or abolish them. They are not joking. This will be the death blow to the American experiment. There will be no going back. We will become a police state. Our freedoms, already under heavy assault, will be extinguished. At that point, only mass mobilizations and strikes will thwart the solidification of the dictatorship. And such actions, as we see in Minneapolis, will be greeted with lethal state repression.

The subverting of the next elections will offer two stark choices to Trump’s most vocal opponents. Exile or arrest and imprisonment at the hands of ICE thugs.

Resistance to the beast, as in all dictatorships, will come at a very high cost.

Share

The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Upgrade to paid

 

Twelve Failed Constitutional Amendments That Could Have Reshaped American History

 

The United States Constitution had been in effect for little more than a year when Congress first moved to amend it. On September 25, 1789, the legislature sent a dozen proposed amendments to the then-13 states (soon to be 14) for ratification, as the law required. By December 15, 1791, the necessary three-fourths of states had ratified 10 of the 12 amendments, which collectively became known as the Bill of Rights.

Another 17 amendments have been ratified in the 234 years since, for a total of 27. But these measures represent just a tiny fraction of the amendments that have been proposed in Congress over the years—nearly 12,000 to date.

“The U.S. Constitution was intended to be amended,” writes historian Jill Lepore in her new book, We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution. However, “almost all efforts to amend the Constitution fail. Success often takes decades. And for long stretches of American history, amending the Constitution has been effectively impossible.”

Most proposed amendments die quietly in congressional committees (if they even get that far), with only a few sent on to the states for ratification. At present, there are six proposed amendments awaiting possible state ratification—one of them dating back to 1789.

Many failed amendments have involved fairly minor administrative matters. But others would have changed the American government in substantial ways and possibly altered the course of history.

Here are a dozen of those failed amendments and what they set out to accomplish.

1. Change the country’s name

In 1866, Missouri Representative George Washington Anderson proposed dropping “United States” from the country’s name and simply calling it “America.” The current name was “not sufficiently comprehensive and significant to indicate the real unity and destiny of the American people as the eventual, paramount power of this hemisphere,” he argued, albeit unsuccessfully.

Weighing in from across the Atlantic, the Illustrated London News mocked the proposal as the “verbal appropriation of a hemisphere.”

Just one hemisphere wasn’t enough for Lucas Miller, a first-term representative from Wisconsin. On a single February day in 1893, he introduced 46 bills, one of which would have changed the country’s name to the “United States of the Earth.”

Miller’s rationale, in his own words, was that “it is possible for the republic to grow through the admission of new states into the union, until every nation on earth has become part of it.” Another source suggests that he might also have settled for the “United States of the World.” Miller’s proposal was widely ridiculed at the time, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the congressman didn’t return for a second term.

2. Abolish the presidency!

In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, Missouri Representative John William Noell suggested abolishing the office of president and replacing it with a three-person executive council elected by separate regions of the country. The proposal would have given each member veto power over the other two.

Even after the Civil War, proposals to abolish the presidency arose from time to time. In 1878, Ohio Representative Milton Isaiah Southard introduced a resolution much like Noell’s, to create a three-person executive council, with one president each for the Western states, the Southern states, and the combined “Eastern and Middle” states. Southard argued that “the people of this country are opposed to monarchy, or the ‘one-manpower’ created by the accumulation of regal power in the hands of one person in the control and direction of their public affairs.”

3. End term limits for presidents

While some proposed amendments have tried to limit how long a president could serve, others have gone in the opposite direction. In fact, since the 1951 ratification of the 22nd Amendment, which set the limit at two terms, legislators have repeatedly attempted to repeal that measure and allow presidents to serve as many terms as they choose.

According to the Congressional Research Service, supporters of term limits believe they serve as “an essential check to the cult of personality and the potential for excessive presidential power.” Opponents maintain that the 22nd Amendment is “inherently undemocratic, in that it prohibits the voters from electing a qualified candidate they favor.”

Although an existing amendment has only been repealed once (when the 21st Amendment, ratified in 1933, repealed the 18th Amendment, which instituted Prohibition), efforts to end or expand presidential term limits continue, including as recently as 2025.

4. Elect the president by lot

Numerous amendments have tried to change how Americans elect their president, but few have been more novel than the proposal put forth by James Hillhouse, a senator from Connecticut, in 1808. He suggested, first, that senators be elected to three-year, rather than six-year, terms, staggered so that one-third of their terms would end each year. The senators whose terms were expiring would then choose a new president from among their ranks, with each drawing a ball from a box. The senator who picked the lone colored ball would become president for one year.

Unusual as Hillhouse’s proposal may have been, he wasn’t the first to suggest a lottery as a means of appointing the president. At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, Pennsylvania delegate James Wilson floated a plan in which a small group of congresspeople, chosen by lot, would gather to make the decision. “It was an inventive idea,” says David O. Stewart, author of The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution, “but nobody thought it was a very good one.”

5. Abolish the vice presidency

In 1897, Herman V. Ames, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania, published a list of proposed constitutional amendments dating back to the very beginning of the nation’s history. He recorded seven attempts to abolish the office of vice president, with some critics referring to the position as “superfluous.” One early proponent was none other than Hillhouse, the same man who’d suggested selecting the president by lot.

Similar efforts continued into the 20th century, led by both politicians and other prominent voices. Testifying before Congress in 1975, the presidential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. also called the office “superfluous.” “I know that presidents say ritualistically they are going to give their vice presidents something to do,” he said, “but this never has amounted to much.”

Schlesinger went on to describe the office as one of “spectacular and, I believe, uncurable frustration” for its occupants. “Few vice presidents have survived the systematic demoralization inflicted by the office without serious injury to themselves,” he argued.

6. Add more vice presidents

While some would-be amenders have sought to do away with the job of vice president entirely, others have insisted that what the country really needs is more seconds-in-command.

In 1881, for example, Georgia Representative Nathaniel Job Hammond suggested creating a first, second and third vice president. More recently, in 1964, New York Senator Kenneth Keating proposed splitting the office in two, with an executive vice president and a legislative vice president.

7. Abolish the U.S. Senate

In 1911, Wisconsin Representative Victor Berger, the first socialist to be elected to Congress, introduced an amendment intended to shutter the Senate, calling it “an obstructive and useless body, a menace to the liberties of the people, and an obstacle to social growth.”

With the Senate out of the way, Berger’s amendment would have concentrated all legislative power in the House. Its decisions would be “the supreme law,” the resolution stated, “and the president shall have no power to veto them, nor shall any court have any power to invalidate them.”

Berger must have known that his proposal was purely symbolic, since the process for passing amendments requires Senate approval, and it was highly unlikely that its members would willingly put themselves out of a job.

8. Abolish the Electoral College!

Choosing the American president through the Electoral College rather than by direct vote of the people was controversial from the start. As the historian Ames wrote in 1897, “No part of the Constitution has caused so much dissatisfaction and hence given rise to so many amendments to effect a change.”

A major reason for the dissatisfaction is that the Electoral College vote and the popular vote do not always align, making it possible for a candidate to win the popular vote but ultimately lose the election. This has happened five times to date, in the presidential elections of 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016.

Among the many attempts to abolish the Electoral College, the most recent appears to be that of Tennessee Representative Steve Cohen in December 2024. “Americans expect and deserve to see the winner of the national popular vote for any elected office assume the office as its legitimate winner,” he said at the time. “The Electoral College is a vestige of the 18th century, when voters didn’t know the candidates. Today, presidential candidates are widely known and regularly appear on Americans’ phones and television screens.”

One amendment to replace the Electoral College with direct elections did come pretty close to succeeding in 1969, when the House passed it by a 338-to-70 vote. However, the measure died in the Senate.

9. Create a court that could overrule even the U.S. Supreme Court!

Asserting that the U.S. Supreme Court has too often overstepped its authority in striking down state laws, some amendments have proposed creating an even higher court with the power to review and nullify Supreme Court decisions. 

The first of these seems to have been offered in 1867 by Senator Garrett Davis of Kentucky, who called for a “tribunal” consisting of one member appointed by each state. Later legislators advanced similar proposals for a court made up of the Supreme Court justices of each state, a concept that came to be known as the “Court of the Union.”

The idea attracted new attention during the 1960s, when dissatisfaction with recent Supreme Court rulings led representatives from Southern states to call for a “Court of the Union.” At least 15 proposals for an amendment to that effect came before Congress between 1963 and 1981.

10. Limit personal fortunes

In 1933, often considered the bleakest year of the Great Depression, Wesley Lloyd, a representative from Washington State, proposed giving Congress the authority to establish a cap on the personal wealth of Americans. Perhaps to soften the blow, he proposed that the limit be set no lower than $1 million (about $25.7 million today). “The only reason there is a widespread poverty,” he told Congress, “is that wealth and the ownership of wealth have become centralized—the only reason many men are too poor is because a few men are too rich.”

11. Allow the American people to vote on wars!

The power to declare war, which the Constitution invests in Congress, has long been a subject of controversy—and attempted amendments. For example, in 1916, the year before the U.S. entered World War I, Representative Denver Samuel Church of California offered an amendment requiring that declarations of war first be put to a popular vote and win the approval of a majority of Americans. He did allow for certain exceptions, such as an invasion of the U.S. by a foreign country. Numerous similar amendments have followed in the years since, particularly in the 1930s, as war in Europe loomed.

12. Make war illegal!

North Dakota Senator Lynn Frazier began a quixotic fight to put an end to war in 1926, with a proposal “providing that war for any purpose shall be illegal, and neither the United States nor any state, territory, association or person subject to its jurisdiction shall prepare for, declare, engage in or carry on war or other armed conflict.” A committed isolationist, Frazier continued to propose such amendments regularly until 1939, before losing his party’s backing in a 1940 primary. The following year, the U.S. entered World War II.

-Smithsonian Magazine, Greg Daugherty | Read More

Greg Daugherty is a magazine editor and writer, as well as a frequent contributor to Smithsonian magazine. His books include You Can Write for Magazines.

National Archives: 11,000 Failed Attempts to Change US Constitution

 

Trump's Attempts at Sabotaging Our Elections

 

On August 18, I wrote to you about Trump’s “Truth”—his social media post—about voting. It was a screed that pulled in all of the debunked threads he’s used over time to support his completely unsubstantiated claim about massive fraud in American elections. In his post, he complained about mail-in ballots, voting machines, and cheating Democrats. He moved on to open borders and men playing women’s sports, neither of which has anything to do with elections, but he was on a roll at that point. Midway through, he came out with something new and truly alarming. He wrote that “the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY.” The states aren’t agents of the federal government when it comes to holding elections. The Elections Clause of the Constitution, Article I, Section 4, Clause 1, gives them control over the times, places, and manner of holding elections, subject only to congressional, not presidential, action. But Trump, who has been on a power grab ever since he took the oath of office, wants to claim this real estate for himself, too. And there is news today confirming that he is firmly on that path. The New York Times reported that “The Justice Department is compiling the largest set of national voter roll data it has ever collected, buttressing an effort by President Trump and his supporters to try to prove long-running, unsubstantiated claims that droves of undocumented immigrants have voted illegally, according to people familiar with the matter.” Trump operated during the last election and continues to operate in a vacuum where he fails to acknowledge that it’s already a federal crime for noncitizens to vote in a presidential election, prohibited by Title 18 of the U.S. Code, Section 611.  In January 2024 he began floating that idea that “illegal aliens” were voting in large numbers, an idea that defies logic—few people would endure the trauma of entering this country without legal status, desperate to start a new life, only to throw it away by trying to vote in a situation where they would be sure to be found out and have no chance of impacting the outcome of the election. But for Trump, this isn’t about logic. It’s about riling up the base. And now, it’s about something more. Republicans have long dreamed of compiling national data. It can be used to try and intimidate voters or persuade them not to vote. They can be targeted with information, plans that are even more frightening in the era of AI. But most of all, it’s the idea of “caging,” of using the information to try and disqualify voters.  We know how that works with Trump. It doesn’t matter if there’s any truth to his allegations. As he did with false claims of fraud in 2020 or claims in the run-up to 2024 (they suspiciously went away as soon as he won) about noncitizens voting, prepare yourself for claims in 2026 about all sorts of ineligible people voting. And worst of all, it’s the Justice Department putting that information together. Not rogue political operatives. The work is being done in two DOJ components, the Civil Rights Division, which used to protect voters’ rights, and the Criminal Division, which used to prosecute people who violated them. The Justice Department has requested, and will presumably receive, voter data from at least 16 Republican-controlled states, including Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas.  It also sent demands for data to at least 17 mostly Democrat-controlled or swing states, including Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, and New York. We spoke with Maine’s Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows, the week she received one and told the White House to “go jump in the Gulf of Maine.” What kind of information about you is the administration trying to get? According to the Times, they want “personally identifiable information on voters like driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers.”  In a lawsuit in South Carolina, a judge has blocked the release, at least for now. That kind of information could let Republicans make untrue claims based on partial or misinterpreted information about where a voter’s primary residence is, for instance, and use that to drive half-baked claims of voter fraud. It’s dangerous because it would have the imprimatur of the Justice Department, something Trump tried but failed to get for his fake election fraud claims in 2020. The Times reported that “The administration plans to compare that voter data to a different database, maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, to see how many registered voters on the state lists match up with noncitizens listed by immigration agents, according to people familiar with the matter.” Of course, people can become citizens, and as we know from 2024, these records aren’t always accurate, and the data doesn’t always add up.  For instance, people with the same name can be falsely accused of fraud when they’re eligible to vote. States are highly effective at educating election personnel in how to ensure a voter who attempts to register is, in fact, an eligible citizen and declining to register anyone who isn’t eligible. Except in rare instances, these people don’t make it on the voter rolls, let alone into a polling place. But again, the truth is no bar to Trump, the man who, on repeated occasions, has asked people to just open an investigation, so that he can take it from there. This is more of the same. This is not your mama’s Justice Department—nor is it recognizable as mine anymore. It has tried to get access, unsuccessfully, at least for now, to Missouri voting machines and openly discussed prosecuting state officials, a clear effort to intimidate them and discourage them from holding free and fair elections. These efforts by the Trump administration echo Republican claims that they were worried about election integrity while they were actually trying to suppress Black and Brown voters. That’s the reason we had a Voting Rights Act in 1965, and some parts of the country were required to submit changes to elections for preclearance to the Justice Department before they could go into effect. Republicans made claims about voter fraud, but there was never evidence of it. It was about voter suppression. And it still is. There are stark reminders of that today. In Michigan, a prosecution brought against fake Trump electors in the 2020 election was dismissed by a state court judge. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson issued a statement in response: “In 2020, Michigan was ground zero for a nationally organized, concerted effort to overturn a legitimate presidential election. The attempt to subvert the results of a free and fair election is an affront to our Constitution and a betrayal of American values. Since these individuals signed these false certificates more than four years ago, we have worked with lawmakers to pass additional laws and protections around the certification process. I am grateful to those who pursued justice, and who sought accountability in the name of our democracy. I’m committed to ensuring Michigan elections remain safe, secure, and the results reflect the will of the people – regardless of the outcome. But today’s decision is also a poignant reminder that it’s up to all of us to ensure democracy, our right to vote and to hold our elected officials accountable, prevails in Michigan and beyond. I remain dedicated to that work and am grateful to every Michigander who shares that commitment.” And earlier this week, Republican legislators in the Missouri House passed a redistricting plan, caving to Trump’s demand that they pervert their elections and subvert the rights of their voters to deliver another safe Republican seat in Congress. The bill is expected to clear their Senate and be signed into law by a Republican Governor. But Trump will accuse Democrats of voter fraud, and loudly. He will do it with the full force of the government, including the criminal justice system, behind him. Get ready, and be prepared to shine a spotlight on what’s happening. Longtime readers of Civil Discourse will recall a 2017 effort by Trump allies to collect voter data that backfired, precisely because a little sunlight proved to be an effective disinfectant. Trump created an “election integrity” commission that was supposed to identify voter fraud, but couldn’t find any. Instead, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was outed for using the commission to try to access sensitive voter information—a lot like this current operation—and Trump was forced to shut down the commission just months into its operation. Public outrage worked in that instance. We need to use it here, as well. We’ve protested for due process. We’ve protested for the rule of law. We’ve held signs proclaiming “No Kings.” The right to vote is always part of the dialogue, but now it needs to take center stage.  Share this information about what the administration is trying to do with friends and neighbors and ensure that future protests focus on the right to vote and keeping it. Voting is the right that unlocks all other rights. And Trump is trying to take it away. Our votes don’t exist in a vacuum—they’re shaped by laws, courts, and institutions that set the rules of democracy. At Civil Discourse, we unpack how those forces work together and why they matter at the ballot box. Subscribe for clear, informed analysis when and where it matters the most. We’re in this together, Joyce Vance

 

Scientists are uncovering more and more unsettling facts about our politics by Eric W. Dolan

 

Recent analyses of political division often point to familiar culprits: deepening partisan loyalties, ideological echo chambers, and the rampant spread of misinformation. While these factors are significant, a growing body of research in psychology and political science suggests they are symptoms of a deeper phenomenon.

Across dozens of countries, scientists are uncovering the psychological mechanisms that drive political behavior, from affective polarization to the appeal of authoritarianism. This emerging field reveals how personality traits, emotional responses to threat, and fundamental needs for social identity are shaping our political landscape.

By examining the psychological roots of political hostility and democratic erosion, this new science offers a more fundamental explanation for why persuasion feels increasingly impossible and why societies are growing more divided. The following 13 summaries from recent scientific literature offer a cross-section of this emerging research.

1. Politics is Becoming the Core of American Social Identity

In today’s America, political identity isn’t just about voting—it’s shaping who we want as friends, neighbors, and even in-laws. A study published in Political Psychology found that partisanship now overrides nearly all other social identities—including race, religion, and education level—when people evaluate others.

Using a national survey, researchers showed participants profiles of hypothetical individuals and asked them to judge how much they liked each one, or whether they’d want to live near them or have them as family. Political affiliation was the strongest predictor of these social preferences, with people consistently favoring those who shared their party and expressing dislike for those who didn’t.

More strikingly, out-group hostility often outweighed in-group warmth—people disliked the other side more than they liked their own. Even when profiles defied party stereotypes, like a Black Republican or an atheist Democrat, participants still judged them mainly through their political lens. And while religion and race did influence ratings, especially among Republicans, political party was still the most powerful factor overall. This suggests that polarization in the U.S. has seeped far beyond the ballot box into the very fabric of social life, shaping not just political views but how people interact in their communities.

2. Democracy May Be Good for Your Personality

A study published in Scientific Reports found that people living in democratic societies tend to score higher on benevolent personality traits like empathy, kindness, and belief in human goodness. These so-called “light triad” traits were more common in democracies, while authoritarian nations saw higher levels of manipulative, narcissistic, and callous traits—known collectively as the “dark triad.” The study, which included data from nearly 250,000 people in 75 countries, suggests that political systems may be connected to the psychological makeup of citizens, with democratic environments encouraging prosocial behavior and emotional well-being.

What’s more, people with higher light-triad traits also reported greater life satisfaction, hinting at a feedback loop between democracy, personality, and happiness. Even after controlling for income, education, and religious experience, the trend held strong: the more democratic the country, the kinder and more trusting its people tended to be. The researchers acknowledged that causality isn’t certain—benevolent people may help build democratic societies, or democratic conditions might shape people’s personalities. But the implications are unsettling in light of global democratic backsliding: as democracies erode, people may become more distrustful and antagonistic, paving the way for more authoritarian norms.

3. When Voters Idolize Dark Leaders, Polarization Grows

Not all political leaders are admired for their integrity or humility. In fact, when voters support leaders with narcissistic, manipulative, or callous traits, their emotional hostility toward the opposing side tends to deepen. A new study published in the European Journal of Political Research found that voters who feel ideologically close to “dark” political candidates—those scoring high in Machiavellianism, psychopathy, or narcissism—were more likely to express stronger affective polarization. The effect wasn’t caused by dislike of the opposition, but rather by an emotional attachment to their own combative leader.

The researchers found this pattern across 34,000 voters in 40 national elections, covering leaders like Trump, Bolsonaro, and Macron. Crucially, only in-party admiration mattered—voters didn’t become more polarized simply because they disliked dark-spirited opponents. This suggests that strong emotional bonds to dominant or deceptive leaders may not just reflect existing polarization, but actually amplify it. Whether voters are drawn to these traits or shaped by them is still unclear, but the cycle is ominous: dark personalities at the top may be feeding political radicalization from the bottom up.

4. Narcissists Fuel Political Extremes—On Both Sides

Personality may shape more of our politics than we think. A study in Political Behavior found that narcissism—especially the antagonistic, entitled variety—is strongly linked to affective polarization. People high in narcissistic traits weren’t just more loyal to their political group; they were also more hostile toward the opposing side. This pattern held across traditional party lines and newer political identities like Brexit stances. Those with higher scores in “rivalry narcissism” were especially likely to express emotional attachment to their group and contempt for outsiders.

Interestingly, the researchers found that the hostility wasn’t just about admiration for one’s side—it was mostly driven by negativity toward the outgroup. Narcissistic individuals were more prone to see criticism of their political group as a personal attack and were quick to devalue opponents. Even after accounting for the Big Five personality traits, narcissism stood out as a strong predictor of political animosity. These findings suggest that emotional needs for superiority and recognition may be fueling partisan identity in ways that go beyond ideology or party loyalty.

5. Support for Strong Leaders Isn’t Just a Right-Wing Thing

Support for authoritarian-style leaders is often seen as a right-wing trait, but new research in Psychological Science complicates that picture. Across six studies, researchers found that ethnic minorities—regardless of political ideology—were more likely than White left-leaning individuals to support strong, rule-breaking leaders. This wasn’t because of ideology, but because of generalized trust: groups with lower trust in others were more open to leaders who promised order and control, even at the expense of democratic norms.

This helps explain why some minority voters have gravitated toward dominant political figures like Donald Trump, despite his divisive rhetoric. It also suggests that feelings of vulnerability and social threat may shape leadership preferences more than traditional political labels. Experiments showed that when trust in others was experimentally increased, support for strong leaders declined—especially among minority participants. These findings challenge the idea that support for authoritarianism is driven purely by conservatism and highlight how lived experiences of trust and exclusion can influence political choices.

 6. Feeling Politically Excluded Makes People Angrier—and More Hostile

New research published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology suggests that political exclusion—being ignored or rejected because of your political beliefs—can fuel anger, emotional withdrawal, and even online hostility. In two studies using a virtual ball-tossing game called Cyberball, researchers simulated political rejection among young adults. When participants were excluded by others who disagreed with them politically, they reported feeling psychologically threatened, angry, and less willing to interact with people from the opposing side. In some cases, exclusion even increased intentions to insult or threaten opponents on social media.

Interestingly, exclusion from one’s own political group also triggered psychological discomfort, and sometimes even led participants to feel warmer toward the other side. But the dominant effect was clear: being shut out because of political identity increases emotional distress and polarizing behavior. The study suggests that affective polarization may not just stem from ideological conflict, but from social dynamics that mimic bullying or rejection. When political differences become grounds for exclusion, people may dig in deeper—not necessarily because of policy, but because of pain.

7. Traumatized Childhoods May Shape Narcissistic Leaders

A study published in Frontiers in Psychology offers a striking psychological comparison between Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump. By analyzing historical and biographical records, the author argues that all three leaders share a pattern of childhood trauma, authoritarian father figures, and emotionally indulgent mothers. These early dynamics may have laid the groundwork for the development of pathological narcissism—an inflated sense of self rooted in emotional insecurity. Rather than stemming from ideology alone, their leadership styles may reflect deep psychological compensation for childhood distress.

Each leader experienced different forms of psychological adversity: Hitler and Putin were “replacement children” born after the deaths of siblings and raised by harsh fathers, while Trump was sent to military school at a young age—an event he interpreted as rejection. The study cautions that while these patterns don’t explain every aspect of their political behavior, they may help account for the grandiosity, aggression, and lack of empathy seen in their public personas. While limited by its interpretive nature, the research adds a provocative layer to our understanding of authoritarian leadership—one rooted in early emotional wounds.

8. What You See in a Candidate May Depend on What You Believe About Authority

In polarized politics, voters often project personality traits onto candidates based on their own values—and that includes seeing opponents as mentally unfit. A study in Europe’s Journal of Psychology found that perceptions of psychopathy in political candidates—traits like callousness or deceit—are shaped by voters’ authoritarian beliefs. In two studies conducted after the 2016 U.S. election and again in 2020, participants consistently rated the opposing candidate (Trump or Clinton) as more psychopathic, especially if they scored high in authoritarianism.

This partisan mirror effect was surprisingly stable across time, and it wasn’t based on accurate psychological assessments—just belief and perception. Clinton voters tended to see Trump as far more psychopathic, while Trump voters viewed Clinton similarly. But those who held authoritarian values were more likely to believe their own candidate was psychologically sound and the opponent was dangerously unstable. These findings suggest that mental health perceptions in politics are filtered through ideology, not psychiatric knowledge. The result is a kind of psychological warfare, where traits like cruelty or instability become tools for political judgment.

9. Around the World, Conflict Sparks Support for Strongmen

In one of the largest cross-cultural studies of its kind, researchers from 25 countries found that people are more likely to support dominant, authoritarian leaders when they perceive intergroup conflict or national threat. Published in Evolution and Human Behavior, the study included over 5,000 participants and tested whether scenarios involving war or peace affected leadership preferences. In conflict situations, people were more likely to prefer leaders who appeared physically dominant, aggressive, or forceful. This preference showed up across cultures—from the United States and China to Kenya and Russia.

The findings support the idea that humans have an evolved tendency to turn toward strong leadership during times of danger. It’s a psychological reflex that may have helped early humans survive tribal warfare—but in modern democracies, it can lead to a cycle of escalating authoritarianism. Once dominant leaders are elected in response to perceived threats, they may amplify those threats to maintain power. The study suggests this cycle is not unique to any one country—it’s a global pattern, deeply embedded in human psychology.

10. Feeling Like Society Is Falling Apart Makes Authoritarianism More Appealing

A study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology offers new evidence that perceptions of social breakdown can directly increase support for authoritarian rule. When people feel that moral norms are eroding, institutions are ineffective, and society is falling into chaos—a condition known as anomie—they begin to feel politically powerless. This lack of control then leads to political uncertainty, creating fertile ground for authoritarianism. The researchers tested this pathway using both large-scale survey data and a series of controlled experiments.

The results show that the link between societal disorder and authoritarianism isn’t random—it’s a psychological chain reaction. When people feel they no longer understand or influence politics, they become more likely to favor a “strong leader” who promises clarity and control, even if it means bypassing democratic principles. The study adds a layer of psychological depth to political instability: authoritarianism may rise not just because of fear or ideology, but because people crave order in the face of perceived collapse. In times of uncertainty, control can start to look more attractive than freedom.

11. Across 59 Nations, Threat Sparks Authoritarian Support—Especially on the Right

A global study published in the Journal of Personality found that people in 59 countries are more likely to support authoritarian forms of government when they feel threatened by crime, poverty, or political unrest. Drawing on data from nearly 85,000 participants, the study confirmed that this psychological response is consistent across cultures: threat increases the appeal of strong, controlling leadership. Although the effect was seen on both the political left and right, it was significantly stronger among conservatives.

The researchers argue that while left-leaning individuals may also turn toward authoritarian attitudes under threat, conservatives tend to do so more predictably. This aligns with previous studies showing that right-leaning individuals are more sensitive to threat cues. Yet the global consistency of the trend is what stands out: whether in Sweden or South Africa, perceived danger pushes people to favor authoritarian rule. It’s a reminder that the desire for security—even at the cost of civil liberties—may be a universal feature of human psychology.

12. Certain Narcissistic Traits Predict Anti-Immigrant Views

Not all narcissists think the same. A study published in Behavioral Sciences found that people high in antagonistic narcissism—those who are hostile, entitled, and competitive—are more likely to hold negative attitudes toward immigrants. This connection is driven in part by how they view the world: as a ruthless competition where others are threats rather than allies. These individuals also tend to endorse authoritarian and dominance-based ideologies, which reinforce exclusionary beliefs.

Interestingly, not all forms of narcissism showed this pattern. Neurotic narcissists—those who are insecure and anxious—were actually less likely to endorse anti-immigrant views. Extraverted narcissists, who crave attention but are not necessarily hostile, showed a more indirect relationship. Across three studies in the U.S. and Israel, the researchers found that narcissism intersects with worldview: those who see society as a competitive jungle are more likely to favor policies that punish or exclude outsiders. Personality, in this case, becomes a lens through which people interpret politics and identity.

13. Democrats Show More Partisan Dislike—But for Moral Reasons

A multi-method study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that Democrats in the United States tend to express more dislike toward Republicans than vice versa. Across seven studies—including Twitter experiments, hiring scenarios, and controlled surveys—researchers found that Democrats were more likely to reject or block Republican users, rate them lower in hypothetical workplace evaluations, and express stronger moral condemnation. The driving force wasn’t just disagreement, but the belief that Republicans pose harm to disadvantaged groups.

This perception of moral threat—particularly on issues like race and immigration—appears to fuel Democrats’ emotional intensity. When a Republican individual supported diversity or anti-racism causes, Democratic participants showed less animosity. But when they didn’t, the moral condemnation returned. The findings challenge the idea that partisan dislike is symmetric. At least in this moment in history, Democrats’ stronger aversion is rooted in moral concerns. Still, the researchers caution that moralization can cut both ways—and may fuel cycles of dehumanization across party lines.

Read more at PsyPost