The Planet

We're continuing How Democracies Fight Back, the new series for The Planet that follows The Strongman's Playbook. I published Part 1 last week, opening with institutional resistance: the D.C. Circuit blocking the White House ballroom against Todd Blanche’s Justice Department, with lessons drawn from Poland's Constitutional Tribunal and Brazil's Supreme Federal Tribunal. Today, I finalized Part 2, on legal resistance, judges, lawyers, and bar associations pushing back against executive overreach.

On August 7, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled 2-1 that the Trump administration could not continue above-ground construction of the White House ballroom without congressional authorization. A week later, on August 14, Trump asked the Supreme Court to let him resume construction. The project is officially priced at $400 million for a 90,000-square-foot East Wing complex, though the broader cost of Trump’s White House renovations keeps moving.

On January 15, 2026, Reuters sat down with President Trump for a wide-ranging interview. The conversation turned to the midterm elections scheduled for November. Trump complained about the historical pattern of the president’s party losing seats at midterms. He talked about his administration’s accomplishments. Then he said: “When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.” The White House subsequently called the remark facetious.

On July 4, 2025, nine people gathered outside an ICE detention facility in Alvarado, Texas. They were protesting. One person fired a weapon — he said he aimed at the ground. Others wrote graffiti on vehicles and set off fireworks. One man, Daniel Sanchez-Estrada, was not present at the protest at all, but was convicted of conspiracy to conceal documents for moving a box of zines. The sentences handed down by a federal court: 100 years for the shooter.

On April 25, 2025, dozens of America’s top business leaders met for dinner in the White House’s East Room. The event marked the opening of Trump’s personal ballroom, a $250 million renovation of the East Wing that some former lawmakers called a complete desecration. The guests of honor were the donors who paid for the project. Public Citizen looked into what happened after the dinner. Out of the 27 known donors to the ballroom project, 14 later received over $50 billion in federal contracts.

Yesterday, I published part 7 of The Strongman’s Playbook in The Planet. Here I share a few thoughts on what stood out most. The transcript is below for those who prefer to read. This is the video about the seventh installment of The Strongman’s Playbook. It is a ten-part series examining how authoritarian leaders consolidate power once they have won office. One technique per installment. The historical cases do the argumentative work.

During the September 2024 presidential debate, Donald Trump said this: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” The moderator fact-checked him on air. Springfield’s city manager told ABC there were no credible reports of pets being harmed by immigrants. Local police denied it. The city set up a webpage debunking the claims. The woman whose Facebook post had started the rumor retracted it.

On the evening of July 4, 2026, fireworks lit the sky over Washington. On the same afternoon, while the crowds were gathering, the White House quietly posted a 162-page document to its website. The report was titled “Saving America’s Story.” It was aimed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and it was the most explicit statement yet of what this administration believes history is for. The report accused the museum of anti-white bias.

Last week I covered the civil service. The technique was replacement: remove the professionals, install the loyalists, and the state implements whatever you want. This week we move to the fifth technique in the strongman’s playbook. It is related, but it cuts deeper. It uses the law itself as a weapon. Not to enforce justice. To inflict it selectively — on enemies, while shielding friends. On May 18, 2026, the United States Department of Justice announced the creation of an Anti-Weaponization Fund.

Today, the United States turns 250 years old. I have been thinking about this country since I was thirteen years old. That was when Dutch television aired Centennial, the NBC miniseries based on James Michener’s 1974 novel of the same name.