Are We Losing Our Democracy?
Opinion, The Editorial Board, The New York Times, October 31, 2025. Gift Article – Countries that slide from democracy toward autocracy tend to follow similar patterns. To measure what is happening in the United States, the Times editorial board has compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion, with help from scholars who have studied this phenomenon.
The sobering reality is that the United States has regressed, to different degrees, on all 12. Our country is still not close to being a true autocracy, in the mold of Russia or China. But once countries begin taking steps away from democracy, the march often continues. We offer these 12 markers as a warning of how much Americans have already lost and how much more we still could lose.
No. 1: Authoritarian takeovers in the modern era often do not start with a military coup. They instead involve an elected leader who uses the powers of the office to consolidate authority and make political opposition more difficult, if not impossible. Think of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and, to lesser degrees, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Viktor Orban in Hungary and Narendra Modi in India. These leaders have repressed dissent and speech in heavy-handed ways. Over the past year, President Trump and his allies have impinged on free speech to a degree that the federal government has not since perhaps the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s. His administration pressuredtelevision stations to stop airing Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show when Mr. Kimmel criticized Trump supporters after the murder of Charlie Kirk; revoked the visas of foreign students for their views on the war in Gaza; and ordered investigations of liberal nonprofit groups. Mr. Trump so harshly criticizes people who disagree with him, including federal judges, that they become targets of harassment from his supporters…
Is spyware hiding on your phone? How to find and remove it – fast
- Spyware can secretly track, record, and steal data from your phone.
- Watch for strange behavior, data spikes, or unknown apps as signs.
- Use antivirus tools, update often, and avoid untrusted app sources.
Spyware is a threat to your personal security and privacy that you may not know is on your smartphone.
But what is spyware? It’s a form of malware, often packaged as a legitimate mobile application, that may steal your information, track your location, record your conversations, monitor your social media activity, screenshot your actions, and more.
It may land on your handset through phishing, as a fake mobile application, or via a once-trustworthy app updated over the air to become an information stealer…”
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“We find that the height of Americans began to decline among those born around or before the early 1980s in parallel with the diminution in the rate of increase of life expectancy. The decline in adult height ranged from 0·68 ± 0.36 cm among white women to 1·97 ± 0.50 cm among Hispanic men and is statistically significant across all six demographic groups considered.” Link here.
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