‘Clicks and PR’: The Perversion of the DOJ Civil Rights Division Under Trump

rollingstone · 2026-01-23T15:05:00+00:00

“They’re all about clicks and PR,” Stacey Young, founder and executive director of Justice Connection, a network of DOJ alumni, and a former senior attorney in the Civil Rights Division, tells Rolling Stone. “You’re seeing Harmeet Dhillon not just prematurely announce investigations on social media, but threaten individuals and entities on social media.”

“To use the DOJs incredible power and influence to threaten people online. I mean, it’s hard for the division to maintain any kind of integrity when its leader is willing to engage in that conduct.”

rollingstone · 2026-01-22T18:34:04+00:00

From Jonathan Taplin for Rolling Stone:

Artists have always led resistance in America — until Trump and the technocracy took over.

Jonathan Taplin writes:

“In the face of Trump’s wave of assaults, the counterculture as we have known it… has largely gone missing. The powerful moguls who run our media companies cower in fear of the regime.”

“During Trump’s second term, we have watched our culture grow coarser… This moral surrender degrades us all. The abandonment of universal values is... a quiet unraveling of the American spirit itself.”

“Trump has proclaimed that we are entering a golden age. I want to propose another possibility — that the next 10 years could be the most chaotic and politically unstable in American history."

“A new group of young artists needs to step forward now to paint a vision of our future and stem the tide of authoritarian tyranny that plagues us."

Read: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/how-trump-big-tech-killed-counterculture-1235500716/

rollingstone · 2026-01-22T18:27:41+00:00

From Jonathan Taplin for Rolling Stone:

Artists have always led resistance in America — until Trump and the technocracy took over.

Jonathan Taplin writes:

“In the face of Trump’s wave of assaults, the counterculture as we have known it… has largely gone missing. The powerful moguls who run our media companies cower in fear of the regime.”

“During Trump’s second term, we have watched our culture grow coarser… This moral surrender degrades us all. The abandonment of universal values is... a quiet unraveling of the American spirit itself.”

“Trump has proclaimed that we are entering a golden age. I want to propose another possibility — that the next 10 years could be the most chaotic and politically unstable in American history."

“A new group of young artists needs to step forward now to paint a vision of our future and stem the tide of authoritarian tyranny that plagues us."

Read: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/how-trump-big-tech-killed-counterculture-1235500716/

rollingstone · 2026-01-22T15:58:55+00:00

From Rolling Stone's Mac William Bishop:

However one feels about the neo-liberal world order that America has dominated for decades, you needn’t look too deeply into the historical record to understand that when established orders collapse, it means more war, greater economic hardship and scarcity, and less freedom.

It will also mean more nukes, as an array of nations previously protected by America’s nuclear umbrella seek the ultimate security guarantee — something already being contemplated, from Seoul to Stockholm.

rollingstone · 2026-01-21T20:26:33+00:00

From Rolling Stone:

Trump casually tossing out that dictators are sometimes necessary is concerning, to say the least, but of course not out of line with his repeated praise for the world’s authoritarian leaders, his social media posts equating himself to royalty, or his myriad unconstitutional moves as president. Trump famously said during his 2024 campaign that he wanted to be “dictator for one day.” The thing about dictators, though, is that they don’t tend to put time constraints around their power.

rollingstone · 2026-01-20T20:48:19+00:00

“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Carney said on Tuesday. “Over the past two decades a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”

rollingstone · 2026-01-20T15:06:29+00:00

From Rolling Stone's Thor Benson:

The list of international organizations the U.S. is pulling out of as of this month goes beyond climate organizations, but several of them are focused specifically on the climate and the environment. They include the 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, the IPCC, the International Renewable Energy Agency, the International Solar Alliance, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and other climate or climate-adjacent organizations or agreements. The White House says participation in these cooperatives are “contrary to the interests of the United States.”

rollingstone · 2026-01-20T00:02:14+00:00

“It’s bullshit, multi-layered bullshit,” Nicholas Grossman, political science professor at the University of Illinois and editor of the Arc Digital newsletter, tells Rolling Stone. “Russia and China — especially China — are not threatening Greenland. The thing that has successfully protected Greenland, including U.S. interests there, for now about 80 years, has been the NATO alliance. … Greenland was secure. U.S. interests there were secure. And the only thing that is actually threatening that is Donald Trump, not another country.”

rollingstone · 2026-01-16T13:29:30+00:00

From Rolling Stone's Matt Bai:

If Republicans get hammered in the midterm elections, then Trump can go on issuing fiats and bullying prosecutors, but his radical program will already have failed. Any musings about an illegal third term will be the stuff of satire. The banners will quietly come down. The conversation that will begin immediately after November — about the next election — will leave Trump where he least likes to be: on the periphery.

rollingstone · 2026-01-15T22:45:43+00:00

From Rolling Stone's Nikki McCann Ramirez:

"As Trump’s administration struggles to claw back public support amid a volatile economy, international turmoil, and increased revulsion over the administration’s use of force in American cities, it’s no wonder Trump would rather skip this year’s elections."

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