Authoritarianism Ratings November 2025
Trump Versus US Cities, and the Firing (and Re-Hiring) of Jimmy Kimmel
In the present post, we rate authoritarianism for both sides in the ongoing debate about Trump’s deployment of ICE and the National Guard in US cities. Because the various aspects of the ICE/National Guard controversy are different, we separate them into different events (starting in June 2025 and working forward). We further rate Trump’s use of the FCC to potentially suppress Jimmy Kimmel’s free speech.
Event: Trump sends National Guard, Marine Corps to Los Angeles
Date: June 2025
Authoritarianism Rating: One boot.
Right-Wing or Left-Wing: Right Wing.
Description: Frustrated by crime rates in major US cities, President Donald Trump began the process of federalizing several states’ National Guards and deploying them to cities. All these cities are Democrat-ran and are those that Trump often decries as lawless and crime-ridden. The first deployment of federalized military forces into US cities began in June 2025 with the deployment of federalized National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles during anti-immigration enforcement protests that took place in the city. This action was criticized by many as a needless escalation to a situation that did not require the involvement of military assets. Some, like California governor Gavin Newsom, also argued that the act was illegal. Months later a federal district judge ruled that Trump violated the Posse Comitatus Act which prohibits the use of federal military forces for domestic law enforcement purposes, without Congressional approval or an invocation of the Insurrection Act, which was not invoked there. The judge in this case ruled that the troops that remained in the Los Angeles area were permitted to remain but only perform duties permissible under the Posse Comitatus Act.
Rating Explanation: We are here dismissing claims that ICE itself is authoritarian in its deployment. ICE is a legitimate arm of the Federal government and has legal authority to enforce US immigration law. Further, Trump was democratically elected in part on his immigration platform, which included using ICE to remove illegal immigrants. Our judgment is rather about the legal ability of the Trump administration to deploy the National Guard in this case. Whether Trump has the legal ability to do this depends on whether an invasion, rebellion, or inability to execute federal law is occurring. Trump used Title 10, Section 12406 of the United States Code to justify the deployment. The decision as to whether there is a rebellion or inability to execute federal law is dependent to an extent on the interpreter. In addition, as compared to previous cases where presidents have sent federalized National Guard troops to cities (i.e., the JFK-Wallace Schoolhouse Door Showdown, or the Little Rock Nine), there are several key differences. First, in previous cases, the Insurrection Act was first declared. Second, in many of the previous cases from the Civil Rights era, the Guard was first used, under state duty, to victimize protestors and further violate federal law and Constitutional rights. In this case, the judicial branch has concluded that the action was not justified, violating federal law. There was debate among Authoritarianism Tracker scorers about the boot rating, with some arguing that this should earn a two boots rating. However, although Trump has pushed the boundaries of the law, he has to date followed judicial orders. Further, there were active threats to law enforcement that would be a valid reason for deployment. We here give a warning boot because at a minimum, Trump’s use of this mechanism pushes the boundaries of normal procedure. And this boundary is of vital importance: The use of Federal military personnel on US citizens.
Author: NDW
Event: National Guard deployed to DC, Memphis
Date: ongoing (began August 2025 [DC] and September 2025 [Memphis])
Authoritarianism Rating: CHILL OUT!
Right-Wing or Left-Wing: Right Wing.
Description: In August 2025, Trump signed an executive order declaring a crime emergency within the District of Columbia. The executive order allowed for the deployment of federalized National Guard troops into the city and the federal takeover of the District’s police force – The Metropolitan Police Department as is permissible under Section 740 of the District’s Home Rule Act. This takeover lasted 30 days and ended in mid-September, though the National Guard remains on the streets patrolling. Trump has not faced any legal opposition to his actions in D.C., since the District is federal and is under the control of Congress, the federal government has much influence on the governance and enforcement of laws therein. In addition, the District of Columbia National Guard is under the direct control of the President, unlike the various National Guards of the states which are under the direct control of the state’s governor unless federalized.
In September and October of 2025, the Tennessee National Guard was deployed to Memphis, TN with the stated hope of quelling the city’s violent crime. This deployment is different from the others because the National Guard troops are under the control of the Tennessee governor (state duty).
Rating Explanation: Trump’s deployment of the DC National Guard to Washington was legal because it was under the direct control of himself and the district is federally controlled. Therefore, this deployment earns a rating of CHILL OUT! The deployment of the Tennessee National Guard to Memphis has been done by the governor of Tennessee and covered under the governor’s purview, therefore earning a rating of CHILL OUT!
Author: NDW
Event: Trump attempts to send National Guard to Portland
Date: ongoing (began September 2025)
Right-Wing or Left-Wing: Right Wing.
Description: In September 2025, President Trump announced plans to federalize the Oregon National Guard and deploy it to Portland, OR to quell unrest in the city, specifically regarding immigration enforcement. Of particular concern to the Trump administration has been attacks at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in the city by groups his administration alleges are “domestic terrorists”. This decision was blocked by US District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, arguing there was a lack of evidence of rebellion or significant interference with law enforcement, specifically saying that President Trump’s “determination was simply untethered from the facts”. Undeterred, President Trump announced plans to federalize the California National Guard and deploy it to the city. This plan was almost immediately blocked again by Immergut who asked “How could bringing in federalized National Guard from California not be in direct contravention of the [decision] I issued yesterday?” The deployment to Portland remains in litigation as of the present moment. However, the Trump administration has to date obeyed legal orders as they were issued.
Rating Explanation: As noted before, whether Trump has the legal ability to deploy National Guard troops depends on whether an invasion, rebellion, or inability to execute federal law is occurring. (Also as before, we dismiss claims that the deployment of ICE itself is authoritarian). Trump is using Title 10, Section 12406 of the United States Code to justify the deployment. The decision as to whether there is a rebellion or inability to execute federal law is dependent to an extent on the interpreter and thus shares many of the same problems with the Los Angeles deployment (see above). This attempted deployment in Portland earns one boot because the Trump administration attempted to circumvent the original blocking of the deployment by sending in another state’s National Guard. The judge in this case determined that the conditions on the ground in Portland did not justify a deployment of the Guard. It is unlikely that her determination would change based on which states’ Guard is heading to the city, thus why she considered this an attempted circumvention. As with the Los Angeles case, there was some debate amongst Authoritarianism Tracker raters, with some persons believing it should have earned an appreciably higher score. However, in the end, it did not earn a higher rating because there were active threats to law enforcement (Trump clearly has the right to protect Federal personnel) and because to date, despite trying to circumvent the legal decisions, he has nonetheless abided by those decisions.
Author: NDW
Event: Trump attempts to send the National Guard to Chicago
Date: ongoing (began October 2025)
Authoritarianism Rating: One boot.
Right-Wing or Left-Wing: Right Wing.
Description: In early October 2025, President Trump announced plans to federalize elements of the Illinois and Texas National Guards with intent to deploy them to Chicago with the stated intent to crack-down on anti-immigration demonstrations that his administration argued were violently “obstructing federal law enforcement activities”. This decision was met by immediate push back from Illinois governor JB Pritzker and Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson. Critics of the deployment content that it is a foray into a federal takeover of the city. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul decried the plan, arguing that the deployment of federalized troops, especially federalized troops from another state (Texas) violates the sovereignty and self-governance of Illinois. In response to the announcement, US District Judge April Perry blocked the deployment plan, arguing that she found a lack of evidence of the administration’s claim of violence beyond control, rejecting the administration’s insistence that a rebellion was occurring. The deployment plan remains in the courts as of the present moment.
Rating Explanation: As noted before, whether Trump has the legal ability to deploy National Guard troops depends on whether an invasion, rebellion, or inability to execute federal law is occurring. (Also as before, we dismiss claims that the deployment of ICE itself is authoritarian). Trump is using Title 10, Section 12406 of the United States Code to justify the deployment. The decision as to whether there is a rebellion or inability to execute federal law is dependent to an extent on the interpreter (see above discussion for LA and Portland deployments). Here, a one boot rating was more unanimously supported by authoritarian tracker raters. As in the other incidents, the action does not follow the usual approach in the US and runs the risk of using US military on American citizens. However, in Chicago especially, the Trump administration has a clear case that the troops are necessary to protect ICE. Federal law enforcement does experience a significant resistance to the execution of federal law, and it is certainly within the Federal Executive branch’s purview to use federal means to protect them.
Author: NDW
Event: Brandon Johnson, Chicago Mayor, Dodges the Federal Government’s Immigration Crackdown
Date: August 30, 2025, and October 7, 2025
Authoritarianism Rating: One boot.
Left-Wing or Right-Wing: Left-Wing.
Description: In late August 2025, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson responded to anticipated Federal immigration crackdowns, which involved threats of federal troops and ICE officials being deployed to Chicago, by signing an executive order restricting the federal troops’ power in the city. By taking this proactive measure, Johnson hoped to protect the rights of citizens and the rights of immigrants, as Chicago is a sanctuary city. The order upholds the Chicago Police’s authority in the city and sets strict regulations for federal troops, including requiring body cameras and identification badges, and prohibiting the wearing of masks. Furthermore, the Chicago Police were forbidden from helping federal troops with immigration law enforcement, including any patrols or investigations.
While the Federal government has claimed that the crackdown in Chicago will decrease crime, Johnson uses decreasing crime rates and the presence of ICE officials to speak to the initiative’s immigration-related motivation. On October 7, federal troops arrived in the city. Both Chicago and the state of Illinois have sued the Trump administration for violation of the Constitution, hoping for a restraining order against federal involvement in the state. In an attempt to limit federal troops’ power in Chicago, Johnson signed another executive order, this time prohibiting ICE officials and federal troops from using city property, including city-owned parking lots, for any purpose related to immigration enforcement. On October 10, a judge upheld Chicago’s case against the Trump administration, and federal troops were prohibited from enforcing immigration regulations in the city for two weeks.
Johnson has further made many inflammatory comments. In January, before the Chicago immigration crackdown was eminent, Johnson declared that “That White House is being ran in one of the most raggedy forms of government that I’ve ever seen. If anybody is questioning whether or not what our country would look like had the Confederacy won, there should be no question now.” He has also publicly commented that Trump considers himself a “Supreme Being” who is above Constitutional law and accused Trump and his followers of being “undocumented individuals who are criminals… who enslaved my people and colonized this land.” Johnson, in a speech at the No Kings protest, compared his enslaved ancestors’ legacy in striking against slave masters during the Civil War era to the people’s current battle against the “ultra-rich and big corporations.”
Rating Explanation: It is clearly not authoritarian for Johnson to challenge Trump in court, so we dismiss any authoritarian claim on that ground. Rather, whether Johnson is behaving in an authoritarian manner largely hinges on whether he is unilaterally usurping authority he does not have while stoking potential conflict with authoritarian-style rhetoric.
This case is complex, as it resides at the intersection of Constitutional powers given to federal and state governments. According to the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, if a state law and federal law conflict, federal law must be upheld in courts. Furthermore, states cannot nullify federal laws, as determined in the landmark court case Cooper vs. Aaron (1958). On the other hand, states are given certain rights in relation to federal laws. According to the anti-commandeering doctrine, states are not required to use their own resources to carry out federal dictates or to comply with federal laws. Thus, Chicago is not required to use its own resources to obey national command by funding and providing resources to federal troops. According to Johnson, since Chicago is a sanctuary city, it does not have to assist in ICE raids and other federal immigration enforcement policies. However, the city cannot prevent federal agents from enforcing federal laws. Several landmark court cases have defined the separation of federal and state rights on the issue of immigration, and they have consistently upheld the supremacy of the federal government over state government. Furthermore, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952 granted the federal government legal authority in determining immigration-related issues. A city can, therefore, not be a sanctuary city to immigrants if the federal government’s policies contradict that upheld in sanctuary cities. In this case, Johnson cannot claim that Trump is violating the Constitution by cracking down on immigration policies in a sanctuary city, and such rhetoric it itself dangerous. While Chicago does not have to finance and support ICE agents, it cannot actively work in opposition against them.
Where does that leave us? Mostly, these are issues for the court to decide, and it is not entirely clear that Johnson is doing anything other than pushing legal boundaries for doing what his constituents want (much like Trump is doing). In the main, Johnson used the correct legal channels to combat the Trump administration’s executive order, suing the administration in court, which resulted in a temporary restraining order against federal troops. That is not authoritarian at all. However, many of Johnson’s actions (like Trump’s) are non-normative and his rhetoric (like Trump’s) is often dangerous. Issuing executive orders contrary to the federal government and forbidding federal troops from using city property to carry out the orders are potentially quite explosive actions to take. And using rhetoric suggesting that the enforcement of Federal law (especially when legal Federal officers are being shot at) is tantamount to Civil War is dangerous — when it is (as is the case here) a false accusation. Thus, the combination of Johnson’s actions and his dangerous rhetoric is worth one warning boot. However, since Johnson is largely using the legal system to defy the federal government, his actions warrant no more for the present.
Author: SEG
Event: Trump claims that US cities could be used as ‘training grounds’ for National Guard, military
Date: September 30, 2025
Authoritarianism Rating: Three Boots.
Right-Wing or Left-Wing: Right Wing.
Description: On September 30, 2025, President Trump, in a meeting with high-ranking US military leaders relayed a conversation he had with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, where he argued that “dangerous cities” could be used as “training grounds for our military…our National Guard, but our military.”
Rating Explanation: One of the major distinguishing marks of a free society from an authoritarian one is that free societies do not use their military on their own citizens. Therefore, merely suggesting an unconstitutional order to unleash the military upon its citizens, apart from a particularly violent insurrection, is extremely dangerous rhetoric. The suggestion of this to the Secretary of War and to the many high-ranking military leaders in the room (and to the whole nation and world to whom this was broadcast) simply goes beyond normal democratic, constitutional, and legal processes. Although we recognize that this was only rhetoric and does not constitute anything remotely like a full deployment of US troops against American citizens, the combination of this extremely dangerous rhetoric with the fact that Trump is aggressively pursuing legal means to deploy the National Guard in US cities easily earns this a three-boot rating.
Author: NDW
Event: Jimmy Kimmel Live! Temporarily Suspended Following Insensitive Comments about Kirk’s Assassination as Free Speech Debate Rages in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
Date: September 17, 2025
Authoritarianism Rating: One boot.
Left-Wing or Right-Wing: Right-Wing.
Description: Television host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel of Jimmy Kimmel Live! responded to Charlie Kirk’s death in a series of politically sarcastic monologues during the program’s airing from September 11- September 16. Responding with shock and sympathy to Kirk’s “senseless murder,” which took place on September 10, Kimmel used Kirk’s death as a launching point for a discussion of political division, with Trump in the crosshairs. The most offensive comment to conservatives was when Kimmel claimed (falsely, as evidence later showed) that conservatives were trying to characterize the shooter as “anything other than one of them.” Following these statements, ABC suspended Kimmel’s program after receiving apparent threats from both Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Nexstar Media Group, which determined that Kimmel’s statements did not reflect the Los Angeles community. Kimmel was invited back to ABC the following week, after Disney+ reported massive streaming service cancellations.
Kimmel’s suspension is not an isolated instance. This is a rather different message than he gave during the 2018 FCC Oversight Hearing in which he called for unbiased media coverage, noting that “the whole purpose of the First Amendment is to encourage strong, robust -- perhaps rough in some situations -- discourse.” Upon Kimmel’s return to ABC, the comedian humorously reflected on the days when Carr supported political satire under the Biden administration. However, Carr noted in an interview after Kimmel’s return that the local broadcasting networks showed agency in defending their communities against major broadcast companies by cancelling a program that did not suit public interests. Nexstar and Sinclair media groups resumed airing Jimmy Kimmel Live! on September 25, with Sinclair demanding that Kimmel directly apologize to the Kirk family.
Rating Explanation: This case hinges largely two separate issues, one about mob authoritarianism and the other about government interference.
(1) Cancel culture can definitely be authoritarian, and that is especially the case when someone loses their livelihood over a cancellation movement. Thus we considered carefully the degree that conservatives merely calling for Kimmel to lose his job as authoritarian. This cancel culture impact must be balanced with the right of consumers to choose their own television shows and speak out against shows they do not like. The key issue is whether the job in question is directly related to the calls for cancellation. Jimmy Kimmel made false and insensitive comments, and that is his right. It is also the right of consumers to turn his show off and say they want him off the air. That is different from the right of consumers to demand a Home Depot employee to be fired for political views irrelevant to her job, or for consumers to demand that Gina Carano’s politics should get her fired from her job at Disney (when her comments were not relevant to her job). In this case, while we find the cries for cancellation to be unnecessary and showing a negative impulse that would better be quashed, they were largely a response to something Kimmel did on his show and are thus directly relevant to his job, and therefore warrant perhaps one boot as a warning to the potential cancel culture mob.
(2) The second issue is government interference. Here we considered additional boots because of the comments of Carr and President Trump as potentially influencing Kimmel’s firing. The Federal Communications Commission does have wide latitude to enforce standards. It is an independent government agency with members appointed by the Senate that operates under the oversight of Congress, ensuring that federal communication laws and regulations are followed by media companies around the United States and its territories. It was formed after the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) was passed in 1972 with the purpose of “national defense…and promoting safety of life and property through the use of wire and radio communications.” As an advisory committee, the FCC can offer advice and insights on communications and media-related issues to political figures in the executive branch, and no more than three out of the five members may be of the same political party. The agency grants licenses for public media broadcasts, which must pursue public interests to receive and maintain media licenses. The Supreme Court has upheld the right of the FCC to impose content restrictions on broadcast companies if they fail to support public interests, though each time the Court has also maintained the importance of protecting First Amendment Rights. That is to say, the FCC has the legal right to retract licenses from or impose fines on broadcast networks that air “indecent material,” and violate “public interest,” though the ambiguity of what constitutes either often results in subjective judgments by the chairman and the other agency members. The Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act (2005) further expanded the FCC’s power to censor indecent media.
What of our current case? The FCC did not directly suspend Jimmy Kimmel Live! from airing. Carr noted in an interview after Kimmel returned to ABC that Nexstar and other major media groups suspended the show for financial reasons (fear as to how the controversial comments would be received in the community), and returned it to air when Disney+, the parent company, suffered a large cancellation of subscriptions. However, Carr’s own comments and Trump’s later comments suggest influence was put forward, which at a minimum is dangerous. Indeed, Carr has previously launched multiple major broadcast network investigations, skirting carefully around Fox News. Further, on September 18, two days after Kimmel’s suspension from ABC, Carr told Fox News that “[broadcast] licenses give networks ‘a unique obligation to operate in the public interest,’” implying that politically untasteful comments on public media programs have no place on air under the FCC. Both Republicans (notably Senator Ted Cruz) and Democrats (notably FCC commissioner Anna Gomez) have expressed concern that Kimmel’s suspension is censorship violating First Amendment Rights. It is hard to make too much of an issue when the person in question got their job back, but a warning boot is in order for this rhetoric combined with a potentially-dangerous pattern from the Trump administration. Authoritarianism Tracker will be watching future Carr actions carefully in this regard.
Author: SEG