Warring for the US Institute of Peace

MAGA’s counter-revolutionary war has many fronts:

• state patronage for billionaires;

• building up the permanent war economy;

• purging the federal workforce;

• ICE raids and expanding the net of expulsion;

• criminalizing peace protests;

• a siege on the US university system, which, in theory, is the key to economic mobility in America;

• facilitating the physical territorial breakup of US territory while trying to acquire new territory abroad; and

• a tariff regime that, taken with the other steps, will crash the economy, giving wealth-hoarders firesale prices to buy up distressed assets.

It is perhaps inevitable that this war would eventually extend to the US Institute of Peace (USIP), but it’s surprising that it happened so quickly. You might be forgiven for not hearing much about the legal, political, and even physical struggle for USIP that’s been happening this month, but the story represents an alarming escalation in the Trump administration’s abuse of power.