PRA observes in this issue that “we’ve witnessed a sweeping escalation of authoritarian attacks” during Trump 2.0’s first 100 days, ranging from efforts to gut the social state and consolidate executive power to those targeting marginalized groups and our right to dissent. And as this issue goes to press, the regime is unleashing military force on protestors to quash a popular uprising against ICE’s paramilitary raids.
At a time when our communities and social movements face intensifying repression, this Summer 2025 issue dissects Trump 2.0 and the antidemocratic reaction. Our contributors’ analyses offer strategic insights by surfacing Trump 2.0’s tensions and contradictions to inform broad-based resistance and pro-democracy organizing.
In “Trump 2.0’s First 100 Days”, PRA’s researchers offer their assessment of the regime’s unfolding agenda in a few key areas to watch: Christian Zionism’s influence, anti-Palestinian state repression, anti-immigrant policing and deportations, and anti-gender policies attacking LGBTQ rights and reproductive justice.
Our next feature powerfully outlines the forces behind this agenda. In an essay adapted from her new book, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, investigative journalist Katherine Stewart surveys the antidemocratic reaction’s alliance of billionaire funders, pseudo-intellectuals, Christian nationalist networks, MAGA activists, and more. As Stewart writes, “The movement is at war with itself even as it wages war on the rest of us”—and in this, she finds hope for dividing and opposing it.
In our last feature, scholar Faith Lazar traces the Far Right’s changing relationship with the FBI, revealing how MAGA’s “Deep State” narrative is the latest form of a decades-long tradition of selective anti-statism. As Lazar argues, “The MAGA Right’s supposed rebellion is less a break than a power struggle within an antidemocratic framework that enables the security state’s continued expansion while dismantling the redistributive state.”
Ending public provision is central to efforts to expand the president’s authority, as Matthew N. Lyons maintains in this issue’s commentary on the neoreactionary movement behind DOGE. Lyons argues that DOGE’s role in Trump’s power grab signals important changes in his political project and differences within his coalition that antifascists can exploit.
Our two Q&As are online exclusives. Neil J. Young, author of Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right,speaks with PRA online editor J. Gieseking about how the shifting politics of gay Republicans helped lay the groundwork for Trumpism. And Quinn Slobodian talks with Public Eye editor Kitana Ananda about the neoliberal frontlash and return of “race science” fueling today’s Far Right, the subject of his latest book, Hayek’s Bastards: Race, IQ, Gold, and the Capitalism of the Far Right.
Our cover features a beautiful illustration by artist and cultural organizer Micah Bazant. In The Art of Activism, they speak with PRA about how they interpreted the issue’s theme and the inspiration for their work.
As always, between print issues of The Public Eye, visit politicalresearch.org and religiondispatches.org for more of PRA’s research and reporting on the Right.
