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The Department of Government Efficiency is poring over the federal books to find government waste. The office taps into a populist impulse that says that the government is not on your side but on the side of some special interest.

The Department of Government Efficiency is poring over the federal books to find government waste. The office taps into a populist impulse that says that the government is not on your side but on the side of some special interest. Waste is only one of the ways governments get captured for someone else’s benefit, however. There is a target-rich environment for policies that stick it to the little guy. Governments at all levels have them.

The populist impulse is correct, and the country would be better off if elected officials worked across state lines and partisan divides to go after the policies that hurt the regular citizen. Here are state laws that benefit the few and cost the public:

• Occupational licensing rules create barriers to getting a job without improving safety. They increase costs to consumers and protect those who can afford the extra schooling, training and fees.

• State alcohol regulation enriches existing businesses for no public safety benefit.

• Certificate of Need laws require medical providers to get permission from their would-be competitors to open or expand. This increases costs to consumers and limits their options.

Here are some federal policies that harm the little guy and enrich the politically powerful.

• The Jones Act raises costs for the public in order to protect an uncompetitive shipbuilding industry.

• The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative provides Congress a way to hand out taxpayer money to politically approved causes and organizations. It is just one example of a nice-sounding government program that amounts to little else than funneling money from the many to the favored few.

• Federal student loans are designed to transfer money to universities instead of helping students gain credentials to get good-paying jobs. This can be fixed.
Governments pay wealthy people and businesses, sometimes for no good reason at all.

• Professional sports team owners get taxpayers to pay for their stadiums.

• Selective business subsidies are the classic case of handing out money to the politically powerful. States should stop writing big checks to big companies.

• Hollywood producers shift 20% to 35% of the costs of shooting a movie onto taxpayers.

Unions are powerful political interests that have tilted the law to benefit themselves (rather than their members).

• Teachers unions convinced politicians to keep schools closed long after it was clear that Covid-19 posed no threat to children. Parents were left in the lurch, and students are still scrambling to make up the lost learning.

• Home health care workers have their Medicaid payments skimmed by unions, despite not needing or wanting union representation.

• In non-right-to-work states, workers are forced to give unions money as a condition of employment.

Too much of government has been captured by special interests.

• State utility regulation too often delivers expensive and unreliable electricity to ratepayers, despite its stated intent to do the opposite.

• The incumbent government school monopoly throttles attempts to give parents better options and cares more about getting public money than about educating children.

• Green subsidies force people to pay for products that they don’t want to buy in the first place. The market is unsustainable because people don’t want to buy the products without subsidies.

There are plenty of favors that governments hand out. The recipients aren’t normal Americans. They are politically potent interest groups.

One multiclient lobbyist agency advertised its services this way: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” Interest groups tend to hire lobbyists. Regular voters don’t.

It often makes sense for people with a special interest to band together to lobby for policies that give them advantages. It’s less compelling for regular people to join together to fight something that costs each of them only a small amount.

It would be good if the American public focused its cynicism toward the government on these policies. Populist politicians, despite often claiming to help the little guy, hardly seem to notice these unfair policies. Take tariffs: Populists claim to be protecting Americans from foreign trade, but tariffs are just another policy that benefits the few at the expense of the many. Economist Scott Lincicome summed it up well: “Tariffs not only impose immense economic costs but also fail to achieve their primary policy aims and foster political dysfunction along the way.”

American government earns people’s cynicism when lawmakers side with special interest groups and ignore the costs they impose on the rest of us.

If populists persuaded policymakers to get rid of these favors, we’d all be better off.

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James M. Hohman is the director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michael Van Beek is director of research for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

n late February 2025, senior Hamas leader and ex-chairman of its politburo, Mousa Abu Marzouk, said he would not have supported Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel had he known how destructive Israel’s response would have been.

(THE CONVERSATION) — In late February 2025, senior Hamas leader and ex-chairman of its politburo, Mousa Abu Marzouk, said he would not have supported Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel had he known how destructive Israel’s response would have been.

That remarkably frank admission takes on renewed relevance now, just weeks later, after the resumption of Israel’s brutal bombing campaign. Airstrikes since March 18 have already claimed hundreds of Palestinian lives and officially ended a tenuous ceasefire deal.

As an expert on Palestinian politics, I believe the return to active war in the Gaza Strip speaks – on the Palestinian side of the equation – to the ongoing gross power imbalance of Hamas’ military position vis-a-vis Israel, and the group’s lack of strategic foresight in failing to anticipate the apparent willingness of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to return to fighting.

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Asymmetrical ‘peacefare’

It is no secret that Netanyahu and his coalition partners showed little interest in fully implementing the ceasefire deal that was in part brokered by Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and signed on Jan. 19.

The deal was split into two main phases followed by a post-conflict reconstruction phase.

In the first round, Hamas freed Israeli hostages in return for the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and the resumption of aid into Gaza. After that, a second round of negotiations was intended to see the release of all remaining Israel hostages in Hamas custody in exchange for the total withdrawal of Israel’s forces from Gaza – and an end to the war.

But from the beginning, there were widespread concerns that Netanyahu would not be able to deliver on the second phase of the ceasefire deal – and speculation that he had no personal or political intentions of doing so.

The Trump administration essentially took the same position. Statements by the U.S. president expressing a desire to take over Gaza – with the accompanying implication that Palestinians living there would have to leave – underscored the lack of commitment to the second phase of the ceasefire.

Hamas was aware of these realities. But the militant governing authority seemingly felt it had little other option than to pursue the terms of the ceasefire while holding onto the only source of leverage it still had – the remaining Israeli hostages, believed to consist of about 59 people with perhaps less than half of them still alive. Indeed, that leverage was tied to seeing through the second stage of a ceasefire.

Of course, part of Hamas’ interest in the ceasefire was that it offered the group the chance to remain in power while delivering to Hamas the opportunity of boasting that it had secured the release of thousands of jailed Palestinians.

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A lack of strategic foresight

But despite Hamas’ obvious disadvantages during the ceasefire, it’s important to focus on how the group significantly failed to appreciate several external factors.

For one, Hamas leaders appeared to believe, for a number of reasons, that they had more time to negotiate than they did. That belief relied in part on the understanding that Israeli public opinion polls indicated that a majority of the public favors an end to the war in exchange for freeing all Israeli hostages in one package.

Moreover, Adam Boehler, Trump’s hostage envoy, had recently opened up a direct communication channel between the U.S. and Hamas – something that hadn’t happened for decades – over the release of dual U.S.-Israel citizen Edan Alexander.

And in the days running up the resumption of fighting, Hamas and Israel officials had been meeting with U.S., Qatari and Egyptian counterparts, where they were discussing a proposal to extend the first phase through the end of Ramadan while negotiations continued over the final stage.

Yet others were seemingly aware that the ceasefire was on borrowed time. U.S. envoy Witkoff, in blaming Hamas for allegedly balking at the extension proposal – something Hamas denies – explicitly noted on March 14: “Hamas is making a very bad bet that time is on its side. It is not.”

Hamas also appeared to have miscalculated the political situation in Israel. It seemingly read too much into the fractures within the Israeli security establishment, including Netanyahu’s intent to fire the chief of Israel’s internal security agency, Ronen Bar – seeing in these developments signs that Gaza was immune from any immediate resumption to the fighting amid internal Israeli splits.

But far from signaling a short-term weakness, Netanyahu’s security shake-ups have merely removed dissenting voices.

Finally, Hamas let its own limited success go to its head. It emerged from the initial ceasefire able to present the group as triumphant as a fighting force that had still not been vanquished and could force Israel to the negotiating table. That was on full display through its media machine during the six weeks of handovers of Israeli hostages, in which Hamas’ repeated propaganda displays during hostage handovers angered Israeli public opinion, as well as Israeli political and security officials.

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Growing rift

Where things go from here is hard to predict. For now, Netanyahu appears all too happy to return to a full-scale war that keeps his far-right coalition members happy, makes new elections less likely and keeps him safe from the looming criminal charges he would have to face once out of office.

Yet for all of the suffering for ordinary Palestinians that war guarantees, Hamas appears more adrift than ever. There remains a clear rift between its political leadership – based in Qatar and Turkey – who are more interested in diplomacy, and the head of the military wing in Gaza, Mohammed Sinwar, whose brother Yahya – mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks – was killed by Israel last fall.

But aside from a desire for revenge against Israel and remaining the primary power broker in Gaza, Hamas has consistently struggled to articulate an achievable long-term strategy for alleviating the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. The resumption of the war is unlikely to change that.

George III, king of Great Britain and its colonies at the time of the American Revolution, has been maligned unfairly.

(THE CONVERSATION) — George III, king of Great Britain and its colonies at the time of the American Revolution, has been maligned unfairly.

During both the first and now the second term of President Donald Trump, commentators in the U.S. have invoked the king’s misdeeds to criticize Trump. When the president bypassed Congress to create a new government agency, appointed its head and stopped payment of millions of dollars of allocated federal funds, his critics noted that he assumed the role of Congress, a power grab that supposedly made him similar to George III. According to this criticism, the president engaged in tyranny, just as the founders accused George of doing.

As a scholar of early America, I believe, however, that George III has gotten a bad rap. He was not the all-powerful monarch that Trump allegedly aspires to be.

In the 1770s, the power of the British king was limited by the authority of Parliament. In that system, which Americans and others praised at the time as balanced, the king and the legislature each had specific duties and powers so that neither could control the government alone.

George III was not an absolutist monarch, to use the language of the day for a power-hungry ruler. The English had struggled in the previous century over the extent of the king’s power. After fighting two civil wars, executing one king, and, eventually, forcing the monarch to agree to rule with Parliament rather than on his own, they believed their liberties were safeguarded.

This system, known as limited monarchy, was the pride of Great Britain. It was also admired by the American founders. As late as 1774, in his Summary View of the Rights of British America, Thomas Jefferson praised the “free and ancient principles” of the British constitution in which “kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people.”

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No kingly tyranny

Britons, whether in Great Britain or the colonies, did fear a tyrant, a controlling and abusive leader.

Some fears came from their study of political theory, which taught that government worked best when composed of various branches that represented the concerns of the different political classes.

As this theory went, an unbalanced government would descend into tyranny with a too-powerful monarch; oligarchy under a dominant aristocratic class; or anarchy with the people out of control. They believed these perils could be avoided only by maintaining balance.

Even though the British did not fear imbalance or a tyrant king in their own case, they could see the danger threatening elsewhere in Europe.

France represented a worst-case scenario. Its absolutist kings had ruled without France’s legislature – the Estates General – for more than a century and a half at the time of the American Revolution. British poet Robert Wolseley’s often reprinted poem declared: “Let France grow proud beneath the tyrant’s lust, While the rackt people crawl and lick the dust. The mighty Genius of this isle disdains Ambitious slavery and golden chains.”

Within a few years, Anglo-American criticism of kingly tyranny in France would be validated: That country descended into a violent revolution that resulted in decades of warfare and political violence, including the execution of the entire royal family.

This experience confirmed for the British and Americans that a balanced system was best and that they should count their blessings.

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Why revolt?

If the American revolutionaries admired the British system and sought to copy it in the United States, why did they reject the link to Britain and revolt in the first place?

Americans did not revolt against the nature of British government. Rather they objected to their changing place within the British Empire. The revolutionary crisis had a number of roots, but most of them arose out of changes in the management of the relationship between the American Colonies and the imperial center.

From the 1760s, the British government took a more activist role in its American Colonies, limiting their geographical expansion and imposing taxes directly on the population. In the past, Colonists had been free to move west, challenged only by the indigenous residents who fought to defend their lands.

Now the British government, aiming to put an end to these wars, blocked expansion. At the same time, to pay down the debt accrued in recent war with France – and fought in part in North America – the government levied taxes not via the Colonial legislatures, as it had before, but directly on residents. This change sparked revolt and, eventually, revolution.

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Turning on the king

Before 1776, the Colonists believed that George III would come to their rescue and halt these changes imposed by Parliament. They thought initially that he did not realize how the new policies affected them.

Only in 1776 did they accept that George III supported the policy changes and would not defend their rights. It was in that context that they turned on him and declared him tyrannical, blaming him for the new policies and calling for a break with Britain. As the Declaration of Independence said: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”

Although they complained about the tyranny of George III, their true objection was that their subordinate position within the empire gave them little leverage when opposing policies that king and Parliament agreed to impose on them.

Once independent, the founders created a system that imitated the British model of mixed governance and created barriers – the powers of Congress and the oversight of the Supreme Court – that they hoped would safeguard their liberties against the threat of renewed tyranny.

President Donald Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act on March 15, 2025, and deported about 200 Venezuelan immigrants his administration alleged have ties to a Venezuelan gang.

By Cassandra Burke Robertson
Case Western Reserve University

(THE CONVERSATION) — President Donald Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act on March 15, 2025, and deported about 200 Venezuelan immigrants his administration alleged have ties to a Venezuelan gang. U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg verbally issued an order that same day telling the government that the planes carrying the deportees must return to the United States.

The U.S. government, though, allowed the flights to continue and for the Venezuelans to be detained at a facility in El Salvador infamous for its mistreatment of prisoners.

The subsequent legal back-and-forth, which is still going on, intensified so quickly and dramatically that many legal scholars say the U.S. is past the point of a constitutional crisis, as the Trump administration appears to be defying a federal court order, for which Boasberg may hold the government in contempt. Trump has also called for Boasberg to be impeached. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts then issued a rare public statement that day rejecting Trump’s statement.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in a written statement on March 18.

Amy Lieberman, a politics and society editor at The Conversation U.S., posed a few questions to Cassandra Burke Robertson, a scholar of civil proceedings and legal ethics, to break down some of the dynamics of this complex, evolving case.

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Is it rare for a Supreme Court justice to weigh in on politicians’ activities or statements?

It’s uncommon for a Supreme Court justice to publicly contradict a president. Roberts has typically shown great respect for the separation of powers between branches of government. He has also consistently recognized that presidents have broad authority to run the federal government.

However, this isn’t the first time Roberts has spoken up to protect judicial independence. During Trump’s first term in 2018, the president criticized rulings as coming from “Obama judges.” Roberts responded publicly, and said, “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

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Why is Roberts’ statement of note, and what influence does he have in this situation?

Roberts leads the U.S. Supreme Court. He also oversees all federal courts across the country.

Roberts takes this leadership role very seriously. He has been willing to speak up when he believes something threatens judicial operations and independence.

Since Roberts was confirmed as chief justice in 2005, he has often spoken publicly about why judges need to remain independent from political pressure. He has pointed out four main threats to judges’ independence: “violence, intimidation, disinformation and threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.”

When Roberts makes a public statement, it carries weight because he speaks as the top judicial officer in the country. His words are a reminder about the importance of keeping courts free from political interference.

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What is most important for people to understand about the Alien Enemies Act case that Judge Boasberg is currently considering?

First, Trump is using a rarely used wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act. This law allows for deportations during a time of war without the normal legal protections like court hearings. Some legal experts argue that Trump doesn’t have the authority to use this law since the U.S. isn’t officially at war with Venezuela or with the gang the administration has cited, Tren de Aragua. They worry that invoking the Alien Enemies Act inappropriately expands presidential power beyond constitutional limits and could be misused to target other immigrant groups.

Second, Boasberg ordered a stop to these deportations on March 15. But the Trump administration went ahead with the deportations anyway. It later claimed it did not violate the judge’s order because the planes were over international waters.
Under our legal system, the executive branch must obey valid court orders. This case raises concerns about whether the president is respecting the authority of the courts.

Third, Trump has publicly called for Boasberg to be impeached, saying the judge overstepped his authority by ruling against the president’s actions. There’s no evidence that Boasberg acted corruptly or improperly – he simply made a legal ruling the president disagreed with.

The case touches on fundamental questions about the balance of power between presidents and courts, and what happens when an administration chooses not to follow a judge’s orders. This confrontation between branches represents one of the most direct challenges to judicial authority by a president in American history.

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What would it take for a judge to be impeached, and what is the precedent for doing so, based on disagreements about a case?

Federal judges can only be impeached by Congress for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” That generally means serious wrongdoing, not just making unpopular decisions.

The impeachment process for judges works just like it does for presidents.

First, the House of Representatives votes to impeach, needing just a simple majority. Then, the Senate holds a trial where a two-thirds majority is needed to remove the judge.

Only 15 federal judges have ever been impeached in the U.S., and of those, only eight were convicted by the Senate.

The only two judicial impeachments during this century involved very serious misconduct – including a judge who lied about sexually abusing two female employees in 2009.

Only judges who have serious misconduct have been impeached and removed from office – not those involved in cases of political disagreements about judicial decisions.

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What are the most important legal and ethical questions that this case raises?

This case raises important questions about the rule of law in the U.S. A key American belief is that no one, not even the president, is above the law. As Thomas Paine famously wrote in 1776, “In America, the law is king.”

This doesn’t mean every court decision is always right. That’s why the legal system has appellate courts, as Roberts pointed out – so decisions people disagree with can be challenged through an appeal in proper channels. My scholarly research on the right to appeal explores how this process serves as a crucial safeguard in the country’s legal system.

Twenty years ago, Roberts also stressed how important the rule of law is, saying it “protects the rights and liberties of all Americans.”

When a government chooses to ignore court orders instead of appealing them through the legal system, it creates a serious threat to this principle. The current situation raises concerns about whether the federal government will continue to respect the boundaries established by the Constitution in the country’s legal system.

Florida, the “Sunshine State,” once known as a beacon of government transparency, is growing ever darker, and the clouds are spreading throughout the United States.

(THE CONVERSATION) — Florida, the “Sunshine State,” once known as a beacon of government transparency, is growing ever darker, and the clouds are spreading throughout the United States.

From March 16-22, 2025, the nation celebrates the 20th anniversary of national Sunshine Week, which originated in Florida, historically home to the most transparent and accountable governments in the country.

Times have changed.

At the University of Florida Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project, my colleagues and I have researched and taught about the freedom of information since 1977. We monitor the state of open, accountable government, and our research findings do not bode well for democracy – in Florida and throughout the U.S.

But first, let’s look back to sunnier days.

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Sun rises

Florida enacted its first version of a public records law in 1909, the sixth state to do so. The movement was led by Nebraska in 1866 and Montana in 1895. Florida’s law was repealed in the 1950s and then returned in 1967 as the Sunshine Law.

“Sunshine” was equated with the state’s nickname but also the concept of government transparency – lighting the dark recesses of secrecy. The Sunshine Law also played on a famous quote by former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis that “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”

Something unique happened in Florida then. Transparency took hold.

Journalists such as Pete Weitzel at the Miami Herald pushed hard for governments to operate more transparently, building momentum through the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. They and other media groups helped launch, with US$11,000, the Florida Freedom of Information Clearinghouse in 1977 at the University of Florida. The journalism college assigned a professor and grad student to monitor public record denials, open meeting closures and court cases, and to alert newspaper editors to secrecy legislation. This effort created a culture of transparency, including among elected leaders.

Journalists successfully pushed for a constitutional amendment in the early 1990s, which required transparency across the state and required a two-thirds vote from the state Legislature to adopt exemptions to the law.

Several provisions of Florida public records law stood out:

• Attorney fee-shifting is mandatory. If a citizen is denied government information, sues and prevails, the agency is required to pay the person’s attorney fees. Our research indicates that this is one of the most important elements in public record laws to encourage compliance.

• The definition of a public record is broad, even applying to documents created by a private person or contractor acting on behalf of the government. Applying the law to private actors is unique in the U.S., and even in the world.

• Governing bodies face strict requirements to deliberate in public. Just two officials communicating with each other constitutes an official meeting and must be announced ahead of time, allowing for public attendance. Most states require a quorum, or majority, of the governing body to be considered an official meeting.

The nonprofit Florida First Amendment Foundation was launched in 1985 to promote government transparency and hired its first paid employee, Barbara Petersen, in 1995, to monitor secrecy legislation, train public employees and aid people trying to get information. The organization banded with the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors to create Sunshine Sunday each March to promote the right to know. This event went national in 2005 as Sunshine Week.

All these factors led Florida to become known as the most transparent state in the nation.

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Increasing clouds

Fast forward to 2025, and we see an entirely different climate in Florida.

The decline of newspapers has meant fewer reporters pushing for records, fewer editors advocating for transparency, and fewer owners suing government agencies.

Copy charges related to getting public records create barriers for average citizens. Research shows that providing fee waivers would increase accessibility without significant costs.

Through the years, legislators became emboldened to pass more exemptions to the Florida Sunshine Law – more than 1,100 and growing. Some of those exemptions were focused on protecting personal privacy – for example, in reaction to journalists requesting the autopsy file of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt after his 2001 death.

Fear of terrorists following 9/11 led to a flurry of exemptions, such as hiding records about crop dusters to prevent al-Qaida from hijacking planes to spread anthrax.

Companies profiting from public records sparked another backlash. For example, some companies acquired public mugshots, posted them online and allowed people to have them removed for a price. Some attorneys gamed the fee-shifting provision, submitting public record requests that would be difficult to fulfill, sued immediately and then settled with agencies for thousands of dollars.

Elected leaders turned against transparency, Petersen, who now directs the Florida Center for Government Accountability, told me recently. One of the prominent examples she points to is Gov. Ron DeSantis’ refusal to disclose his travel expense records.

I hear it every week – calls from journalists and others stymied by state and local government agencies. They often cite high copy fees for public records, claims of exemptions and outright ghosting by agencies. One reporter encountered Miami city commissioners sworn in at a private ceremony. Another challenged Tallahassee police refusing to provide information about an officer-involved shooting. A college journalism student was told she had to pay $1,665 for records about Florida dams that could fail and ended up pleading with the government to “free the dam records.”

One of my studies from 2019 indicated that, on average, if you requested a public record in Florida, you would receive it about 39% of the time. That placed the state 31st in the nation, the bottom half.
More recent data from the nonprofit MuckRock reports Florida’s percentage declining – as of February 2025, to 35%.

Bobby Block, current director of the Florida First Amendment Foundation, wrote in February that “There was a time when Florida set the gold standard for open government. … Those days are over.”

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Not just Florida

Florida is reflective of a national trend – a secrecy creep spreading throughout the country, culminating in transparency deserts in cities big and small.

The United States is losing its reputation as a leader in open, accountable government. Its federal Freedom of Information Act, often known as FOIA, ranks 78th in strength out of 140 nations, and continuously drops as new countries adopt better laws. An information commissioner from Africa told me a few months ago that he and his colleagues laugh at the United States’ weak FOIA law, referring to it as a
“toothless poodle.”

On average, according to our research, if you asked for a public record in America 10 years ago, you would get it about half the time. Now, it’s down to about a third of the time, and just 12% at the federal level.

Even the U.S. Department of Justice’s own statistics show a similar decline in full release of records, and the average response time has nearly doubled over the same period, from 21 to 40 days.

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What happens when compliance reaches 0%?

Aside from the ramifications on democracy itself, every American will feel the pain in their pocketbooks and everyday lives.

Studies show that public record laws lead to cleaner drinking water, safer restaurants, better-informed school choice, less corruption, saved tax dollars and a lower chance of sex offenders reoffending.

According to Stanford economist James Hamilton, for every dollar spent on public-records journalism, society benefits $287 in saved lives and more efficient government.

Some transparency advocates have raised the alarm on actions taken by the new Trump administration, such as the removal of agency websites, the firing of FOIA staff and the dismantling of the Open Government Federal Advisory Committee.

It is likely these efforts will escalate the secrecy creep and allow it to trickle down to the state and local levels. It is important to note, though, that declining transparency is a long-term trend that transcends any one president or political party. The federal government reached its absolute low in full compliance with FOIA last year, under the Biden administration.

It’s easy to point fingers at one politician, but perhaps wiser to look at the entire system, which many scholars say is broken and should be reimagined.

German sociologist Max Weber posited that secrecy is the natural tendency for bureaucracy if left unchecked. For decades, news companies, particularly in Florida, pushed back against that secrecy through public pressure and litigation.

With that opposing force weakened, if not disappearing, what or who will replace it?

Nonprofit groups have filled some of the gap, and independent online news sites are growing and enforcing public record laws.

But will it be enough? Ultimately, it is up to the citizenry. If the people don’t cherish and demand transparent government, then the politicians certainly won’t, whether in Florida or the rest of the country.

Like many other news organizations, The Associated Press maintains a “live updates” page, which posts the latest from the Trump administration in a ticker tape-like live scroll, with multiple updates per hour, 12 hours a day.

(THE CONVERSATION) — Like many other news organizations, The Associated Press maintains a “live updates” page, which posts the latest from the Trump administration in a ticker tape-like live scroll, with multiple updates per hour, 12 hours a day.

President Donald Trump has kept the ticker busy.

“Trump is moving with light speed and brute force to break the existing order and reshape America at home and abroad,” an Associated Press reporter wrote on Feb. 22, 2025.

Many Americans find the amount and pace of news exhausting, confusing and overwhelming.

“How do you push back against a tidal wave?” political communication expert Dannagal Young wrote of this media phenomenon on Feb. 21. “You can’t.”

I study the relationship between communication and democracy. I teach university classes on propaganda, presidential communication and the dark arts of communication, and I’m the author of an award-winning 2020 book on Trump’s communication strategies.

Deliberately overwhelming people with a flood of news content is a propaganda strategy used by authoritarians like Russian President Vladimir Putin to distort reality and prevent people from clearly evaluating their government’s actions.

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Trump communicates more than ‘The Great Communicator’

When Ronald Reagan’s first term as president began in 1981, several prominent political scientists noted in an analysis that a “week scarcely goes by without at least one major news story devoted to coverage of a radio or TV speech, an address to Congress, a speech to a convention, a press conference, a news release, or some other presidential utterance.”

It’s hard to believe that Reagan’s presidential communication only attracted one major news story per week, especially since he is often called “the Great Communicator.”

The 1980s had a slower, pre-digital news environment than that of the current day, to be sure. But Trump is also simply generating a lot more news content than Reagan did.

Today, Trump’s frequent press conferences, news releases, social media posts and other appearances and offhand remarks generate a constant flow of new stories and social media posts each day.

The proliferation of cellphones and social media allows many people to follow the news throughout the day. People, in return, expect the president and other politicians to talk to the public constantly and often berate them when they fail to meet that expectation and go silent.

In fact, Trump is generating a lot more media content in his second term than he did in his first.

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Trump’s intensified communication strategy

Reagan averaged about 5.8 news conferences per year. Trump averaged 22 per year in his first term, according to data collected by a nonpartisan group at the University of California Santa Barbara called the American Presidency Project. Former President Joe Biden averaged 9.25 per year.

Trump has already had 18 press gaggles or press conferences since taking office in January 2025.

A news analysis conducted by National Journal White House reporter George Condon showed that Trump has already answered more than 1,000 questions from reporters since he returned to office, which is nearly five times more questions than he answered at this point in his first presidency.

Trump has also made a lot of news by issuing almost 90 executive orders, which he has used both as a strategy for exercising executive power over issues like foreign aid and as a strategy for attracting media coverage.

Reagan issued 50 executive orders in his first year in office in 1981. Trump issued 72 executive orders within his first 30 days in 2025. That’s more executive orders than any previous president has issued in their first month over the last 40 years, including himself. He only issued 33 at this point in his first term in 2017.

Trump’s media strategy in his second term appears to intensify the approach he used in his first term. During Trump’s first term, according to The New York Times, “Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals.”

As former Trump aide and current host of the show “War Room” Steve Bannon said in 2018, “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

In 2025, in order to win the day’s news coverage, Trump is flooding the media with an unrelenting tidal wave of news content to dominate and vanquish the zone.

This strategy is evident in the Oval Office executive order signing events. Trump literally makes news by signing a large piece of paper in front of cameras and reporters. These events are carefully staged political theater for media consumption in which Trump casts himself as the nation’s hero protecting it from foreign invasions, diversity programs or paper straws.

Many of Trump’s executive orders are facing legal challenges, and some have been shot down by federal judges. Nonetheless, it is the spectacle of signing the orders that I, as a communications scholar, believe is designed to win the day – they are effective at generating news coverage and making Trump look powerful.

“Trump, as we know from this first month, is the most news-making person to occupy the Oval Office I’ve ever seen,” said New York Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn on Feb. 27.

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A strategy of control

Media scholar Marshall McLuhan famously argued in 1964 that “The medium is the message.” Likewise, with Trump, the communication strategy is the message.

Communication is a tool. It can be used to promote democracy or to erode it. Any politician’s communication strategy reveals, at least in part, how they think about governing, power and democracy. Some political leaders communicate in ways that encourage people to ask questions and use their reason and critical thinking skills to evaluate public policies.

Other political leaders use communication in undemocratic ways to manipulate and coerce, preventing citizens from using their reason and critical thinking skills to evaluate policies.

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What does Trump’s tidal wave of news content say about how he thinks about governing, power and democracy?

As a media and governing strategy, I think that creating an unrelenting tidal wave of content is designed to enable Trump to attract and keep the nation’s attention on himself and – in the process, drown out other voices.

This method overwhelms the media and exhausts many Americans who cannot easily absorb so much information at once.

And the tidal wave strategy prevents the public from scrutinizing the president’s actions – because no one can push back against a tidal wave.