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Debating the 1960s: Liberal, Conservative, and Radical Perspectives

Steigerwald, David

The conventional interpretation of the 1960s emphasizes how liberal, even radical, the decade was. It was, after all, the age of mass protests against the Vietnam War and social movements on behalf of civil rights and women's rights. It was also an era when the counterculture challenged many of the values and beliefs held by morally traditional Americans. But a newer interpretation stresses how truly polarized the 1960s were. It portrays how radicals, liberals, and conservatives repeatedly clashed in ideological combat for the hearts and minds of Americans. Millions in the center and on the right contested the counterculture, defended the Vietnam War, and opposed civil rights. Debating the 1960s explores the decade through the arguments and controversies between radicals, liberals, and conservatives. The focus is on four main areas of contention: social welfare; civil rights; foreign relations; and social order. The book also examines the emergence of the New Left and the modern conservative movement. Finally, it assesses the enduring importance of the 1960s on contemporary American politics and society. Combining analytical essays and historical documents, the book highlights the polarization of the decade by focusing on the political, social, and cultural debates that divided the nation then and now.

The book does not present the 1960s as radical or liberal, as many others have. Instead, it introduces the conservative perspective and highlights the polarization of the decade by focusing on the political, cultural, and social debates that divided the nation then and now. No other book on the market directly addresses the debates of the era - as opposed to the events - which continue to influence contemporary controversies.

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Civil Rights Movement

By: History.com Editors

Updated: January 22, 2024 | Original: October 27, 2009

The civil rights movement was a struggle for social justice that took place mainly during the 1950s and 1960s for Black Americans to gain equal rights under the law in the United States. The Civil War officially abolished slavery , but it didn’t end discrimination against Black people—they continued to endure the devastating effects of racism, especially in the South. By the mid-20th century, Black Americans, along with many other Americans, mobilized and began an unprecedented fight for equality that spanned two decades.

Jim Crow Laws

During Reconstruction , Black people took on leadership roles like never before. They held public office and sought legislative changes for equality and the right to vote.

In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution gave Black people equal protection under the law. In 1870, the 15th Amendment granted Black American men the right to vote. Still, many white Americans, especially those in the South, were unhappy that people they’d once enslaved were now on a more-or-less equal playing field.

To marginalize Black people, keep them separate from white people and erase the progress they’d made during Reconstruction, “ Jim Crow ” laws were established in the South beginning in the late 19th century. Black people couldn’t use the same public facilities as white people, live in many of the same towns or go to the same schools. Interracial marriage was illegal, and most Black people couldn’t vote because they were unable to pass voter literacy tests.

Jim Crow laws weren’t adopted in northern states; however, Black people still experienced discrimination at their jobs or when they tried to buy a house or get an education. To make matters worse, laws were passed in some states to limit voting rights for Black Americans.

Moreover, southern segregation gained ground in 1896 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Plessy v. Ferguson that facilities for Black and white people could be “separate but equal."

World War II and Civil Rights

Prior to World War II , most Black people worked as low-wage farmers, factory workers, domestics or servants. By the early 1940s, war-related work was booming, but most Black Americans weren’t given better-paying jobs. They were also discouraged from joining the military.

After thousands of Black people threatened to march on Washington to demand equal employment rights, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941. It opened national defense jobs and other government jobs to all Americans regardless of race, creed, color or national origin.

Black men and women served heroically in World War II, despite suffering segregation and discrimination during their deployment. The Tuskegee Airmen broke the racial barrier to become the first Black military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps and earned more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses. Yet many Black veterans were met with prejudice and scorn upon returning home. This was a stark contrast to why America had entered the war to begin with—to defend freedom and democracy in the world.

As the Cold War began, President Harry Truman initiated a civil rights agenda, and in 1948 issued Executive Order 9981 to end discrimination in the military. These events helped set the stage for grass-roots initiatives to enact racial equality legislation and incite the civil rights movement.

On December 1, 1955, a 42-year-old woman named Rosa Parks found a seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus after work. Segregation laws at the time stated Black passengers must sit in designated seats at the back of the bus, and Parks complied.

When a white man got on the bus and couldn’t find a seat in the white section at the front of the bus, the bus driver instructed Parks and three other Black passengers to give up their seats. Parks refused and was arrested.

As word of her arrest ignited outrage and support, Parks unwittingly became the “mother of the modern-day civil rights movement.” Black community leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) led by Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr ., a role which would place him front and center in the fight for civil rights.

Parks’ courage incited the MIA to stage a boycott of the Montgomery bus system . The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 381 days. On November 14, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating was unconstitutional. 

Little Rock Nine

In 1954, the civil rights movement gained momentum when the United States Supreme Court made segregation illegal in public schools in the case of Brown v. Board of Education . In 1957, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas asked for volunteers from all-Black high schools to attend the formerly segregated school.

On September 4, 1957, nine Black students, known as the Little Rock Nine , arrived at Central High School to begin classes but were instead met by the Arkansas National Guard (on order of Governor Orval Faubus) and a screaming, threatening mob. The Little Rock Nine tried again a couple of weeks later and made it inside, but had to be removed for their safety when violence ensued.

Finally, President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened and ordered federal troops to escort the Little Rock Nine to and from classes at Central High. Still, the students faced continual harassment and prejudice.

Their efforts, however, brought much-needed attention to the issue of desegregation and fueled protests on both sides of the issue.

Civil Rights Act of 1957

Even though all Americans had gained the right to vote, many southern states made it difficult for Black citizens. They often required prospective voters of color to take literacy tests that were confusing, misleading and nearly impossible to pass.

Wanting to show a commitment to the civil rights movement and minimize racial tensions in the South, the Eisenhower administration pressured Congress to consider new civil rights legislation.

On September 9, 1957, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law, the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It allowed federal prosecution of anyone who tried to prevent someone from voting. It also created a commission to investigate voter fraud.

Sit-In at Woolworth's Lunch Counter

Despite making some gains, Black Americans still experienced blatant prejudice in their daily lives. On February 1, 1960, four college students took a stand against segregation in Greensboro, North Carolina when they refused to leave a Woolworth’s lunch counter without being served.

Over the next several days, hundreds of people joined their cause in what became known as the Greensboro sit-ins. After some were arrested and charged with trespassing, protesters launched a boycott of all segregated lunch counters until the owners caved and the original four students were finally served at the Woolworth’s lunch counter where they’d first stood their ground.

Their efforts spearheaded peaceful sit-ins and demonstrations in dozens of cities and helped launch the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to encourage all students to get involved in the civil rights movement. It also caught the eye of young college graduate Stokely Carmichael , who joined the SNCC during the Freedom Summer of 1964 to register Black voters in Mississippi. In 1966, Carmichael became the chair of the SNCC, giving his famous speech in which he originated the phrase "Black power.”

Freedom Riders

On May 4, 1961, 13 “ Freedom Riders ”—seven Black and six white activists–mounted a Greyhound bus in Washington, D.C. , embarking on a bus tour of the American south to protest segregated bus terminals. They were testing the 1960 decision by the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia that declared the segregation of interstate transportation facilities unconstitutional.

Facing violence from both police officers and white protesters, the Freedom Rides drew international attention. On Mother’s Day 1961, the bus reached Anniston, Alabama, where a mob mounted the bus and threw a bomb into it. The Freedom Riders escaped the burning bus but were badly beaten. Photos of the bus engulfed in flames were widely circulated, and the group could not find a bus driver to take them further. U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (brother to President John F. Kennedy ) negotiated with Alabama Governor John Patterson to find a suitable driver, and the Freedom Riders resumed their journey under police escort on May 20. But the officers left the group once they reached Montgomery, where a white mob brutally attacked the bus. Attorney General Kennedy responded to the riders—and a call from Martin Luther King Jr.—by sending federal marshals to Montgomery.

On May 24, 1961, a group of Freedom Riders reached Jackson, Mississippi. Though met with hundreds of supporters, the group was arrested for trespassing in a “whites-only” facility and sentenced to 30 days in jail. Attorneys for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ) brought the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed the convictions. Hundreds of new Freedom Riders were drawn to the cause, and the rides continued.

In the fall of 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals

March on Washington

Arguably one of the most famous events of the civil rights movement took place on August 28, 1963: the March on Washington . It was organized and attended by civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph , Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr.

More than 200,000 people of all races congregated in Washington, D. C. for the peaceful march with the main purpose of forcing civil rights legislation and establishing job equality for everyone. The highlight of the march was King’s speech in which he continually stated, “I have a dream…”

King’s “ I Have a Dream” speech galvanized the national civil rights movement and became a slogan for equality and freedom.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 —legislation initiated by President John F. Kennedy before his assassination —into law on July 2 of that year.

King and other civil rights activists witnessed the signing. The law guaranteed equal employment for all, limited the use of voter literacy tests and allowed federal authorities to ensure public facilities were integrated.

Bloody Sunday

On March 7, 1965, the civil rights movement in Alabama took an especially violent turn as 600 peaceful demonstrators participated in the Selma to Montgomery march to protest the killing of Black civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by a white police officer and to encourage legislation to enforce the 15th amendment.

As the protesters neared the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were blocked by Alabama state and local police sent by Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, a vocal opponent of desegregation. Refusing to stand down, protesters moved forward and were viciously beaten and teargassed by police and dozens of protesters were hospitalized.

The entire incident was televised and became known as “ Bloody Sunday .” Some activists wanted to retaliate with violence, but King pushed for nonviolent protests and eventually gained federal protection for another march.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

When President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, he took the Civil Rights Act of 1964 several steps further. The new law banned all voter literacy tests and provided federal examiners in certain voting jurisdictions. 

It also allowed the attorney general to contest state and local poll taxes. As a result, poll taxes were later declared unconstitutional in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections in 1966.

Part of the Act was walked back decades later, in 2013, when a Supreme Court decision ruled that Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional, holding that the constraints placed on certain states and federal review of states' voting procedures were outdated.

Civil Rights Leaders Assassinated

The civil rights movement had tragic consequences for two of its leaders in the late 1960s. On February 21, 1965, former Nation of Islam leader and Organization of Afro-American Unity founder Malcolm X was assassinated at a rally.

On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on his hotel room's balcony. Emotionally-charged looting and riots followed, putting even more pressure on the Johnson administration to push through additional civil rights laws.

Fair Housing Act of 1968

The Fair Housing Act became law on April 11, 1968, just days after King’s assassination. It prevented housing discrimination based on race, sex, national origin and religion. It was also the last legislation enacted during the civil rights era.

The civil rights movement was an empowering yet precarious time for Black Americans. The efforts of civil rights activists and countless protesters of all races brought about legislation to end segregation, Black voter suppression and discriminatory employment and housing practices.

A Brief History of Jim Crow. Constitutional Rights Foundation. Civil Rights Act of 1957. Civil Rights Digital Library. Document for June 25th: Executive Order 8802: Prohibition of Discrimination in the Defense Industry. National Archives. Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-In. African American Odyssey. Little Rock School Desegregation (1957).  The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Stanford . Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Stanford . Rosa Marie Parks Biography. Rosa and Raymond Parks. Selma, Alabama, (Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965). BlackPast.org. The Civil Rights Movement (1919-1960s). National Humanities Center. The Little Rock Nine. National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior: Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site. Turning Point: World War II. Virginia Historical Society.

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Lesson Plan: Story of the 1960s

National Book Award-winning author Kevin Boyle provides an introduction to his lecture on the social and political history of the United States during the 1960s during a virtual event hosted by the National Archives in Washington, DC.

Description

Parochial? Segregated? Shattered? Deadly? Which of these words most accurately describe the "story of the 1960s?" This lesson, which features National Book Award-winning author Kevin Boyle, guides students through a choice-board case study to try to answer that question. The lesson opens with reflective questions that ask students to consider what determines how the past is described and how individuals' experiences with the past can differ. Students then view an introductory video clip in which Boyle provides an introduction to his lecture on the social and political history of the United States during the 1960s. From there, students then engage in a case study choice board activity, choosing to one of four individuals who experienced the 1960s in different ways: Stella Cahill, Elizabeth Eckford, Estelle Griswold, or Allison Krause. After the class shares their findings from the case study activity and records the answers to other students' sections, students then view a final video clip in which Boyle provides concluding remarks to his lecture. Finally, students respond to a summative writing prompt that asks them to describe "the story of the '60s."

This lesson offers several options for you to use with your students whether you are teaching in class, using a hybrid model, or engaging through distance learning. It can be completed in steps as a class or students can move at their own pace and complete the activities independently.

You can post links to the videos in the lesson along with the related handout and engage in discussion to share responses on a discussion board or learning management system.

You can also save and share the following Google resource for students to use with this lesson.

Handout: Choice Board (Google Slides).

In Google, choose "File" then "Make a Copy" to get your own copy. You can make any needed adjustments in the instructions such as which activities students need to complete, when it is due, etc. and then make it available to them via Google.

Pose the following questions to your students, directing them to record their responses on a sheet of paper, share with a partner, and then with the class if they choose.

• What determines how we describe eras from the past?
• In what ways do different people experience time periods differently? Explain.

The vocabulary terms that will appear in the lesson are listed to the right on this webpage. Consider which terms your students may need to preview before beginning the lesson.

Depending on time and resources, you may consider having your students engage in a Frayer's Model activity , where each student is responsible for completing one or two items. Students can then post their models around the room for reference throughout the lesson.

Note: this is not an all-encompassing list of terms included in each video. We recommend you preview the video clips to determine any necessary additions/subtractions to this list for your specific students .

INTRODUCTION

Have your students proceed to the introduction section of their Google Slide document. Direct your students to view the linked video clip, answer the related questions on the slide, and share their findings with a partner, small group, or the class when finished.

Clip #1: An Essay (3:44).

• Summarize the excerpt from Joan Didion’s essay, as read in the clip.
• What do historians “actually do?”
• According to Kevin Boyle, what is his new book The Shattering attempting to do and what does it center on?
• Based on the clip, what stories are also central to the study of history? Why?

Direct students to the case study section of their Google Slide document. Instruct your students to select one of the four individuals listed on the slide. Have your students view their selected video clip and answer the related questions on the respective slide.

After your students are finished with their selection, have them prepare to share their findings with the class. As students share with the class, make sure that they record the information from their peers’ sections as well. This share-out portion of the lesson could be completed via a jigsaw activity .

Clip #2: Stella Cahill (16:16).

• Summarize the story behind the photograph shown in the clip.
• Based on the clip, what challenges did Stella experience in her youth?
• How did Ed’s family compare to Stella’s, and what was their “neighborhood” like?
• Describe the early years of Ed and Stella’s marriage, as told in the clip.
• What did post-war life bring to the Cahills and their neighborhood? How was their life “parochial,” and why did Stella have a reason to smile in the 1960s?

Clip #3: Elizabeth Eckford (8:32).

• How might Elizabeth’s story have been “different?”
• According to Kevin Boyle, what did Elizabeth see when she got dropped off at Little Rock Central High School?
• Based on the clip, what did Elizabeth do after being denied access to the school?
• Summarize what happened while Elizabeth sat at the bus stop, as described in the clip.
• How did Elizabeth’s story impact the Civil Rights Movement, according to Boyle?

Clip #4: Estelle Griswold (9:54).

• What did Estelle “dream of being,” but what did she do instead?
• Based on the clip, what did Estelle do after returning to the United States? Why?
• What was “illegal” in Connecticut since 1879? Describe Planned Parenthood’s subsequent efforts and the effect of Estelle’s new “tactic.”
• According to Kevin Boyle, why and how did Estelle get herself arrested?
• Based on the clip, what did the Supreme Court rule in 1965? Why?

Clip #5: Allison Krause (6:53).

• Based on the clip, what was Allison’s background?
• Why didn’t Allison “make a mark” in high school?
• Where did Allison choose to go to college? Why?
• According to Kevin Boyle, what happened to Allison on May 4th, 1970?
• How did what happened to Allison impact the “anti-war” movement?

After your students finish sharing their findings from the case study section, direct them to the closure section in their Google Slide document. Direct your students to view the linked video clip, answer the related questions on the slide, and share their findings with a partner, small group, or the class when finished.

Clip #6: Story of the '60s (3:02).

• Why did the Cahills celebrate the “old fashioned” holiday of July 4th?
• Was the Civil Rights movement “triumphant?”
• What was “shattered” during this era?
• Did the anti-war movements fundamentally “transform” the United States?

WRITING PROMPT

After your students are finished sharing their findings from the lesson, direct them to complete the final culminating writing on the last slide of their Google Slide document, and have students share their responses, comparing their perspectives with their classmates' perspectives: What is the “story of the ‘60s?” Be sure to include evidence from the video clips in the lesson to support your response .

Related Articles

• The Sixties Timeline (PBS)
• 1960s: Counterculture and Civil Rights Movement (Video) (HISTORY)
• 1960 Fast Facts - History (U.S. Census Bureau)

Additional Resources

• Video Clip: The Impact of Protests on Political Change
• Bell Ringer: Integration of Little Rock Central High School
• Bell Ringer: Life as an Unemployed Person during the Great Depression
• Bell Ringer: The Decision in Griswold v. Connecticut
• Bell Ringer: Kent State Shootings
• Bell Ringer: The Rise of America’s 1960s Counterculture
• Lesson Plan: The Great Depression
• Lesson Plan: The Vietnam War
• Lesson Plan: Landmark Supreme Court Case: Griswold v Connecticut (1965)
• On This Day: Little Rock Nine
• Birth Control
• Civil Rights Movement (1954-68)
• Desegregate
• Griswold V. Connecticut (1965)
• Kent State Shootings (1970)
• Military Draft
• Military Industrial Complex
• National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People
• Planned Parenthood
• Restrictive Covenant
• Roe V. Wade (1973)
• Vietnam War (1955-75)
• White Flight
• World War Two (1939-45)

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Course: US history   >   Unit 8

• John F. Kennedy as president
• Bay of Pigs Invasion
• Cuban Missile Crisis
• The Cuban Missile Crisis
• Lyndon Johnson as president
• Vietnam War

The Vietnam War

• The student movement and the antiwar movement
• Second-wave feminism
• The election of 1968
• 1960s America
• The Vietnam War was a prolonged military conflict that started as an anticolonial war against the French and evolved into a Cold War confrontation between international communism and free-market democracy.
• The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in the north was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist countries, while the United States and its anticommunist allies backed the Republic of Vietnam (ROV) in the south.
• President Lyndon Johnson dramatically escalated US involvement in the conflict, authorizing a series of intense bombing campaigns and committing hundreds of thousands of US ground troops to the fight.
• After the United States withdrew from the conflict, North Vietnam invaded the South and united the country under a communist government.

Origins of the war in Vietnam

Lyndon johnson and the war in vietnam, richard nixon and vietnam, what do you think.

• For more on the origins of US involvement, see Mark Atwood Lawrence, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) and Mark Atwood Lawrence, The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
• See William S. Turley, The Second Indochina War: A Concise Political and Military History (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009); Lawrence, The Vietnam War , 71-73.
• The exact circumstances of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and the extent to which US officials may have misrepresented the incident, remain in dispute. Tonkin Gulf Resolution; Public Law 88-408, 88th Congress, August 7, 1964; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.
• For more on Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War, see Michael H. Hunt, Lyndon Johnson’s War: America’s Cold War Crusade in Vietnam, 1945-1968 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997).
• Paul S. Boyer, Promises to Keep: The United States since World War II (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 283-284.
• Lawrence, The Vietnam War , 143.

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Norman Mailer : Collected Essays of the 1960s

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The 1960s and 2010s Decades in the United States Essay

Introduction, contrast discussion, works cited.

Comparing decades is a monumental task as modern history shows, a tremendous number of world-changing events can occur in such a short period of time. Each decade is unique, having an identity shaped by its culture, political differences, as well as social tendencies, and perceptions. However, the most interesting approach is to compare a historic decade to modern time, after all, history is meant to demonstrate the progress of human civilization and provide invaluable lessons about society’s biggest mistakes. The 1960s and 2010s decades are similar in patterns of conflicting ideological differences and subsequent large-scale social changes that differ in the context of modern perceptions and acceptance by the population.

The 1960s was one of the most historically profound and turbulent times in history, characterized by the complexity of racial, inter-cultural, and political trends in the United States. The country was fully engaged in the Cold War, experiencing a consistent threat of nuclear annihilation. American society was greatly divided on a number of vital issues and events. In the context of this paper which focuses on comparing social changes across the decades, the 1960s is most well-known for its large social movements and protests regarding a vast number of issues. The most prominent of which is the Civil Rights movement focused on desegregation for people of color and ethnic minorities, achieving a significant breakthrough in 1964 when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed which made segregation and discrimination officially illegal.

The decade is known for giving birth to social movements as part of the counterculture revolution to the conservative, white male-dominated society. Led by the younger generations, it was an opposition to the social conformity of the previous decade and people became less tolerant of injustices that were committed against minorities. Scholarly research by Biggs and Andrews discusses places such as the deeply segregated U.S. South, protest campaigns and social movements saw increased success (416). Political environments and economic conditions which were previously extremely conservative and outright racist began to experience general change. There were many challenges as many protests turned violent with African Americans killed by police. The undesired change led to the prevalence of extremists such as white nationalists and the KKK which terrorized civilians. Nevertheless, the socio-political conditions of the decade were favorable for such massive change and protesters had the support of the liberal federal government as well as the economic leverage to achieve desegregation.

The 2010s decade is known to be both a celebration of a scientific and technological breakthrough as well as the degradation of the global political peace and rise of tensions. Similar to the 1960s, this decade has seen the rise of satellite military conflicts such as Syria and the rise of tensions with other nuclear-capable powers in the likes of Russia, China, and North Korea. The decade is experiencing significant ecological and environmental disasters which have begun to shake the foundation of human society. Humanity has seen significant anthropological as military conflicts and poverty in some parts of the world have led to the mass migration of refugees to wealthier countries. Socially, there has been a lot of unrest, both for political and ideology related, as resources are becoming scarce and the wealth divide between the rich and poor is exponentially increasing.

The rise of nationalistic sentiments in light of rising migrations, instances of institutionalism racism, and the uncovering of decades of hidden discrimination and abuse, both racial and gender-based in many industries, have led to the emergence of social movements meant to spread awareness and create societal change. An article by Molly Callahan of Northeastern University discusses the various movements prevalent in this decade. It is known for officially recognizing and establishing rights for the LGTBQ community. After evidence of police brutality and discrimination against African Americans has emerged, the Black Lives Matter movement has gained traction. Finally, a pattern of abuse and discrimination against women which has been uncovered through the MeToo movement has led to important changes in various industries. Although legislation has already existed for many of these groups, these listed movements among many others have led to changes in social identity and culture regarding awareness and acceptance.

The 1960s and the ongoing 2010s decades are both inherently similar but also vastly different when juxtaposed. Both decades experienced a time of extreme social divide based on race and ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic class, political affiliation, and ideology. At the same time, both decades saw significant social changes in terms of legislation and public perception regarding at least one of these divisive issues, beginning a widespread conversation regarding acceptance and unity. However, as noted by a Washington Post article, the “social divides were deeper back then” (Ingraham). Protests were larger and less safe, with many more instigators of racial violence which were almost expected. Communication among different races and cultures was more difficult to establish, even in peaceful settings such as schools.

Despite similar patterns of social division, the society in the 2010s decade has a legislative and moral foundation about the wrongdoing of such aspects as racism and discrimination. The public, in general, is more educated, aware, and actively participating in the discussion via tools such as social media. These were nonexistent in the 1960s, creating significantly more challenges for social movements to make their voice heard in comparison to modern-day where movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter are trending and providing a platform for the injustices. A comprehensive investigative report by Bijan Stephen for the Wired magazine examines this perspective of media and reporting of civil rights abuses, stating “any large social movement is shaped by the technology available to it and tailors its goals, tactics, and rhetoric to the media of its time” (Stephen). It inherently increases awareness and public pressure on the government to create meaningful change. However, both decades saw significant breakthroughs for women and racial minority rights, both in policy and social behavior.

In this context, it can be argued that while the ideologies continue to clash, in the 1960s, it was a minority attempting to make a difference for civil rights going against a fully conservative society. In the 2010s, such social change comes much easier, as society is more accepting and willing to identify its shortcomings. Once a social movement overcomes the initial barriers of gathering support and providing evidence. Nevertheless, it takes time and unfortunate sacrifice before the mindset of the whole society begins to change for the better.

The 1960s and 2010s were both decades of socio-political turmoil due to differences in ideology and breakthroughs in civil and social rights of minority groups such as African-Americans and women. Although the 1960s saw more violence and conservative backlash, the 2010s were more difficult in terms of solutions since there was already a legislative base, social changes had to occur at a more complex level of sociological behavior. It is difficult to compare decades from a perspective of social movements, but doing so helps to identify both, the successes and the failures that the country experienced when faced with challenges and needs to evolve. Using these lessons, society can move forward and build upon the foundations that have been created by history.

Biggs, Michael, and Kenneth T. Andrews. “Protest Campaigns and Movement Success: Desegregating the U.S. South in the Early 1960s.” American Sociological Review , vol. 80, no. 2, 2015, pp. 416-443, Web.

Callahan, Molly. ” #Metoo, #Blacklivesmatter, #Nobannowall: Social Movements Likely to Dominate 2018.” News @ Northeastern . 2018, Web.

Ingraham, Christopher. “How the Unrest of the 1960s Compares to Today, according to the People Who Lived Through It.” The Washington Post . 2016, Web.

Stephen, Bijan. “Social Media Helps Black Lives Matter Fight the Power.” Wired . 2015, Web.

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IvyPanda . 2021. "The 1960s and 2010s Decades in the United States." July 7, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-1960s-and-2010s-decades-in-the-united-states/.

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NPR defends its journalism after senior editor says it has lost the public's trust

David Folkenflik

NPR is defending its journalism and integrity after a senior editor wrote an essay accusing it of losing the public's trust. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

NPR is defending its journalism and integrity after a senior editor wrote an essay accusing it of losing the public's trust.

NPR's top news executive defended its journalism and its commitment to reflecting a diverse array of views on Tuesday after a senior NPR editor wrote a broad critique of how the network has covered some of the most important stories of the age.

"An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America," writes Uri Berliner.

A strategic emphasis on diversity and inclusion on the basis of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation, promoted by NPR's former CEO, John Lansing, has fed "the absence of viewpoint diversity," Berliner writes.

NPR's chief news executive, Edith Chapin, wrote in a memo to staff Tuesday afternoon that she and the news leadership team strongly reject Berliner's assessment.

"We're proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories," she wrote. "We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world."

NPR names tech executive Katherine Maher to lead in turbulent era

She added, "None of our work is above scrutiny or critique. We must have vigorous discussions in the newsroom about how we serve the public as a whole."

A spokesperson for NPR said Chapin, who also serves as the network's chief content officer, would have no further comment.

Praised by NPR's critics

Berliner is a senior editor on NPR's Business Desk. (Disclosure: I, too, am part of the Business Desk, and Berliner has edited many of my past stories. He did not see any version of this article or participate in its preparation before it was posted publicly.)

Berliner's essay , titled "I've Been at NPR for 25 years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust," was published by The Free Press, a website that has welcomed journalists who have concluded that mainstream news outlets have become reflexively liberal.

Berliner writes that as a Subaru-driving, Sarah Lawrence College graduate who "was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother ," he fits the mold of a loyal NPR fan.

Yet Berliner says NPR's news coverage has fallen short on some of the most controversial stories of recent years, from the question of whether former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election, to the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19, to the significance and provenance of emails leaked from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden weeks before the 2020 election. In addition, he blasted NPR's coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

On each of these stories, Berliner asserts, NPR has suffered from groupthink due to too little diversity of viewpoints in the newsroom.

The essay ricocheted Tuesday around conservative media , with some labeling Berliner a whistleblower . Others picked it up on social media, including Elon Musk, who has lambasted NPR for leaving his social media site, X. (Musk emailed another NPR reporter a link to Berliner's article with a gibe that the reporter was a "quisling" — a World War II reference to someone who collaborates with the enemy.)

When asked for further comment late Tuesday, Berliner declined, saying the essay spoke for itself.

The arguments he raises — and counters — have percolated across U.S. newsrooms in recent years. The #MeToo sexual harassment scandals of 2016 and 2017 forced newsrooms to listen to and heed more junior colleagues. The social justice movement prompted by the killing of George Floyd in 2020 inspired a reckoning in many places. Newsroom leaders often appeared to stand on shaky ground.

Leaders at many newsrooms, including top editors at The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times , lost their jobs. Legendary Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron wrote in his memoir that he feared his bonds with the staff were "frayed beyond repair," especially over the degree of self-expression his journalists expected to exert on social media, before he decided to step down in early 2021.

Since then, Baron and others — including leaders of some of these newsrooms — have suggested that the pendulum has swung too far.

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Legendary editor marty baron describes his 'collision of power' with trump and bezos.

New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger warned last year against journalists embracing a stance of what he calls "one-side-ism": "where journalists are demonstrating that they're on the side of the righteous."

"I really think that that can create blind spots and echo chambers," he said.

Internal arguments at The Times over the strength of its reporting on accusations that Hamas engaged in sexual assaults as part of a strategy for its Oct. 7 attack on Israel erupted publicly . The paper conducted an investigation to determine the source of a leak over a planned episode of the paper's podcast The Daily on the subject, which months later has not been released. The newsroom guild accused the paper of "targeted interrogation" of journalists of Middle Eastern descent.

Heated pushback in NPR's newsroom

Given Berliner's account of private conversations, several NPR journalists question whether they can now trust him with unguarded assessments about stories in real time. Others express frustration that he had not sought out comment in advance of publication. Berliner acknowledged to me that for this story, he did not seek NPR's approval to publish the piece, nor did he give the network advance notice.

Some of Berliner's NPR colleagues are responding heatedly. Fernando Alfonso, a senior supervising editor for digital news, wrote that he wholeheartedly rejected Berliner's critique of the coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict, for which NPR's journalists, like their peers, periodically put themselves at risk.

Alfonso also took issue with Berliner's concern over the focus on diversity at NPR.

"As a person of color who has often worked in newsrooms with little to no people who look like me, the efforts NPR has made to diversify its workforce and its sources are unique and appropriate given the news industry's long-standing lack of diversity," Alfonso says. "These efforts should be celebrated and not denigrated as Uri has done."

After this story was first published, Berliner contested Alfonso's characterization, saying his criticism of NPR is about the lack of diversity of viewpoints, not its diversity itself.

"I never criticized NPR's priority of achieving a more diverse workforce in terms of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. I have not 'denigrated' NPR's newsroom diversity goals," Berliner said. "That's wrong."

Questions of diversity

Under former CEO John Lansing, NPR made increasing diversity, both of its staff and its audience, its "North Star" mission. Berliner says in the essay that NPR failed to consider broader diversity of viewpoint, noting, "In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans."

Berliner cited audience estimates that suggested a concurrent falloff in listening by Republicans. (The number of people listening to NPR broadcasts and terrestrial radio broadly has declined since the start of the pandemic.)

Former NPR vice president for news and ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin tweeted , "I know Uri. He's not wrong."

Others questioned Berliner's logic. "This probably gets causality somewhat backward," tweeted Semafor Washington editor Jordan Weissmann . "I'd guess that a lot of NPR listeners who voted for [Mitt] Romney have changed how they identify politically."

Similarly, Nieman Lab founder Joshua Benton suggested the rise of Trump alienated many NPR-appreciating Republicans from the GOP.

In recent years, NPR has greatly enhanced the percentage of people of color in its workforce and its executive ranks. Four out of 10 staffers are people of color; nearly half of NPR's leadership team identifies as Black, Asian or Latino.

"The philosophy is: Do you want to serve all of America and make sure it sounds like all of America, or not?" Lansing, who stepped down last month, says in response to Berliner's piece. "I'd welcome the argument against that."

"On radio, we were really lagging in our representation of an audience that makes us look like what America looks like today," Lansing says. The U.S. looks and sounds a lot different than it did in 1971, when NPR's first show was broadcast, Lansing says.

A network spokesperson says new NPR CEO Katherine Maher supports Chapin and her response to Berliner's critique.

The spokesperson says that Maher "believes that it's a healthy thing for a public service newsroom to engage in rigorous consideration of the needs of our audiences, including where we serve our mission well and where we can serve it better."

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editor Gerry Holmes. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

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NPR suspended Uri Berliner, the senior editor who published a bombshell essay a week ago that claimed that the publicly funded outlet has “lost America’s trust” by approaching news stories with a left-wing bias.

NPR media writer David Folkenflik revealed on Tuesday that Berliner was sidelined for five days without pay beginning last Friday. Folkenflik, who reviewed a copy of the letter from NPR brass, said the company told the editor he had failed to secure its approval for outside work for other news outlets — a requirement for NPR journalists.

NPR called the letter a “final warning,” saying Berliner would be fired if he violated NPR’s policy again.

Neither NPR nor Berliner immediately responded to requests for comment.

Berliner is a dues-paying member of NPR’s newsroom union, but Folkenflik reported that the editor is not appealing the punishment.

Berliner, a Peabody Award-winning journalist who has worked at NPR for 25 years, called out journalistic blind spots around major news events, including the origins of COVID-19, the war in Gaza and the Hunter Biden laptop, in an essay published Tuesday on  Bari Weiss’ online news site the Free Press .

The fallout from the essay sparked outrage from many of his colleagues. Late Monday afternoon, NPR chief news executive Edith Chapin announced to the newsroom that executive editor Eva Rodriguez would lead monthly meetings to review coverage.

The fiasco also ignited a firestorm of criticism from prominent conservatives — with former President Donald Trump demanding NPR’s federal funding be yanked — and has led to internal tumult,  the New York Times reported  Friday.

Berliner had  told The Times  he had not been disciplined by managers when interviewed last Thursday, though he received a note from his supervisor reminding him that NPR required its employees to clear speaking appearances and media requests with standards and media relations. 

He told The Times he didn’t run his initial remarks or those to the Gray Lady by NPR.  

NPR’s new chief executive Katherine Maher defended NPR’s journalism, calling Berliner’s article “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning,” The 42-year-old exec added that the essay amounted to “a criticism of our people on the basis of who we are.”

Folkenflik said Berliner took umbrage at that, saying she had “denigrated him.” Berliner said he supported diversifying NPR’s workforce to look more like the US population at large. Maher did not address that in a subsequent private exchange he shared with Folkenflik for the story.

The fiasco soon put the spotlight on Maher, whose own left-leaning bias came to light in a trove of woke, anti-Trump tweets she penned.

In January, when Maher was announced as NPR’s new leader,  The Post revealed her penchant  for parroting the progressive line on social media — including bluntly biased Twitter posts like “Donald Trump is a racist,” which she wrote in 2018.

That hyper-partisan message was scrubbed from the platform now known as X, but preserved on the site Archive.Today.

It’s unclear when Maher deleted it, or if its removal was tied to her new gig.

Other woke posts remain on Maher’s X account. In 2020, as the George Floyd riots raged, she attempted to justify the looting epidemic in Los Angeles as payback for the sins of slavery.

“I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive,” Maher  wrote on May 31, 2020 .

“But it’s hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people’s ancestors as private property.”

The next day, she lectured her 27,000 followers on “white silence.”

“White silence is complicity,”  she scolded . “If you are white, today is the day to start a conversation in your community.”

The NPR job is Maher’s first position in journalism or media.

She was previously the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, the San Francisco-based nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia, after holding communications roles for the likes of HSBC, UNICEF and the World Bank.

Maher earned a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies from New York University,  according to her LinkedIn account , and grew up in Wilton, Conn. — a town that her mother, Ceci Maher,  now represents  as a Democratic state senator.

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I Served on the Florida Supreme Court. What the New Majority Just Did Is Indefensible.

On April 1, the Florida Supreme Court, in a 6–1 ruling, overturned decades of decisions beginning in 1989 that recognized a woman’s right to choose—that is, whether to have an abortion—up to the time of viability.

Anchored in Florida’s own constitutional right to privacy, this critical individual right to abortion had been repeatedly affirmed by the state Supreme Court, which consistently struck down conflicting laws passed by the Legislature.

As explained first in 1989:

Florida’s privacy provision is clearly implicated in a woman’s decision of whether or not to continue her pregnancy. We can conceive of few more personal or private decisions concerning one’s body in the course of a lifetime.

Tellingly, the justices at the time acknowledged that their decision was based not only on U.S. Supreme Court precedent but also on Florida’s own privacy amendment.

I served on the Supreme Court of Florida beginning in 1998 and retired, based on our mandatory retirement requirement, a little more than two decades later. Whether Florida’s Constitution provided a right to privacy that encompassed abortion was never questioned, even by those who would have been deemed the most conservative justices—almost all white men back in 1989!

And strikingly, one of the conservative justices at that time stated: “If the United States Supreme Court were to subsequently recede from Roe v. Wade , this would not diminish the abortion rights now provided by the privacy amendment of the Florida Constitution.” Wow!

In 2017 I authored an opinion holding unconstitutional an additional 24-hour waiting period after a woman chooses to terminate her pregnancy. Pointing out that other medical procedures did not have such requirements, the majority opinion noted, “Women may take as long as they need to make this deeply personal decision,” adding that the additional 24 hours stipulated that the patient make a second, medically unnecessary trip, incurring additional costs and delays. The court applied what is known in constitutional law as a “strict scrutiny” test for fundamental rights.

Interestingly, Justice Charles Canady, who is still on the Florida Supreme Court and who participated in the evisceration of Florida’s privacy amendment last week, did not challenge the central point that abortion is included in an individual’s right to privacy. He dissented, not on substantive grounds but on technical grounds.

So what can explain this 180-degree turn by the current Florida Supreme Court? If I said “politics,” that answer would be insufficient, overly simplistic. Unfortunately, with this court, precedent is precedent until it is not. Perhaps each of the six justices is individually, morally or religiously, opposed to abortion.

Yet, all the same, by a 4–3 majority, the justices—three of whom participated in overturning precedent—voted to allow the proposed constitutional amendment on abortion to be placed on the November ballot. (The dissenters: the three female members of the Supreme Court.) That proposed constitutional amendment:

Amendment to Limit Government Interference With Abortion: No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion. 

For the proposed amendment to pass and become enshrined in the state constitution, 60 percent of Florida voters must vote yes.

In approving the amendment to be placed on the ballot at the same time that it upheld Florida’s abortion bans, the court angered those who support a woman’s right to choose as well as those who are opposed to abortion. Most likely the latter groups embrace the notion that fetuses are human beings and have rights that deserve to be protected. Indeed, Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz, during oral argument on the abortion amendment case, queried the state attorney general on precisely that issue, asking if the constitutional language that defends the rights of all natural persons extends to an unborn child at any stage of pregnancy.

In fact, and most troubling, it was the three recently elevated Gov. Ron DeSantis appointees—all women—who expressed their views that the voters should not be allowed to vote on the amendment because it could affect the rights of the unborn child. Justice Jamie Grosshans, joined by Justice Meredith Sasso, expressed that the amendment was defective because it failed to disclose the potential effect on the rights of the unborn child. Justice Renatha Francis was even more direct, writing in her dissent:

The exercise of a “right” to an abortion literally results in a devastating infringement on the right of another person: the right to live. And our Florida Constitution recognizes that “life” is a “basic right” for “[a]ll natural persons.” One must recognize the unborn’s competing right to life and the State’s moral duty to protect that life.

In other words, the three dissenting justices would recognize that fetuses are included in who is a “natural person” under Florida’s Constitution.

What should be top of mind days after the dueling decisions? Grave concern for the women of our state who will be in limbo because, following the court’s ruling, a six-week abortion ban—at a time before many women even know they are pregnant—will be allowed to go into effect. We know that these restrictions will disproportionately affect low-income women and those who live in rural communities.

But interestingly, there is a provision in the six-week abortion ban statute that allows for an abortion before viability in cases of medical necessity: if two physicians certify that the pregnant patient is at risk of death or that the “fetus has a fatal fetal abnormality.”

The challenge will be finding physicians willing to put their professional reputations on the line in a state bent on cruelly impeding access to needed medical care when it comes to abortion.

Yet, this is the time that individuals and organizations dedicated to women’s health, as well as like-minded politicians, will be crucial in coordinating efforts to ensure that abortions, when needed, are performed safely and without delay. This is the time to celebrate and support organizations, such as Planned Parenthood and Emergency Medical Assistance , as well as our own RBG Fund , which provides patients necessary resources and information. Floridians should also take full advantage of the Repro Legal Helpline .

We all have a role in this—women and men alike. Let’s get out, speak out, shout out, coordinate our efforts, and, most importantly, vote . Working together, we can make a difference.

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This Is What You Get When Fear Mixes With Money

By Thomas B. Edsall

Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.

Donald Trump has added something to the practice of extracting money from major donors: fear.

Traditionally, high-dollar contributors write big checks for a mix of reasons: to curry favor, to support their political party, to promote an agenda, to win favorable tax and regulatory policies, to defeat the opposition, to be seen as powerful — a blend of self-interest and principle.

This year, Trump’s history in the White House and the agenda for 2025 that he and his allies have been putting together amount to a warning to wavering supporters.

According to The Washington Post , Trump has candidly warned onlookers that he will turn the federal bureaucracy into an instrument to punish those who fail to toe the MAGA line:

He wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the F.B.I. and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.

In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family.

The events described in the Post story

reflect Trump’s determination to harness the power of the presidency to exact revenge on those who have challenged or criticized him if he returns to the White House. The former president has frequently threatened to take punitive steps against his perceived enemies, arguing that doing so would be justified by the current prosecutions against him. Trump has claimed without evidence that the criminal charges he is facing — a total of 88 across four state and federal indictments — were made up to damage him politically.

Trump has made retribution a central theme of his campaign, seeking to intertwine his legal defense with a call for payback against perceived slights and offenses to “forgotten” Americans.

Faced with the prospect of a chief executive prepared to abandon the rule of law for the rule of revenge, many affluent donors — for whom the machinations of government can determine bankruptcy or wealth — seem to think they have little choice but to pony up to the self-proclaimed “ dictator for one day .”

Trump’s campaign to reclaim the White House — armed with the bristling Heritage Foundation playbook , which conservatives are using as a tool to pressure Trump to remain true to the hard-right agenda, as well as long, revealing lists compiled by Axios and The Times of prospective MAGA appointees — is the embodiment of the politics of intimidation.

At the core of what Trump and Heritage’s Project 2025 have proposed is an escalation of the power concentrated in the presidency and in the executive branch generally. This includes the politicization of the bureaucracy, whose mission would become, in part, to wreak revenge on Trump’s adversaries and the adoption, throughout federal departments and agencies, of policies rewarding ideological supporters and defunding ideological opponents.

Kim Lane Scheppele , a professor at Princeton of sociology and international affairs, summed up in an email the Trump-driven changes in the politics of raising money: “Most business leaders unfamiliar with autocratic government believe that when they support someone running for office, that person will owe them something if elected, tax cuts, deregulation, whatever the business leaders want.”

But, Scheppele continued, “autocrats turn the tables. Once elected, autocrats use the power of the state to squeeze business.”

In these circumstances, she added, political leaders “can threaten businesses with tax audits, more regulation, even criminal charges, unless they give in to the autocrats’ demands.”

Project 2025, Scheppele wrote,

is a blueprint for autocracy. In fact, it’s a direct copy of the plan that Viktor Orban used to take over the Hungarian government in 2010. If it is carried out, Project 2025 will concentrate huge power in the hands of the president, giving him the power to control the whole federal government at his whim. If business leaders think that this will benefit them and that giving up the rule of law is good for business, they will quickly learn that they are wrong. But it will be too late.

The Trump campaign has made it clear that Trump is not committed to adopting all the policy and personnel proposals described in Project 2025 or other documents produced outside his campaign.

At the same time, nowhere is corporate acquiescence to Trump more evident than among Republican megadonors who swore after Jan. 6, 2021, that they would never again support Trump but who are now swallowing their pride, trickling back in obeisance to the leader who betrayed them with his encouragement of the insurrection.

In February 2023, Eric Levine, one of the founders of the law firm Eiseman Levine and a prominent Republican fund-raiser, told Politico :

I don’t think it is fair to call Donald Trump a damaged candidate. He is a metastasizing cancer who if he is not stopped is going to destroy the party. Donald Trump is a loser. He is the first president since Hoover to lose the House, the Senate and the presidency in a single term.

As if that were not enough, Levine continued, Trump “is probably the only Republican in the country, if not the only person in the country, who can’t beat Joe Biden.”

Less than a month ago, however, Levine sent a memo to fellow Republicans telling them he had had a change of heart:

The adage of “never say never” is a wise one. I repeatedly said, since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, that I will never vote for Donald Trump. Today, however, due to a dramatic change in circumstances, albeit reluctantly and with reservations, I have decided I will vote for Trump in November.

Levine is not alone in his return to the Trump fold. On March 29, Josh Dawsey, Jeff Stein, Michael Scherer and Elizabeth Dwoskin, reporters for The Washington Post, published “ Many G.O.P. Billionaires Balked at Jan. 6. They’re Coming Back to Trump. ”

“As hopes of a Republican alternative have crumbled,” the four Post reporters wrote, “elite donors who once balked at Trump’s fueling of the Capitol insurrection, worried about his legal problems and decried what they saw as his chaotic presidency are rediscovering their affinity for the former president — even as he praises and vows to free Jan. 6 defendants, promises mass deportations and faces 88 felony charges.”

Some examples:

The day after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 , 2021, billionaire and G.O.P. megadonor Nelson Peltz called the insurrection a “disgrace” and expressed remorse for voting for Donald Trump : “I’m sorry I did that.” In early March, nonetheless, Peltz hosted a breakfast meeting at his Palm Beach mansion with Trump and such billionaire Trump backers as Steve Wynn and Isaac Perlmutter.

And similarly, “After Jan. 6, billionaire developer Robert Bigelow said Trump had ‘lost me as a supporter. … He showed that, in that particular hour, he was no commander.’” This year, “Bigelow has pledged $20 million to a pro-Trump campaign group and has given $1 million to cover the former president’s legal costs.”

Bigelow was on the host committee for a record-setting $50.5 million fund-raiser for Trump and the Republican National Committee in Palm Beach on Saturday night. The suggested price of admission: $250,000 to $814,600.

Most of the commentary on the megadonors’ return to the Trump fold suggests that self-interest and greed are the primary motivators. In describing donors’ calculations, The Washington Post wrote: “The financial upside of going with the former president may win out. Trump has discussed further cutting the corporate tax rate, and he toyed in his administration with unilaterally lowering the capital gains rate paid by investors.”

Jonathan Chait, a columnist at New York magazine, is more explicit :

Joe Biden is running on a plan to increase taxes on the very wealthy, while Trump is promising to cut those taxes. In 2025, most of the Trump tax cuts will expire, as will Obamacare subsidies extended by the Inflation Reduction Act. The 2024 elections will therefore determine whether hundreds of billions of dollars remain in the pockets of wealthy people or instead fund things like health insurance for the middle class.

Similarly, Chris Cillizza wrote in his Substack newsletter, “I will now explain to you how these wealthy people overcame their principled stances against Trump as a threat to democracy.”

The answer to all of your questions is money. Most rich people want to stay as rich as possible. Or get even richer. That is their main focus. So, when rubber meets road, that is their default setting. Principles go out the window.

The Post writers, Chait and Cillizza are right, up to a point. The about-face of these superrich donors is a mixture of greed and terror — terror of sparking the anger of a volatile politician who proudly declares, “ I am your retribution .”

Just as Trump has cowed congressional Republicans — many of whom privately voice strong criticism of him — with the threat of MAGA-driven primary challenges, he has turned himself and his agenda into weapons of intimidation for businesses seeking to survive and thrive in a second Trump administration.

A primary goal of business is predictability, if not certainty , based in part on consistent rules, regulations and laws so that corporations can make plans and investments without worrying about arbitrary government interventions based on the revenge-seeking whims of a leader many see as a malignant narcissist .

American businesses are fully aware of Trump’s willingness to govern by caprice , a modus operandi he demonstrated repeatedly during his term in the White House.

In those years, however, he was held back by his own ineptitude, the incompetence of his most loyal advisers and the interventions of his more reasonable aides and key civil servants — a combination that kept him largely in check.

Catherine Rampell summed up some of the most egregious initiatives of the Trump White House in a November 2023 Washington Post column, “ Take Trump at His Word When He Threatens to Punish His Enemies ”:

Trump also frequently deployed economic and regulatory powers against businesses deemed insufficiently loyal. For example, his administration launched a bogus antitrust investigation into some auto companies when they did not support his rollback of fuel-efficiency standards. He likewise reportedly instructed his top economic aide to interfere with the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, as punishment for critical coverage from CNN, which was then owned by Time Warner. Trump also openly mused about revoking the licenses of broadcast news outlets for, among other things, reporting that his secretary of state had called him a “moron.” Again, his underlings did not go along with him. Elsewhere, he tried to use the government procurement process to damage Amazon. According to a memoir by a top aide to then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Trump “called and directed Mattis to ‘screw Amazon’ by locking them out of a chance to bid” on a defense contract.

Trump’s allies, especially those working on Project 2025, are working tirelessly to make sure that if Trump wins in November, he will not be restrained by aides or career civil servants and that instead of taking office unprepared, he will have a complete MAGA agenda from Day 1.

Separately from the report, Project 2025 has been assembling names of Trump loyalists who will take his commands seriously — and not deep-six them — to fill key spots in a second Trump administration and assembling an across-the-board agenda of legislative initiatives, executive orders and regulatory changes running the gamut from anti-abortion policies to a strategy “to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will,” in the words of one of the project’s authors.

Perhaps most important, Project 2025 asserts that “President Trump’s Schedule F proposal regarding accountability in hiring must be reinstituted.”

Schedule F , which Trump sought to initiate by executive order in 2020, would turn the top 50,000 or so civil servants, who are currently protected from arbitrary firing or demotion, into political appointees under the control of his administration. Trump lost the White House before Schedule F could be applied, and Biden withdrew the executive order creating it.

For corporate America, application of Schedule F would radically escalate uncertainty. Federal officials making decisions ranging from penalties for failed occupational safety violations to initiation of antitrust proceedings, from I.R.S. rulings to the application of sanitary regulations in nursing homes would presumably have to prioritize loyalty to Trump to keep their jobs.

Fear of the consequences of Schedule F is the strongest weapon of intimidation in Trump’s fund-raising armament. A significant campaign contribution might well serve as a useful shield.

“One practical consequence of undermining the civil service is a rise in cronyism,” Vanessa Williamson , a senior fellow in governance studies at Brookings, wrote by email in response to my inquiry. “Usually we think of that in terms of the winners, the insiders getting special deals, but it is equally true that cronyism creates losers, the business elites that do not get favors or face punishment for their lack of loyalty to the ruling party.”

Trump and others on the American right, Williamson wrote,

have become enamored of Hungary’s Viktor Orban in recent years, and his regime provides a good example of how cronyism can be used to consolidate political power — not just in terms of the punitive use of regulations but in licensing and government contracting as well. Whether Trump would be able to achieve these kinds of results is deeply debatable, of course. But the model is there.

Elaborating on this theme, Jasper Theodor Kauth , a political scientist at Nuffield College, Oxford, wrote by email: “Trump’s threats to use state coercion to go after perceived personal and political opponents is evidence of his agenda to disrupt democratic norms.”

Kauth noted that he and Desmond King , a political scientist at Oxford, described these practices as “disruptive illiberalism” in their 2021 paper “ Illiberalism ”:

They keep up the appearance of honoring democratic procedures (elections) while eroding democracy through the back door — although in the case of Trump this erosion is now taking place in plain sight. These warnings need to be taken seriously regardless of their intention as they heighten the risk of a future transition to authoritarianism.

What drives the willingness of wealthy executives to abandon their principled concerns over Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection?

Rawi Abdelal , a professor of international management at Harvard Business School, argued that “fear and, frankly, naïveté are far more powerful influences than simple greed.”

Abdelal wrote by email:

What is most interesting to me is that this is not as much about Donald J. Trump, the individual, but about a moment in history. These sorts of antisystemic challenges to democratic practice are emerging across the developed world and in developing countries as well. There exists in these societies — including ours — a deep frustration with the system. Many believe that the system is simply unfair, and often it is exactly that.

Bruce Cain , a political scientist at Stanford, noted that some of the conservative victories in campaign-finance law have had the unintended consequence of strengthening “the power of elected officials to coerce donations out of the donors.”

There has always been, Cain wrote by email, “an element of hostile dependency built into campaign fund-raising. Businesses have always given money to gain access or avoid bad things happening to them if the people in power feel that certain supporters let them down.”

Until recently, Cain argued, the potential for extortion

was limited by stricter campaign contribution laws before we loosened the system up post the Citizens United decision. The irony of inviting large donors and businesses to give large or unlimited donations is that the court strengthened the implicit hostile dependency relationship between donors and Trump.

Republican donors sought the elimination of restrictions on donors in the belief that such loosening of the law “would favor them,” Cain wrote. Instead, “the dog has caught the car just as it is backing up on it,” adding: “Trump’s mafia m.o. can be counted on to take this to the extreme.”

While greed and fear are powerful motivations behind the decision to make campaign contributions to a candidate, they are not antithetical. Rather, they reinforce each other, something Trump appears to be acutely aware of.

Samuel Issacharoff , a professor of constitutional law at N.Y.U., described this dynamic in an email to me, which I will leave as the last word:

Trump governs in a swirl of corruption and intimidation. Everyone knows this and understands that in such regimes, proximity to power is key to government largess. In oligarchic regimes we see this in the sheer population concentrations in the capital city. Here, aspirants flock to Mar-a-Lago. Stable democracies rely on institutions. Fragile democracies have poorly formed institutions. Unfortunately, the new populist wave sees the unwinding of institutions in favor of personalist rule. One cannot afford to be distant from the heart of power when perks are doled out on a one-by-one basis by cronies of the top commander of the country. The rush to Trump does not, in my view, represent policy agreements with the Trump tax cuts or anything of the like. Many of those rushing to Trump actually had their taxes go up because of his retaliation against blue states through the elimination of the local tax property deduction. They are eager to contribute, and to be seen as contributing, because power and privilege flow from proximity. Trump may view himself as a latter-day Louis XIV, including in his love of gilt. But in more recent times, this is the governance style of the banana republic dictators of the 20th century and the populist antidemocrats of the 21st.

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Thomas B. Edsall has been a contributor to the Times Opinion section since 2011. His column on strategic and demographic trends in American politics appears every Wednesday. He previously covered politics for The Washington Post. @ edsall