Since President Donald J. Trump took office for the second time on Jan. 20, 2025, it has become obvious that Trump is wielding power differently than any presidential administration in modern history, including his first administration. The difference is so striking that the Editorial Staff of the Independent feels it is objectively inaccurate to refer to Trump’s government in the same way as previous administrations. Therefore, the Independent has made the editorial decision to refer to Trump’s government as the “Trump regime” in the future.
We acknowledge that this is not a neutral move. However, we believe it is an objective description of the current way in which the Trump regime is wielding power.
According to the Associated Press Style Guide, the word “regime” is synonymous with a “political system,” such as a “democratic regime” or an “authoritarian regime.” It can also refer to a period of rule by either a person or a system. Examples of this could be the “Assad regime” or the “Nazi regime.” Frequently, these carry negative connotations, implying oppressive or authoritarian rule, unlike the more neutral terminology, “administration” such as the “Reagan administration.”
Some news outlets have already begun to refer to the Trump regime using terms associated with authoritarianism. One political commentator, the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley and formerly the Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, Robert Reich, has already used the phrase, “Trump regime.”
One example is from an opinion piece by Reich in The Guardian, titled “Trump is the most lawless president in American history”: “Plaintiffs are seeking to ‘check this abuse of power’ by asking the courts to declare the Trump regime’s actions unlawful and prevent their enforcement.”
An example of a news outlet using authoritarian language to describe the Trump regime comes from Truthout, in “Erasing History, Erasing Democracy: Trump’s Authoritarian Assault on Education” by Henry A. Giroux: “[“Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling”] executive order is not just an attack on critical race theory or teachings about systemic racism — it is a cornerstone of an authoritarian ideology designed to eliminate critical thought, suppress historical truth and strip educators of their autonomy.”
Another example of this comes from a New York Times article “A Trump Oligarchy Is Moving to Washington, and Buying Up Prime Addresses” by Elisabeth Bumiller: “President Biden warned in his farewell address to the nation last week that an oligarchy is taking shape in America. In Washington, the oligarchs are already here, buying big houses.”
In one more example, on a podcast episode of the “Ezra Klein Show” by New York Times Opinion titled “The New Rules of the Trump Era,” Ezra Klein said this:
“I could also see it all leading to a consolidation of power as Trump and his allies unite to protect their power, to serve each other: You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. This is how democracy has backslidden in so many other countries.
But we’re entering a new era. Power did not just pass from one president to another. It passed from one regime to another, one set of rules to another. And you can see it so clearly because the old regime ended even before the new one began.”
The Independent’s staff feels that these examples, and others, speak to an objective truth. We feel it is a new era, that the rules of power under Trump are different. We feel this is a new regime. And so, we feel it is our editorial duty to reflect that in our publication, by referring to Trump’s government as the Trump regime.
Note: Full research by our Copy Editing Team, “Editorial Study of Regime vs. Administration According to AP Style” by Jasmine Rodriguez and Anika Tracy, can be found on the Independent website.
