Ami Fields-Meyer
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fieldsmeyer.com
Ami Fields-Meyer
@fieldsmeyer.com
8.8K followers 1.8K following 590 posts
Senior Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School | Fmr: White House Senior Policy Advisor | Work on civil rights, democracy, tech, and power. Nothing is inevitable.

Writing: amifieldsmeyer.substack.com
Get in touch: fieldsmeyer.com
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fieldsmeyer.com
This is me almost *nine years ago* at a march on the first full day of the first Trump Administration. Astounding that I could (and maybe will) hold the same poster at today's No Kings – with the same relevance and urgency.

But the fight for a true multiracial democracy continues...
Holding an "American Jews Welcome Muslim Refugees" poster at the 2017 Women's March
October 18, 2025 at 12:37 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
Lots of talk about big tents, but if you're unable to look at a Yom Kippur car ramming say "that's unacceptable" then I'm not sure what we're doing here.

You believe innocent people should be shielded from violence, or you don't. There are no shades of humanity. I mourn with the Jews of Manchester.
Outside the synagogue in Manchester
October 3, 2025 at 2:00 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
The Guardian on the left, the New York Times on the right

Two different approaches for covering authoritarianism.
NYT: Trump Says He Has Ordered Troops to Protect ICE Facilities in Portland The president characterized Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities as being under siege from domestic terrorists. Guardian: Donald Trump says he is deploying troops to Portland, Oregon Apparently misled by hyperbolic reporting from conservative outlets on a single small protest, president described peaceful city as ‘war ravaged’
September 27, 2025 at 8:40 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
As the brother of an autistic American, as a person who worked on US scientific integrity policy at the White House, and as human being, I'm boiling at the RFK idiocy. And though I have little to offer beyond surpassing rage and national shame, I did smile at this statement from NYU's Arthur Caplan:
Sept. 22, 2025, 5:46 p.m. ET3 hours ago Christina Jewett F.D.A. reporter My inbox is already lighting up. Arthur Caplan, the founding head of the division of medical ethics at N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine, wrote: “The announcement on autism was the saddest display of a lack of evidence, rumors, recyling old myths, lousy advice, outright lies and dangerous advice I have ever witnessed by anyone in authority in the world claiming to know anything about science.”
September 23, 2025 at 1:05 AM
fieldsmeyer.com
Some exciting news to share: I’m writing a book — with the great @juliaangwin.com for HarperCollins/Mariner. ON COURAGE is a deeply reported case for courage in our age of authoritarianism, weaving the stories and lessons of dissidents on five continents into a guide for Americans. See you in 2026.
Pulitzer Prize-winning NYT contributing Opinion writer Julia Angwin and former White House senior policy advisor Ami Fields-Meyer's ON COURAGE: TO BE A DISSIDENT IN AMERICA'S AGE OF FEAR, a guide to confronting fear, taking risk, and being courageous in our new age of authoritarianism, which expands on The New Yorker essay, “So You Want to Be a Dissident?: A Practical Guide to Courage in Trump's Age of Fear,” through new interviews with dissidents, opposition leaders, theorists, and movement strategists across the world, to Peter Hubbard at Mariner, for publication in summer 2026, by Laurie Liss at Sterling Lord Literistic (world English).
September 3, 2025 at 2:29 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
On days like today I think a lot about Luís Roberto Barroso, the chief justice of Brazil's Supreme Court. www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/w...
It has put presidents in prison. It has taken on Elon Musk — and won. It has become one of the world’s toughest policemen of the internet. And it appears poised to make Jair Bolsonaro the next former Brazilian president in handcuffs. Brazil’s Supreme Court has become perhaps the most powerful institution in Brazil — and one of the most powerful top courts in the world — in part because it has granted itself that power. For years, the court has overseen sprawling criminal investigations into Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters. As a result, many on Brazil’s left believe the court helped save the nation’s democracy in the face of an attempted coup, while those on the right believe it is now the court itself that poses a democratic threat.
August 22, 2025 at 7:52 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
I will say it again and again: dehumanizing language BEGETS DEHUMANIZATION. That there is no accountability for those who refer to their fellow human beings as "cockroaches" is a vicious omen. Remember Rwanda. Especially in an estranged politics, our language lives its own life.

From The Atlantic:
Twenty-five years ago this month, all hell broke loose in my country, which is tucked away in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Hordes of members of the Hutu ethnic majority, armed with machetes, spears, nail-studded clubs, and other rudimentary weapons, moved house to house in villages, hunting for Tutsis, the second largest of Rwanda’s three ethnic groups. The radio station RTLM, allied with leaders of the government, had been inciting Hutus against the Tutsi minority, repeatedly describing the latter as inyenzi, or “cockroaches,” and as inzoka, or “snakes.” The station, unfortunately, had many listeners. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/rwanda-shows-how-hateful-speech-leads-violence/587041/
August 22, 2025 at 4:04 AM
fieldsmeyer.com
It should go without saying, but it is possible for a U.S. president to extract diplomatic and humanitarian concessions from dictators without flattering them in the process. But that would require Trump not to admire them in the first place.

The missing clause here is highly respected "by me."
Donald J. Trump: I had a wonderful talk with the highly respected President of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko. The purpose of the call was to thank him for the release of 16 prisoners. We are also
August 15, 2025 at 3:21 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
A chilling report on the abuses the Rohingya population of Myanmar is facing today at the hands of the Arkan Army:

www.hrw.org/news/2025/07/28/m...
August 12, 2025 at 7:00 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
“Instead Sudan’s city of the dead”

www.rollingstone.com/politics...
August 8, 2025 at 3:46 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
Texas Dems are doing the right thing. But many across the US are rationalizing staying quiet or keeping their heads down.

Has the fear environment led you to disengage? Are you starting to bargain with yourself about why it shouldn't be you who stands up?

Here's what I told the @bostonglobe.com‬:
August 7, 2025 at 4:05 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
Horrific. Do not look away: Evyatar David, 24, looks looks visibly gaunt as he ticks off days on a calendar in a narrow tunnel. Another section of the Hamas video shows him being forced to dig a hole in the ground that he says will be his grave.

time.com/7307125/evya...
Evyatar David, 24, looks looks visibly gaunt as he ticks off days on a calendar in a narrow tunnel. Another section of the Hamas video shows him being forced to dig a hole in the ground that he says will be his grave. Evyatar David, 24, looks looks visibly gaunt as he ticks off days on a calendar in a narrow tunnel. Another section of the Hamas video shows him being forced to dig a hole in the ground that he says will be his grave.
August 3, 2025 at 2:43 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
Horrific. Saif Hijazi, 13, who suffers from severe malnutrition and was partially paralyzed by shelling lies on a bed. Malnutrition is often worsened by preexisting conditions and compounded by illnesses linked to inadequate health care/poor sanitation. Don't look away.

bit.ly/45gZPah
Saif Hijazi, 13, who suffers from severe malnutrition and was partially paralyzed by shelling lies on a bed to have his picture taken at the Shifa Hospital where he is being treated in Gaza City, Monday, July 28, 2025. In Gaza, malnutrition is often worsened by preexisting conditions and compounded by illnesses linked to inadequate health care and poor sanitation, largely the result of the ongoing war. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
August 3, 2025 at 2:35 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
Playing Dead: Do the Democrats really want reform? (Harper's)

harpers.org/archive/2025/08/p...
August 1, 2025 at 3:13 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
I'm going to buy this book.
Leo Szilard: Hitler came into office in January ’33, and I had no doubt what would happen. I lived in the faculty club of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin-Dahlem and I had my suitcases packed. By this I mean that I had literally two suitcases standing in my room which were packed; the key was in it, and all I had to do was turn the key and leave when things got too bad. I was there when the Reichstagsbrand occurred, and I remember how difficult it was for people there to understand what was going on. A friend of mine, Michael Polanyi, who was director of a division of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry, like many other people took a very optimistic view of the situation. They all thought that civilized Germans would not stand for anything really rough happening.
July 31, 2025 at 2:59 AM
fieldsmeyer.com
From ‪@ariannacoghill.bsky.social‬

www.motherjones.com/politics/...
July 30, 2025 at 10:28 AM
fieldsmeyer.com
Very helpful intervention from @eladn.bsky.social which deserves our attention and debate. He argues that the hard right is overlaying antisemitic tropes onto other communities (he brings receipts!) and says a solidarity politics is the only viable way out.

eladnehorai.substack.com/p/fascists-a...
The core tropes of much of historic antisemitism (shadowy elite puppetmasters controlling the country, the “feminization” of society, blood libel etc) have been transmuted and redirected. Now, it is no longer just Jews at the center of these myths: other groups have become the center of them. Trans people, Palestinians and others are the targets. In each case, familiar antisemitic tropes are being recycled, with a new scapegoat placed at the center. This does not mean Jews are being replaced as targets. It means that fascists have learned how to adapt their messaging to obscure their goals. Like every fascist tactic, this one is built to confuse its targets, divide its opposition, and grow while no one is looking. Now, it is no longer just Jews at the center of these myths: other groups have become the center of them." is highlighted
July 29, 2025 at 3:11 AM
fieldsmeyer.com
Even Orwell's bit on progress now reads as a blistering indictment of where the United States has arrived:
Moreover, the national health insurance has partly done away with the idea that a working-class patient is a pauper who deserves little consideration. Well into this century it was usual for ‘free’ patients at the big hospitals to have their teeth extracted with no anaesthetic. They didn't pay, so why should they have an anaesthetic — that was the attitude.
July 26, 2025 at 11:18 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
Hey @andreapitzer.bsky.social – this para from today's homelessness EO feels like a concentration camp clause, right? (Hope I'm wrong.) Of course lots of warehousing/criminalizing homelessness already happening in US cities, but does this open the door in some new way to disappearing folks?
(iii) assess Federal resources to determine whether they may be directed toward ensuring, to the extent permitted by law, that detainees with serious mental illness are not released into the public because of a lack of forensic bed capacity at appropriate local, State, and Federal jails or hospitals; and
July 25, 2025 at 2:18 AM
fieldsmeyer.com
As Trump unveils an "AI plan" – shaped by David Sacks, who made his name opposing multiculturalism – recall the work we did under @alondra.bsky.social + @kamalaharris.com so that AI wouldn't harm the most vulnerable.

How far we've fallen. Our October 2023 announcement of the AI Bill of Rights:
This blueprint is for the older Americans denied critical health benefits because of an algorithm change. The student erroneously accused of cheating by AI-enabled video surveillance. The fathers wrongfully arrested because of facial recognition technology. The Black Americans blocked from a kidney transplant after an AI assumed they were at lesser risk for kidney disease. It is for everyone who interacts daily with these technologies—and every person whose life has been altered by an unaccountable algorithm.
July 23, 2025 at 5:35 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
"Larry Ellison’s son, David, met with the FCC’s Carr earlier this week to get the merger ironed out, promising that CBS would embrace 'varied ideological perspectives,'" namely:
David Rhodes (a longtime Rupert Murdoch lieutenant), Jeff Shell (the appointed president for the Paramount-Skydance conglomerate, who reportedly pressured 60 Minutes executives ahead of the settlement), and Free Press editor Bari Weiss. (According to Belloni, Skydance is reportedly in talks to acquire Weiss’ increasingly Trumpy publication; if both the Paramount and Free Press deals go through, Rhodes and Weiss would serve as the “ideological guide” for CBS News.)
July 19, 2025 at 3:39 AM
fieldsmeyer.com
Just now at a reading of the Declaration in Stockbridge, MA, a reader translated this line to Spanish:

“He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither”
Two people standing before a crowd for a reading of the Declaration of Independence at the Norman Rockwell museum
July 4, 2025 at 7:23 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
A good day to recall that the Biden-Harris Administration undertook a major effort to change how the government categorizes people by race and ethnicity to reflect how people actually think, talk, and conceive of themselves.

www.pbs.org/newshour/amp...
July 4, 2025 at 2:03 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
A relative of mine received this in his email inbox last night. Beyond parody.
Social Security Applauds Passage of Legislation Providing Historic Tax Relief for Seniors The Social Security Administration (SSA) is celebrating the passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill, a landmark piece of legislation that delivers long-awaited tax relief to millions of older Americans. The bill ensures that nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits, providing meaningful and immediate relief to seniors who have spent a lifetime contributing to our nation's economy. “This is a historic step forward for America’s seniors,” said Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano. “For nearly 90 years, Social Security has been a cornerstone of economic security for older Americans. By significantly reducing the tax burden on benefits, this legislation reaffirms President Trump’s promise to protect Social Security and helps ensure that seniors can better enjoy the retirement they’ve earned." The new law includes a provision that eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for most beneficiaries, providing relief to individuals and couples. Additionally, it provides an enhanced deduction for taxpayers aged 65 and older, ensuring that retirees can keep more of what they have earned. Social Security remains committed to providing timely, accurate information to the public and will continue working closely with federal partners to ensure beneficiaries understand how this legislation may affect them.
July 4, 2025 at 1:37 PM
fieldsmeyer.com
Come on guys, be nice. He’s just going through the hazing ritual at his new frat. It’s a tradition, they do it to all the new brothers, you wouldn’t get it. A lot of the guys are actually really cool!
Sean Spicer in from of inauguration crowd photos in White House press room in 2017
June 26, 2025 at 1:30 PM