The US Vice President, JD Vance , is biding his time at the White House. Still only 41, he can afford to wait for the ultimate prize . But he can reflect with satisfaction on giving his power-hungry boss the intellectual confidence and justification to implement authoritarianism in the US .

A colleague of mine was stopped on the streets of New York and asked to show her papers – her ID – by an immigration official the other day. She was born in the US but comes from a minority community. She had popped out for coffee without her driving licence but talked her way out of a sticky situation. Others have not been so lucky.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised at this new variant of racial profiling and “stop and search”. Years ago Donald Trump , then a mere citizen, demanded that presi

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