Is America Hitting a Breaking Point?

A Saturday Prompt

The necessary protests continue in Minneapolis and around the country. (Photo by Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)

Yesterday saw quite a flood of bad news. We learned that independent journalist Don Lemon was arrested in Los Angeles after reporting on a protest in a church in Minneapolis. This outrageous action came even after a federal magistrate judge had refused to sign off on an arrest warrant for him, which reportedly enraged Attorney General Pam Bondi. Lemon and three others (all Black) were charged with allegedly conspiring to interfere with the exercise of religious freedom at a place of worship.

“No one should be arrested merely for holding a camera, asking hard questions or telling the public what we have a right to know,” asserted Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. The Trump regime disagrees. Lemon’s arrest is straight out of the authoritarian playbook—a ratcheting up of its attack on the First Amendment and our free press meant to scare journalists away from doing their jobs so that the truth about this regime remains hidden.

The disgracefully unjust Justice Department also flooded the zone yesterday by releasing over three million Epstein documents—along with some 200,000 videos and 180,000 images—containing an avalanche of horrors. On just a first glance, it revealed accounts of behavior toward small children so monstrous that words like evil and vile, rapist and sadist cannot come close to capturing the scale of human degradation. And as horrific as the crimes depicted are—including serial rape and other acts of pedophilia allegedly committed by Trump and others—we can also expect such atrocities will be quickly met with silence or claims that nothing can be done because these accounts lack verification (and this Justice Department will not investigate them). Yesterday, the smooth-talking Deputy AG Todd Blanche told this lie to reporters: “If we had information—we, meaning the Department of Justice—about men who abused women, we would prosecute them.”

Allow me to share several examples of the graphic details. (You can see these documents here.) Now we know about a 13- or 14-year-old girl who was allegedly forced to perform oral sex on Donald Trump repeatedly. Now we know about another young girl who was allegedly raped by Trump, who, according to an anonymous complaint filed with the NYPD, “was present when her uncle murdered her newborn child.” Now we know through another filed complaint about the “calendar girls” parties at Mar-a-Lago where Trump would insert his finger in these children’s vaginas to “rate the children on tightness” and then “auction them off.” Of course, the Justice Department delivered the millions of files with this overarching disclaimer: "Some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election…To be clear, the claims are unfounded and false…”

The mind reels, barely able to put into focus the reality of a regime that is supporting the destruction of our most fundamental democratic rights and whitewashing probable violations of the most basic tenets of human decency. This new information comes a week after we witnessed the sickening footage of a Trump-inspired death squad’s second on-camera execution in Minneapolis in broad daylight. It comes a day after we learned this regime was seizing ballots in Georgia—what Democracy Docket’s Marc Elias described as “a dry run” for 2026 to deny the democratic outcome of the midterms.

The shocking thing is there’s so much more that could be added to this list to even begin a full accounting of the extreme violations of law and humanity committed by these monsters holding our country hostage. Even as we look with pride at the many Americans in Minnesota and in hundreds of places across America protesting ICE this weekend, it’s also not hard to understand why so many other Americans are looking away—unable to handle what’s happening if not indifferent to it.

How much will people take? Will Americans cling to their comfort and try to pretend that we are not led by pedophiles and their enablers bent on destroying a country just months before its 250th year of existence? Are we looking at some kind of sick cosmic joke—that all of this is coming to a head in the year that America should be celebrating its remarkable achievements? Are we watching play out national suicide, a stunning reminder that the line between life and death—between civilization and utter savagery—is shockingly thin?

Is this the ultimate reckoning for a country that has marched onward through the genocide of native Americans and the ceaseless evil of the kidnapping, torture and enslavement of millions of Black Africans as it built its economy and pursued its future? Is the utter madness of handing the levers of power again to one of the worst humans to ever walk this earth a sign that we have avoided reality and accountability for too long—and now we must pay the price that so many Americans refused to pay by looking forward and ignoring the crimes of the past? Are we still capable of confronting the mass psychosis that has gripped millions of our fellow citizens? Is America hitting a breaking point?

In these prompts, it’s always my goal to encourage reflection and dialogue. That’s true this week, too. But I also ask you to think hard about what you can do—that is, what you are willing to do to help redirect the trajectory of a once-great nation currently on a suicidal path. I say this with the humble knowledge that there’s little I or any one of us can do by ourselves—that it’s only through the collective efforts of a dedicated majority that we can overcome the insanity and evil that besets us.

As always, I look forward to reading your observations and the opportunity of this community to hear from each other. Please do be respectful in your remarks. Trolling will not be tolerated.

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