Waging War Against America
The authoritarian takeover isn't on its way. It's already here—and the Trump regime is just warming up its assault.
Donald Trump federalized 4,000 National Guard troops and sent 700 U.S. Marines this week to downtown Los Angeles to pretend that this militarized show of force was necessary to overcome street protests supporting immigration rights and due process. Donald Trump ordered dozens of tanks and is spending tens of millions of dollars for a military parade, a shameful spectacle with thousands of soldiers in the streets of Washington on his birthday tomorrow. This disgraceful man, standing behind the presidential seal, stood in front of American soldiers at Fort Bragg in North Carolina this week and attacked California’s governor, the nation’s former president and the free press—successfully goading handpicked members of our military to boo and participate in partisan politics.
All this is enough to know that Trump and his immoral, lawless, anti-American and authoritarian regime is escalating its efforts to deepen our nation’s polarization, stoke conflict and fear, incite violence and further turn Americans against each other. If you thought that the regime’s hostile agenda would in any way recognize constitutional limits and basic rights—at least for American citizens—know now that none of us are safe from these lawless thugs.
This fact came into stunning clarity in Los Angeles yesterday during the press conference of Department of Homeland Security’s Kristi Noem. A United States senator, Alex Padilla of California, raised his voice to question Noem. His act of free speech was met by “security” without uniforms assaulting him and forcibly removing him; he was then forced to the ground and handcuffed behind his back by FBI agents.
Padilla, you should know, is not only a sitting senator. He is chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety. (You can see the video here.)
Some minutes later, with remarkable calm, Padilla spoke in front of the downtown federal building, explaining he had come there for information in his oversight role and he had only begun to ask a question when he was assaulted and forcibly removed.
“If this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and out in California and throughout the country,” Padilla said, his voice rising in anger as he spoke. “We will hold this administration accountable. I encourage everybody to please peacefully protest.”
Minutes earlier, Noem (the infamous killer of dogs who relishes photo ops in paramilitary garb) told the assembled reporters: “We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country.”
That’s 4,000 federalized National Guard and 700 Marines to “liberate” this city. Think about that for a minute. What’s the plan? To arrest and lock up these duly elected officials—as Trump and his border “czar” Tom Homan have threatened? To unleash willing American soldiers to ignore their duty to the Constitution, to ignore local elected officials and local law enforcement, and to attack U.S. citizens on American soil?
All of the Trump regime’s disgraceful and false talk of “invasion” by migrants and “rebellion”—apparently evidenced by a small number of protestors who haven’t remained peaceful—should be seen as pretext for escalating their plot to invoke the Insurrection Act and increasingly turn our beloved country into a police state disemboweled and disconnected from the constitutional order. All to make the pathetically weak man who occupies our White House appear strong. Keep this in mind when you see the footage on Saturday of tanks rolling down the streets of our nation’s capital.
Let’s return for a moment to Trump’s grotesque politicization of our military in his inciting comments at Fort Bragg on Tuesday. This included his proud boasting that bases would revert to their Confederate names, commemorating generals like Robert E. Lee. That’s the Southern general who betrayed his nation to uphold the system of slavery in a war that led to the deaths of an estimated 750,000 Americans.
I don’t know if Donald Trump consciously wants another Civil War. I do know that he takes sadistic pleasure in violence, loves to sow chaos and conflict, and yearns to be seen on the same level as Hitler, Mussolini and Putin.
There’s nothing that he wants more than to trigger violent protest so he can call in his troops to crack heads and stifle dissent. Note his comment about his self-aggrandizing parade: “If there’s any protester who wants to come out, they will be met with very big force.” That’s “any protestor,” not just violent ones, underscoring that the sacred right to peacefully assemble isn’t part of the picture for his despicable spectacle.
If you haven’t listened to my conversation with Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible which is coordinating the “No Kings” protest on Saturday, I hope you will. Ezra’s remarks included this:
The worst thing that's going to happen to American democracy is for a lot of people to quietly and privately disagree with what's going on—to believe that this guy is indeed in charge. Because if you believe that, and if you are not willing to vocalize publicly your opposition, he is in charge. They are in charge. The democracy is lost.
As of our talk on Tuesday, some 1,800 “No Kings” protests have been planned around the country (consciously excluding Washington, D.C.), with the expectation that they will draw more than the 3.5 million people estimated to have taken to the streets for the “Hands Off” protest in April. I believe the events of the last few days will significantly expand the numbers of Americans who have decided that they’ve had enough.
If not now, when? If not after the military has been called on by this regime to “liberate” a major American city…if not when a fascistic military parade is telling us to forget the Constitution and bow down to a king…if not after thousands of people have been kidnapped and removed without due process…if not when a U.S. senator is assaulted and handcuffed for speaking while the Homeland Security secretary looks on…then when?
Allow me to leave you with California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s concluding comments from his address Tuesday night following Trump’s military imposition: “I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress and fear. But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment. Do not give into him.”
Newsom is right: We cannot give in.
Late breaking note: In a solid bit of good news, District Judge Charles R. Breyer of Northern California ruled against Trump’s federalizing of the California National Guard and ordered them returned to Gov. Newsom’s control. “Although Defendants identify some stray violent incidents relating to the protests against ICE raids in Los Angeles, and from there boldly claim that state and local officials were ‘unable to bring rioters under control,’” Breyer wrote, “it is not the federal government’s place in our constitutional system to take over a state’s police power whenever it is dissatisfied with how vigorously or quickly the state is enforcing its own laws. Quite the contrary, the Founders reserved that power, and others, to the states in the Tenth Amendment.”
In addition, the judge notes that this “illegal” action “threatens serious injury to the constitutional balance of power between the federal and state governments, and it sets a dangerous precedent for future domestic military activity. There is a reason that [Title Code 10] and other similar statutes, such as the Insurrection Act, apply only in the narrowest and most extreme of circumstances— they jeopardize the delicate federalism that forms the basis of our very system of government.”
As of last night, California has won this particular battle.
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You'd better be paying attention, and you'd better show up somewhere tomorrow at a No Kings event, or you are going to be next.
You can believe all you want that you're not at risk, but that is not true. Your location, your skin color, your gender, your financial status, who you voted for -- none of those things will matter to this power-mad, cruel, and heartless regime when it comes for you, your family, your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers.
Show up. Stand up. Speak out.
Be peaceful, but be strong.
Watch what they do, as well as what they say.
“…constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong...With such a people, you can do whatever you want." - Hannah Arendt