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civil war
Team Trump Is Threatening to Aim the Power of the State at His Political Enemies—Yes, That Means You
When a government points its finger at you — when it decides you are the enemy — the entire machinery of the state lines up behind that accusation. That’s not hyperbole; it’s the lesson of history, written in blood and exile and mass graves.
Sep 15, 2025
Every president and most members of Congress have known for the past two centuries that having the ability to wield the power of government is a serious responsibility that carries with it real obligations for self-control.
The reason is simple and obvious, although our media appears to not realize it when they act like Trump’s and Miller’s rhetoric is normal: Government can legally kill you, imprison you, and take everything you own. Fox “News” and other commentators can’t.
When some bigot on Fox or another rightwing outlet goes off on how Democrats are “left wing extremists,” “terrorists,” or “traitors” he doesn’t have the power or ability to do anything about it. They’re just words, which is why they’re protected by the First Amendment. Inflammatory words, certainly, but just words.
But when a government official slaps one of those kinds of labels on you because of things you’ve said or political views you hold, you can lose literally everything.
Just ask Mahmoud Khalil or Rümeysa Öztürk, who were imprisoned for expressing their opinions on the genocide Netanyahu is carrying out in Israel, or Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had the bad fortune of being brown-skinned when Stephen Miller was on one of his racist jeremiads even though he had legal permission to stay in the US.
This is why even after 9/11 George W. Bush measured his words, going so far as to emphasize that Islam wasn’t our enemy. So did Abraham Lincoln, for that matter, even as the country he led was under attack by actual traitors committed to ending democracy in America. In his first inaugural address, on the verge of the Civil War, he said:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds…”
Utah’s Republican Governor Spencer Cox understood that, as a government official with the power to kill by firing squad or imprison, it was his obligation to turn down the heat.
“We can return violence with violence; we can return hate with hate. That’s the problem with political violence. It metastasizes,” Cox told the nation when Robinson was arrested. “We can always point the figure at the other side. At some point we have to find an off ramp, or else it’s going to get much worse.”
Trump, Miller, and the GOP more generally haven’t gotten the message.
Trump blamed the “radical left” — as if there actually is any meaningful number of people in America calling for communism — for the killing, and then on Thursday told reporters, “We just have to beat the hell” out of “radical left lunatics.”
When Matthew Dowd notes on MSNBC that Kirk engaged in hate speech, the worst that happens is the network fires him. Ditto for when Fox’s Brian Kilmead called for America to emulate Hitler’s Aktion T4 program, where physicians killed homeless and disabled people by lethal injection, later moving on to mobile vans that used their exhaust to kill. The worst Kilmead can expect is to be fired, although given how shamefully unprincipled Fox management is, that’s probably unlikely.
But when government officials describe people using language that could lead to any of us being investigated, arrested, or even imprisoned or deported because of our politics, it’s an entirely different thing. It’s a genuine threat to our system of government, our rule of law, and to the safety and security of all of the American people.
Because when they start hauling away Americans for their opinions, when they threaten to pull our citizenship or passports — as Trump and other Republicans have recently done — history tells us it’s not a long trek to using those same tactics against people who thought they were on the “right side.”
Indeed, it’s already started to happen: just ask Republicans James Comey, John Brennan, and James Clapper, who are all now facing criminal investigations for speaking out against Trump. All these lifelong Republicans had to lawyer up after Trump publicly called them “criminals.”
When Stephen Miller — who the White House wants you to know definitely does not play with porcelain dolls — says the Democratic Party (which he can’t bring himself to say; he instead uses Joe McCarthy’s “Democrat Party” slur) “is not a political party; it is a domestic, extremist organization,” he’s laying a legal foundation for criminal investigations and arrests per the Patriot Act.
When he vows to “dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence,” promising under Trump’s leadership to use law enforcement to “strip them of money, power, and freedom” and threatening that members of the left who “spread evil hate” will “live in exile” he’s not just a commentator: he’s a man who wields actual power over life and death, imprisonment or freedom.
This rhetoric is particularly troubling since all of the previous 31 politically-motivated violent attacks in America have been committed by rightwingers.
Or consider Elon Musk, the world‘s richest man who created and ran the DOGE program to dismantle our government. He was in England this weekend and said:
“The violence is going to come to you. You will have no choice. This is a, this is, you're in a fundamental situation here where you, where, whether you choose violence or not. The violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die. You either the fight back or you die. And that's the truth.”
And he wasn’t talking about Osama bin Laden or anybody like that; he was talking about people like you and me:
“[Y]ou see how much violence there’s on the left with our friend Charlie Kirk getting murdered in cold blood this week and people on the left celebrating it openly; the left is the party of murder and celebrating murder. I mean let that sink in for a minute. That’s who we’re dealing with here. That is who we're dealing with.”
When Trump is asked how to heal the country and says, “I couldn’t care less” and adds that, “The radicals on the left are the problem,” he’s inciting stochastic lone-wolf terror against Democrats and setting up rationalizations for government actions like Hitler’s Reichstag Fire Decree that ended all free speech protections in Germany in 1933.
And now a member of Congress is introduced legislation to strip the passports of anybody who “supports terrorism.“ The bill’s author is a former soldier in the Israeli military: you know what direction this is going.
The few rational people still left in the GOP need to reach out to this administration and convince them to follow the example of every other president since Andrew Jackson to dial back the rhetoric, acknowledge the fundamental humanity of Democrats and others on the “left,” and their absolute right to advocate for their own, different vision of a better America with fewer guns, more unions, and free healthcare and free college (the actual “radical left” positions).
Because when a government points its finger at you — when it decides you are the enemy — the entire machinery of the state lines up behind that accusation. That’s not hyperbole; it’s the lesson of history, written in blood and exile and mass graves.
Every authoritarian regime began not with tanks in the streets but with leaders who used words like weapons and convinced their followers that fellow citizens were traitors. Every one. Trump and his enablers are replaying that script, right here, right now.
The only question left is whether we’ll recognize it for what it is and slam on the brakes, or whether we’ll watch, paralyzed, as the state’s power to cage, exile, or kill is once again turned inward, but this time, against us all.
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Trump Is No King—He's More Dangerous Than That
And yet, as he was elected by the people, we need no revolution to overthrow him. What we must do is reclaim democracy for the common good and put back together what the MAGA movement has smashed.
Jul 04, 2025
Donald Trump seems to think he is a king.
On June 14, I joined with citizens across the country to loudly declare “No Kings!
At the same time, Trump is not a king. For while he inherited great wealth, he did not inherit the political power he now wields with such cruelty and contempt for the law.
Trump, alas, is the elected President of the United States.
Well over 77 million citizens voted for him, after experiencing his Covid response, his two impeachments, his civil and criminal convictions, and his failed administration. After all that, those millions of our fellow citizens elected him to the highest office in the country for a second time.
As we celebrate this July 4, it is important to emphasize the ways that Trump’s presidency stands as an affront and a danger to those core values of the Declaration that have long animated democratic struggles...
Trump is indeed much more dangerous than any monarch, precisely because he was elected after a multi-year campaign (kings do not campaign) that consisted of angry rhetoric and violent incitement and very clear promises to do exactly what he is now doing, a campaign that generated substantial popular support and even enthusiasm. There is something paradoxical about this: claiming to represent “We the People,” Trump is laying waste to the foundations of the very constitutional democracy that authorizes his power—much like dictators of the past, including Mussolini and Hitler, did a century ago, and Viktor Orban and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan do today.
The U.S. was not a constitutional democracy in 1776. But it became one, over time, because of the struggles of social movements that regarded the Declaration of Independence as “a charter of liberty” and sought to make real its promise—to secure human rights for all, and a government legitimated by popular consent. A nation, as Lincoln famously put it, “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” and challenged to sustain “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
As we celebrate this July 4, it is important to emphasize the ways that Trump’s presidency stands as an affront and a danger to those core values of the Declaration that have long animated democratic struggles—which makes it all the more galling that he continues to insist that he, along with his recently reinstated “1776 Commission,” is its chief defender.
The rhetoric of popular revolt or revolution is misleading precisely because Trump is a democratically elected president and is neither a king nor a dictator—at least not yet.
On June 14, I nodded approvingly as I heard fellow demonstrators rightly invoke the liberatory rhetoric of the Declaration’s Preamble. But I blanched when this line was loudly repeated as a call to action: “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
I bow to no one in my opposition to Trump, and I truly want to see him gone as soon as possible. Given his administration’s rapid-fire assaults on liberal democracy, I fully appreciate the mobilizational power of those “No Kings” appeals to the rhetoric of popular revolt. And it must be stated: those who embrace this rhetoric do so only rhetorically; it is not anywhere accompanied by incitements to violence or calls to insurrection.
At the same time, the rhetoric of popular revolt or revolution is misleading precisely because Trump is a democratically elected president and is neither a king nor a dictator—at least not yet. Trump is what historians call a “conservative revolutionary.” Seeking to destroy the progressive achievements of past decades, and to restore a mythic lost “greatness,” it is he who seeks to alter or abolish the current political system, and it is we who must prevent him from succeeding, by defending constitutional democracy, whatever its deficiencies.
Recall that the January 6, 2021 insurrection was justified as a second American Revolution. On that morning, MAGA Congresswoman Lauren Boebert ttweeted “Today is 1776.” Congressman Jody Hice followed a few hours later, tweeting “this is our 1776 moment.” The rallying cry was heard. And, led by Proud Boys and Three Percenters cosplaying the Minutemen of Lexington and Concord, the “patriotic” mob descended upon the Capitol, doing their part to prevent “Biden the Usurper” from becoming president. Days later, the Philadelphia Inquirer profiled Jim Sinclair, a 38-year-old home restoration contractor from Bensalem, Pennsylvania, who traveled to Washington to participate in the “Stop the Steal” march. “Freedom!!!!!!!” Sinclair posted on Facebook. “It’s 1776, the American people have ears and eyes,” he declared. “We will not accept this fraudulent election.” Politico reported that online social media traffic among extremists in the lead-up to the insurrection frequently alluded to the precedent of 1776.
This is the rhetoric of civil war. And it attacks the fundamental premise of our constitutional democracy—the legitimacy of political contestation.
Also recall that the highbrow conservative luminaries from Hillsdale College and the Claremont Institute who comprised Trump’s “1776 Commission” and revere “The Founding Fathers” either directly supported this insurrection or gave it intellectual cover. The “Stop the Steal” movement that powered Trump’s 2024 victory frequently invoked the “spirit of ’76.” Claiming to represent a “resistance” to the supposedly “totalitarian Biden regime,” MAGA ideologues were quite amenable to extra-legal action in the service of “regime change,” in the event that “the Democrat Party” succeeded in 2024. If you doubt this, take a look at Claremont Institute Fellow Kevin Slack’s 2023 book War on the American Republic: How Liberalism Became Despotism, which floats the idea of a new—and very much armed—American Revolution. Discussing the book in The American Mind, a MAGA journal, Claremont fellow Glenn Ellmers dispassionately discusses “Revolutionary Necessity,” quoting Jefferson on “prudence” and gently urging caution because “the regime” would love to crush a revolution, and “one should embark on a revolution only when there is a reasonable expectation, and plan for, a better arrangement.” In other words, you need to really be sure you can succeed before you try to overthrow the “despotism” of liberal democracy.
This is the rhetoric of civil war. And it attacks the fundamental premise of our constitutional democracy—the legitimacy of political contestation. Trump won the 2024 election. And so, instead of taking to the streets—as they might have done had Trump lost—MAGA ideologues, armed with their own revolutionary manifesto, Project 2025, have taken control of the Executive Branch of the federal government. And they are using it to wage war on legal institutions, universities, immigrants both documented and undocumented, sexual minorities, and political critics of all kinds.
This July Fourth, we ought to recall heroes and heroines of the past—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Eugene V. Debs, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others—who led the fight to realize a robustly democratic vision of the Declaration. And then, using the hard-won civil and political liberties still at our disposal, we ought to rededicate ourselves to winning back political power democratically, so that, in the words of Lincoln, “government of, by, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” For if the MAGA agenda succeeds, we can say goodbye to civil rights, civil liberties, and democracy itself. It would be a cruel irony indeed if future July 4 celebrations were to become celebrations of the MAGA illiberalism that warms Donald Trump’s shriveled heart.
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Trump Is Following in the Footsteps of the Worst Traitor in US History
It makes perfect sense that the current chief betrayer of the ideals of our nation would brag to a group of American soldiers that he’s going to rename a military base after Robert E. Lee.
Jun 13, 2025
Robert E. Lee killed more Americans than Hitler. More than Khruschev. More than King George III, Ho Chi Mihn, or Kim Il Sung. He killed more Americans than we’ve lost in every war since the American Revolution, combined. He was the largest mass murderer of Americans in our nation’s history.
General Lee was not a good man: He was a morbidly rich oligarch who not only bought and sold enslaved human beings but delighted in whipping and torturing them.
Three of the 200-plus enslaved people he held at his plantation—Wesley Norris, his sister Mary, and their cousin George Parks—escaped and were captured in nearby Maryland. The report in the March 26, 1866 edition of The New York Daily Tribune, quoting Wesley Norris at length, tells us all about Lee’s proclivities:
He then ordered us to the barn, where, in his presence, we were tied firmly to posts by a Mr. Gwin, our overseer, who was ordered by Gen. Lee to strip us to the waist and give us 50 lashes each, excepting my sister, who received but 20; …
Gen. Lee, in the meantime, stood by, and frequently enjoined Williams to “lay it on well,” an injunction which he did not fail to heed; not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with [excruciatingly painful saltwater] brine, which was done.
Fearing President Abraham Lincoln might end slavery in America, Lee raised an army and tried to use it to end democracy in the United States; he thus committed treason in a way that exceeded even Benedict Arnold’s wildest fantasies. His war killed almost 750,000 men, women, and children, all Americans.
No American has ever betrayed or visited as much violence on this country as severely as did Robert E. Lee.
And so, when Lee lost the war that he’d started against us, the federal government seized his slave plantation and turned it into a cemetery for the Civil War dead. It’s today named Arlington National Cemetery.
So, perhaps it makes perfect sense that the current chief betrayer of the ideals of our nation, convicted felon and Putin toady Donald Trump, would brag to a group of American soldiers that he’s going to rename a military base after Robert E. Lee.
Even more shocking, in what’s an astonishing indictment of how our educational system has deemphasized civics in the years since Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both took an axe to civics education, the assembled soldiers cheered the news that Lee’s name would again desecrate a military facility.
Trump then went on to repeatedly lie to our soldiers, falsely claiming that:
- He won the 2020 election, which he told them was “rigged and stolen;”
- He sent the National Guard into Minnesota “and I saved it” during the George Floyd protests, when in fact it was Gov. Tim Walz who did so;
- He defeated ISIS “in four weeks”; it took two years to liberate the ISIS caliphate;
- “Nobody wanted to join” the military under former President Joe Biden, a blatant lie;
- Countries like “Congo” dumped their prisoners and people from their mental hospitals here, saying, “Their countries would bus them or drive them right to our border and say, ‘Go in there. If you ever come back, we’re going to kill you;’”
- He’d brought water to LA during the fires when in fact he’d just ordered a field flooded in Northern California, screwing up water allocations for agriculture; and
- Echoed Hitler when he called Los Angeles protesters “animals” and “a foreign enemy.”
And even more disgusting than that, Trump was nakedly using those soldiers he was lying to as political props to massage his own ego and provide a made-for-Fox-“News” clip, as Military.com pointed out yesterday:
Internal 82nd Airborne Division communications reviewed by Military.com reveal a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics of Trump's recent visit, including handpicking soldiers for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance. The troops ultimately selected to be behind Trump and visible to the cameras were almost exclusively male. One unit-level message bluntly said, “no fat soldiers.” [emphasis added]
This is the exact opposite of the instructions to keep the military nonpartisan that President George Washington gave future generations in his farewell address:
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.
The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.
That the Secretary of Defense, “Kegger” Pete Hegseth, would not just allow but intentionally facilitate such an offensive display of partisanship is particularly troubling when compared to the military’s actual policies in Directive 1344.10, put into place years ago to respect Washington’s advice:
In keeping with the traditional concept that members on active duty should not engage in partisan political activity, and that members not on active duty should avoid inferences that their political activities imply or appear to imply official sponsorship, approval, or endorsement, the following policy shall apply:…
A member of the Armed Forces on active duty shall not: …
Participate in partisan political fundraising activities, rallies, conventions, management of campaigns, or debates, either on one’s own behalf or on that of another, without respect to uniform or inference or appearance of official sponsorship, approval, or endorsement…
Attend partisan political events as an official representative of the Armed Forces…
This is a lawful general regulation. Violations of paragraphs 4.1. through 4.5. of this Directive by persons subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice are punishable under Article 92, “Failure to Obey Order or Regulation.”
When Trump blurs this line designed to keep our military nonpartisan, he’s imitating the behavior of dictators like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who cultivate personal loyalty within the military, rather than respect for constitutional processes.
Trump’s and “Kegger’s” move is apparently designed to test whether rank-and-file troops will go along with his political agenda and to build a foundation for future actions in which military force can be used domestically to defend his regime rather than the Constitution (e.g., suppressing protests, enforcing disputed election outcomes, defending the suspension of elections, etc.).
This is deeply dangerous to any democracy, which is why such behavior is not allowed by the military or executive of any other advanced democracy in the world. When military loyalty becomes politicized, the risk of coups, unlawful orders, or martial law rises dramatically.
Which—given the fact that Trump’s already tried once to stage a coup against the United States—makes this all the more alarming.
But Trump didn’t stop there. He next attacked the media filming the event, saying to more applause from the troops:
And for a little news, for the fake news back there, the fake news, ladies and gentlemen, look at them, look at them, aye yai yai, what I have to put up with. Fake news. What I have to put up with.
In fascist regimes, the press is always one of their first targets, typically labeled as “enemies of the people,” blamed for national problems, and ultimately silenced or co-opted. Trump using such rhetoric normalizes contempt for independent journalism among armed agents of the state while it suggests the possibility of state-aligned force being turned against critical media or dissenters.
Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Putin’s Russia, and more recently Orbán’s Hungary all followed this script. By repeating it, Trump is conditioning our soldiers to follow him rather than the Constitution and the law of the land.
He even brought along a vendor of Trump merchandise in violation of military policy, including MAGA hats, T-shirts, and cards that read, “White Privilege Card: Trumps Everything.”
Historically, when democracies have slid into dictatorship, there’s a moment when the military is required to choose sides, the press is cast as a threat, and loyalty to the regime is demanded and rewarded, rather than loyalty to the law.
We’re there now. Today.
Every American, particularly those who’ve served in the military, should be outraged by Trump’s fascist performance in front of our troops. That the only senior active duty military officer who spoke to the press did so anonymously (he said, “This has been a bad week for the Army for anyone who cares about us being a neutral institution; this was shameful.”) is a damning indictment of how far away from American values we’ve let Trump drag our country.
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