Trump has overstepped his presidential authority. Americans must resist.
President Donald Trump’s first months back in office have seen a deluge of executive orders implementing his Project 2025 agenda.
This “everything, everywhere, all at once” approach can seem bewildering, but Trump’s direction is clear. He is doing all the things that dictators do to solidify their power.
On his first day in office, Trump approved his followers’ lawbreaking by pardoning all the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. This gives Trump’s supporters impunity to use threats and violence to terrorize and silence anyone who opposes his regime.
Over the summer, the Trump regime deployed both military and National Guard troops in California, claiming they were needed to assist with Immigration and Customs Enforcement detentions, ignoring objections by the governor and local authorities.
He then claimed authority over Washington police, activated the National Guard in the District of Columbia, and recently authorized sending the National Guard to Memphis, Tennessee; Portland, Oregon; and Chicago. The Portland and Chicago deployments face court challenges, and federal courts have so far blocked moving troops into both cities.
He recently told assembled generals and admirals that he wants to use American cities as military training grounds to fight “the enemy within.”
Expansion of ICE is akin to creating a police state
None of this is normal. All these actions attempt to bully state and local officials and military leaders, instill fear among local citizens, normalize using the military for civilian law enforcement and set the stage for a manufactured “crisis” excuse for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.
All of this is repugnant to our democracy and shows a wannabe dictator testing the public’s and court’s appetites for constitutional overreach.
ICE detentions have gone well beyond the frequent promises to target dangerous criminals. Well over half the detainees have not been convicted of any crimes, many are asylum seekers pursuing legal steps to support their claims,e and numerous ICE arrests have used intimidation tactics, invading courts, schools, churches, parks, farms and workplaces.
ICE operates the world’s largest immigrant detention system, currently imprisoning almost 60,000. Detainees are sent far from their homes, families and lawyers, illegally. Some are sent to countries they did not come from and they are denied due process as documented by Human Rights Watch and others.
A huge increase of $170 billion for the immigration enforcement and ICE budget, passed by a complicit Congress, gives the agency extravagant resources to expand extensively and multiply the reach of its tactics by adding 10,000 agents.
These are the tools of a police state, not a democracy.
University, law firms and others capitulate to the president’s will
The Trump regime’s attacks on a wide range of federal agencies have spread chaos and fear among devoted civil servants. Arbitrary agency cuts and firings threaten basic public health protections and scientific research and target the most vulnerable in society.
Trump and his appointees use federal grants to pressure and dictate to colleges and universities, including Emory University in Atlanta and both of my alma maters — University of Texas at Austin and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — debasing academic freedom and risking destruction of the best higher education system in the world.
He has forced law firms into his service and sued major news outlets for coverage he deems unfavorable.
Trump and his collaborators’ actions are an anathema to our Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the rule of law. We cannot let Trump solidify a dictatorship.
How to take creative and effective action
Now is the time for creative, nonviolent resistance and innovative noncooperation. Trump and his sycophants may grasp at and beyond all the levers of government power, but “We the People” have the real authority.
Speak out and shout out: Silence is complicity. Our combined voices speaking truth to power have far more potency than the lies of an autocrat, his henchmen and their beguiled followers.
Contact your senators and representatives: U.S. Capitol switchboard number 202-224-3121.
Resist: Inaction is submission. Together we can repel this attack on our democracy. We will tap our American ingenuity to oppose, contest, challenge and thwart infringements of our freedoms. Our combined imaginations will inspire one another with clever, resourceful ideas to hinder, obstruct, defy and foil the fascist would-be dictator and preserve our Constitutional Republic. Act now.
Paraphrasing a comment I saw on YouTube: Be a nonviolent warrior for democracy. If you cannot be a warrior, be a monkey wrench. If you cannot be a monkey wrench, be a speed bump. If you cannot be a speed bump, be a squeaky wheel.
Jim Harrison is a retired environmental scientist who worked for the federal government for more than 30 years.
