Tag Archives: Choose Democracy

Canada, Democracy under attack, Donald Trump, Erasing history, Greenland, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), NATO, Stephen Golub, USAID

Stephen Golub: This Is Happening Now in America

Springsteen punch

The Benicia Herald, July 12, 2026,  by Stephen Golub 

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub

During Bruce Springsteen’s recently completed “Land of Hope and Dreams” concert tour, his “This Is Happening Now” speech in the middle of each show packed as much punch as his music. He delivered it just before his song, “My City of Ruins” – which, despite its title, is distinguished by its hopeful refrain: “Rise up!”

It’s in that spirit that I share the core of a Reddit post that quotes most of Springsteen’s speech (as delivered at his April 20 Newark concert). Following almost every quote, you’ll find italicized commentary by the post’s author, Chris Jordan of The Asbury Park Press. Jordan’s illuminating remarks back up Bruce’s statements with relevant documentation.

In a few instances, I supplement Jordan’s commentary with my own remarks, in brackets.

For me, the power of the speech culminates in Springsteen’s concluding message. It’s as uplifting as most of his songs.

Here’s what Springsteen said, then, along with Jordan’s explanatory comments (again, in italics) and my additional remarks (in brackets):

Bruce: “Our young men and women’s lives are at risk in an unwise and illegal war. This is happening now.”

The Iran war has been called illegal by members of Congress who say the action was unprovoked and a violation of international law as there was no imminent threat, and no Congressional approval was sought.

Bruce: “There are immigrants being held in for-profit detention centers around the country and being deported without due process of law to alien countries and foreign prisons. This is happening now.“

A U.S. District Judge ruled in February that the Department of Homeland Security deporting immigrants who arrived here illegally to “third countries” is “not fine, nor is it legal.” The deportees should not be sent to where their “life or freedom would be threatened” because of their “race, religion, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

The two largest private prison corporations reported profits of more than a billion dollars in total for second quarter, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

[As articulated by principled conservative authors in The Bulwark’s “A Season of Death and Fear” online post, two of the many other manifestations of current immigration policy can be found in the highly questionable shooting death (and apparent coverup) by ICE agents of a 35-year US resident in Texas and the possibly imminent deportation of a hard-working immigrant community in Ohio that has lived in America legally for years.]

Bruce: “Our Justice Department has thrown away its independence, and it takes its orders directly from a corrupt White House. They prosecute our president’s perceived enemies, they cover up for his misdeeds and protect his powerful friends. This is happening now.”

DOJ lawyers have lost credibility in the courts after ignoring court orders, misrepresented facts and made arguments with no basis in the law, said Stacey Young, executive director of Justice Connection, an advocacy group for former DOJ workers. More than 3,300 attorneys left the Justice Department between Trump’s first day back in office and February 2026, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Meanwhile, only about 800 attorneys have been hired.

Bruce: “The richest men in America have abandoned the world’s poorest children to death and disease, by dismantling USAID. It’s not on the front pages anymore but it’s happening now. People are dying.“

More than 757,000 people, the majority of them children, have died from the funding cuts to USAID, according to ImpactCounter, which tracks the effect of USAID cuts, as reported by the Health Policy Watch. There are also almost a million more malaria cases, over 700,000 affecting children.

The budget for USAID was slashed by Elon Musk, former head of the Department of Government Efficacy, last year.

[A leading medical journal, The Lancet, estimates that within four years the USAID cuts could yield over 14 million deaths worldwide, 4.5 million of them children under five.]

Bruce: “We undermined NATO, the world order that’s kept us safe and at global peace for 80 years. This is happening now.”

President Donald Trump has said that NATO, a defense alliance created after World War II, was a “paper tiger” and that he’s considering withdrawing America from the alliance.

[In contrast, as summarized by the online site Politico, he has repeatedly praised the authoritarian leaders of China, Hungary, Russia, Turkey and even totalitarian North Korea.]

Bruce: “We threaten our good neighbors and our allies whose sons and daughters have fought alongside us in American wars, Canada and (Denmark), we threaten them with predatory annexation of their land. This is happening now.”

Trump has repeatedly said Canada should be the 51st state and launched tariffs against our neighbor to the north, which has resulted in fewer Canadians visiting the Jersey Shore than in recent years, and also secured a political victory for the ruling Liberal Party, which was fading in the polls until Trump’s rhetoric reversed its fortunes. Meanwhile, Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s prime minister, said that Trump is “very serious” about acquiring Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish island off North America.

[At this past week’s NATO summit, Trump doubled down on his Greenland threat against Denmark, which lost more soldiers per capita as America’s ally in Afghanistan than the United States itself did.]

Bruce: “Our museums are being told to whitewash American history of any unpleasant or inconvenient facts, like the full history of the brutality of slavery. You want to talk about snowflakes? We have a president who can’t handle the truth. This is happening now.”

Trump’s declarations and executive orders have led to the altering and dismantling of slavery exhibits, such as one at the site of George Washington’s house in Philadelphia when he was president, the restoration of Confederate statues and other initiatives, say civil rights advocates, according to Reuters.

Bruce: “While working Americans struggle, our president and his family enrich themselves by billions of dollars trading on the people’s office in corruption unmatched in American history. This is happening now.”

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, raised $2 billion from the Saudi Arabia government’s Public Investment Fund for his private equity fund and has collected more than $110 million in management fees from the Saudi government, according to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Congressman Robert Garcia (D-CA). He’s currently in negotiations with Iran, a neighbor of Saudi Arabia, to settle the war.

[Departing from past presidents’ practice of separating themselves from previous financial interests, Trump’s own businesses made an unprecedented $2.2 billion in 2025 alone, including from Saudi Arabian real estate deals, a massive crypto-currency venture with a criminal he pardoned and other crypto deals. Through June 2026, nearly a million people (that is, most of his crypto investors) lost over $3.8 billion on such deals.]

The sum of these transgressions is undermining America, Springsteen says:

“This White House is destroying the American idea and our reputation around the world. To many, we are no longer looked upon as an often imperfect but strong defender of democracy standing for the global good. We are no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. We are now, to many, America the reckless, unpredictable, predatory rogue nation. That is this administration and this president’s legacy. This is happening now,” Springsteen said.

“Honesty, honor, humility, truth, compassion, humanity, thoughtfulness, morality, true strength and decency — don’t let anybody tell you that these things don’t matter anymore — they do. They are at the heart of the kind of men and women we are, the kind of citizens we want to be, the kind of country we’ll be leaving to our children. So many of our elected leaders have failed us that this American tragedy can only be stopped by the American people — by you. So join us and let’s fight for the America that we love.”

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

Stephen Golub writes about democracy and politics, both in America and abroad, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country.

…and… here’s more Golub on the Benicia Independent

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4th of July, Democracy under attack, Donald Trump, Immigration, Stephen Golub

Stephen Golub: From the Fourth of July Onward, Let’s Honor the Hands That Built This Country

The Benicia Herald, July 5, 2026 (pub. on July 3),  by Stephen Golub 

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub

The Fire Down Below

What’s made America great? What’s made America different? Along with whatever else we do on July 4th and afterwards, let’s celebrate this:

We all came from somewhere else.

It’s something we sometimes take for granted. We shouldn’t.

Of  the 40 nations I’ve been fortunate enough to visit for work and the many additional ones for play, I’ve never encountered one nearly as diverse as our own.

I never thanked them, but I’m blessed that my peasant grandparents took a leap of faith toward the promise of America, venturing  across Europe and the Atlantic to flee persecution. They were but a few of the many millions, from all over the world, represented in the iconic Bruce Springsteen song, “American Land”:

They come across the water a thousand miles from home
With nothing in their bellies but the fire down below

Indeed, and without disparaging any other nation, there’s something special to be said for one springing from souls who largely risked and suffered so much to get here, forming a melting pot of peoples and perspectives.

From Debate to Demagoguery

Sadly, as America turns 250, current immigrants and even our immigrant heritage are under attack.

To be fair, there is room for legitimate debate about this issue. That includes whether Joe Biden was initially too lax in addressing it  – though much of the overheated anti-Biden rhetoric significantly overstates the number of illegal/undocumented (pick your politically loaded term) immigrants who entered across the Mexican border and were able to stay.

Furthermore,  both sides have politicized the matter. I’ll get to the Republicans in a minute. But Democrats were driven not just by humanitarian values but by some of their pollsters’ misleading public opinion survey results. That research incorrectly indicated that Latino citizens don’t share their fellow Americans’ strong concerns about overly lenient border policies. The resulting, mistaken Democratic political and policy calculations did damage to their presidential election performances in 2016, 2020 and, especially and disastrously, in 2024.

But there’s a vast gulf between mistaken politicization and intentional demagoguery. Most of what Donald Trump is doing has nothing to do with removing “illegals” from the country and much to do with racism. Under Trump, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has swept up people pursuing political asylum or other legitimate immigration claims. It isolates them in for-profit prisons far from their families, homes and legal help. It  deports them to dangerous third countries with which they have no connections.

At the same time, Trump purges immigration judges and pressures others to deport detainees for fear of losing their jobs. He accordingly delays or prevents consideration of the detainees’ cases, or even in effect dictates the results.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs…they’re eating the cats.”

The depth and breadth of other abuses are too extensive to summarize. So, I’ll pick just one recent instance, since it illustrates how severely the anti-immigrant demagoguery is playing out.

It’s documented by Timothy Snyder, a leading historian who’s an expert on European and American fascism and Nazism. In a powerful online commentary, he describes how J.D. Vance and then Donald Trump stoked the flames of hatred and racism against (Black) Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.

Most notably,  building on a woman’s Facebook post about a missing cat, in September 2024 vice presidential candidate Vance spread groundless accusations about them: “…people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people [Haitians] who should not be in this country.” Trump  amplified this to 67 million viewers in his presidential debate with Kamala Harris the next day, asserting “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats.”

What’s more, Blood Tribe, a growing neo-Nazi group with chapters across the United States and a leader who worships Hitler as a deity, exploited various Vance anti-Haitian slurs to mount demonstrations in Springfield and otherwise spread this racist gospel.

Putting this in historical context, Snyder explains that such tactics echo Hitler’s and Stalin’s genocidal playbooks:

“In an urban or suburban setting, in which animals are companions, the idea that others mistreat animals can be the signal that they are not like us, barbarians, not fully human. Among the many other accelerating repressions, Jews in Nazi Germany were not allowed to keep pets at home.”

The Truth

Springfield’s conservative Republican mayor and Ohio’s conservative Republican governor disproved and decried these Vance, Trump and Blood Tribe claims, the governor calling them “garbage.”

The truth, in fact, as both officials have asserted, is that Haitians have greatly contributed to the revitalization of what had been an economically devastated Rust Belt town. Many have been there for over a decade, after having been granted temporary but renewable legal status in the wake of a devastating 2010 earthquake (which claimed roughly 200,000 lives) in Haiti and in view of widespread political chaos and gang violence there.

Despite these dangers, last month the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration in ruling that the 350,000 Haitians immigrants across America can be deported – putting a million other immigrants with similar status and home country dangers in jeopardy.

In its ruling, the Court in effect ignored an April 2026 State Department travel advisory, which bluntly states, “Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest, and limited health care.”

In addition to this being devastating news for the Haitians themselves, this could be devastating for Springfield and other communities across America who depend on them to fill jobs, run businesses, buy goods and services, and otherwise build or rebuild local economies.

That reflects a larger reality about current immigrants in America, no matter how they got here. Contrary to hostile claims, they actually commit crimes at lower rates than people born here do; do not take jobs from Americans; in fact, generate economic activity that aids employment creation; help hold down inflation; and contribute payments to Social Security and Medicare without (if they don’t have legal status) taking any payments from those programs.

It’s true that we can’t open our borders to everyone. There are legitimate housing, social services and other constraints to consider.

But it’s equally true that our immigration policies should not be driven by hate, lies and racism.

Honoring Our Immigrants

Even more  to the point, today’s immigrants are contributing to this country in ways our parents, grandparents and ancestors did. And no matter the nation of origin, most of our predecessors faced the same kind of bigotry here that Haitians and other current immigrants today encounter. The only thing that’s different is the slurs being hurled at them.

Going forward from the Fourth of July, we should honor immigrants, past or present, for their hard work and their sacrifices in the face of so many challenges and so much hostility.

We should honor them for how they embody an American motto, E pluribus unum: Out of many, one.

We should honor them in the spirit of our better angels, rather than our darker demons.

As Springsteen puts it in “American Land”:

They died building the railroads, they worked to bones and skin
They died in the fields and factories, names scattered in the wind
They died to get here a hundred years ago, they’re still dying now
Their hands that built the country we’re always trying to keep out

We should honor them because they are all of us.

*To fully appreciate “American Land,” which explores both immigrants’ fantasies about America and the realities they’ve faced here, you need to hear the song itself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzJB2vKlET8&list=RDKzJB2vKlET8&start_radio=1

**And to fully appreciate Springsteen, you need to see him perform the song in concert:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxF_VnjF3xw&list=RDyxF_VnjF3xw&start_radio=1

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

Stephen Golub writes about democracy and politics, both in America and abroad, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country.

…and… here’s more Golub on the Benicia Independent

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Authoritarian Rule, Choose Democracy, Democracy under attack, Donald Trump, Stephen Golub

Stephen Golub: Even in Dictatorships, Dictators Are Not the Only Game in Town

The Benicia Herald, May 24, 2026,  by Stephen Golub 

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub

Back in 1983, I scored a summer fellowship from my law school to research the plight of Cambodian refugees in Thailand. On the way back home, I stopped off in the Manila for a few days to see an old friend who was on his first overseas posting for the State Department. I mainly recall reconnecting with my pal and dealing with the aftermath of some bad oysters. But one discussion stands out…

It was in my friend’s living room, with a few of his fellow junior embassy staffers, debating the Philippines’ future. One professed no love for then-dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who’d dominated the nation since declaring martial law in 1972. But he viewed the autocrat as securely in place and thus claimed that he was  “the only game in town.”

Marcos was gone less than three years later, deposed by the country’s People Power revolution.

It was not just Marcos who in 1986 proved to not be “the only game in town.” It was East Germany’s communist regime in 1989. It was the Soviet Union in 1991. It was South Africa’s apartheid rulers in the early 1990s. It was Indonesian’s Suharto in 1998. It was Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. It was Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. It was Brazil’s (and Trump ally) Jair Bolsonaro in 2022. It was Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina in 2024. It was Hungary’s (and Trump hero) Viktor Orban last month.

All of these ruthless rulers and regimes seemed securely in power…until just a few weeks, months or years before they weren’t. They fell due to a plethora of factors: popular pressure, external developments, self-inflicted wounds and/or good old-fashioned democratic voting.

Regardless, they fell.

The point merits mention in view of Donald Trump’s ongoing attempts to rig our elections, gut the rule of law, entrench mind-boggling corruption and otherwise despoil our democracy. Every day brings a new assault on not just our system but on values that many of us still share.

We can’t ignore such outrages. In fact, we should feel outraged. It’s a normal response to a thoroughly abnormal, abysmal state of affairs.

But, as demonstrated time after time and in place after place,  the  triumph of such efforts is never inevitable – as long as we don’t cave to them.

That’s something to bear in mind for our November midterm elections and beyond. I can’t downplay the threats our democracy faces. Things may often appear bleak in the months and years to come. But the future is never written in stone. We have the power to shape it.

As in many other nations, even in America’s darkest times there is never just one game in town.

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

Stephen Golub writes about democracy and politics, both in America and abroad, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country.

…and… here’s more Golub on the Benicia Independent

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Choose Democracy, Democracy under attack, Donald Trump, Local vigilance

So hard to stay hopeful – good words for 2026

Dear BenIndy friends – The following came to me in an email. Like so many of you, I’ve started deleting many or most of these good resistance pitches without even reading them. Most are looking for money – and even when not, almost all are depressing. This one isn’t. It’s a good analysis with a few excellent suggestions. (You might recall that Choose Democracy is the organization we promoted in Benicia back in 2020 as we helped organize against a Trump/MAGA coup.) Read on…
– Roger Straw, The Benicia Independent

Breaking Norms to Look Strong

Friend,

Happy New Year. And it’s clearly going to be quite the ride.

I drafted a New Year’s message that started, “Trump is the weakest he has been since getting in office. Weak dictators are dangerous and will lash out as their friends co-sign atrocious norm-busting actions to appear strong and in charge. We’re likely to see escalated violence even as his support drains away.”

We are seeing this with Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

A President unilaterally ordering bombing in Venezuela and the forcible kidnapping of a sitting head of state is clearly illegal under both international law and the U.S. Constitution, as noted by the UN. It’s not coming from a place of strength, coherence, rationality, kindness, anti-drugs, or human rights…

Yes, this is about oil. Yes, Stephen Miller wants to demonize Latin Americans. Yes, Marco Rubio wants to break Cuba’s economy and is using Venezuela as a stepping stone for that. Yes, all of this is a distraction that less than 1% of the Epstein files have been released, the fifth anniversary of January 6th, and economic turmoil.

But Trump is not a strategist or playing any long game. He wants power and control. This is his sense of naked, raw power.

The rest of us are left processing reasons and rationales, scratching our heads trying to assess the meaning and end goals. Elites, billionaires, and his corrupt gang are going to exploit this moment.

But for Trump it’s just about being the biggest bully on the playground. He’s running the authoritarian’s favorite move: creating a caricatured villain to take on–and hoping the country will see him as a savior.

Trump wants the world to believe he cannot be restrained by anyone. That strength emanates from people fearing that he will break any norm. That’s why there was no declaration of war, no imminent self-defense claim, and no authorization from Congress as required by the War Powers Resolution. The norm-breaking is the point. Legal scholars are clear this crosses a bright red line. This is not law enforcement; it is an illegal war crime.

For Trump, this is the same underlying story we’ve seen: hoping that his friends will see him as strong and that his opponents will grow fearful.

Our test through 2026 is to help people unhook from this story. Those who tell us that the President cannot be stopped are giving him what he wants: a story of unrivaled, unstoppable power.

But 2025 proved his limitations. Courts stymied and slowed many maneuvers. Trump lost control over the national guard in many cities (by the Supreme Court, no less). He couldn’t censor Jimmy Kimmel. He couldn’t control the Epstein story. And whenever he began to lose, he would change the subject.

So in 2026 he will continue to make horrible, violent, murderous moves — not all of which we will be able to stop in the immediate. Our job in 2026 is to continue withdrawing people’s support for those policies, not only in words but in deeds.

The Pillars of Support

We’ve been teaching over the last year that authoritarians take advantage of institutions’ unwillingness to push back. Trump doesn’t execute laws, give judicial rulings, write headlines, build roads, invade countries, kidnap residents, tear down the West Wing. He orders others to do it — and if they refuse to comply, an authoritarian’s power to give orders becomes useless.

That’s what happened when Trump ordered Indiana State Republicans to gerrymander the state. Hoosiers across the political spectrum said no — in town halls, in calls, in protests, in direct actions. Even after Trump escalated with personal threats and people acting on his behalf engaged in acts of violence, Indiana politicians said no — they would not accede and they would not comply.

Or another example right now: Minneapolis faces threats of 2,000 federal agents descending on their city in what appears to be a Chicago-style waged campaign of raids and terror targeting Black, Brown and immigrant communities. Residents of Minneapolis have shown much grit in escorting kids, confronting federal agents directly, and pooling funds to support residents who fear for their safety and are unable to work. But they did more than focus on Trump and federal agents — they expanded their targets to include hotels who are putting ICE up. The campaign may have already notched its first win: “Minnesota Hilton cancels ICE agents’ hotel reservations,” blares the headlines from The Guardian. (The situation now remains uncertain, with the national chain insisting it’s “resolved” this dispute.)

The point is we’ve been sapping Trump’s support over the last year — and we have to continue growing that. It helps to not just focus on Trump — but on those pillars of support, too. Here are some of those pillars with respect to Venezuela:

Congress

If you’re looking for immediate actions, colleague Ash-Lee Henderon offered a direct one: contacting your leaders in Congress. The Constitution is explicit: Congress decides questions of war. If it abdicates now, it sets a precedent that will be used again — and again.

A bill is moving this week to stop further action in Venezuela — so the timing is right now. Her suggestion:

  • If you’ve got 10 minutes: contact your two U.S. Senators
  • If you’ve got 20 minutes: contact your two Senators + your House Representative
  • If you’ve got 30 minutes: add Senate Foreign Relations Committee leadership or members you have ties to.

Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121. You can find direct info for congress people at https://5calls.org/issue/trump-venezuela-extrajudicial-murder/.

Military personnel

In a just society, many people involved in planning and executing an illegal war would face accountability. Senator Mark Kelly and others famously made a video reminding service members of their oath to disobey unlawful orders. Section of Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice is clear — servicemembers must not follow orders that are “manifestly unlawful.”

Veterans have been organizing. In this moment, Common Defense continues to mobilize veterans and military families to defend the Constitution and oppose forever wars: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/defend-the-constitution-end-forever-wars

Oil companies

No one benefits more from Trump’s actions in Venezuela than oil companies. These are hard targets — and unavoidable ones. War after war has been fueled by the same corporations that poison our air, destroy communities, and accelerate climate collapse.

Venezuela’s oil — the largest reserves in the world — has been a geopolitical prize — and a recurring justification for pressure, sanctions, covert action, and now open force.

After many decades in which U.S. and European companies dominated extraction, Venezuela formally nationalized its oil industry in 1976. This followed earlier reforms in the 1960s that steadily increased Venezuelan control and royalties. The move was broadly popular inside the country and made Venezuela a central player in OPEC.

At the moment, Chevron is the only remaining US oil company operating in Venezuela. They have over 400 locations across the US, from gas stations to refineries to corporate offices. These are prime locations for future actions as they stand to benefit quickest.

Other companies, like Exxon, are eyeing ways to get their hands on Venezuelan oil — but like much of this rapidly unfolding situation, taking oil from Venezuela is not straightforward.

We expect to see more soon — a 1-day wildcat consumer strike has been called for January 8th. The ask is easy enough: no buying oil or gas on January 8th. https://bit.ly/StrikeThePump. More targeted actions will follow!

International solidarity

The U.S. cannot do this alone. Pressure from other countries matters. One concrete demand: countries should refuse to buy stolen Venezuelan oil.

Canada, Mexico, and the Netherlands are some of the largest buyers of US oil. They share some responsibility for the US engagement in another imperialist venture. A boycott — or even the threat of one — could pressure both governments and oil companies, especially as firms already express concern about entering Venezuela.

Mainstream media

The media is playing a role sanitizing the kidnapping of a head of state. Words like “capture” — used in almost all US press — understate the gravity of abducting a country’s leader. They have not accurately named the US’s piracy in stealing oil shipments.

Largely, the press remains quick to quote Trump and slow to fact-check his lies. No, this is not about drugs — Venezuela does not smuggle fentanyl into the US. No, the US is not “reclaiming stolen oil” — this is a factually deficient framing that ignores history.

Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones writes, “So many in media are ill-equipped to interview officials about what’s happening because they begin with the presumption of legitimacy and don’t know enough about history or U.S. foreign policy to foment intelligent pushback and hold officials accountable. The questions begin with WILL regime change be successful, not how is it legal or ethical to orchestrate a coup and who are we to decide when leadership must go and who are we to believe we have rights to a sovereign nation’s resources.”

(You can follow real journalists like her and Marsia Kabas.)

All these — and other pillars — are upholding the authoritarian regime. They keep it normalized, legitimized, flush with resources and protection. 2026 is about continuing to strip that back.

I want to affirm again this analysis: Trump is the weakest he has been since getting in office. Weak dictators are dangerous and will lash out as their friends co-sign atrocious norm-busting actions to appear strong and in charge. We’re likely to see escalated violence even as his support drains away.

Resistance is growing. He is not invincible. More and more people are not being taken in by the lies and his regime’s utter disregard for life. The hill is high to climb, but each step that you can take matters.

So for 2026, don’t give in to the fear.

Warmly,

Choose Democracy
https://choosedemocracy.us/