Hold your ground
It’s hard to tell your so-called domestic terrorists (you) from your functional domestic terrorists (ICE) without a program.
At a Monday sign protest downtown, I rotated over my head a large, two-sided placard that read, ICE IS COMING | ARE YOU NEXT? Some dude drives up, lowers his passenger window, glares at me, and holds up a green Customs and Border Patrol hat before driving off. No uniform. Likely an Amazon purchase. We’re far from any CBP office.
There are at least three such weekly demonstrations here. And they are growing.
Friends reported another guy shouting curses at Good Trouble protesters after last night’s rally. They won’t go quietly.
David Lurie writes at Public Notice:
For Trump and his cronies, the prospect of losing power — or even sharing it with Democrats in the event control of the House shifts in 2026 — could prove to be catastrophic because of their reasonable fear of being held accountable for criminality that dwarfs Trump’s first term. And unlike January 2021 — when the Big Lie scheme failed — Trump and his cohorts will have new tools to carry out a coup, including a massive federal police force with a proven willingness to engage in systemic illegality.
Trump’s brownshirts
From its outset, Trump 2.0 has been grounded on systemic illegality and unilateral executive actions, a course of (mis)conduct the administration has succeeded in pursuing because of pliant GOP majorities in Congress the Supreme Court. It’s all but certain that the administration’s authoritarian conduct will grow in scope and intensity over the succeeding months, in no small part because the GOP reconciliation bill will hand over a staggering $170 billion to the Department of Homeland Security.
The next couple of years are going to get harder than what we’ve seen so far.
While many are currently rightly concerned about the impact Trump’s brutal “immigration crackdown” will have on undocumented persons, the danger of his creation of a massive, non-law-abiding federal police force could extend far beyond the immigration. Congress has just handed the coup leader in the White House new, dangerous tools that he and his cohorts could use in their next attempt to overturn the nation’s democracy once and for all.
At the Black Gate, as “all about the hills the hosts of Mordor raged,” Gandalf the White
lifted up his arms and called once more in a clear voice:
‘Stand, Men of the West! Stand and wait! This is the hour of doom.’
Not today.
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Have you fought dictatorship today?
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense