Coax them off their couches
Donald Trump paused last week from adding more tacky, gold-painted plastic accents from Home Depot to the walls of the Oval Office. He announced he’d changed the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War (which he can’t legally do without an act of Congress).
“We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense,” boozy Secretary of Whatever Pete Hegseth told reporters. Trump is offensive, all right, and clearly fantasizing about having troops shoot Americans in the streets of Chicago to show he means business. Not economic business. He’s trashing that.
But Trump could fill the White House with black velvet art and talk out of a bruised hand puppet and MAGA Republicans would smile and praise him like Peter Falk does the dictator in The In-Laws (1979). The 25th Amendment will not save us.
The spirit of 1776 has been dormant for the longest time. But if Trump succeeds in anything positive in his second term, it may be in awakening it.
Americans filled the streets of Washington, D.C. and Chicago on Saturday to protest Trump’s federal takeover of the District on the pretext of fighting crime. But you’d have to look below the fold of the Washington Post to know it. The New York Times is keeping its masthead down as well. So is The Los Angeles Times.
So from The Associated Press:
Thousands of protesters marched across Washington, D.C., on Saturday in one of the largest demonstrations against President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of policing in the nation’s capital.
Behind a bright red banner reading “END THE D.C. OCCUPATION” in English and Spanish, protesters marched over two miles from Meridian Hill Park to Freedom Plaza near the White House to rail against the fourth week of National Guard troops and federal agents patrolling D.C.’s streets.
The “We Are All D.C.” protest — put together by local advocates of Home Rule and the American Civil Liberties Union — was perhaps the most organized demonstration yet against Trump’s federal intervention in Washington. The president justified the action last month as a way to address crime and homelessness in the city, even though city officials have noted that violent crime is lower than it was during Trump’s first term in office.
I’ll get to why big-city protests won’t save us either in a moment. First some images.
District of Columbia
“This is no longer just a march—this is a movement,” tweets Brian Allen. Let’s hope he’s right.
Chicago
The Associated Press has an extensive photo galley here.
The streets of Chicago are full with tens of thousands of people standing up to ICE and Trump.
Join us.
— Kat Abughazaleh (@katmabu.bsky.social) September 6, 2025 at 7:53 PM
Now what?
Heather Cox Richardson observes:
Trump’s threats against American citizens are outrageous, but they also feel desperate. Trump’s popularity is tanking, the economy is faltering, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing a chorus of calls to resign or be fired, and the American people are taking to the streets. Thousands of people turned out today in Washington, D.C., for the “We Are All D.C.” march to protest the presence of troops in the city, and in Chicago for the “Chicago Says No Trump No Troops” protest. The protests are notable for the seas of signs the peaceful protesters carry.
All that is fine. But note that major national news outlets gave the protests the big ignore.
I attended a weekly protest in Hendersonville, NC a few weeks ago. About two dozen people. Two German tourists who stopped by were astonished that weekly protests were occurring in small towns across America. All they see is coverage of the big events, and as Saturday’s protest coverage shows, not much of that.
A friend at a political event last night (my fourth of the day) had just come from an organizing meeting where their national group was considering mounting a big rally in Washington, D.C. Considering the one-and-done nature of such events, perhaps more (and weekly) local events are more productive. To push back on Trump, people have to take to the streets in numbers not seen since the Women’s March.
And not the usual suspects who always take to the streets. The sort of people who’ve never protested must start. For that, they must overcome their reluctance and get the message that, yes, the country is in crisis. They must see that people like them, you, people from their neighborhoods, take Trump 2.0’s actions seriously enough make enough noise to get noticed. If we believe the nation is in crisis, clicktivism and writing your representatives is not enough. Your neighbors don’t see that. Back up words with public actions. Throw a better party. Make it easier for the couch-sitters to say, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
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