President Trump and MAGA followers have mounted a robust challenge to freedom on the home front. Trump does not believe in the liberal constitutional democracy that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson bequeathed us and that Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and John McCain so ably defended.
Eight months since swearing an oath to uphold the Constitution, the president is moving expeditiously with his authoritarian takeover. President Trump and his key aides, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, understand the window of opportunity to install a dictatorship is limited. Democratic pollster Simon Rosenberg reports President Trump’s polling numbers are dipping into the 30s.
They must move quickly before his popularity further tanks and the resistance increases in strength. The next three months do not bode well for the White House. Because the Republicans control the White House, the Senate and the House, it is hard for the Republicans to blame the Democrats for the government shutdown. Additionally, the Democrats have chosen promising terrain on which to defend. First, working-class Americans, of all ethnicities, have benefited from Obamacare and as their healthcare coverage is eliminated (courtesy of the Big Beautiful Bill) and health insurance premium spike, anger will follow. Democrats will make sure these Americans know who is causing their pain.
The longer Speaker Johnson keeps the House in recess, the more obvious that his motive is purely to keep the Epstein coverup going. If Johnson brings back the House, he must swear in and seat the special election winner in Arizona, Democrat Adelita Grijalva. With Rep. Grijalva joining the House, 218 votes will force a vote on the Epstein files. Trump loses either way because the Epstein files are back in the news.
In addition, the longer the shutdown goes, the closer we get to the Holiday shopping season. Soon, people not only will be complaining about the rising cost of food, but also the inflated price of gifts. President Trump’s infamous comment mocking little girls – “maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls” – will be replayed again and again on social media.
Betting they can intimidate the nation into submission, President Trump, Miller, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have targeted Blue cities as enemy territory. During Hegseth and the president’s highly unusual in-person meeting with the military’s top 800 generals, Trump told the military and the nation of his intentions.
In chilling language, the president said the United States faces a “war from within” and “we have to handle it before it gets out of control … It won’t get out of control once you’re involved at all.” Trump said he has told Hegseth that the U.S. “should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military …”
The administration’s tactics in Chicago and Portland are increasingly aggressive. Using Black Hawk helicopters for an early morning raid on a Chicago high-rise as if we are in the middle of Black Hawk Down, the 2001 film about war-torn Somalia, might thrill Fox News hosts and Trump’s base, but the show of excessive force could backfire.
Storming a 5-story apartment building from the ground and the air as families slept, using teargas and blowing open doors, terrified children (some naked) and citizens were zip tied in restraint, brought this response from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker: “In the dead of night and seemingly for the cameras, armed federal agents emerged from the Black Hawk helicopters rappelling onto the roof of that apartment building … They are the ones that are making it a war zone,” said the governor on CNN, “They fired tear gas and smoke grenades, and they made it look like a war zone.”
In Portland, a Trump-appointed judge vigorously pushed back on the president’s assertion that he must mobilize the Oregon National Guard to stop protests against ICE raids. U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut temporarily blocked the administration from deploying National Guard Troops to Oregon. What Immergut says are “small and uneventful” protests at an ICE building in Portland have been characterized by Stephen Miller as akin to “violent armed resistance.”
In a post on X, Miller claimed the president has “undisputed authority” to “deploy troops stationed in any state, to defend a federal facility” from what he called “domestic terrorism or violent assault.” Miller claims the administration is contending with a “legal insurrection” and that legal rulings impeding the White House’s militarization of American cities violate the laws and Constitution.
In response, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek said there is no need for military intervention in her state. Of Miller’s statements, Kotek told NPR: “I don’t know what reality he is living in.” To Trump’s assertion that Portland “is burning to the ground,” the governor exclaimed: “It’s just ludicrous … we had thousands of people on the streets of Portland for the Portland Marathon yesterday … The protests are in a one-block radius of the ICE facility.”
Reserved for extreme situations such as rebellions or invasions, the Insurrection Act of 1807 allows a president to circumvent the Posse Comitatus Act, the 1878 law that prohibits the use of the U.S. military on American soil to enforce laws against American citizens.
Asked if he would invoke the Insurrection Act, Trump casually replied: “I’d do it if it was necessary … If I had to enact it, I’d do that. If people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors, or mayors were holding us up. Sure, I’d do that.”
Hegseth and Trump are working to make the U.S. military Trump’s personal army, but to succeed that effort will take years. If U.S. military units are sent to American cities, the officers and the troops who make up today’s military will know their presence is a charade. The president might be surprised: the U.S. military will not be his storm troopers. Service members will do their duty without enthusiasm; they will refuse illegal orders to shoot civilian protesters.
If Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, it will send shock waves across the country and spur massive peaceful protest. If the president does so, it is because he feels his hand is weakening. Sending units such as the 82nd Airborne to cities such as Portland will not be a sign of strength, it will be a message of desperation.