Why Must We Protest Now?

Al of our lives are under threat from the Trump regime

Today there are protests across the U.S. against the Trump regime. It is also Bicycle Day (celebrating Albert Hoffman’s 1943 discovery of LSD) and Earth Day. I don’t have a lot of time to write this morning, but I do want to suggest that all American citizens go to their local protest, which they can find here:

https://www.fiftyfifty.one/

Why is this necessary?

Starhawk explains it well in her Substack:

I'm sure you're all familiar with the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, abducted by ICE and illegally sent to a brutal torture prison in El Salvador, although he had a court order explicitly preventing his deportation to that country, and no one has presented any credible evidence that he was ever involved in a crime or a member of a gang. His case is perhaps the most blatantly egregious of the hundreds who've been illegally abducted and deported.

Now the situation has escalated to a constitutional crisis. The courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have ordered Abrego Garcia's return, and the administration has stonewalled, lied, stalled, and outright refused to do so. The courts have ruled that all of those deported have a right to a hearing and to due process, and the Trump regime has ignored them.

It's time for us all to do something. Even if you don't know what to do, even if you feel that what you can do is minimally useful, do something!

…

It's an important weekend to make our voices heard. Protests may not cause Trump to tremble in his boots, but they are a necessary precondition for change to happen. They're like the compost you spread to amend the soil so that something can grow. Without them, without the visual representation that we stand firmly against these acts of cruelty and lawlessness, there is little incentive for our elected representatives to take stronger actions. Trump may not care about demonstrations, but the Republican Representatives who are up for reelection in 2026 will care when their hold on Congress is threatened. The Supreme Court’s legitimacy is already on shaky grounds. The Justices need to know that the public stands firmly with the rule of law and expects them to do the same.

I also appreciate Jim Stewartson’s MindWar: The Psychological War on Democracy, where he writes:

Trump seems to have either concluded that he no longer needs the Supreme Court to validate his fascist, unconstitutional agenda, or he thinks they will back him up and let him populate foreign black sites with anyone the hell he wants. If they do, they will be announcing they are simply the Hand of the King — just as illegitimate as he is. If they don’t, we will be back to square one anyway. We will still have a lawless tyrant doing illegal renditions of innocent people to concentration camps, with the stated desire to do it to American citizens, and no checks or balances anywhere.

What to do? Well, stop obeying him. That’s it.

If enough people stop believing that he has the authority to tell them what to do, or what to think, his power will dissipate. I know that seems simplistic, but bear with me.

If people in the US and foreign governments, the military, business leaders, union and industry leaders, intellectuals, lawyers, podcasters, law enforcement and regular people everywhere just start to tell him he’s lost authority over them because of his lawless unconstitutional actions, what’s he gonna do? Arrest everyone? For what?

He is openly breaking the foundational law of the United States of America, the Constitution, and ignoring the most powerful check on his power provided by the Constitution — the Judiciary. Here is his Oath:

I will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

You don’t need to be a lawyer to know he is breaking his Oath. So why should he carry any authority, whatsoever?

Essentially, if we don’t put enough pressure on the government to stop the vile mafioso Trump regime from being able to grab people — anyone, US citizens, legal residents, undocumented immigrants — from the streets and throw them into an El Salvadoran concentration camp with no due process or legal intervention, we will have devolved into an absolute tyranny. Things will degenerate very quickly from there. They are talking about deporting and interning 12 million people (!!) before the 2026 midterm elections. Trump has shown that he will keep pushing on every possible aspect of the American system until he meets resistance and gets stopped. We need to create that resistance, even if the task seems overwhelming at this point.

There are some good signs. The arch-conservative Wall Street Journal is starting to publish editorials saying that Trump needs to be impeached — not due to his shredding of the Constitution, of course, but because of the damage he is doing to the stock market. In “Trump Wants to Be Impeached Again”, WSJ editorial board member Holman W. Jenkins Jr. writes: “A future Trump impeachment seemed all but guaranteed by last Wednesday morning. It seems only slightly less likely now. It may even be desirable to restore America’s standing with creditors and trade partners.” Harvard choosing to resist is a good sign.

Even Joe Rogan — who went extreme MAGA and now routinely platforms tech-Fascist billionaires — is starting to get concerned about how the Trump administration is throwing people into a foreign concentration camp for life (apparently nobody has left that El Salvadoran gulag yet except in a coffin) with no legal recourse.

Let’s do what we can — prepare for the worst, hope for the best — but definitely let’s protest right now, as if our lives depend on it. Because, unfortunately, they do.