Words I Never Wanted to Write

The next few months are essential if we want to save our country

Today I feel the very sad necessity of discussing the chilling new escalation of the Trump regime. Over the last few days, the FBI has started arresting judges for allegedly interfering with Trump's efforts to capture and deport illegal immigrants or purported Venezuelan gang members. So far, a judge in Milwaukee has been arrested and a former judge in New Mexico. This is illegal and without precedent in American history.

I recommend that people start watching The Meidas Report which is relentless in its reporting on what’s happening. They bring a droll tone to their reporting which I find helpful for my nervous system. If you don’t have a basic knowledge around terms like “Habeus corpus” (Latin for “you shall have the body”) or “due process,” or an understanding of the protections guaranteed under the Constitution, this is a great time to book up on it. I have included those definitions at the bottom of this article.

At the same time as he is now imprisoning judges, Trump continues to ignore the Supreme Court, which has demanded 9-0 that the regime "facilitate" the release of a legal resident with no criminal record who was deported to an El Salvadoran concentration camp with no hearing or due process. In other words, we are now in a Constitutional crisis: The basic rule of law is under attack by the Executive Branch. Even Trump-appointed judges are rejecting his ongoing attacks on the rule of law.

Resistance is growing quickly. Unfortunately, the various enforcement arms of the federal government—the FBI, U.S. Marshals, and the military—are all under the control of the executive branch. We will need Congress to impeach Trump if we want to survive this crisis as a nation. This means that a number of Republican senators and members of Congress must break ranks.

On Fox, the vicious and disgusting Pam Bondi, the U.S. Attorney General appointed by Trump, said that Judge Hannah Dugan's arrest was “only the beginning.” She vowed the Trump administration “will come after you and we will prosecute you” whenever a judge "harbor[s] a fugitive," because “some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law, and they are not.” She dismissed such jurists as "deranged," adding in an official statement that “no one, least of all a judge, should obstruct law-enforcement operations.” This is very, very bad.

If you are reading this, I want you to understand—if you don't already—that the Trump regime is now trying to break the judiciary, the last independent branch of the government, to create conditions for totalitarian control of the U.S. Unfortunately, unless Congress impeaches Trump — which seems unlikely at this moment, but things could quickly change — we are reaching a situation where the regime will soon be able to deport and imprison whoever they want in this country.

As Politico reports, a consortium of military contractors, led by former Blackwater chief Erik Prince, has proposed a $25 billion plan to deport 12 million people before the 2026 midterms by erecting “processing camps” on Army bases, deploying a private fleet of 100 aircraft, and deputizing 10,000 ex-soldiers and law-enforcement veterans as a citizen “army” with federal arrest powers. While Prince’s proposal has not been accepted as far as we now, it should give us a sense of where this is heading.

Before the election, I wrote about the book Unhumans by Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec, which JD Vance blurbed and supported as the right plan for America: “In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags,” Vance wrote in his blurb. “Today, they march through HR, college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.” Although not officially a member of the regime, Posobiec recently traveled to Munich as part of Vance's entourage.

Posobiec has been identified as a linchpin in the white-Christian-nationalist media ecosystem. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, he works with white supremacists and neo-fascists, plus regularly amplifies the “white-genocide” and “great replacement” conspiracies on his channels. At CPAC 2024 he told the crowd, “Welcome to the end of democracy—we're here to overthrow it completely.” He then held a cross aloft, vowing to “replace [democracy] with this.” Matt Walsh is another popular figure in this ecosystem, identifying himself as a “theocratic fascist” on his Twitter profile.

According to Unhumans, Leftists, socialists, liberals and Democrats are not fully human: They do not deserve to be treated like human beings. The book applauds the Fascist regimes of Augusto Pinochet in Chile and General Francisco Franco in Spain, even giving a special mention to Pinochet's helicopter killings of political opponents and dissidents. I think it is becoming clearer, by the day, that the Trump regime intends to follow the path of Pinochet and Franco, if they can. This will ultimately lead to mass imprisonment and incarceration of his political opponents including liberal Democrats.

History teaches us that when authoritarian leaders consolidate power, they typically pass through predictable phases: capturing the judiciary and law enforcement, suppressing independent media, targeting political opponents with legal persecution, restricting voting rights and undermining electoral systems, and militarizing civilian operations. We are now discovering how quickly the erosion of democratic norms and laws can accelerate once institutional guardrails are compromised. To put it bluntly: We are in a real-time existential crisis here in the U.S. that endangers all of us.

Who can oppose this regime? How do we stop it?

Luckily, we are seeing a rapid collapse in Trump's popularity. This is combined with the imminent meltdown of the American economy due to his ruinous economic policies. Combined, these could be disruptive forces that lead to the end of this regime.

If a certain percentage of House and Senate Republicans turn against him, we can avoid what otherwise will be a very terrible fate. This requires sustained public pressure but it also requires a rapid spread of collective awareness. We all must make it part of our lives right now to reach out to people who are not following the developments and make them aware of the severity of what's happening. Whatever it takes to get this on people’s radar.

Trump's focus on mass deportations and his confrontational trade policy is quickly ruining the US economy — which, ironically, was prospering under Biden — causing strain markets and supply chain shocks. Business can’t plan for the future due to Trump’s erratic policies. Tourism is collapsing and China is no longer exporting the rare metals we need to produce our computer chips and military weapons. Trump is removing millions of workers from the economy while imposing punitive tariffs. Economists believe this will initiate a recession or worse.

I have already spoken to a number of people who are already being forced to close their boutique businesses as a downstream result of the tariffs. As I wrote in previous essays, I believe this to be an intentional attack on the middle class in the U.S. by the Trump regime. The goal is to pauperize the middle class to break further resistance to the regime. However, this could also lead to mass, sustained resistance and a rapid political awakening among vast swathes of American society. If Trump’s popularity falls below 32%, experts believe the country becomes ungovernable and Trump will fall.

One major problem we have is that many people are still not paying close attention to the political developments. They remain distracted, dissociated, checked out. Most people in their twenties and thirties seem very disconnected. They have become deeply cynical about politics generally. They view both parties as corrupt and see the system as totally broken to the point where their actions do not matter. They need to realize that their cynicism and detachment is serving the interests of an incipient Fascist regime. They have been made apathetic by design and they need to snap out of it.

Trump and his cronies benefit as long as people remain detached and disengaged from civic participation. The fragmenting of media ecosystems online is one major part of our problem. Many Americans simply aren't hearing news about judicial arrests or constitutional crises. Their algorithm serves them entertainment, celebrity gossip, tech news, and lifestyle content: They don’t even know about the rapid unraveling of democratic protection and the rule of law, and how dangerous this is for their future.

The coming months will be decisive for American democracy — potentially, for all of our future as human beings on this planet, when we consider the Trump regime’s blatantly destructive environmental policies. If institutional resistance collapses while public opposition remains fragmented, the slide toward authoritarianism will accelerate beyond recovery. The U.S. will be ruined. But if growing economic suffering combines with judicial pushback and mass awakening, we can reverse the current trajectory. Things that seemed impossible — such as Republican congresspeople breaking ranks with MAGA — will happen through sustained public awareness and pressure from below.

If you have slept through the warnings so far, this is a great time to wake up!

Appendix: Due Process, Habeus Corpus, and the Basic Rights Guaranteed to all of us in America by the Constitution

“Due process of law” is mentioned twice in the Constitution—first in the Fifth Amendment (“No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”) and again in the Fourteenth. The phrase carries two layers of meaning. Procedural due process requires the government to follow fair, regular procedures—notice of the charge, a neutral decision-maker, a chance to be heard—before it can take away life, liberty, or property. Substantive due process adds that some liberties (for example the right to marry, to raise one’s children, to be free from bodily intrusion) are so fundamental that they may not be abridged at all unless the government has a very severe justification.

Habeas corpus—Latin for “you shall have the body”—is even older. In Article I, Section 9 the framers wrote that the writ “shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” A person held by the state may petition a court to demand that the jailer bring her into open court and justify the detention. If the government cannot show lawful authority, the judge must order her released. This is our most direct safeguard against secret or indefinite imprisonment. It operates even in wartime unless Congress formally suspends it.

Because both clauses say “no person,” not “no citizen,” the Supreme Court has long held that many constitutional guarantees protect everyone on U.S. soil, including undocumented migrants. An individual without lawful status cannot be summarily jailed or expelled; she is entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge, notice of the factual allegations, a right to present evidence, to be represented by counsel (at her own expense), and to appeal an adverse decision. She may file a habeas petition in federal court if the executive detains her contrary to statute or without prompt judicial review.

Beyond those procedural rights, the general protections of the Bill of Rights also encompass non-citizens: freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly, and petition (First Amendment); protection against unreasonable searches and seizures (Fourth); the privilege against compelled self-incrimination and entitlement to fair criminal process (Fifth and Sixth); and the ban on cruel and unusual punishment (Eighth). Equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment likewise shields “any person,” as cases from Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886) to Plyler v. Doe (1982) confirm. What undocumented migrants do not possess are the political rights reserved to citizens—voting, holding most public offices, serving on juries, and the unconditional right to remain in the country.

The Constitution draws a sharp line on membership in the political community but a broad circle around protection of basic human liberty: Before the state can imprison or expel anyone, citizen or not, it must explain itself in open court and follow the law. That is not happening now, under the Trump regime. It is absolutely necessary that we restore the rule of law.