This weekend has the makings of an unprecedented moment for our nation. A rare peacetime military parade in Washington DC to mark the president’s birthday will be countered by anti-authoritarian protests around the country. Both of these come amid the president’s devolving rhetoric around military deployment against protesters and a test-run of actual military deployment in Los Angeles. This dynamic cannot balance on the knife’s edge for long. Where it falls—toward tyranny or democracy—depends on us.
We are all under assault
This improbable blue planet is enough to make you gasp: suspended in the silent dark, yet bedazzled and humming with life. But here in the summer of 2025, its brilliant corals are fading to bone-white in the hot ocean, its glaciers are collapsing, rivers are shrinking, its forests are on fire, its vibrating soundscape is going quiet as the chorus of Earth’s creatures dies out. We are breaking Nature’s back and the price is going to be steep. There’s no sugarcoating that humanity’s ship is headed into a dark and challenging night.
Our challenge is to pull together, navigate with care toward possibility—of which there is still so much—steer safely to the other side, and deliver our children and future generations a new day. We can!
But with everything riding on us rising to that challenge, this ship we are on together is being steered by people choosing to govern through intimidation, not hope, by sowing chaos, not community. Our president, the captain of our ship, and his crew—an administration of anti-democratic, anti-science, and incompetent leaders working to advance the agenda of the very fossil fuel companies choking our planet—are trying to set the ship on an even crueler and more challenging course than the one we are on and tormenting anyone on board who reminds them of the future they fear. They are destroying the instruments (read: science) for navigating toward those better shores. They are burning the sails (read: clean energy) that would carry us there. They seem ready for people to die (read: too many cuts and policies to name) as they claw toward absolute power.
People are rising up from below deck to fight back. But their numbers are still small compared with the many who remain below. In the relative comfort of their berths, they hear the shouting from above but try to ignore it (or cheer it on; this crew still has its supporters). Those below deck soothe themselves with the small, unremarkable view from their porthole window, where not much has changed. “Maybe this will blow over,” they think.
But above deck, this evermore power-hungry crew is now forcing people off the ship and into the water. Families. Children. Terrorizing them for who they are. Those who would defend their fellow humans are growing desperate. And the captain and crew appear to be just waiting for provocation to draw their weapons on the ship’s passengers.
This is the ruthlessly, callously steered ship we find ourselves on, and they are sailing us toward violence.
We are in a knife’s edge authoritarian moment. Where our democracy, our nation, and our future hang in the balance. Where, without our overwhelming, peaceful response, we could all find ourselves under full authoritarian rule any day now. This is where you and I are needed.
A manufactured crisis
We’ve been watching the rhetoric and official signals mount since January 20th, when the new president signed a “National Emergency” Executive Order that considered invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807—i.e., deploying troops on US soil—to “secure the southern border.” A preliminary 90-day mark for that decision passed, perhaps due to public outcry. But in the last couple of months, unlawful and violent raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have increased dramatically, with some deportees shipped to foreign prisons where our constitutional protections don’t apply. The terror campaign being waged against immigrants, naturally, has driven new activist opposition.
Which brings us to this week, where the situation in Los Angeles, the looming prospect of the president’s military birthday parade this Saturday, and the widespread opposition that will be voiced that day are a tense and dangerous mix.
But the situation in LA is a manufactured crisis.
On Tuesday, President Trump said that governors should be able to handle disasters without FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency—the same week he insisted that governors cannot handle protesters without the US Marines. He cannot mean both things. What’s happening in LA, in Governor Gavin Newsom’s words, is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions. President Trump’s response to LA protests of ICE abductions of innocent people has been to override the governor, LA Mayor Karen Bass, and local law enforcement—all of whom insist that involving US military in the situation is uncalled for.
Manufactured to consolidate power
Why is the Trump Administration doing what it’s doing right now in LA? Here are four of the reasons I and other observers are seeing:
1. To test run deploying military forces on US soil and see how far they can get. Historically, deployment of the National Guard to quell civil unrest is rare, deployment of active-duty troops is rarer still, and their presence in the past was short term. If the administration does deploy troops more broadly and makes any headway in establishing a sustained military presence, it would provide precedent and lasting latitude for them to rule in unprecedented, unconstitutional ways. And it would have lasting implications for our freedom, including to free assembly, speech, and fair elections.
Let’s be clear: There’s no democracy under martial law.
(2) To create a huge distraction that draws attention away from the One Big Bonus for Billionaires Bill.
The bill contains such terrible things and comes with such terrible costs, that some of the terribly disingenuous lawmakers who voted for it are now playing dumb and distancing themselves from it. It also contains expansion of ICE’s increasingly unpopular activities. This is a bill with something for everyone to hate. But not if they’re terrified about our second largest city unraveling into violence.
If we, the American public, are terrified and transfixed, all manner of injustice is possible.
(3) To provoke, demonize and disempower the resistance.
Across the US, people of conscience are appalled at the ICE abductions. Some are organizing to protect people and to protest ICE’s presence. Their actions have been overwhelmingly peaceful. This is true in LA, too, though instances of vandalism and looting have also occurred.
Though local law enforcement insist they are capable of handling the situation, the Trump administration appears to be deliberately building pressure in LA by calling up 4,000 National Guard and then 700 Marines. Unlike state and local law enforcement, the US military are not typically trained in the general de-escalation ethos essential to peacefully calming civil unrest. This dangerous mismatch was demonstrated during the 1992 riots in LA when Marines were also deployed. Members of the military are being forced into roles they may be unprepared for. And peaceful protesters are in grave danger should violence break out on militarized streets.
It’s not difficult to see how a cycle of violence begetting violence could easily lead to a public relations opportunity for the Trump administration and its supporters. Footage can shape and shift public opinion from support of people exercising their rights under the Constitution to support for martial law to quell what they perceive as violent mobs.
If the administration wishes to test drive domestic military deployment, public opinion and opposition is one of the few things in its way. But public opinion in a world of disinformation is a highly-engineerable thing.
Speaking of which:
4) to project inevitability of their takeover
Since his inauguration, President Trump has been pushing the nation away from democracy and toward authoritarianism: releasing the January 6th insurrectionists, ignoring judicial orders, degrading institutions, punishing opponents, demonizing vulnerable groups, inflaming prejudices, and deepening division. This is the authoritarian playbook and a show of military force on US soil is right on schedule. As the organizers of No Kings call out: “For the would-be dictator, success depends on projecting power and creating an aura of inevitability.”
That’s part of this LA show-of-strength and the military parade. With tanks rolling through DC and our neighbors being ripped from the streets, a shocked, awed, and disheartened public is more likely to accept the previously unthinkable as inevitable.
All of us who are alarmed, outraged, and terrified by the increasingly authoritarian actions of the administration need help shedding that sense of inevitability. We need reason to think democracy, love thy neighbor, and care for our planet will win. We need each other.
What now in this increasingly authoritarian moment? It’s our move
To counter the above, we need a massive peaceful opposition. Millions of everyday people mobilizing and showing up in the streets, demanding the administration walk back from authoritarianism. And not just the stalwarts who have been protesting administration actions since day one. Not just frontline communities, BIPOC activists, LGBTQ+ folks, white educated women, and youth activists. We need everyone who believes in democracy, human rights and our constitutional freedoms.
If we show up, millions of peacefully mobilized people will:
- Demonstrate broad opposition to the abductions of immigrants, tearing apart of families, and heartless ICE policies and actions.
- Directly discredit the administration’s claims of radical, violent mobs and undermine its calls for domestic military deployment.
- Defuse the “distraction bomb” the administration is hoping will provide cover for the heinous reconciliation bill.
- Show the nation and the world that resistance is broad, powerful, and peaceful and that violence toward those of us protesting would be an authoritarian crime.
- Show the nation and the world that there is nothing inevitable about this authoritarian juggernaut. This is still the United States of America and we do not bow to kings.
Critically, we need to do this peacefully. There is abundant guidance on how to engage in peaceful protest, help to de-escalate violence and counterprotest situations, and keep ourselves and each other safe. I’ve done my share of protests but I’m no expert, especially not in these times, so please consult expert resources closely. Know your rights and risks. Mind your health and digital safety. Learn how to safely document and be a good ally. There are real risks of showing up to protest, especially amid the administration’s escalation. And there are assured costs of us failing to mount a massive public opposition.
The next important opportunity to show up and be heard is Saturday, June 14th at the No Kings demonstrations. The thousands of protests planned around the nation that day will, collectively, be a huge, peaceful counter to President Trump’s dictator-esque military birthday parade.
But again, we need numbers. People by the millions. History provides evidence that when movements grow to involve a critical share of the population—in this country, around 10 million people—they can topple authoritarian regimes.
Our vigilance or our neglect?
And here I want to go back to the ship and the quiet majority biding their time below deck. We have seldom had anything more important to do than fight the authoritarian takeover of our country. If you can show up, show up.
I recently re-read a powerful 2023 commencement speech by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. (My eldest child just graduated college and the start of these people’s new lives at this tumultuous time is much on my mind.) In it she quotes words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that are apt today:
“We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time…. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’ There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect…. Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter—but beautiful—struggle for a new world.”
It is not too late. But soon, it could be. If we lose this nation to an authoritarian ruler and waste these four years undoing climate progress at home and abroad, it will be too late for our near-term climate goals, too late for certain life-sustaining ecosystems around the world, and too late for the hopes of better lives for many of the world’s vulnerable people. But it is not too late today.
Do not stay home. Yes, they are steering the ship, but that doesn’t mean they have total control of it. It doesn’t mean they decide what happens next. The ship is everything and everyone we love is on it.
Do not give up the ship.