Trump has declared war on the American Way and there's only one way to fix it

I’ve been feeling something unusual these past few weeks: optimism.

Not naïve optimism or the kind that ignores danger, but the real kind that arrives when you see people waking up, standing up, and refusing to bow before a lawless president who believes rules are for suckers and the Constitution is a mere suggestion rather than the foundation of our republic.

We’re now governed by a man who treats legal limits as personal insults. Donald Trump doesn’t just violate our nation’s norms and laws: like every wannabe third-world tinpot dictator before him, he despises the idea that any law can constrain him at all.

Trump and the spineless sycophants in his administration have rejected the entire idea of a rules-based society. He and his lickspittles are turning the presidency into a throne, trying to transform you and me into its subjects, and painting as enemies anyone who insists soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen (and others in government) should follow the law.

Under Trump’s neofascist worldview, the only “legal” act is obedience, while defiance of his whims and illegal orders is a crime. We saw this when Trump lashed out at lawmakers who reminded our military that their sworn oath is to the Constitution and not to him personally.

He posted a rant about those six CIA and military veterans/lawmakers and wrote “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” in response to their message that both history and law — including military law — require soldiers to refuse illegal orders. Then he reposted a message calling for them to be hanged.

That wasn’t a rhetorical flourish: it was Trump’s declaration of war on the rule of law, something so essential that it’s the basis of every democracy and civilized society in history throughout the world. Instead of respecting American ideals, he’s sounding more like his “good friend,” the murderous dictator of Saudi Arabia (who’s given Trump’s family billions, with more billions on their way).

You’d think that after the My Lai massacre, the horrors committed at Abu Ghraib, and the Nuremberg trials, Americans — and Trump and those around him — would have gotten the message, but over at the Fox propaganda channel and on other rightwing media they’re actually defending this obscene behavior.

It’s also criminal behavior: 18 U.S. Code § 610 makes it a crime for any federal official — including the president — to use their authority to intimidate, threaten, or punish citizens for their political expression, voting behavior, or dissent. Threatening members of Congress with execution for following the law is an extreme, textbook violation.

Meanwhile, the country is learning how this un-American philosophy plays out on the ground. In cities like Charlotte, Portland, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc., masked, anonymous, secret police-style federal agents descend without warning, kicking in doors and smashing car windows, arresting U.S. citizens, stealing people’s possessions, invading trusted community spaces, shuttering businesses, and sending tens of thousands of students home in fear.

This isn’t border enforcement or public safety: it’s warfare against due process and America itself. It’s gotten so bad that Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and her peers are getting death and bomb threats.

Our nation’s Founders warned us that America’s greatest threats to liberty would come not from abroad, but from leaders who’d try to turn our legal system and military against us. James Madison said the means used against foreign dangers too easily become instruments of tyranny at home. That warning wasn’t theoretical: it was aimed directly at moments like this.

Yet we’re also see something the Founders hoped for, something that echoed their heroic efforts against King George III: average Americans refusing to be cowed.

People are documenting abuses, flooding the streets in peaceful protest, forming rapid-response networks, hauling the government into court again and again. Ordinary citizens are doing the job Congress has been too afraid, too compromised, or too divided to do.

It’s the most patriotic thing happening in America today.

Which is why Trump’s response to lawful dissent has been so horrific: he’s demanding Saudi-style executions.

He wasn’t being metaphorical: he demanded actual executions (although he later pretended to walk it back). That’s the language of a dictator. It’s the purest expression of Trump’s governing philosophy: if the law gets in his way he simply ignores it.

This isn’t merely corruption. It’s not even ordinary authoritarianism. It’s a direct repudiation of the entire American experiment. Defiance of courts and the law is a poison that says the only legitimate authority is the will of the leader, and Trump’s entire presidency has featured a nonstop campaign to replace the rule of law with the rule of Trump.

He enriched himself in office (he’s made billions off his position in just 10 months), he wielded the government as a tool of reprisal, he attacked judges, he extorted foreign governments, he stole government property and lied about it to federal investigators, he’s using public office to reward loyalists and punish critics, and he now presides over masked, unaccountable paramilitary raids that terrorize American communities.

The Constitution offers a clear remedy for a president who behaves like this.

Impeachment isn’t a political act: it’s a constitutional obligation when a president becomes a danger to the Republic. And Trump crossed that line long ago.

The only way to restore the rule of law is for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings immediately. Half measures are complicity. Silence is complicity. Delay is complicity.

But impeachment alone isn’t enough. There must also be criminal prosecution of Trump and his co-conspirators. Real prosecution, by real prosecutors, following real evidence, for real crimes.

And while we’re at it, DOGE deserves a pretty good looking at, too. And what happened to all those government investigations of billionaire donors’ companies?

Trump and those doing his bidding must face justice. His children who participated must face it. His bagmen and loyalists who broke laws to carry out his will must face it. A nation can’t heal if high office becomes a shield from justice.

Equality before the law is the foundation of any functioning democracy. If we abandon that principle now, we abandon the Republic itself.

I believe we’re at or very near a turning point. People are rising up. Communities are resisting. Judges are pushing back. Journalists are exposing what the administration wants hidden. The illusion of Trump’s invincibility is cracking.

The billionaires who believed he could terrorize the country into submission on their behalf are discovering that Americans refuse to bow.

This country was built by people who rejected kings. It can survive this counterfeit king, too.

But only if we act. Only if we insist that the Constitution still has meaning. Only if we refuse to let a lawless president redefine the rule of law as disloyalty.

Trump has declared war on the American Way. The only acceptable response is the full force of our constitutional system: impeachment, prosecution, and the unrelenting assertion that no man, no family, and no political movement is above the law.

I realize the political reality is that Mike Johnson won’t allow such a vote in the House and the Senate is now controlled by Republicans so timid and cowed by Trump that a GOP senator who’s a physician is afraid to criticize Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But we’re only 12 months away from an election that could sweep both bodies and we must lay the foundation now for that.

That means waking up as many people as possible , engaging with groups like Indivisible, and supporting litigators and progressive Democrats across the board.

We can do this. We just need resolve, passion, and to begin the hard work of reclaiming the American Way and the American Dream, as Democrats did in the 1930s and the 1960s, and both parties did to oust Nixon and imprison his cronies in the 1970s.