Donald Trump finds a new way to put service members at risk

Yesterday I played tennis with a couple players I’d never met before. We met at Chicago’s Waveland Park along Lake Michigan, where we played next to a leafy municipal golf course built in 1901.

About 30 minutes into our set, something extraordinary happened. Just as I was serving, ten or so ominous-looking helicopters came flying out of nowhere from the east. Matte brown, thundering low to the ground, they reminded me of military tanks Trump recently sent to scare people in LA’s MacArthur’s Park. The choppers didn’t say ‘ICE,’ “Coast Guard,’ or any words I could see, but they were on a loud and intimidating mission all the same.

I stood transfixed. For a moment, standing safely on a tennis court, in a grand municipal park of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, I caught a glimpse of living under siege. I thought of cities turned to rubble under direct orders from Hitler, Putin, Netanyahu, and other authoritarians cursing the planet who brutalize “other” for power. In that instant, intuiting that Trump calls Democrat-run cities “war zones” because he plans to make them so, I saw the violence to come from republicans giving Trump $170 billion to arm domestic ICE agents: the deafening noise, the surprise of imminent sweep.

But instead of feeling intimidated or afraid, I was overwhelmed with an odd emotion: anger. I instinctively swung my racket at the helicopters with my left hand, while the middle finger of my right hand shot up to the sky. I started jumping in place and screaming at the helicopters like an insane person, “Fuck You!! Fuck You!! Fuck You!!,” wet with tears of rage.

I wasn’t embarrassed. I didn’t care if I’d embarrassed the friend who’d invited me, either. I didn’t know if her friends were MAGA and it didn’t matter. I screamed with righteous abandon, even as I imagined the choppers turning back to open fire on the lot of us.

Defiance is patriotic

My middle finger has a recurrent case of Tourrets; it gets stuck upright every time I walk by the Trump high rise defacing Chicago’s river view. But that’s not remarkable.

What was extraordinary was that, while I assumed my playmates were either disgusted at my outburst or waiting for my serve, they weren’t. All three of these middle aged, white women some would call bougie were giving the same salute to the helicopters, perhaps with a tad less vigor.

Then I looked at the courts surrounding us—we were playing on the second of six full courts— and saw that we weren’t alone. Standing on one court to the west and four courts to the east, every single player, singles or doubles, had stopped playing, arrested by the rumbling sky overhead.

When I saw that all the players around me were doing the exact same thing I was doing, the bitter tears turned sweet.

Conflicted emotions

It's hard to say it was a proud moment. I don’t feel proud for hating my government. I don’t feel proud to reflexively disrespect the military by conflating it with the drunk who commands it. I know that’s unfair, even as I worry about enlisted troops serving under a Fox News clown, especially after he botched Signalgate, Iran’s enriched uranium, and the withholding of weapons for Ukraine.Plus, I come from a military family. My dad and his dad retired from the Navy, my brother was in the Marines, two aunts and an uncle served in the Air Force, etc.

But my anger, and that of everyone else on the courts that morning, wasn’t at the people in the choppers. It was at their Commander in Chief, an unhinged and dangerous man who should’ve been taken down already under the 25th A.

Our anger wasn’t subversive. It was patriotic, and it was electrifying. It restored hope just when the Supreme Court’s rapid fire perfidy had almost erased it.

Politicizing the military puts service members at risk

I’m guessing people on the courts saluting the choppers had seen footage of ICE goons, tanks, and roof-mounted military rifles terrorizing soccer players at LA’s MacArthur’s park. Or maybe they saw the video that went viral of masked criminals with ICE badges repeatedly punching and beating a landscaper, a portly middle-aged father of three US Marines. Or it could have been a segment on the nightly news showing ICE raiding a farm with giddy brutality, using tear gas on peaceful protestors who ran, clutching their eyes.

Whatever horrors inspired them, their tiny acts of defiance on the tennis courts, as ridiculous as it may sound, made me proud to be an American. It made me proud, even as I know in my bones that Trump’s immigration raids will soon encompass other undesirables, and that I am one such undesirable. It made me proud, even as I sense that his detention centers will likely, within the year, imprison political adversaries and media figures who criticize him.

I know the violence and injustice that are coming, and I still feel proud of where it sits with me. I feel proud because, more than fear, I feel anger.

I feel anger at an “Attorney General” telling Americans they’d better watch out. I feel angry that our “Homeland Security” Secretary says ICE will hunt detractors down. I feel anger—and disgust— at a “president” who announces, on the 4th of July, that he “hates” over half the citizens in our country.

Trump, Bondi, Hegseth, and Noem are grotesqueries wrapped in American flags, and 166 million Americans who did not vote for Trump see them for what they are. Trump may well get the Civil War he’s itching for, but he and his posse will eventually lose, and every one of them will be held to account.

People resisting Trump are the best, brightest and bravest of America; we are the true Revolutionary throwbacks unwilling to love a king. We so fiercely love our imperfect country and the perfect ideals it stands for that no force of darkness will ever be able to defeat it.

Middle fingers on Chicago tennis courts delivered that optimistic clarity more forcefully than any op ed ever could.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.