Updated Facts be Submitted to a Candid World
An excerpt from the Declaration of Independence:
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
From Jamelle Bouie’s October 22, 2025 piece, No Kings Means No Kings. No Wonder Trump Hates It.:
it takes no time at all to write out a litany of offenses that threaten the republican foundations of American democracy.
To borrow language from one of the nation’s founding documents, Trump has “erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance”; he has “kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures”; he has “affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power”; he has cut “off our Trade with all Parts of the World” and imposed “Taxes on us without our Consent.” He has transported us “beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences” and in deigning to spend tax dollars without congressional authorization — to pay soldiers in the midst of a shutdown, in a move reminiscent of Stuart absolutism — he has “invested” himself “with Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever.”
All this so that he might alter “fundamentally the Forms of our Governments,” and remake the United States in his image as a personalist autocracy.
The president’s opponents can see, quite clearly, that Trump wants authoritarian power so that he can crush their dissent. And Trump has been nothing but open about his desire to turn the federal state against blue America, punishing Democrats and Democratic voters for the crime of acting against him. “We’re under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy,” he said in remarks to the military’s top brass last month. “It’s a war from within.”
Hence the president’s use of the National Guard to occupy American cities and, as much as possible, to replace civil law with military order. Hence his use of federal law enforcement to harass and intimidate his political adversaries as well as universities and civil society organizations deemed liberal. Hence his impoundment of funds meant for Democratic-led states and his threats to defund Democratic-led cities like New York. And hence his promise to use the government shutdown to cut programs favored by Democrats.
“We’re only cutting Democrat programs, I hate to tell you, but we are cutting Democrat programs,” Trump said during a cabinet meeting early in the standoff. “We will be cutting some very popular Democrat programs that aren’t popular with Republicans, frankly.”
One irony, here, is that in his zeal to punish Democrats for their opposition to his administration, Trump is harming millions of his own voters who live in states such as New York, Illinois and California. He seems unaware that there were more Trump voters in, for example, Los Angeles County than there were in the state of Oklahoma.
But this just gets to the basic folly of trying to govern for “your” people and force the rest of the public to submit to your will. Despite what might appear to be true in the maps we use to illustrate election results, it is not possible to divide the United States into “red” and “blue” teams. For as much as Americans are polarized around party affiliation, they do not actually exist in separate societies or civilizations. Wish as we might otherwise, we rise, and fall, together.
…
In seizing the mantle of the country’s anti-royal heritage — that is, in seizing the rhetoric and imagery of the American Revolution and taking back the tea party from the Tea Partyers — Saturday’s protests may remind many more than those who waved a sign that we, as Americans, are honored participants in a shared project of self-government and that there is no election that could give any president the power to deprive us of our right to govern ourselves.
Trump needs division to fuel his autocratic plans and make his royal dream a reality. For this reason, he is working as hard as possible to divide this country against itself. But if we can take any sign from the public’s escalating response to this madness, it is that Trump just may, in the end, remind Americans of the vital power of acting together in solidarity with each other.