President Trump’s attempts to suppress patriotic dissent are failing.
As the Trump regime’s attacks on freedom, the rule of law, brown people and anyone who dares to criticize the dear leader get increasingly vicious, more and more Americans are saying, “Not in my name.”
Trump’s wrecking crew built momentum by moving fast and bullying powerful people and institutions into submission. Each act of cowardice and complicity was a victory for White House efforts to portray resistance as futile.
It turns out that millions of Americans aren’t willing to accept that brutality and authoritarianism are the way we do things now.
More people are finding the courage to put themselves on the line to defend their neighbors. More leaders and institutions are defending American ideals that are being shredded by the corrupt people who are temporarily in charge. These resisters are patriots, no matter how often dishonest politicians like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) try to smear them as a bunch of America-haters.
I was moved to see images of a procession led by Catholic priests and religious sisters trying to bring communion to migrants being held at a detention center in the Chicago suburbs. They were turned away, as were members of Congress exercising their legal right and official responsibility to conduct oversight of the conditions at the detention center. But what a powerful witness, and what a rebuke to Trump’s disingenuous preening as a champion of Christian values.
At the Pentagon, where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has gutted institutional checks on illegality and abuse of power, journalists and media outlets have rejected Hegseth’s demands that they preemptively give up their First Amendment right to report the truth in return for access to Pentagon officials.
And it’s not just the media outlets Trump loves to hate. The traditionally Trump-aligned Fox News was among the networks defending freedom of the press. So was CBS, which Trump has praised for installing an anti-woke culture warrior as its new news chief.
Along with mainstream outlets like the Washington Post and New York Times, right-wing outlets like Newsmax and the Daily Caller refused to sign Hegseth’s unconstitutional pledge.
Trump has had some success at intimidating university leaders with threats and funding cuts. But he has run into resistance to his new effort to hold future educational funding hostage in order to force colleges to accept far more control by Trump and his brazenly politicized Justice Department over how schools are run and even what ideas can be taught in classrooms.
Trump’s “compact” has been publicly rejected by MIT and Brown University. This should embolden other college leaders to reject this assault on higher education and academic freedom.
Airport officials around the country are refusing to show a partisan video by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blaming travel delays and the government shutdown on congressional Democrats.
Progressive nonprofit organizations and philanthropies have demonstrated admirable solidarity in the face of Trump administration smears and threats against the Open Society Foundations and their grant recipients.
Democratic state and local leaders and activists in California, Illinois and Oregon have bravely challenged the administration’s deployment of military forces against U.S. cities and citizens. Notably, the Republican governor of Oklahoma spoke out against Trump deploying one state’s National Guard troops into another state over the objections of state and local officials.
In Chicago, city leaders, small business owners and residents have teamed up to tell ICE that its sadism is unwelcome. In Portland, nightly dance parties featuring inflatable animal costumes have playfully mocked the administration’s claims of a city ravaged by war.
And all that is on top of the everyday heroism of Americans all over this country defending their immigrant neighbors and the contributions they make to our communities. In every state in the country and in our nation’s capital, people are mobilizing alongside their neighbors to affirm the fundamental American principle that we are not ruled by dictators or kings.
It is no small thing to decide to resist a president who eagerly abuses his power, demonizes every American who disagrees with him and sends violent and heavily armed masked men into our streets to terrorize our communities.
And that makes every act of peaceful, creative, courageous resistance a beautiful thing to behold — patriotism at work.
