Trump can spit on our founders' graves — but he can't run from Lincoln's truth

We’re now living in an early-stage police state.

After Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) was assaulted for saying, “I’m Sen. Alex Padilla and I have a question for the Secretary,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary and notorious puppy murderer Kristi Noem went on Fox “News” and lied to the American people, saying that he hadn’t identified himself, she didn’t know who he was, and that he was “lunging into the room.”

The violence inflicted on Padilla was the point. And it’s being celebrated in real time by MAGA, Fox, and the Trump administration.

After all, dictators can’t be dictators without first cowing the people, terrifying even elected officials, and asserting their absolute and unlimited power to use violence anywhere, any time, and under any circumstances they choose.

“We are not going away,” Noem said in a snarling comment that provoked the question from Padilla. “We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor [Gavin Newsom] and that this mayor [Karen Bass] have placed on this country.”

For the record, the job of the federal government is not to “liberate“ cities from the leaders they have elected. That’s what Putin did when he forced all the elected governors of the Russian states (oblasts) to resign and replaced them with men he appointed. Even suggesting it is deeply and profoundly un-American.

This is the Trump administration once again nakedly asserting that they are above the law, are committed to acting without ethical or moral restraint, and that they have no obligation to honor the constitutionally defined oversight role of members of Congress. That they are intent on running a dictatorship here in America, not a democratic republic.

They have arrested and are prosecuting a member of the House of Representatives who was simply doing her job at an immigration detention center in New Jersey. They are ignoring explicit orders by federal judges and the Supreme Court. They are literally disappearing people, including American citizens, off the streets of our cities. And now they’ve taken a United States senator to the ground.

This is not what the people who fought and died to create and sustain this country had in mind.

The genius of the Founders was Montesquieu’s idea of three branches of government with checks on each other’s power. It’s essential to democracy.

Trump (2nd branch) has been trashing judges (3rd branch) and has now violently attacked a congresswoman and a US senator (1st branch). He’s spitting on the graves of the Framers of our Constitution.

And to emphasize their ignoring the Constitution and its requirement that both Congress and the courts can exercise oversight of the president, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said:

“The courts should have no role here. There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process.”

Similarly, they refuse to respect the right of American citizens to protest that’s laid out in the First Amendment, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Trump came right out and said that if anybody in Washington, DC tries to protest his birthday parade on Saturday, he will meet them with violence:

“For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force. Very big force!”

That wasn’t a threat against vandals or even people who might try to disrupt Dear Leader’s birthday celebration: it was a threat against people who may “protest.”

This echoes the behavior of Hitler’s goons in the early 1930s as they set out to violently intimidate anybody — particularly members of Parliament — who may challenge him. Or Commissioner Bull Connor as he bloodied protesters in Birmingham in the 1950s and 1960s.

Under Trump and Noem, federal agents have been given carte blanche to use violence against non-white people (it’s probably no coincidence that Sen. Padilla is a brown-skinned son of Mexican immigrants), including kidnapping them in broad daylight and sending them to foreign concentration camps with no access to due process whatsoever.

Noem could easily have taken the senator’s question, or just said, “I’m happy to meet with you after this press conference.“ Instead, she chose escalation and violence, which is why Democrats are today calling on her to resign.

Now, in response to the violence Noem and the FBI directed against a US senator, the professional propagandists at Fox “News” are peddling rationalizations and repeating Noem’s lie that she didn’t know who Padilla was. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino issued a statement “thanking” the men who beat Padilla to the ground. House Speaker Mike Johnson implied Padilla was trying to inflict violence on Noem and called for him to be censured by the Senate.

It appears that Republicans are circling the wagons, defending the assault on Padilla, Trump’s illegal infliction of armed troops on the streets of Los Angeles over the objections of the governor and mayor, and his and Noem’s efforts to stir up trouble in California that they can then exploit Reichstag Fire-style.

Are there any John McCain Republicans left? Any patriots who revere the Constitution and respect the rule of law? Any who are willing to call out Trump’s brutal dictator-inspired corruption and excesses?

The question is an urgent one, because right now the only people who can stop America’s descent into tyranny are the Republicans in the House and Senate. If just a small handful grow a spine, Trump could be stopped in his tracks.

Will it happen? History suggests that massive public opinion holds the answer to that question. It ended, for example, both the presidency of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War.

As Abraham Lincoln famously said in his debate with Stephen Douglas:

“In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces judicial decisions.”

Saturday will be this era’s most visible expression of public opinion. Stay tuned and stay peacefully active.