Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement of people with no criminal record are surging. Federal immigration agents have shot at nearly two dozen people – most of them Latino – since last year, according to The New York Times. Those include the fatal shootings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine.
This photo caught Trump off guard — and should scare the hell out of America
I keep thinking about that haunting photograph of Donald Trump, framed in the window of his gilded new Air Force One, looking at poster boards prepared for him by the foolhardy lackey Bill Pulte and apparently unaware that he could be seen.
It's an unforgettable image because it captured something I can't stop noticing: every day now feels like looking through that window and watching something get demolished. Trump has unleashed total destruction on this country, and it's gotten to a point where it's too much to comprehend.
Americans have been spoiled, myself included. For decades, we have assumed certain things would just be there.
We would have a growing economy, and if it faltered, the government would give it a lift.
We would have the world's most capable military, a respected and venerable diplomatic corps that could smartly negotiate peace. We would have cheap gas, medical schools turning out the best doctors and psychiatrists year after year. We would have civil rights protections, a functioning justice system, and a president who might not be perfect, but had America's best interests at heart.
There were always hiccups because any government is an evolving work in progress. There have been countless times when our frustration bubbled up and we protested, spoke out, and switched things up at election time.
The point is that we didn't have to think about any of it. That was the luxury of living inside institutions built by people who came before us, always improving or adapting. Failing, yes, at times, but always seemingly bouncing back.
I think Americans still generally believe that despite all of the intense turmoil over the last year and 10 months, American institutions will just go back to normal once the demolishing storm that is Trump passes. But what took decades to stand up, and less than two years to demolish, will take decades again to return to those simple expectations.
The Environmental Protection Agency is being hollowed out just as climate consequences accelerate. Health and Human Services is being run in a way that would have been unthinkable a decade ago, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. telling an anti-vaccine crowd “they have a friend” in the White House, while funding and guidance for the next pandemic quietly disappear.
And the Justice Department? The proverbial wrecking ball has already crashed that from all sides of the building.
Throughout our government, career civil servants, the unglamorous people who actually keep agencies running across administrations, are being pushed out. What happened to transgender intelligence expert Julia Curlee is emblematic of other highly skilled professionals being kicked to the curb for reasons that have nothing to do with their job performance.
Even in corporate America, there's demolition occurring. Take CBS News, once a genuine standard-bearer for American broadcast journalism for generations, which has had its integrity demolished by the heavy hand of Trump.
Trade relationships with Canada and Mexico that took generations to build are being demolished. And now there's that foam board of the demolition of the Kennedy Center, the demolition of the White House's East Wing to make room for a ballroom, an act that runs against everything the building has stood for in its plain, deliberate simplicity.
This week, I had a conversation with a friend of mine who runs a psychiatric training program at Columbia University. The government support it has relied on for years is gone. The program has been cancelled.
He reminded me that what happened to his program is a microcosm. Multiply that by every medical and doctoral training program across the country that depended on the same kind of funding, and that pipeline providing future doctors and psychiatrists stops.
Any interruption in that process will take years to rectify. Doctors aren't trained overnight.
Here's what worries me most: We all go blithely along, with none of this demolition yet apparent. Gas is still relatively cheap. The stock market hasn't collapsed. Most people go about their lives without feeling the absence of cancelled medical training grants, a gutted pandemic preparedness office, or not seeing ICE agents roam their streets. There are so many other things waiting in the wings that could disappear.
But all of these institutions and actions don't fall over the way buildings collapse. It takes time to dismantle their effectiveness. They are eroding before our eyes, and the moment we need them, we will discover they're not there.
You don't build a great medical education system, a functioning diplomatic corps, or a competent public health apparatus overnight. It takes decades. And when you tear it down, rebuilding takes decades too.
Ask yourself this: If you are a public servant who was cut by Elon Musk's indiscriminate DOGE, will you be available to come back in 2029 after a Democratic administration takes office? Most likely not, because the infrastructure you helped build is gone, you've taken another job, and you're not going to go back to a disaster area with the thought that in four years you could be fired again.
That's the part I don't think many Americans get. Even in the more immediate, best-case scenario, if Democrats retake the House and Senate, some competent people are reinstalled and funding is restored, you cannot simply flip a switch and have back what was lost.
The talent that left won't all come back. The programs that closed won't reopen on the old timeline. The relationships with allies that frayed will need to be painstakingly rebuilt, if they can be at all.
And we're doing all of this at the exact moment artificial intelligence is reshaping the world faster than any technology in memory. It's a moment that is screaming for more institutional competence and foresight, not less.
Layer that on top of everything else in the throes of being dismantled, and the country is heading into genuinely uncertain territory with a weaker infrastructure than it's had in generations, or maybe in the short lifespan of a 250-year-old democracy.
I don't say any of this to scare the bejesus out of anyone. I say it because I think most Americans wake up with blue skies in their eyes, not realizing that somewhere behind them, a wrecking ball is swinging closer and closer to causing irrevocable damage. Eventually, all of what Trump's doing will come home to roost.
And when it does, the picture of a poster board of the Kennedy Center being demolished will have been an ugly harbinger.
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A Trojan horse threatens to turn America into a puppet nation — and it's inside the gates
As a veteran, the oath I took to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, did not come with an expiration date. National security is not solely the responsibility of the military or even law enforcement. It begins with ensuring a government of, by, and for the people cannot be bought by the ultra-wealthy or left vulnerable to foreign influence.
A nation whose elected officials are propped up by foreign countries and shadow entities is not a sovereign nation, but a puppet. It is time to cut the strings.
As we mark Constitution Day this Sept. 17, I ask my fellow veterans to put that oath into practice through active civic participation. Take action to stand up for a country that is not run by the highest bidder.
Our nation’s Founders anticipated this exact vulnerability. George Washington called foreign influence “one of the most baneful foes of republican government,” while Thomas Jefferson warned that preserving liberty required constant vigilance against corruption and outside interference.
Unchecked dark money and foreign-backed interests are pouring into our elections, bending public policy toward priorities that do not serve the American public. Veterans, working families, and everyday citizens are being drowned out by massive financial influence from masked donors we cannot match.
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Here in Maryland, State Board of Elections filings reflect the same reality we see nationwide: Out-of-state funding and deep-pocketed donors dominate campaign finance, sidelining Marylanders. But this is not just a Maryland problem, and it is not one that we can solve alone. We need a national response.
According to an Ipsos Poll, Americans across the political spectrum agree that campaign spending is not speech that should be unregulated. Voters overwhelmingly agree that citizens and their elected representatives should be the ones setting the limits, without the Supreme Court sweeping away those protections. In 1976, in Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court determined that spending unlimited money on political campaigns is protected as free speech. In 2010, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission extended that “right” to corporations.
If money in politics is free speech, then most everyday Americans have no voice at all. Billionaires and corporate entities can spend sums in a single cycle that the vast majority of us will never see in a lifetime.
Americans of all political persuasions are uniting behind a clear objective: passing a constitutional amendment that restores the power to regulate election money to Congress and the states. The movement is real, and the moment has arrived.
The For Our Freedom Amendment, championed by American Promise, achieves exactly that by authorizing state and federal oversight of “contributions and spending in campaigns, elections, or ballot measures.” It has been introduced in Congress and needs active support to reach the floor for a vote.
Why is an amendment necessary? There are only two ways to overturn the Supreme Court: Wait for the court to reverse its own precedent, which is not happening here, or use the mechanism we learned about in high school civics, a constitutional amendment. The ultimate check and balance.
This Constitution Day cannot pass without notice. Having pledged our lives to defend this Republic, veterans hold both the standing and the moral obligation to demand a higher standard. We did not serve this country only to watch foreign wealth and billionaire mega-donors choose our leaders for us.
Fellow veterans, we no longer wear the uniform, but our duty is not finished. Our time standing in formations may be over, but our oath to the Constitution never expires. While we served, many of us were unable to be engaged in politics. That time has passed; we are home, and we are still serving, and we cannot do this alone.
Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: info@marylandmatters.org.