Donald Trump is now waging full-on war against our democracy, and wants to leave us all with no choice. Not just about how, where, and who gets to vote, and his $100 billion war — but about whether we continue as a civil society; bound together as a nation governed by our Constitution and the rule of law. If you believe in democracy, your children; this nation: it’s time to wake up.
Politics is now Donald Trump’s full-on bloodsport. His first assault on elections and American democracy came on a treasonous January 6, 2021 when he admonished thousands of Proud Boys, Oath Keeper thugs and MAGA followers to “fight like hell,” before they marched off, enraged — breaking into the Capital in their bloody coup attempt to overthrow Congress and our government.
By injecting his poison of mistrust and chaos into our historically free and fair elections Trump wants to crush a nation’s soul. Full control over the citizenry, the courts, and the co-equal branches of government is the end game. He is today’s embodiment of everything courageous people fought against in 1776.
His attempt to weaponize the US Postal Service to erase voter’s rights signaled the new full-on push to crush our freedom to choose. But now his treasonous promise of $5,000 loyalty-cash for each voter’s ballot cast toward achieving his ends is the betrayal of all our democracy has stood for these last 250 years.
Trump will use all manner of billionaire tech and crypto dark money, AI surveillance, deep-fake advertising, and the chaos of prediction market gaming in his desperate attempt to corral power. The dictator-king is now ready to shove the world’s oldest constitutional democracy over a cliff. And he’ll stop at nothing until the good people of this nation wake up and take action to stop him.
In that first January attempt on democratically elected governance a furious Trump invited his MAGA crowd to Washington after all 60 of his appeals claiming fraud in his loss to President-elect Joe Biden failed in court. Nearly a third of citizens, including Trump, vote by mail. His coup attempt on the postal service, Benjamin Franklin’s brilliant egalitarian invention serving all without fear or favor as our common carrier since 1775, is anathema to all justice, our Constitution and the Declaration. Using a civil agency to harvest state-protected private data and suppress national voting rights is an attack on each and all.
This president is immune to soaring gas and grocery prices. While millions can’t afford shelter, homes or healthcare the Roberts’ Court again has green-lighted his East Wing ballroom and luxury, long-term, security bunker build-out — replete with adjacent helipad. He’s untouched by heat domes; untroubled by the grim air of exploding wildfires, crippling drought, rivers and reservoirs running dry, and taps absent of flow. Our bridges beg for replacement as he joyrides across our nation’s emptied Reflecting Pool. We’ll be left with the tab for his $100 billion war while his family and mega-billionaire friends reap its profits.
The capitol of a free people should reflect its values. Donald Trump has placed Washington under around-the-clock National Guard surveillance for the next three years. He’s fully appropriating Washington as personal real estate, working frantically to bulldoze and rewrite its history in monuments to himself. At the anniversary of our Declaration and government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” Washington looks like a bombed-out deconstruction zone. Our National Mall is used like a centerpiece of some fascist general’s piazza: a carnival setting for cheap-thrill auto races, blood-lust cage fights and pounding military flyovers.
Washington is our national showplace, our legacy. Its dignity, its monuments, its Supreme Court, history and culture are being summarily dismantled — building by building, law by law, agency by agency, civil liberty by civil right, voter by voter, and now election-by-election. That’s the playbook right up to Nov. 3. Trump will lie about his disastrously failed war, claim failed tariffs and ruined foreign relations as victories, and promise to end soaring prices and give jackpot voter payouts to all willing to sell out their children’s democratic freedom.
A cheating president is waging full-out war on our November election, now. He cares nothing of our rights. He’s abandoned our Constitution. Now, after 20 months of new Trump usurpation of constitutional and judicial powers, our great democratic failure has been in not finding the wisdom and courage to fight back on his war’s actual battleground, Washington DC. Waiting, until after his treasonous campaign reaches its endgame to take to the streets, or again marching in place in yet another No Kings Day! parade of righteous indignation while he’s tearing down our democracy right before us is not a winning strategy, it’s de facto surrender.
Now is the time to stand together as a people in full possession of our sacred constitutional right of redress in the capitol of our nation. The women of the 2017 Washington Women’s March understood the stakes. Senator Corey Booker showed that courage and DC fightback on March 31, 2026, when, for next 25 hours and 5 minutes, he defended our Constitution from Trump’s predation on the Senate floor. And so too did the marchers this Aug. 28, who stood together, directly in the face Trump’s of tyranny, to defend Black voting rights on that mall. All understood that this, now, is our nation’s democratic emergency. It’s time to cash in any new No Kings marching near home, and take the battle for justice and freedom directly to the National Mall. Together, “we the people” have it in our power to win.
Karl Meyer writes about democracy, the Constitution and the Connecticut River. He is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists.