Karl Meyer writes about democracy, the Constitution, and the Connecticut River. He is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists.
GREENFIELD, MASS.-Donald Trump is now waging full-on war against our democracy, and he 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 as a nation, and 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 Jan. 6, 2021, when he admonished thousands of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers thugs, and MAGA followers to "fight like hell" before they marched off, enraged, and broke into the U.S. Capitol 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 endgame. He is today's embodiment of everything that courageous people fought against in the American Revolution.
His attempt to weaponize the U.S. Postal Service to erase voter rights signaled the new full-on push to crush our freedom to choose. But now his treasonous promise - to promise $5,000 loyalty-cash for U.S. adults if Republicans retain control of both houses of Congress - is the betrayal of all our democracy has stood for these last 250 years.
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Trump will use all manor of billionaire tech and crypto dark money, AI surveillance, deepfake 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 the failure of all 60 of his appeals claiming fraud in the previous November's election loss to Joe Biden.
Nearly a third of citizens - including Trump - vote by mail using the U.S. Postal Service, Benjamin Franklin's brilliant egalitarian invention serving all without fear or favor as our common carrier since 1775.
Trump's coup attempt is anathema to all justice, our Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence. 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 Trump's East Wing ballroom and luxury, long-term security bunker build-out, replete with adjacent helipad.
He's untouched by heat domes, by the grim air of exploding wildfires, by crippling drought, with rivers and reservoirs running dry and taps absent of water 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 Iran war while his family and mega-billionaire friends reap its profits.
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The capital of a free people should reflect the values of its values. Donald Trump has placed Washington under round-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.
Now, just past the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence and our government, 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, its history and culture are being summarily dismantled, building by building, law by law, agency by agency, civil right by civil right, voter by voter, and now election by election.
That has been the playbook, and it will continue to be, right up to Election Day on Tuesday, 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 payouts to all voters willing to sell out their children's democratic freedom.
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A cheating president is waging full-out war on our November election now. He cares nothing of our 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 D.C.
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 capital of our nation.
The women of the 2017 Women's March understood the stakes. So did Sen. Cory Booker, who showed courage and fight on March 31, when for 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 in the March on Washington 2026.
All understood that this, now, is our nation's democratic emergency. It's time to take any plans for new No Kings marching near home and move the battle for justice and freedom directly to the National Mall.
Together, "we the people" have it in our power to win.
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