by Indivisible and Horsham Dems
22Aug2025
Indivisible teamed up with the Horsham Dems to protest at the Upper Dublin Promenade Corner in Dresher.
How’s America doing on the democracy front? There’s a famous poem by Martin Niemoller that begins “First they came…” Someone commented on how other folks were casual about what the government under President Trump was doing and pointed out how we were alrady several examples down into the poem. Fortunately, many Americans know the rest of the poem and have been doggedly fighting the Trump Administration every step of the way. But as Dan Froomkin points out, we have ceased to be a democracy and instead have become an “authoritarian state.” He’s a press critic, so his primary beef with that is that our legacy/elite/mainstream media refuse to recognize that.
Armed soldiers patrol the streets of the nation’s capital, with more cities apparently to come. Immigrants who have done nobody any harm are abducted and disappeared by masked agents. The state is seizing stakes of national companies. Election integrity is under attack. Political opponents are targeted with criminal probes. Federal judges’ orders are ignored.
It goes on from there.
Trump conducts a Cabinet meeting that would make Kim Jong-Un blush. How long did the meeting last? I’ve seen two, three and four hours. Obviously, it was an eye-glazing performance of sycophancy and over-the-top worship of Our Glorious Leader.
From Britain’s Mirror (which said the meeting clocked in at 3 hours and 17 minutes) has a disturbibg quote from Trump:
“You have a guy in Illinois, the governor of Illinois, saying that crime has been much better in Chicago recently and Trump is a dictator,” Mr. Trump said, also referring to Pritzker as a “slob”.
“Most people are saying, ‘If you call him a dictator, if he stops crime, he can be whatever he wants’ – I am not a dictator, by the way.”
Methinks the President doth protest too much.
For the first time since the Federal Reserve System was created (1913) , a president has purportedly fired a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Lisa Cook. The Supreme Court allowed Trump to fire other Congressionally-appointed executives “at will” (Because he felt like it), but they insisted that Federal Reserve persons could only be fired “for cause” (There is a clear and justifiable reason to fire them). Trump has found what he thinks is a work-around:
Bill Pulte, MAGA keyboard warrior-turned-director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has apparently been using his position to scan the mortgage documents of Trump’s enemies for any whiff of impropriety or error, then turning them over to the Justice Department for a full-on criminal probe…
Apparently, there are problems with Cook’s mortgage. Is that sufficient reason to fire a Federal Reserve Governor? Ehh, we’ll see. Problem is that the Supreme Court opened a can of worms by saying it was okay to fire some appointees some of the time instead of just holding the line and forbidding “at will” firings.
The latest problem is a member of the Department of Health and Human Services. Susan Monarez, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was appointed less than a month ago, but already, the head of HHS, Robert Kennedy, Jr., put out some crazy, unscientific, anti-vaxxer instructions and Monarez simply couldn’t in good conscience, follow those instructions. A personnel director purported to fire Monarz, but her lawyer says that as she was Congressionally-confirmed, the only one who has the authority to fire her is the President. Again, this is a continuing story. Four top officials at the CDC say that they’re quitting too, as the Trump Administration just doesn’t seem to care about science.
Where are we?
In 49 B.C., Julius Caesar led his army to the banks of the Rubicon, a small river that marked the boundary between Italy and Gaul. Caesar knew Roman law forbade a general from leading his army out of the province to which he was assigned. By crossing the Rubicon, he would violate that law. “The die is cast,” he said…
Seems to me Trump has crossed the figurative Rubicon but is struggling to get up on the other bank. The institutions appear to all be on his side, but public opinion, thankfully, is not (According to AP, his approval rating is only 45%). Fortunately, we’ve got people fighting hard to see to it that he doesn’t get a bridgehead, but we’re in for a tough fight.
Archived Photoessays 
Leave a comment