The Brooklyn Rail

The 3.5% rule¹ says that no government has withstood a challenge of 3.5% of their population standing up against them during a peak event. 3.5% of the US population of 342 million is about 12 million. The Women’s March against Trump on January 21, 2017 drew over 4 million people in hundreds of locations. So to actually stop Trump, we’ll need to get double or triple that number into the streets at one time.

The George Floyd demonstrations against police brutality in 2020 are thought to be the largest protest movement in US history, and it happened in hundreds of locations over weeks and months. Estimates are that a total of 15 to 26 million people participated over that time. But probably only half a million people demonstrated in one single day, June 6, 2020. 75 million people voted against Trump in 2024, so we’d have to get 15% of them to stand up again, outside the polls. Politicians of either party will not really stand up against this attempted authoritarian takeover until the people do. Power lies with the People.

I don’t think most of the people who voted for Trump were calling for a police state. In a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, only 38% of respondents said they support his sending of the National Guard into Washington, DC. Trump is now planning to deploy 200 ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and CBP (Customs and Border Protection) forces into Chicago in September and to use a naval base outside the city as a staging area for deportations.

To meet Stephen Miller’s quota of 3000 arrests a day, ICE and the CBP are going to need a lot more foot soldiers, so they’ve lowered their standards and are offering high salaries and signing bonuses. The Department of Homeland Security is also putting out demagogic ads on social media to recruit agents. One of them shows an Uncle Sam figure standing before a crossroads considering whether to go toward “Cultural Decline” and “Invasion” or “Homeland,” “Service,” and “Opportunity.” And above that is the question, “Which way, American man?” This is a direct reference to the 1978 book titled Which Way Western Man? by William Gayley Simpson, a neo-Nazi and white supremacist who argued that if the US and Western civilization as a whole are going to survive, “all aliens,” including Jewish, Asian, and Black people, would “have to be put out and kept out.” The title has become a ubiquitous far-right internet meme.

On August 25, Trump told reporters, “A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator.” And the next day he told his subservient Cabinet, “The line is that I’m a dictator, but I stop crime . . . So a lot of people say, ‘You know, if that’s the case, I’d rather have a dictator.’”

Trump’s assembling of his own paramilitary force in the ICE and CBP militias has nothing to do with crime fighting. It is in preparation for suppression of the vote and suppression of demonstrations and civil disobedience to come.

This is what Trump is preparing for with his rapid federalization of police forces in cities with Black mayors and preparing US military troops to go to war against American citizens in cities controlled by Democrats. What are we preparing for?

The Social Security Administration keeps a database, called the Numident file, of all 548 million Social Security numbers the government has ever issued, linked up with names, addresses, and birthdates that could be used to steal individuals’ identities. The chief data officer of the SSA, Charles Borges, filed a whistle-blower complaint stating that members of Elon Musk’s DOGE uploaded a copy of this database to a vulnerable cloud server that could be easily leaked or hacked and lead to a “catastrophic impact.” “Should bad actors gain access to this cloud environment,” said the complaint, “Americans may be susceptible to widespread identity theft, may lose vital health care and food benefits, and the government may be responsible for reissuing every American a new Social Security number at great cost.”² On August 29, Trump forced Borges to resign from his position.

The collection of massive amounts of personal data on American citizens by DOGE has nothing to do with “waste, fraud, and abuse.” It will eventually be used against those citizens. And it reinforces the idea that only Trump can protect us from the abuses he is generating.

When Trump defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, it meant that the CPB can no longer provide public broadcasting stations with severe weather alerts. In partnership with FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), CPB ran the Next Generation Warning System to provide alerts and information over radio and TV stations in rural America when all other communication systems fail. FEMA has lost one third of their full-time staff and others have been reassigned to ICE. Remaining FEMA staff now say the administration is making it impossible for FEMA to respond to hurricanes, floods, fires, and other disasters and is leaving these populations more vulnerable. The staff members that voiced this complaint were promptly fired.

Trump is going after the Federal Reserve, trying to fire Linda Cook for a cooked-up mortgage violation that allegedly happened before she was named to the Federal Reserve Board. If the firing of Linda Cook stands (and is supported by the Supreme Court), most economists think it will tank the economy. But now that a federal appeals court has ruled that Trump’s tariffs are illegal, perhaps the economy will recover. Unless the Supreme Court overturns that as well.

Trump and RFK Jr. are also going after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). RFK Jr. fired all the nation’s top vaccine experts and replaced them with anti-vax zealots. RFK Jr. has tried to force out Susan Monarez as director of the CDC because she balked at his anti-vax insistence, but so far she has refused to step down without a direct order from President Trump. Kennedy plans to replace her with his deputy, Jim O’Neil, a former Silicon Valley executive who has worked closely with Peter Thiel.

Kennedy is blowing up the public health infrastructure of the US, which could set us back a century. He lied to Senator Bill Cassidy (Republican of Louisiana and a medical doctor) during the Senate confirmation hearings about what he was going to do if confirmed, and that led colleagues of Cassidy’s to confirm him. Now the only one who can get rid of Kennedy is Trump, which is unlikely since Kennedy helped Trump get elected.

Life-saving public health infrastructure that took decades to build is being destroyed overnight, and this will lead to more outbreaks of preventable diseases, which will reestablish themselves in the population. Trump and RFK Jr. are now on the side of the viruses, including measles and the Coronavirus. RFK Jr. is now saying that only those who are over 65 or are otherwise at high risk for serious complications from the virus will be eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine when it is ready in a few days. But some pharmacists are saying they will give the vaccine to all those who need it and they are willing to go to jail for it if need be.