The mad king growls, and snaps, and strikes out in all directions against his enemies.
The people of Minnesota have shown us how to fight back.
How much damage can one demented criminal do in a year? If you’re among the survivors of the first year of the second Trump regime, consider yourself lucky. Worldwide, many others did not survive.
Consider only the estimated hundreds of thousands slain by allowing the world’s richest man and his ignorant DOGE-ers to destroy USAID, because aid to the international poor offended Elon Musk’s apartheid aversion to empathy. Add to that number the steadily expanding casualties triggered by the ignorant vandalism of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appointed by a heedless president, and confirmed by a feckless Senate, to “go wild” on U.S. health care.
Then there are the millions of Americans who will lose their health insurance this year because the Republican Party has decided that it would rather fund secret police than health care. The human consequences will take a little more time to become evident; meanwhile, the cuts will strain the resources of social service agencies and emergency rooms everywhere. Similar cuts to Medicaid and Medicare will result in additional deadly outcomes.
There is not enough time or space to list it all. Another bloody litany could be compiled from U.S. complicity in the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Palestine (the latter a bipartisan disgrace). The Trump regime considers world affairs as either a distracting nuisance or a real estate hustle. Genocide is simply an ancillary cost of business development.
Those are only the broadest consequences of a criminal administration, a collaborationist Congress and Supreme Court, and willfully blind voters. Together they enabled a malicious, narcissistic felon and insurrectionist to assume the presidency.
There are more specific deadly outcomes. Most recently, we’ve watched the city of Minneapolis being terrorized by Trump’s secret police – aka “ICE” and the “Border” Patrol – assaulting, brutalizing, and kidnapping people at random, citizens or not. In the end, these poorly trained but eager thugs have begun executing people who get in their way.
As noxious and all-powerful as Trumpism pretends to be, it has been defeated and sent packing by fearless and united Minnesotans.
We can hope the ICE executions of Renee Good and Alex Pretti will become tipping points for the growing public outrage against Trump and his sycophants, and that the public revulsion will expand sufficiently to establish an effective national movement against ICE and the regime. In the last few days, it’s already resulted in the demotion of clownish Border Patrol bully-boy Greg Bovino, and in a wheedling but desperate rhetorical retreat by the administration.
But it’s also possible that the regime will succeed in its shock-and-awe strategy to instigate chaos in Minneapolis and elsewhere, find a way to trigger some sort of resistance or provocateur violence, and use that as an excuse to fulfill its repeated threats to invoke the Insurrection Act and move military forces directly into U.S. cities. The regime is increasingly panicked that Trump’s crashing poll numbers will mean a massive defeat in November’s midterm elections, and it’s clear that they have no ethical or legal scruples concerning what they are willing to do to prevent such a defeat.
Witness Attorney General Pam Bondi’s blackmailing demand to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz that if he wants the ICE raids to stop, he needs to turn over state voter records to the feds (as several red states have already done, including Texas). Walz, like other blue state governors, has refused, knowing that should he submit to federal extortion, we would all quickly be reminded how well the regime keeps its promises. This week the feds have seized Fulton County, Georgia, election records, hoping to manufacture evidence of 2020 fraud.
“We told you so” is little comfort – yet it’s true that progressive outlets (including this one) warned the Democratic Party and 2024 voters (far too many of whom stayed home) that a second Trump regime would have all these consequences. How did we know? Trump and the GOP told us so, on the campaign trail, and in the notorious “Project 2025,” the instruction manual for tyranny put together by Trump enablers at the Heritage Foundation. They threatened all of it: destroying federal agencies, abolishing health care standards, undermining scientific research, restricting public and university education, expanding dictatorial presidential powers, slashing environmental regulations, suppressing the vote and fair elections … all of it was foretold, and provided the playbook for what is happening in Minnesota and across the country right now.
Finally, Trump’s clownish declaration of the “Donroe Doctrine,” explicitly declaring U.S. hegemony over the entire Western Hemisphere – from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego – is the raving of a mad emperor, putting the world on notice that the U.S. is now officially a lawless, rogue nation. It can invade sovereign nations at will, kill their citizens, kidnap their leaders, seize their resources – in essence, formally establish a U.S. Empire to be ruled by the Great Orange Gargoyle.
Yet as noxious and all-powerful as Trumpism pretends to be, it has been defeated and sent packing by fearless and united Minnesotans, who nonviolently defended their neighbors and communities from masked goons behaving like armed and savage mobsters. Renee Good and Alex Pretti will remain heroes long after Greg Bovino, Kristi Noem, and Stephen Miller have passed into oblivion. And with a great deal of luck and fortitude, also long after their Master Madman has been tried and convicted for crimes against humanity, and treason.
From 2005-2020, now-retired Austin Chronicle News Editor Michael King wrote about city and state politics from a progressive perspective in his weekly column, Point Austin. We’re pleased to bring back his column whenever he’s inspired to tackle the state we’re in.