Yesterday 8 million Americans demonstrated that in this land we will have no Kings.
I received many derisive comments yesterday from MAGA who were mocking the historic protests.
“He’s not a king he’s your daddy” is one example.
“We haven’t had a king for 250 years so what’s your point?” is the boil down of them all.
The point:
Like a would be king, he has sent military troops into our cities to silence dissent
Like a would be king, he has started unauthorized wars of choice
Like a would be king he has corruptly enriched himself
Like a would be king he has set in motion the means to solidify his rule irrespective of the will of the people
Like a would be king he traffics in impunity
Like a would be king he has slapped his name and likeness on public buildings, and begun constructing a new palace where the people’s house now stands, one which will not be complete until it is time for him to go
and so I worry that like a king he will not leave until nature forces him to.
The people must stand up and remind one another — and remind the few leaders who still have courage to wield the levers they hold — that we will have no Kings in this land.
We must make them think twice.
That is our point.

I have great compassion for this urge. So many of my friends and loved ones have faced unimaginable trauma. The strain of 2025 is real.

A life left unattended falls apart from the inside out.

But this new year does not arrive gently. It arrives with people taken, disappeared from public view. It arrives with emergency powers normalized. With political opponents targeted by the state. With courts tested. Elections questioned.

All signs point to more of the same, in greater measure.

Caring to Show Up

A moment like this, when we are poised on a knife’s edge, cannot be met only with better boundaries and deeper breathing. The world is not only asking me to consider who I want to become. It is asking whether I plan to show up.

Much wisdom right now teaches distance. Step back. Protect my peace. Choose serenity. But I am ill served by a version of care that asks nothing beyond staying intact. We are all ill served by abdication.

Care matters because it makes action possible. Sleep. Devotion. Nutrition. Meditation. The forms matter less than the direction. They must restore me so I can return to the world capable of meeting what is in front of me.

Not everyone belongs on the front lines. No one role fits all.

But everyone has a role. They are all important. And they all require us to be at our best.

Battle, Rest, Restore, Return

Despotism advances quietly. It tests what it can take while people look away. In moments like this, withdrawal is not neutral. Individual inaction builds and becomes permission.

Burnout serves no one. But I worry about mistaking retreat for wisdom. There is a cycle: Battle, rest, restore, return. Tend the inner life so it can withstand the outer one.

When care is maintenance, it sends me back into the mess with steadier hands and clearer eyes.

The New Year

A new year always invites intention. This one requires presence.

Presence does not require drama. Small actions are heroic: Speaking as an ally when silence would be easier. Showing up locally. Taking a small, visible risk instead of preserving calm.

So yes, this year I set intentions. I care for myself. Tend the inner life. Get the sleep I need. But I will try to do it in service of return to battle.

The new year ahead needs us rested, alert, and unwilling to look away.

We all know it. Put a frog in cool water and turn on the heat. The temperature rises slowly and the frog does not notice until it perishes.

It is tempting to say we are in the time of the frog and the pot, as the ratchet turns and the noose tightens. The Trump administration consolidates power bit by bit while the constitutional guardrails strain under the load. There is protest, litigation, organizing, resistance. Yet the center feels stalled. We are the frogs, not hopping until it is too late.

All Too Human

The problem is that this metaphor is not true. In reality, as the water warms, the frog becomes more active. Once the heat rises past a certain point, the frog leaps out.

It is only humans who debate how hot the water is, or say it is not that bad, or wait for better timing.

Frogs jump to avoid danger. We wait and wait and act only when the pain becomes too much.

At some point the heat becomes inarguable and a breaking point arrives. But since we are so differently situated, without the uniform instincts of our friends the frogs, the trigger does not produce one reaction. We hop in all directions. Courts push one way. Governors another. Some take to the streets. Others retreat. Institutions split. Our jumps are not unified.

This can save a democracy or tear it apart.

Another Way

There is another way to think about collective response, a way to avoid desperate, chaotic leaps.

I keep picturing a murmuration of starlings over a field. A predator dives and the flock turns as one body. No leader. No plan. Yet the boundaries hold. Small adjustments draw the shape together and keep it from breaking.

Can those of us hoping to hold onto our democracy move like that?

We do not need a convention. We need enough people responding early. Sand in the gears. Small refusals. Early litigation. Clear public lines. Pressure released before the pot boils.

These movements do not erase the crisis, but they keep the system from exploding all at once. They exert a different kind of pressure, a pressure to remove the power of the dictator.

The frog jumps when it must. The flock turns before it has to.

Can we?

The foundations were laid quietly, in the early months of the Trump administration. As Elon Musk wielded a public chainsaw, a small group of technologists and financiers stitched together databases under the guise of “efficiency.”

What they built were the bones of a tool with unimaginable reach—linking tax records, identity files, law enforcement databases, travel logs, and financial data.

From Efficiency to Empire

Venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s Palantir, led by Alex Karp, has built a flagship interface — called Gotham — that accesses and makes sense of all these databases, allowing a God’s eye view. Gotham and its cousins are now deployed in ICE (April 2025, $30m contract to build “immigrationOS”), the US Army (July 2025, $795m to use “Maven Smart Systems” AI tools), and most recently across the entire Department of Defense War (July 2025, up to $10b to massively consolidate all procurement).

Add to this the recent efforts to consolidate and privatize government research in crypto, research in AI, and the nearly-complete takeover of the space by SpaceX and other private companies.

Personnel complete the circuit. Key figures who had been at the top of Palantir, Anduril (autonomous warfare), and Thiel’s VC firm are leading government policy as undersecretaries and CIOs. Palantir, Meta, and OpenAI officials were commissioned as lieutenant colonels.

The Stack of Control

In technology, engineers use the term “stack” to refer to the series of technological layers that are independent and also interoperate, allowing control of the device. All of our devices have a tech stack.

The Trump administration has built an authoritarian tech stack.

What could be done with this authoritarian stack once it is fully built?

• Predictive law enforcement (“precrime” from Minority Report)
• Individual-level targeting for ICE deportations
• Targeted IRS and regulatory enforcement
• Loyalty-based credit scores
• Total exploitation of space, far from view of earth oversight
• Voter sentiment profiling
• Education and employment screening
• And on, and on . . .

The coming empire may have its military parades on the ruler’s birthday.

But its power and reach will also come from a stack of servers that has already been wired.

Indeed, the legal defense of democracy stood up faster than many expected, and remains stronger and more nimble than we possibly could have hoped.

Within a week of the inauguration, lawyers and nonprofits had begun filing the first suits. They worked with the speed of people who knew what they were seeing. Many suits were filed on inauguration day, in response to the flood of executive orders, and have continued unabated.

Case After Case After Case

On January 28, 2025, Democracy Forward, along with a coalition including the National Council of Nonprofits, filed a challenge to the Office of Management and Budget’s sudden freeze on federal grants and loans. They won: the OMB backed down.

New cases appeared almost daily. Protect Democracy and Selendy Gay filed suit to stop the return of “Schedule F” — now renamed “Schedule P/C” — which would strip job protections from tens of thousands of civil servants.

Civil-rights groups filed suit in California over executive orders attacking diversity and transgender protections.

Universities went to court to preserve federal research funding; by September, Harvard had won back $2 billion in blocked grants. States challenged mass-detention and voting restrictions. 

Case after case after case: Lawfare records that there are currently 233 such cases.

Each suit adds resistance and slows the march to autocracy. It is the courtroom version of sand in the gears. It is a way of being ungovernable.

Holding the Line

The results are real. Judges have restored research funding, paused the civil-service purge, preserved the independence of agencies, and, most recently, ordered the government to keep Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments flowing during the shutdown. 

Not all of these rulings will last.  The administration appeals quickly, and many victories may not survive their trip to the Supreme Court. The Court’s shadow docket has already lifted several injunctions and narrowed relief. Unsigned rulings arrive overnight, granting what Trump seeks with little explanation.

Even when cases remain pending, agencies sometimes ignore lower-court orders, acting as if the appeals are permission to proceed.

Still, the massive legal response is important.  Each case buys time, puts facts in the public record, and creates friction as the machine tries to move ever more smoothly toward ironclad rule.

The Sandbag Republic

And so a loose, yet coordinated and growing, network persists, knowing that many of these fights will end in partial victories or even losses. But persistence in the face of authoritarian might shapes the future: it trains new advocates, clarifies constitutional boundaries, rallieas the people, and keeps institutions awake.

Eventually, we will get out of this bind, and return ourselves to progress toward a truly inclusive democracy. This will start with the rebuilding of the rule of law. Each legal success, even when later reversed, becomes precedent for what our future lawful government will need. The work of these heroic litigators is not only defensive; it is constructive.

When a flood is imminent, those who live by the river spring into action, and pile sandbags along the shore. They know the wall will not hold forever. But often it holds long enough.

We are living now in a sandbag republic.

* * * * *

We all knew what to expect as the year began. It had been laid out for us very clearly in the document called a Mandate for Leadership, otherwise known as Project 2025.

But we could not have expected or anticipated the speed, intensity, and velocity with which it would be implemented beginning January 20, 2025.

Like many, I was taken aback and had to take a moment to find my footing. I am grateful for those who were able to mount an immediate legal defense to the earliest moves, which, by some reports was a surprise to the White House. The side of democracy keeps winning in court, and the side of authoritarianism keeps losing — at least at every level below the Supreme Court.

I have also watched the growing organized movements of people who are standing up for democracy and for the rule of law.

This has heartened  me – but mostly in an intellectual way. I firmly believe we are in a period of autocratic consolidation. That Donald Trump is gathering his power and his forces so as to be able to rule indefinitely. The military, the justice system, and the internal security services are all behaving as those entities do in dictatorships. Military officers purged, private citizens indicted, people snatched from their beds.

This is truth, and we must not look away nor pretend that by getting along better, or by keeping our heads down, we might sidestep our descent into empire. The autocracy may not touch me at this moment — but it will. It will touch all of us, if allowed to solidify.

It was with these thoughts in my mind that I headed downtown on October 18, 2025 to participate in the No Kings demonstrations. I felt it an important duty to show he who would rule, as well as my friends and fellow Americans, that here we would have no kings.

The June rallies brought 5 million people to the streets, in all 50 states, at 2,100 events. Today an even greater turnout was expected, with 2,500 events organized. But still I was despondent as I traveled.

* * * * *

On the last leg of my journey, I was pleased to see the train car full of people, holding signs. But the cars are small and I had no sense of how many would be present.

I left the metro station and rounded a corner — and saw the massive crowd, all holding signs, music playing.

I broke down in tears. A wave of some kind of relief washed over me.  I felt a little bit of hope. This was an undeniable crowd, an undeniable movement, an undeniable statement: That we would have no kings in America.

That we could perhaps become ungovernable.

“Become Ungovernable”

I do believe this is what it will take: to become ungovernable.

To become ungovernable is not to descend into anarchy. It is not to abandon law. It is not violent. It is: refusal to bow to the regime. It is: the first step in regaining self-rule, which is democracy.

As the rally unfolded and the speeches began, weirdly (or maybe appropriately) under the glowering dear-leader face of Trump hanging on a banner on the Department of Labor building, this phrase kept coming to mind. It repeated like a mantra, a counterpoint to the banner I could not stop looking at, even with thousands of signs and costumes around me.

We can become ungovernable. We must take that to heart. We all will need to play a part, throwing sand in the gears at every opportunity.

Today, many of us, millions, played this important role on the way to ungovernability: to show collectively that we would not be ruled by a despot.

(Early reports suggest that at least 7 million Americans shared in this collective act of protest.)

The matter was settled. The founders broke from monarchy and built a republic ruled by law. The crown was thrown aside. But the desire to be ruled is persistent. It lives on, waiting for someone willing to claim it.

That someone has come. Donald J. Trump is testing the idea that a president can rule as a king. He promises vengeance, demands loyalty, and uses the law as a weapon. He does not try to disguise his ambition. He seeks to be king in a republic built to prevent it.

Even if there exists a desire to be ruled, absent him that old instinct would remain only a shadow. It is Trump’s deliberate reach for unchecked power that has given it shape and created followers. He has turned his private appetites into a public movement, inviting his subjects to trade the work of self-government for the comfort of obedience.

A Counter-Movement

Thankfully, not everyone is following. Across the country, a different movement has been growing since January. It is a movement for democracy. It is a movement for the rule of law. It is a movement to rescue our nation.

The Hands Off protests in early spring called out the politicization of justice and the threats to constitutional norms. Then came No Kings 1 in June, one of the largest public protests in American history, when millions filled public squares to defend the rule of law.

Now No Kings 2 is planned for October 18, a visible declaration that this republic still belongs to the people, not to a tyrant.

These rallies are not small. Political scientist Erica Chenoweth and her Crowd Counting Consortium at Harvard have tracked participation in democracy-related protests throughout the year. Their data show that more Americans have demonstrated in 2025 than at the same point in Trump’s first term.

The numbers tell the story: America is awake.

Judge J. Michael Luttig has given this awakening another voice. On Independence Day he issued a new declaration — a list of self-evident truths of freedom and of tyranny. He traced the founders’ grievances against King George III to today’s abuses of power: contempt for courts, corrosion of truth, and the pursuit of personal immunity. Judge Luttig plainly lays out the fundamental strength of American democracy, and why it is antithetical to what we now see:

“The genius of the American experiment in self-governance is that ‘We the People,‘ not the government, possess all power and we govern ourselves by representational democracy. We entrust our power to our government to exercise on our behalf in the interests of our nation. To ensure that our government faithfully exercises the power we entrust it with, we the American people ordained and established government by law, instead of by kings.”

The appeal of kingship, especially when cynically manipulated by a would-be ruler, is simple. It promises clarity in confusion and order in chaos. It lets people believe that someone else will do the hard work of holding the world together.

The promise is false. Democracy is shared responsibility, not surrender. It is willingness to argue, to lose, to begin again. Its strength lies not in a single voice but in our collective refusal to kneel.

On October 18, when citizens gather for No Kings 2, they will be doing the most important work that our American democracy now requires. They will be standing where others can see them. They will be saying that allegiance belongs to the Constitution, not to a man who claims he alone can fix everything.

The danger of this moment lies not only in Trump’s desire to be a king but in the temptation of some to accept it.

Let the rallies be a reminder:

That America must have no throne.

In Athens last week, I walked among ruins around which the modern city had grown. Stone columns beside electric vehicles. The air itself carries argument between old and new. The remains of the Acropolis loom over the city. Hadrian’s Library is tucked into a neighborhood.

All reminders that democracy can be razed.

At the Athens Democracy Forum, Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa gave the Aristotle Lecture. She warned of the rise of impunity. Seventy-two percent of the world’s population now lives under authoritarian rule.

Ressa knows whereof she speaks. She fought the Philippine dictator Rodrigo Duterte, and at one time faced a hundred years’ worth of charges. Duterte now awaits trial in The Hague.

At the Forum, the collapse of rule of law in the United States was part of every conversation. And people spoke of reform—of polarization, of inequality, of the failures of governance. All true.

Yet as I boarded the plane home, I wondered whether any of it mattered while the house itself burns.

* * *

ITEM. On September 25, a presidential memo instructed federal agencies to treat civil society itself as a potential threat, sweeping nonprofits, donors, community groups, and others into the frame of “domestic terrorism.”

The memo, NSPM-7, lays the foundation to criminalize the very things our Constitution protects: free speech, assembly, redress of grievances. It reads:

“The United States requires a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”

The plan’s details include pursuing funders and organizations supporting almost any form of dissent.

ITEM. On the same day, a spare two-count indictment was delivered against former FBI director James Comey, now a private citizen. This came after relentless pressure on the Justice Department by Donald Trump and the firing of prosecutors who had refused to bring the case. Comey replied simply, “Let’s have a trial.”

The plan, according to reports, is a full public perp walk with handcuffs, tactical gear, “beefy” personnel, and cameras ready. One agent has reportedly already lost his job for refusing to take part in the spectacle.

ITEM. Days later, on September 30, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed hundreds of senior officers who had been summoned to Quantico. Between jabs at “fat generals” and “dudes in dresses,” Hegseth said: “No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country.”

Trump echoed him, making clear who those enemies are: “The next fight will be from within.”

This is the language of internal war. The military’s mission will no longer be limited to foreign enemies but will soon include domestic ones.

The assembled officers met the remarks with stony silence.

ITEM. The same day, in Chicago, ICE agents rappelled from helicopters and stormed an apartment building. Agents rousted everyone indiscriminately, including United States citizens. Children were pulled from beds and zip-tied. Dozens were detained without clarity about status or charges. Officials said some suspects were “believed” to be linked to drug trafficking.

All in one week.

* * *

A friend asserted the other night, “We are six months away from death squads.”

I cannot stop thinking about that. Hyperbole, perhaps. Still, weigh it against what is already unfolding.

Raids and killings framed as routine operations. A presidential memo defining political violence so broadly that any dissent qualifies. Domestic opponents treated with counterterrorism tools. Spectacle replacing legitimacy. Masked agents, propaganda, humiliation. War logic applied at home.

We may not yet have death squads roaming neighborhoods. But ICE already acts as secret police, and the military is already on the streets. Look at Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Chicago, Portland.

* * *

Here at home, what threatens democracy most is no longer disinformation, polarization, or apathy. It is the state itself, turned inward against its people. The National Guard now patrols streets in American cities. Federal agents break doors in the name of order.

From Manila to Moscow to Budapest to Ankara to Washington, the pattern repeats. The strongman will blame disorder, then claim the right to restore it.

Many watch, hoping that guardrails will stop the slide. But the machinery is not waiting. It is already in motion.

In every era, citizens tell themselves it cannot happen here until it already has.

Fiddle, Rome.

Writing in postwar Germany in 1951, poet Günter Eich wrote a 5-play cycle, Träume (Dreams), aimed at jolting people out of dangerous complacency. The final play, Wacht auf (Wake up) ends: “Be troublesome, be sand, not oil, in the gears of the world.”

This is our task, too.

Many of us naturally wonder: What can I do?  

Here are 20 things that everyday people can do to throw sand in the gears:

1. Go to community meetings — Show up so you can listen, learn, and speak up about what matters.
2. Film ICE and police abuse — If you see police brutality or threats, record it and share it so others know what happened.
3. Subscribe to independent journalism — Support reporters who tell the truth by paying for their work and passing it along.
4. Join peaceful protests — Add to the numbers at demonstrations that stand for justice.
5. Use encrypted secure apps — Use safer tools like Signal for your texts and emails.
6. Join a mutual aid group — Connect with neighbors who share information, food, money, or other help.
7. Boycott — Spend your money at places that do not help fund oppression.
8. Take part in civil disobedience — When you can, join actions that break unfair rules.
9. Learn and share your rights — Know the basics of what the law says you can do, and make sure your friends and family know too.
10. Demand transparency — Ask questions at town halls, write letters, and use public records requests to bring hidden actions into the open.
11. Share with your family — Let family members know why it matters to stand up.
12. Support whistleblowers — Stand with people who risk their jobs to tell the public about wrongdoing.
13. Fly a rainbow flag — Show that there is room for many voices and views.
14. Turn off propaganda — Refuse to give attention to media that spreads lies and hate.
15. Share satire — Use art, humor, and memes to expose what is happening.
16. Connect with neighbors offline — Build trust and community in small, personal ways that are harder to disrupt.
17. Use tools that block surveillance — Protect yourself online by stopping companies and governments from tracking what you do, like with a VPN.
18. Give to legal defense funds for activists — Contribute so people who resist do not face the courts alone.
19. Call out authoritarian enablers — Speak up and disrupt when you hear authoritarian talking points repeated.
20. Publicly support targeted communities — Show up for trans people, immigrants, and others.

Maybe some of these seem risky. Everyone is in a different situation, and no one should feel like they have to put themselves in danger. Only do what feels safe.

But we all need to do something. Maybe one of these speaks to you. Maybe they spark a new idea. What would you add?

Maybe it can start today.

The courts weakened. The guardrails stripped. Communities made vulnerable. Immigrants disappeared. Trans people targeted and despicably made out to be a violent threat. Higher education attacked for producing independent thought. Journalists threatened for telling the truth. Comedians deplatformed. None of this is abstract. It is happening. People are hurt, lives disrupted, futures narrowed.

The times, to anyone with eyes to see, bring with them a number of natural responses:

We are allowed to feel despair. The cost is real.

We are allowed to feel grief. To mourn what is already lost.

We are allowed to feel tired. This is exhausting.

We are allowed to feel anger. This is intolerable.

Authoritarian logic pushes us toward despair. Each new move is designed to drain the spirit. Fear is not just the consequence but the goal: a fearful people is easier to rule over.

Yet even in dark conditions, there are moments that cannot be dictated away.

We are allowed to feel joy.

Some years ago, I received shocking news about a beloved family member. It came suddenly, militated a change in life and outlook, and would take me months and years to process.

At first, I sleepwalked through daily life.

A week or two into this new reality, I found myself enjoying one of my usual activities — and stopped, guilt stricken. How dare I?

Albert Camus wrote: “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

Even in my winter, there lay moments of summer.

What might invincible summer look like under an autocracy?

Not joywashing, incessant brightsideism. Not pretending, blind optimism. These times are real.

Yet joy is stubborn. It can be refusal to let go of laughter. Loving friends. Moving my body even when I would sit still and tremble.

Stubborn joy: I can work with that.

Those who seek total control thrive on exhaustion. They want me too tired to resist. They want my bitterness to grow. They want my cynicism to choke out my optimism.

But I can keep my moments. This sunrise. This meal. My moving body. It is tempting to feel guilty when joy comes. How dare I? But the presence of joy does not deny all its opposites. I can grieve for those suffering, fight for those targeted, rage at injustice, and still recognize joy at moments in between.

Joy is a flower breaking through concrete.

Under autocracy, to find and share that flower is a political act.

Joy is refusal.

We are allowed to feel joy.