If I were a betting woman, I’d bet that trump’s wrecking ball to the East Wing of the White House to make way for his gaudy ballroom was his middle finger to the No Kings protests. The wannabe dictator gives the country a new gift daily to either intentionally divide us or to show us his unchecked power. We’re still asking questions like “Is this legal?” or “How do we stop this crazy man?” It means that our indecision will cause us to lose more ground. It means that the MAGA has time to inflict more pain and suffering upon us.

The uncertainty, the pain, and the fear are not created without purpose. The trump regime is amassing and consolidating power while we personally struggle and engage in its distractions. The regime is creating an untenable situation that pushes people to their limits, where the anger and frustration drive peaceful protests to violence. At this point, the trap will have been successfully laid for a complete MAGA takeover.

A constitutional crisis is already underway as all three branches of the government are bending a knee to trump. We are consistently told that Democratic cities are out of control and posing a national security threat. Based on manufactured fear, sectors of the country would support martial law to maintain order. Given the impotency of the courts and the legislatures, any legal or political challenges would be moot. The conditions for civil unrest and violence being created by MAGA fit nicely into the plan for a permanent authoritarian government headed by none other than trump.

On Day One of the trump regime, trump targeted some 200 federal agencies. He let Elon Musk, his biggest campaign donor, have the first crack at imposing arbitrary misery with DOGE destruction. The changes impacted several policy areas, including health care, the environment, education, civil rights, immigration, and scientific research. One or more of these areas affect the working class. Most protection or oversight federal departments, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, have been seriously defunded and defanged. Tens of thousands of workers were thrown into the trump tornado of turmoil. While we’re struggling for basic survival, the MAGA movement is fueling a battle that pits us against the branches of government and deepens the historic fault lines among us.

Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to call Congress into session or to swear in Arizona Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva, whose vote could force the Epstein files to be released. The second-longest government shutdown is a critical piece of the destabilization plan for the country. Offices are closed and basic services have stopped. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, approximately 670,000 workers have been kicked to the curb, and another 730,000 are working without pay. Food stamps, WIC payments, childcare payments, and energy assistance are about to come to an abrupt halt. The dictator has warned that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are  ‘Going to Be Gone’ if the Democrats don’t submit.

An heir to a robber baron has allegedly come forward to throw in a few dollars to pay active-duty service people. Yeah, this country is heading towards a calamity.

The world has watched in awe as trump has decimated government, ignored the courts, pardoned criminals, extorted millions from universities and corporations, launched military actions without approval, imposed irrational tariffs that affect global trade, used the office to enrich the trump family fortune, turned the military on innocent people, and much more.  Citizen-led and Democratic Party-driven lawsuits against the government abound in attempts to slow down the attacks.

All this to say that residents have been put into a double-edged vice: we are damned if we fight back and damned if we lay down in submission. We who believe in freedom and democracy must take a step backward to take a sobering reflection on where we are and plan the next steps. We will have a lot to sort through as we organize and educate our people for a struggle that determines the democracy as we know it in this country. We must be mindful of agent provocateurs who will be pushing for violent confrontations that have no strategic purpose. Ours will be a vision of a just and equitable society, where people can thrive because of the support systems in place.

Let’s take a deep breath and intensify the work necessary to create a world that puts the development of people over the concentration of wealth for the oligarchs. Another world is possible if we are prepared to fight for it – sooner rather than later.