Donald Trump must be removed from office

“Look, Donald Trump is unraveling before our very eyes: his baseless claims of massive voter fraud, his promises to not drag us into war. Look at where we are. He’s brought us into an unauthorized war with Iran that’s already claimed the lives of 18 service members and wounded so many more, including many very seriously.

In the meantime, what has the cabinet done? Absolutely nothing. This is why the 25th Amendment exists. I’m calling on the cabinet to exercise their 25th Amendment responsibility and remove Donald Trump from office before he can do more damage.”

These are the words of Senator Alex Padilla, spoken in front of the United States Capitol Building earlier today and posted on his social media accounts.

I had a whole separate essay to share with you tonight. As I was finishing up the final touches on it, I just couldn’t bring myself to publish it. All day today, I’ve been carrying heartbreak for someone I don’t even know. A video of ICE agents arresting a young man, and a mom screaming and crying in pain keeps playing over and over again in my mind, and in my heart.

And then I made the mistake of reading the comments. “Thank you, ICE, for saving our country.” “All because of the Joe Biden administration.” “Good job, ICE.” “Guaranteed illegal with a criminal record.” “Ice, ice baby.” American flags. Laughing face emojis.

I watched the same video they did, with the same young man pinned beneath a pile of armed agents. I saw the same mother screaming in terror as her child was held down and dragged away. Yet somehow, we did not see the same thing. It was as if two entirely different countries had watched that video. And maybe that is just where we are now. We are no longer one America with just a political disagreement shaping us. We are now two Americas living side by side, no longer connected in any meaningful way.

In one of those Americas, some wonder whether today will be the day someone they love doesn’t come home because of how they look, the language they speak, or because armed men with quotas to meet decided to drag someone into an unmarked vehicle. The rest of us in that America carry a different kind of pain. We know it may never happen to our own families, but we cannot watch others’ pain without feeling it ourselves. We cannot look at a mother screaming for her son and not share her pain simply because it isn’t our child being attacked. In the other America, that same video is viewed as entertainment. Something to laugh at and celebrate. Something they even cheer for.

Both of those Americas exist inside the same borders. And what frightens me the most is that many of the people living in the second America will tell us, with complete honesty, that they don’t see anything wrong with what is happening.

What makes it even harder to accept is that it is not a failure of empathy or attention. It is the predictable outcome of the years Trump and his enablers have spent teaching people that cruelty is strength, and that compassion is weakness. Even worse, that some human beings deserve less dignity and compassion than others.

Cruelty like this never spreads across a country all at once. It is directed at specific people first, so everyone else can convince themselves it has nothing to do with them. It happens in neighborhoods they don’t live in, to people whose names they will never know. That is how authoritarianism protects itself in the early days. Most people wake up, go to work, go grocery shopping, spend time with their children, and live normal lives. And because nothing in their own life has changed, they tell themselves there is nothing to worry about. They convince themselves that these bad things will only happen to other people, and they convince themselves that those other people deserved whatever happened to them.

And while they are looking the other way, the danger keeps growing. They build more detention centers, and they expand deportation flights. They kidnap more people off the streets to meet arrest quotas. They see how much fear the public will tolerate, and once they discover they can get away with it, they start looking for new targets. That is how politicians, journalists, and anyone willing to speak out against the regime eventually find themselves as the newest targets and the next to disappear.

I keep thinking about how so much of what we are seeing has unfolded in other countries throughout history. Not exactly, but as the saying goes, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. And this administration seems determined to treat the darkest chapters of history as a roadmap of what to do next.

I wonder if the people cheering in the comments on the ICE video have never stopped to ask where this road leads. Maybe they have never wondered who the new detention centers are really being built for, or who fills those flights once there are not enough people left of today’s target. History tells us that authoritarian movements rarely stop with the people they begin with. They expand, and they search for new enemies. They redefine who belongs and who doesn’t until the only people left are the ones they can easily control.

Today the targets are immigrants. Tomorrow it could be the people who defend them. The journalists who expose what is happening and the elected officials who are viewed as a threat to the regime. The activists who organize and the professors who teach the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it is. And the people who spend every night documenting what is happening, hoping that if we fail to stop it, future generations will at least know that not everyone stayed silent. They are already calling political opponents traitors, Marxists, and communists. Dangerous times follow after governments begin defining entire groups of people as threats instead of fellow citizens.

It still sounds impossible to many people, and I understand why. It would have sounded impossible in other countries too, right up until the moment it wasn’t. The people who eventually found themselves targeted almost never believed they would be. They thought the laws would protect them and that their neighbors would speak up and protect them. They thought there would be a line no government would ever cross. By the time they realized that line had already been crossed, there was no one left to stop it.

We knew that the months before the midterms would get ugly, and it has already started. But it is not just us that are seeing it. The second America is, too.

A poll released today found that 56% of voters oppose the military action in Iran. His handling of the war sits at 34% approval against a record 66% disapproval. His overall approval is at 39%. Among Republicans who do not identify with MAGA, his approval fell 13 points in a single month, down to 51%, after standing at 70% at the beginning of this term. His approval also hit an all-time low with white voters and a near record low with rural voters. And that poll was conducted by Fox News.

Those disapproval ratings won’t stop a raid tomorrow morning. But it is evidence that he hasn’t completely taken over our country. We still have time to save it. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.

Picture of the day: Tonight's post was different. I've written posts before and had to rewrite them if something more urgent came up that needed to be covered immediately, but this was the first time I wrote a whole post and then started over because I just could not hit submit. The video I shared about isn't an isolated event. There are plenty more like it, but this one just broke me. The emotion was so raw and I imagined myself in that mother's shoes. The fear not just of separation or deportation, but something deeper. Knowing that their child could end up in a third-country jail known for torture must be unbearable. What we are debating with the GOP is no longer about immigration. It is, in my opinion, about human rights violations.

Sources:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-voters-oppose-iran-war-see-prolonged-commitment

Instagram ICE detention video

Senator Alex Padilla Instagram video