I’m from the United States of Intimidation.

Where the president of the United States has accelerated his power grab, dismantling the guardrails that once protected democracy and bending every institution to serve his personal grip on power.

I woke up this morning thinking about my great-great-grandfather, a man I spent years misunderstanding.

For most of my life, I thought he was heartless. What kind of father sends his teenage daughters alone to America? What kind of man lets his children disappear across an ocean, never to see them again?

It wasn’t until I started researching our family that I understood the truth buried in those immigration records. The documents tell a story I couldn’t see before: sometimes they listed my ancestors as one nationality, then another, then no nationality at all. Stateless people. Borders that kept moving. People whose very existence was erased by governments that decided they didn’t belong anywhere.

My great-great-grandfather didn’t abandon his daughters. He saved them.

He knew what was coming. He knew that staying meant persecution, maybe death. So he made the hardest choice a parent can make: he sent the people he loved most into the unknown because the known world was about to become hell.

Those girls made it to America and became the proudest Americans you’d ever meet. My great-grandmother would say with fierce pride whenever anyone asked about her origins: “I’m American. That’s all that matters. I’m American.”

I think about what she would say if she could see America now. If she could see what happened this morning.

It starts the way intimidation always starts. Quiet. A dark street just before dawn. Then the sound of a knock that isn’t really a knock, it’s federal agents at your door. Lights blaze in the windows of John Bolton’s home.

Bolton isn’t just anyone. He was Donald Trump’s national security adviser. He has spent his life at the very top of government, whispering in the president’s ear, deciding matters of war and peace. And yet, in August of 2025, he woke to federal agents tearing through his belongings as though he were a common criminal.

Picture John Bolton, 75 years old, standing in his own home as agents search room after room. This is a man who has advised presidents, who has spent his life in the highest echelons of power. If they can raid him, they can raid your neighbor. They can raid you.

And this isn’t really even about John Bolton. He doesn’t have to be our favorite person, or someone we admire, for this to matter. This is about power. This is about what happens when someone dares to break with Trump and refuses to be silent.

The truth is, Bolton’s real “crime” was his book. In 2020, he published The Room Where It Happened, a blistering account of Trump’s presidency. He described Trump begging foreign leaders for personal favors, dismissing national security, and putting his own survival above America’s. Trump tried to block it, claiming it contained classified information. Courts disagreed and let it be published. The Biden administration dropped the case altogether.

But Trump never forgot. And now, with power back in his hands, his loyalists have dug up that same closed case and used it as a pretext for a raid.

The raid wasn’t about classified documents. It was about retribution. It was about sending a message: even the most powerful are not safe if they cross me.

I keep coming back to the image of federal agents searching the home of a man who once sat at the highest levels of power, targeted not because of new evidence but because he wrote a book. That image stays with me because it shows how intimidation works: punish one person loudly enough, and the rest of us are meant to fall silent. And it isn’t just raids on former officials. The same playbook is being carried out in classrooms and universities, shaping what opportunities our children will be allowed to have.

At George Mason University in Virginia, intimidation came disguised as civil rights enforcement. Gregory Washington, the school’s first Black president, was forced into a public apology after the Department of Education ruled that the university had violated civil rights law by running diversity and equity programs. Not one investigation, but four separate probes launched within weeks. All targeting efforts to create opportunities for underrepresented students.

I have three daughters. I am the first generation of women in my family to be born with more rights than my daughters have today. Let that sink in. Federally speaking, they have fewer protections than I was born with. That’s not opinion, that’s documented fact.

When schools are terrorized into abandoning diversity programs, our children lose access to scholarships, to mentorship, to seeing leaders who understand their struggles. When faculty are afraid to speak freely about inequality, the next generation learns that some truths are too dangerous to speak aloud.

Think about what that means for your children. A Black student may never see a professor who looks like them. A first-generation student may never get the chance to apply for a program designed to level the playing field. And if educators are scared into silence, who will teach our children to question power?

This is how they do it. They don’t announce they’re stripping opportunities from our kids. They call it “civil rights enforcement.” They make discrimination sound like justice.

When intimidation doesn’t silence, it exiles.

In the first half of 2025, more Americans filed for refugee status in Canada than during the entirety of 2024. Two hundred forty-five people in just six months, families packing everything they could carry and fleeing their own country.

Most are transgender Americans escaping laws that deny them healthcare, ban them from serving their country, and strip away basic human dignity.

Picture your teenager crossing into Canada, holding their parents’ hands, carrying a backpack with their entire life inside. Imagine telling your child they cannot see their doctor, cannot go to school safely, cannot exist openly in the country where they were born. Imagine your only choice being to leave behind everything, friends, grandparents, the bedroom where they’ve slept their whole life, because staying means living in fear.

I never thought I would see the day in my lifetime where this would be happening in America. And I know how divisive transgender issues can be. I get it. But I care about all children. All people. And I want them to be able to live their best lives. Even if this feels distant to you, the reality is that targeting trans families is only one step in a much larger path toward controlling everyone.

They started with brown people. With autistic people. With healthcare for women. With marriage equality for same-sex couples. Now they have their sights set on trans people and their families. They have even demanded that hospitals release the records of youth who received gender affirming care. Who next? Black people? Queer people? Jewish people? Where does it end?

I think about this every time I look at my daughters. What if one of them didn’t conform to societal norms? What if one of them fell in love with someone the government decided was wrong? What if one of them simply stood up for what was right and found themselves on the wrong side of power?

This is America creating its own refugees. These are our children, forced to flee their homeland because we failed to protect them.

Even our financial stability is being weaponized. Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed board, was threatened by Trump. Resign or be fired, he said. Cook’s term is supposed to run through 2038. By law, she cannot be removed without cause. But the threat alone is intimidation. And we know he treats laws like comic strips, something to laugh at and tear apart.

Lisa Cook is a mother, an economist who worked her entire life to reach the pinnacle of her field. Yesterday, she had to wonder if armed agents might come to her door if she didn’t resign from a job she’s legally entitled to hold until 2038.

Here’s why this matters to you and me. When the Fed bends to political intimidation, our lives change. The Fed sets interest rates, the rates that decide how much we pay on our mortgage, our credit cards, our student loans. They decide whether small businesses can borrow money to hire workers. They decide whether inflation spirals out of control or stays manageable.

When Lisa Cook goes to sleep tonight, wondering if federal agents will raid her home, our paychecks, our savings, and our retirements become bargaining chips in a game of political revenge.

Intimidation isn’t just about targeting people. It’s about erasing information itself. Last weekend, reginfo.gov, the website where the public can see government rules and comment on them, suddenly went dark. Data after August 1 disappeared. No explanation. No answers. It follows a pattern: CDC dashboards taken offline, Census surveys scrubbed, health statistics delayed.

Think about what this means for our families. A parent looking for accurate information about local health risks finds nothing. A journalist investigating a policy that affects our children has no data to cite. You, trying to understand how a new rule will impact your business, are forced to make decisions blind.

Democracy dies when data disappears. And they’re erasing it while we sleep.

I can’t stop thinking about our children growing up in a country where the government hides information from the people who pay for it.

But the most visible intimidation is the kind they want you to see. Washington, D.C., is now patrolled by nearly 2,000 National Guard troops. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary, has ordered them to carry rifles as they walk the streets. Crime in the city is at a thirty-year low, but that doesn’t matter. The point isn’t safety. The point is spectacle.

Soldiers on street corners. Soldiers at monuments. Soldiers staring back at citizens who are just living their lives. Now they walk along sidewalks that look like pretend warzones without the war.

Now, Trump is considering declaring a federal emergency so he can keep them there indefinitely, federalizing the local police and turning the capital into a permanent military zone. This is intimidation in its purest form, a city that belongs to its people transformed into an armed camp.

Do you see the pattern?

Chaos isn’t an accident. It’s the method. Intimidation isn’t random. It’s the weapon. The goal is always the same: consolidate power, silence dissent, and leave ordinary Americans too scared, too tired, too confused to resist.

I know this because I’m living it. This summer, when I started writing these posts, when I started speaking out louder, people reached out to warn me. “Lock your phone,” they said. “Don’t share so much. They’re making watchlists.”

When we were in Canada this summer, strangers approached us with concern in their eyes. “Are you scared?” they asked. “This is really bad. What’s happening down there is horrific.”

It was validating because it wasn’t just me feeling it. But it was also terrifying because they could see from the outside what we’re living inside.

Before I flew home, I received message after message from people telling me to throw away my phone, or delete everything on it. I even had next steps planned out in case I was detained. That shows how speaking out puts targets on our backs. I see the hateful comments that people who share my posts receive. I know that all of us, writers and sharers alike, are taking risks when we speak truth about this regime.

But I also know this: the only way to stop a dictator is to stand up to the bully. My great-great-grandfather understood that. He knew the cost of silence. He knew the price of waiting too long. He did the hardest thing I can imagine. He said goodbye to his children and saved their lives.

The cost isn’t abstract. It’s felt by you, by me, by everyone who knows the cost that comes from standing up.

A student sees their opportunities vanish when scholarship programs are dismantled.

A transgender teenager has to pack a bag and flee the only home they’ve ever known.

A family pays hundreds more every month on their mortgage because the Fed bends to political pressure instead of economic reality.

A parent can’t find accurate health data to protect their children because the government erased it.

Your daughter walks to school under the gaze of armed soldiers, reminded that her freedom exists only at the whim of power.

This is the United States of Intimidation. But intimidation is never the end of the story.

Because resistance is alive. John Bolton’s book was still published. George Mason faculty continue to stand with their president. Transgender Americans seeking asylum are testifying to the world about what’s happening here. Lisa Cook refuses to resign. Citizens in Washington are organizing against militarization. People are still sharing these posts despite the risks.

Each act of defiance matters. Each refusal to bow is proof that intimidation only works if we allow it.

My great-grandmother would tell us: “I’m American. That’s all that matters. I’m American.”

Being American means we don’t kneel to bullies. Being American means we protect each other. Being American means we stand up when they try to make us sit down.

So what do we do?

Tonight: Share this post. Talk about it. Show others the pattern. Tag someone who needs to see it.

This week: Support organizations fighting for transparency, for equality, for rights. Donate if you can. Volunteer if you can’t.

This month: Call your representatives. Demand oversight. Demand hearings. Demand that militarization, intimidation, and erasure be called what they are.

Every day: Refuse to be silent. Refuse to be intimidated. Refuse to let fear win.

Because silence is the victory they seek. And our voices, together, are the only thing they truly fear.

You are not alone. You are not powerless. We have walked through intimidation before, and every time, those who tried to rule with fear eventually fell before the courage of those who stood together.

That is still true now.

They can’t arrest us all. They can’t search all of our homes. They can’t silence all of our voices.

My great-great-grandfather knew that love is stronger than fear. He proved it when he sent his daughters to safety. Now it’s our turn to prove it.

History is watching what we do next. And I believe we will choose courage.

I believe in us. I believe in you. I believe in tomorrow.

I’ll see you then,
Heather