The President Who Plays God

Another six men were killed today.
That makes at least twenty-seven dead, their boats blown apart by U.S. forces far from our own borders. US Officials called them drug smugglers, but no drugs have been found.
No congressional oversight. No Coast Guard reports. No arrests. No evidence.

Just six more bodies, and the President of the United States deciding who lives and who dies, followed by another one of his “truths”:

“Under my Standing Authorities as Commander-in-Chief, this morning, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility — just off the coast of Venezuela. Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route. The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike. No U.S. Forces were harmed. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!!!!”

That’s not leadership or protection.
That’s a man playing God with other people’s lives.

I used to believe there were rules.
That no matter how divided we became, there was still a line no president would ever cross.
Even when they stretched it, like Nixon did, there was a boundary that felt unbreakable.
A kind of invisible guardrail built out of law, conscience, and shame.

But that’s what feels different now.
That’s what keeps so many of us up at night.

Where does this end if there are no limits?
If he can just have people punished with death based on unsustained claims?
If nothing is “too far”?

Because every dictatorship, every fascist regime, every authoritarian system has its own flavor of cruelty, but they all share one thing: control.
MAGA’s playbook takes the worst parts of all of them, borrowing the tools of propaganda from fascism, the spectacle of strongmen from authoritarianism, the loyalty tests of dictatorships.

They’ve learned the one truth every tyrant understands: you don’t have to believe in law if you can convince enough people that you are the law.

Under any other president, ordering multiple strikes on small boats far from our own shores without oversight would have triggered hearings, outrage, and limits.
Because that isn’t defense, it’s theater.
Intimidation disguised as patriotism.
Control masquerading as strength.

And now the president says he’ll release a list of “Democrat programs” he plans to shut down, permanently.

Trump said that the ongoing government shutdown is an opportunity to close “Democrat programs that we want to close up or we never wanted to happen.”

He went on to say, “The Democrats are getting killed on the shutdown because we’re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we were opposed to. So, we’re being and -- and they’re never going to come back in many cases,”

He continued with “so we’re being able to do things that we were unable to do before. So, we’re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we wanted to close up or that we never wanted to happen. And now we’re closing them up, and we’re not going to let them come back.”

This announcement comes in the third week of a shutdown. Instead of working toward a deal, he’s threatening to cut programs he deems “Democrat.”

Presidents are supposed to govern for everyone, not their base, not their donors, not the people who clap loudest at their rallies. There is no such thing as a “Democrat” highway or a “Republican” housing program. The CDC doesn’t only protect blue states. FEMA doesn’t only respond to red ones.

What exactly is a Democratic program versus a Republican one? Is it Meals on Wheels? Pell Grants? Food stamps? Head Start? Social Security? The National Weather Service? Public schools? These aren’t partisan programs, they’re the backbone of a functioning country.

When a president starts labeling public services by party, that’s not fiscal reform. That’s political retribution. It’s a loyalty test written into policy. It’s a way to control how people think about the basic functionality of government itself.

And it’s working, we’re watching people lose programs that helped them, lose healthcare that kept them alive, school lunches that fed their kids, assistance that kept their parents housed, and somehow still believe it’s justified.
As long as they’ve been told those programs were “the enemy,” they’ll accept the pain as proof of loyalty.

That’s how control works.
It teaches people to celebrate their own suffering if it’s wrapped in the promise of punishing someone else.
It’s not policy. It’s psychological warfare.

Because once you convince people that programs helping others are “the enemy,” you can dismantle anything in the name of control, even the country that created them.

And in news that really doesn’t matter, but somehow tells you everything, Trump lashed out today over a Time magazine cover.
Furious not about policy, but about a photo.

The image showed him from below and exactly as he actually looks. That was enough to send him online, accusing Time of sabotage.

All done in an authoritarian instinct to control the narrative, no matter how absurd the fight.

Authoritarians have always obsessed over image. Stalin erased enemies from photographs. Mussolini staged photo ops to appear taller, stronger, more divine. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels said, “It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success.” Every regime that eroded democracy began by controlling what people could see, say, or believe.

He must be seen as the strong man.
Optics and imagery are everything.

From claiming his weight is less than it is to insisting photos be taken from the “right” angle, every detail becomes part of the performance. Because for men like him, power depends on illusion.

Dictators know their days are numbered, and that the control they wield is always fragile. They can’t risk being seen for who they really are. They can’t let the world, or their followers, see the fear behind the posture.

They need to feel powerful.
They need you to believe they are.
Because if the illusion breaks, so does their control.

The performance never stops, from the camera lens to the courtroom, from the magazine cover to the map lines of our democracy.

And while Trump keeps trying to control what truths we’re allowed to see, the Supreme Court is quietly setting the stage to control what voices we’re allowed to hear, and which ones still count.

This week, the Voting Rights Act, the law that made equality at the ballot box more than just a promise, faces its most pivotal test in decades.
At stake is whether states can once again redraw maps that dilute Black and brown voting power, and whether federal courts will still have the authority to stop them.

The case comes from a state already caught defying court orders to protect minority voters. Yet the Court, now stacked with Trump’s appointees, agreed to hear it again, not to strengthen the law, but to reconsider whether it should even exist in its current form.

This is coming from a president who lost his re-election bid and still isn’t over it. Who is trying to punish anyone he blames for that loss. Who reshaped a Court that may now gut the law that ensures every vote counts equally. That isn’t leadership. That’s control, by design, and by lifetime appointment.

The Voting Rights Act was born out of blood and fire, Selma, Montgomery, marches where people were beaten for trying to vote.
To see it hanging by a thread again in 2025 isn’t just history repeating. It’s history being erased in real time.
Because once people stop believing their vote matters, democracy doesn’t need to be taken by force. It simply disappears.

I keep thinking about this saying: “Democracy isn’t an inheritance. It’s a loan from the past to the future, and it can be recalled at any time.”
And I keep wondering what my grandmother would say if she were here to see this.

She lived through the Great Depression, World War II, Jim Crow. She knew what it looked like when governments stopped pretending to serve and started demanding obedience.
She’d recognize this moment instantly.
She’d call it by its name.
And she wouldn’t wait for someone else to fight it.

When I write, I think about her, and all the people who came before us, who fought to make this country live up to the promises it keeps breaking.
I channel my own ancestors’ fight for survival, their courage to stand up against atrocities instead of turning away until the pain reached their own doorstep.
Because they understood something we keep forgetting: the moment you stop caring because it isn’t your problem yet, it’s already everyone’s problem.

And we are not the only ones pushing back.

A growing list of airports, including those in Portland, Sea-Tac, and Westchester, are refusing to play a Kristi Noem video on TSA monitors. The video, about 36 seconds long, features Noem saying, “Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government … many operations are impacted, and most TSA employees are working without pay.”

It was pitched as a “tourism message,” but it’s anything but neutral. The messaging is overtly partisan, blaming Democrats for shutdown impacts on TSA operations. That crosses the line.

It most likely violates the Hatch Act of 1939, a federal law that prohibits partisan political activity by federal employees in certain contexts: while on duty, in federal buildings, wearing official insignia, or using government resources. The law exists to keep government services nonpartisan and to protect employees from political coercion.

Airport authorities in Portland and Seattle explicitly cited the Hatch Act in their refusal. The Port of Seattle said the video’s “political content” disqualified it, noting airport screens are designated for nonpolitical messages.

Terminals and their surrounding spaces aren’t meant to serve as political forums. Turning them into propaganda zones undermines both trust and neutrality.

These airports quietly said: No. Not here. Not in our name.

Because this is how fascism spreads if not stopped. It’s not just through violence, but through normalization. In the 1930s, propaganda posters filled train stations and classrooms. Today it’s airport screens and viral clips. Same technique. New technology.

And it’s not just at airports that people are saying enough is enough.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who prosecuted Trump’s fraudulent business empire and won a $355 million judgment, is now being targeted by MAGA-aligned prosecutors at Trump’s request, threatening politically motivated indictments. It’s retaliation dressed as justice. And it’s not lost on anyone that she’s a Black woman with power, exactly the kind of person this movement wants to break.

She’s not hiding. She stood at a rally and spoke.
They wanted her silence. She gave them volume.

At that rally, she thundered: “I will not bow! I will not break! I will not bend! I will not capitulate! I will not give in!” She dared those who attacked her: “You come for me, you got to come through all of us.”
She warned of “powerful voices trying to silence truth, weaponize justice for political gain,” calling this moment “a defining moment in our history.”

She’s not just fighting charges. She’s fighting the idea that we must stand aside when the system is used as a hammer.

Here’s the pattern: Investigate Trump → Win → Get indicted yourself.
It happened to James Comey. It’s happening to Jack Smith. Now Letitia James.
They’re not being charged for breaking laws. They’re being charged for enforcing them.

Trump is not a leader. He’s a controller.
Leadership listens. Leadership adapts. Leadership serves.
Control demands silence. Control punishes truth. Control protects the powerful, and leaves the rest of us exposed.

I used to believe there were rules no president would cross. I don’t believe that anymore.

But I believe in us. I believe that every authoritarian who ever thought they’d won permanently was proven wrong by ordinary people who refused to bend.

This is our moment to refuse.
The walls are closing in.
But our hands are still free.
Use them.

Because that’s what democracy looks like in practice: ordinary people doing the right thing when no one’s watching, saying no when it would be easier to nod along.
Maybe hope isn’t loud anymore. Maybe it whispers through quiet acts of defiance that keep us free.
And maybe that’s enough to begin again.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather