They cannot arrest us all

“F*** them kids,” she heard one of the agents say as the men zip-tied the children to each other.

Little bodies, still in pajamas, pulled from their beds in the dead of night. Mothers screaming as they were shoved to the ground. Fathers dragged away in handcuffs without explanation. Neighbors watching from behind blinds a helicopter roared overhead, and flash bangs rattled the walls.

This was not the scene of a foreign war. This was Chicago. A South Shore apartment complex turned into a battlefield by ICE and federal agents, cheered on and amplified by the White House itself. Men, women, and children stripped of their rights. Families treated not as citizens but as enemies of the state. And their suffering broadcast as propaganda, a warning designed to scare the rest of us into silence.

This is why we must stop being quiet. Why we must stop thinking small. Why we must speak louder than the lies, and move past the fear that keeps us still.

Because they cannot arrest us all.

I have felt that fear too, the pit in your stomach that whispers, maybe it is safer not to say anything. But silence is what they are counting on.

Trump has told us multiple times that he has nothing to do with Project 2025. That he did not even know who was behind it.

On July 5, 2024, he posted, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

And in a September 10, 2024 debate, he doubled down, “I have nothing to do with Project 2025 … I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it purposely. I’m not going to read it.”

But today, October 2, 2025, at 7:59 a.m., Donald J. Trump posted on Truth Social,

“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent. I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to, quietly and quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DJT.”

He said he did not know them. He said he had nothing to do with them. And now he admits he is literally meeting the architects of Project 2025 for them to tell him which parts of our government to dismantle.

Trump is not running the country. Project 2025 is.

This is what Project 2025 really is. A plan to take over the machinery of government. To fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with loyalists. Not just people in suits in Washington but the workers who keep your Social Security checks going out, who inspect the food you eat, who keep planes flying safely. To end the guardrails that kept the Justice Department from becoming a president’s personal law firm. To bend every department of government into an arm of one man’s power.

This is not policy. This is revenge. It is Trump tearing apart the very system meant to protect us, because he cannot stand a government that is not under his thumb. He knows, deep down, that Project 2025 is rotten, bad for the country and even bad for him in the long run, but that doesn’t stop him. He feels betrayed by the loss of the 2020 election that he simply cannot accept, and so he is making a bargain: as long as the architects of Project 2025 keep him in power, keep him rich, and keep him treated like a king, he will let them do whatever they want to this country. America is no longer something to serve. It is just a prize to hand over in exchange for his own survival.

We have seen this before. In the 1930s, Hitler gutted the Weimar bureaucracy by firing civil servants and filling positions with Nazi loyalists. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán hollowed out independent courts and stuffed them with allies. This is the same story in a new century. Trump is not inventing anything. He is copying the playbook of every authoritarian who came before him. And I mention these fascist regimes nightly to remind us that what feels unthinkable has already happened in other places, in other times, to people who also believed it could never happen to them. History is not a warning from the past. It is a mirror held up to the present.

And Trump is not stopping at bureaucracies and courts. He is moving into something even darker. This week he declared that the United States is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels.

It sounds like jargon. But it is not. That phrase is basically Trump calling it a war, and once he does, he can lock people up without trial, send in the military, and skip Congress completely.

Trump does not care about cartels. He cares about power. And once you give him this label, there is no limit to who he can declare war on next. One phrase from a president can change how the law works. That is how fragile this all is. That is how dangerous his words are.

This is not the first time leaders have invented wars against shadows to justify power. Lyndon Johnson escalated Vietnam with the Gulf of Tonkin “incident,” later exposed as manipulated. George W. Bush seemingly sold a war in Iraq with weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. Strongmen need enemies. And if they do not exist, they will be invented.

Today Trump says it is the cartels. Tomorrow it could be Antifa. Or immigrants. Or protesters. Or journalists. Anyone he decides is an enemy. And once the label sticks, you are no longer a citizen in his eyes. You are a combatant. You are a target.

This is not safety. This is not protection. This is the machinery of dictatorship dressed up in the language of law.

And the instability shows.

New numbers tell us that planned hiring is at its lowest level in sixteen years. Think about what that means. It does not just mean layoffs. It means companies are too nervous to plan for the future. It means they see chaos at the top and say no, we will not take the risk. We will not grow. We will not hire.

And who pays for that? Not the CEOs. Not the hedge funds. Ordinary people. It means your kid cannot get a summer job. It means your neighbor’s small business never expands. It means your community stalls.

Trump brags about being a businessman, but this is what his chaos does. No real business leader creates instability on purpose. Only a dictator does that, because chaos is his currency and his goal is to concentrate the wealth at the top. If you lose your job or make enough to just scrape by, he is winning.

And when communities stop growing and become more desperate, they grow silent. That silence is exactly what authoritarianism feeds on. They know that desperate people are easier to control.

This is what instability does. It kills jobs. It kills growth. It kills hope.

And it is not an accident. Authoritarian leaders thrive on instability. They create the chaos, and then they offer themselves as the only solution. They make people so desperate for certainty that they will accept anything. Even dictatorship.

History reminds us of the danger. In the Great Depression, when businesses froze and jobs vanished, it was not just wallets that emptied. It was faith in democracy itself. And in that vacuum, authoritarian movements took root across Europe.

The same collapse is happening now with truth.

Trust in media is at a record low. And how could it not be. The official White House account is pumping out propaganda like a firehose. Racist AI videos mocking Democratic leaders. Deepfake audio of Chuck Schumer saying things he never said. Fake headlines declaring “Democrats want to starve your children to feed immigrants.”

The White House is even sharing propaganda posters: Lady Liberty holding a sword with the words “Join ICE now.” They are eerily reflective of the posters the Nazis glued to walls across Germany in the 1930s, recruiting citizens to join the SS and Gestapo. Back then it was framed as patriotism. Today, it is framed as “America First.” The message is the same: join the machinery of fear against your fellow citizens.

It is disgusting. The White House is supposed to be the people’s house, not a meme factory. And yet here we are, our own government using AI to mock, smear, and divide us.

We used to look at countries where state TV pumped out lies and tell ourselves that could never happen here. Now it is happening from the White House itself.

Government accounts are not supposed to be political. They are supposed to serve the people. All the people. That is the deal of democracy. But not under Trump. Under Trump, the government is not a public service. It is a propaganda machine.

And when you cannot trust what the government says, you do not just lose faith in politics. You lose faith in daily life. Whether the medicine is safe. Whether the storm warning is real. Whether the school closure notice is true. That is the danger.

And when the lies are not enough, they use force.

This was not about safety. It was about showing force on camera to scare the rest of us into silence.

And let us be clear, this is not about keeping anyone safe. This is about Trump proving he can rip families apart just to show off. It is cruelty as a campaign strategy.

This is not law enforcement. It is intimidation. It is propaganda by terror. It is filmed and packaged into clips designed to recruit and to scare.

And the message is clear. If we can do this to them, we can do it to you.

That is how authoritarianism works. Not by arresting everyone, but by making you believe they can and that you might be next.

And it is working.

A new poll shows nearly thirty percent of Americans now believe political violence may be necessary. That number is growing. Violence is never the answer. It never has been. It does not just harm your opponent. It harms you. It divides us further. It hands them the excuse they are waiting for.

I understand the anger. I feel it too. But I will not let Trump’s cruelty push me into becoming what he wants. He wants broken communities. He wants civil war. I will not give him that.

I get it. When institutions fail you, violence feels like the only language left. But that is the trick. They want you to believe the ballot box is broken so you will pick up a rock instead. Because they know how to crush a rock. They do not know how to crush a movement.

That is the trap. They want us to lash out so they can point at the chaos and say only they can fix it. If we give in to violence, we hand them the war they have been waiting for.

We know this story too. In 1922, Mussolini’s Blackshirts staged violence in the streets to justify the March on Rome. In 1970s Argentina, the military junta pointed to unrest they themselves stoked to justify their “Dirty War.” Violence is the fuel of authoritarianism. It is never the cure.

Even in the chaos, there is a pattern. Trump threatened 100 percent tariffs on drugs, and then backed down. He always does. He blusters. He rages. He makes headlines. He creates panic. And then he retreats.

T.A.C.O. isn’t just a funny acronym. It’s his manual. Cause uproar. Manipulate the message. Take advantage of the chaos. Over and over again, it’s the same routine. He threatens 100 percent tariffs, then backs down. He floats outrageous lies about opponents, then shrugs them off as jokes. He spreads propaganda so fast the truth can’t keep up. The pattern is the point. The chaos is the point.

And it is a distraction.

What was he distracting from this time? The Epstein files.

Howard Lutnick, a Wall Street executive, just said out loud that Epstein was “the greatest blackmailer ever... That’s how he had money.” He went further, “What happened in that massage room I assume is on video … they participated. That’s what his MO was.”

If those files ever see daylight, they could bring down more than reputations. They could bring down systems. That is why they will burn the house down to keep them buried.

And so I remind you again. They cannot arrest us all.

They cannot prosecute every organizer, silence every reporter, terrify every parent, or erase every teacher. The only way they win is if we stop speaking.

I refuse to live in silence. I refuse to let fear dictate what kind of country my children inherit. And I know I am not the only one.

So do not stop. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever. Speak louder. Show up. Document. Organize. Protect one another. Tell the truth even when they call it a lie.

Because history does not fall all at once. It falls through a thousand silences. A thousand compromises. A thousand people looking away. But it is also saved by a thousand small acts of courage. That is the difference between submission and survival.

I do not write this because it is easy. I write this because I refuse to hand my children a country built on silence.

They are counting on us to give up. To go quiet. To disappear into despair.

They are wrong.

They cannot arrest us all.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather