'Democracy is under assault right before our eyes'

Listen to Gov. Newsom's call to action to Americans to protect our democracy against Trump

Intro by Sam Bellamy

If you haven’t yet heard Gov. Gavin Newsom’s full speech warning Californians — and Americans — that Donald Trump’s authoritarian rule is rapidly expanding, take a few minutes and listen to it from the link below.

It isn’t a typical lament from a Democrat against Republican policies. It’s a speech sounding an alarm about a critical point in our nation’s history.

“If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe,” the governor said. “Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there. Trump and his loyalists, they thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control.”

Late Tuesday, Trump deployed 2,000 more National Guard troops to Los Angeles to join the 2,000 guardsmen and 700 active Marines already there. All three actions were taken against the wishes of the governor and LA’s mayor and police chief.

And USA Today reported this Wednesday morning: “The Pentagon is reviewing a Department of Homeland Security request to deploy more than 20,000 additional National Guard troops to aid the Trump administration's widening crackdown on illegal immigration around the United States, according to officials and documents.”

That’s at a cost of $3.6 billion for a year’s deployment, an official briefed on the plan told the paper.

Newsome was blunt in his assessment of what the president is doing: “Trump is pulling a military dragnet all across Los Angeles, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals. His agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses. That’s just weakness, weakness masquerading as strength. Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities. They are traumatizing our communities. And that seems to be the entire point.”

He continues:

“Democracy is under assault right before our eyes, this moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball, a wrecking ball to our founding fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government.

There are no longer any checks and balances. Congress is nowhere to be found. Speaker Johnson has completely abdicated that responsibility.

The rule of law has increasingly been given way to the rule of Don.

The founding fathers didn’t live and die to see this kind of moment. It’s time for all of us to stand up. Justice Brandeis, he said it best. In a democracy, the most important office — with all due respect, Mr. President — is not the presidency, and it’s certainly not governor. The most important office is office of citizen.

At this moment, at this moment, we all need to stand up and be held to account, a higher level of accountability. If you exercise your First Amendment rights, please, please do it peacefully.

I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear. But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment.

Do not give into him.”