No Kings

My spouse and I, a neighbor, and friends from different parts of town attended the No Kings rally in Louisville in the Crescent Hill neighborhood. Basically, peaceful protesters lined Frankfort Avenue for several blocks between 3 and 4 pm -- and numerous drivers tooted their car horns in support as they drove by. There were a few Trump supporters in vehicles that went by as well, but no one provoked violence on either side as far as I know. 

Based on the signs, people obviously had very different reasons for protesting. Many signs focused on Donald Trump's immigration policy, reflecting anti-ICE sentiment and support for due process for all. There were a lot of signs about the Epstein files. 

I didn't carry a sign but I'm quite disturbed by the masked immigration raids and deportations (again, without due process) of individuals to places like El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.  In Chicago recently, masked and heavily armed ICE agents allegedly broke down the doors in an apartment building while residents were sleeping and took everyone into the streets at gunpoint (including children). Dozens of citizens were zip-tied together, separated by race and ethnicity, and then interrogated. Eventually, people were bused away to determine if they were criminals. In the words of one resident, "They didn’t treat people like they were American.”

Local politicians have reacted with outrage:

“This raid wasn’t about public safety,” [Chicago] Mayor Brandon Johnson said several days later. “It was certainly not about immigration. This was about a show of authoritarianism, a forceful display of tyranny.”

I am even more concerned about the President's extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean (talk about lack of due process). This undermines the rule of law with the President effectively acting as judge, jury, and executioner. We don't even know if those killed have committed capital crimes. The President has labeled them as drug runners and thus narco-terrorists. The most recent attack has apparently killed an innocent fisherman. That's murder and the Department of Justice is not doing anything to address this. The Supreme Court may have made the President immune from crimes he commits as part of his official acts (as commander in chief, for example), but those firing the weapons are likely guilty of war crimes. The former President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, is in the Hague awaiting his trial for "crimes against humanity" for similarly ordering summary executions of alleged drug criminals.  

Trump is also usurping congressional power of the purse, arguably the most potent power of Congress in the American system of checks and balances. He's ended programs that were authorized (funded) explicitly by Congress (such as solar energy grants) and has lately started spending revenues that Congress has not authorized (he did this in his first term with regards to the border wall). America's founding fathers wanted Congress to be the most important branch of government.  If congressional Republicans want to end these programs, they could do it legally in the budget. The House is accountable every 2 years in elections, with one-third of the Senate also vulnerable every 2 years. 

Trump's tariffs are also a blatant misuse of presidential power as the so-called Commerce Clause of the US constitution explicitly grants Congress the power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations." Congress did pass some laws during the Cold War granting the chief executive power to enact so-called "national security" tariffs (or embargoes), but Trump has been using tariffs to generate revenues, punish states for non-security policy reasons, and as leverage in various negotiations. That's all illegal. If the Republican Congress wants tariffs, pass a law implementing them.

I took some photos, including several of the inflatable costumed critters and one of the main corner of the protest at Bauer. There were more people surrounding the Walgreens across the street from me than there were on my side. 

    

There was a much larger and better-attended event in downtown Louisville Saturday -- it was scheduled for 3 hours and there were speakers (as there were at other events around the US). My group of friends opted for the neighborhood choice. 

President Trump responded to these protests with a despicable AI-generated video of himself wearing a crown and bombing protesters (see below). CNN reports that 7 million people attended over 2700 events across the US on Saturday. Every state had a rally and many were in smaller towns -- not just cities. Kentucky is a red state of course and there were plenty of rallies in other states Trump won. 

CNN notes police reports of zero arrests in either Portland or NYC. 

 

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Resistance Strategy When the Government is Itching for Violence

Last week, President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth spoke to a group of U.S. generals and admirals they had assembled from deployments all over the world. Trump gave a rambling speech, but the most troubling part repeated something he said during his 2024 campaign. The U.S. military should be in the business of fighting what he called the "enemy from within" because it is a bigger threat to America. He noted that this threat was going to be a "big thing" for those assembled. He had recently signed "an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances."

Essentially none of the brass in the audience built their careers on fighting that alleged enemy from within -- especially considering that Trump seems to be talking about his domestic political opponents though he often conflated them with ordinary criminals (who rape, shoot or beat up people). He mentioned ambiguous threats from "insurrectionists" and said they were "paid by the radical left." Read the speech, it is not very clear.

In any event, it must be weird for career military official who have fought the Taliban, ISIS, or Iraqi insurgents to hear a president claim that domestic threats are worse these days. They have homes in the U.S. They can see that America is not like war-torn Iraq or Afghanistan. Why should they believe that these domestic threats are more worrisome than North Korean or Iranian nuclear weapons, or the rise of China as a great power? It's crazy talk, frankly.

Just to be clear, various sources of crime data find that violent and property crime is lower than it has been in decades. There was a 2020-21 blip from the pandemic, but that's it. 

I know a lot of international relations scholars that worry that threats are often inflated via fearmongering, but even they would be unlikely to accept Trump's ridiculous claims comparing foreign to domestic threats.

It was not just this speech that brought the issue forward, obviously. On September 25 Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum-7  which emphasized a (selective) handful of recent cases of political violence that led to a few deaths. He labels this domestic terrorism and basically blames "the left." He includes a set of anecdotes -- just like he has done when noting a few misleading cases over the last decade when discussing alleged immigrant crime. Yes, immigrants occasionally commit violent crimes, but the data have long shown that they do this less frequently than US citizens. 

Anyway, this is from that NSPM-7:

This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically.  Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.  A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them — is required. 

There is no data to support these claims. A recent think tank study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies report noted a recent uptick in left-wing political violence, but there were only a small number of total deaths this century and their data revealed that the right had been responsible for far more political violence for several previous decades. The death tally for the last decade was 112 killed by the right, 13 by the left. See Figure 3 and Table 1 if you click that link. That's 125 people total, or around a dozen per year.

As I used to note on this blog, terrorism is a rare event and domestic terror is even rarer. More people die from peanut allergies, bathroom falls, dog bites, etc. The FBI and other organizations have catalogued domestic terror incidents for many years and the CSIS finding is not unique -- political violence has been far more common from the right than from the left. It's certainly not been a serious enough problem to justify reorientation of the military to fight an "enemy from within." That last linked article notes that the Trump administration removed a recent government report with conclusions that contradict Trump's baseless claims. 

It seems like Trump, Stephen Miller, and perhaps Pete Hegseth are itching for combat in American cities. Trump himself has been telling outrageous lies about Portland burning in order to justify sending in the National Guard and/or U.S. military (as a "training ground" as he said in the speech last week). This is from his speech to the military leaders:

Portland, Oregon, where it looks like a war zone. And I get a call from the liberal governor, sir, please don't come in, we don't need you. I said, well, unless they're playing false tapes, this looked like World War II. Your place is burning down. 

I visited Portland for nearly a week in mid-August and the city is not burning. It has problems with traffic and unhoused people, but there are no riots -- or even large protests like there were in summer 2020 (possibly the source of Trump's claims about Portland). I saw a handful of protesters outside a Tesla dealership. Look on social media and residents have been posting all kinds of photos demonstrating the normalcy of Portland life. 

There was a huge insurrection during the final days of Trump's presidency, but he praised that January 6 action and then pardoned all the convicted criminals this year -- even if they had committed violent acts against police officers. Such hypocrisy!

My fear is that Trump et al are sending troops and National Guard members to blue cities like Portland and Chicago (after LA and DC) in hopes of provoking the kinds of civil unrest witnessed in 2020 -- sufficient to allow them to invoke the Insurrection Act and occupy those cities. Those are Trump's words, not mine.

One obvious provocation involves ICE activities in blue cities and states. It is easy to find video footage of masked ICE agents using violence to break down doors, crash through windows, push people around. There do not seem to be many arrest warrants and the media reports plenty of cases when citizens are rounded up with other immigrants. Most immigrants now in ICE detention have never been convicted of a crime. 

Most of the worst stuff from ICE seems to be happening in blue cities and states. In my blue city in a red state, Louisville, the mayor agreed to a 48 hour hold on inmate immigrants. In other words, if an immigrant is arrested, then the city allows the federal government 48 hours to make a decision about deportation. Louisville is thus not a sanctuary city. But, apparently as a result of this agreement, there have been almost no raids and arrests have not ticked up as they have in other cities and states. Anecdotally, I often see Latinos in construction and lawn care, seeming to work without concerns about ICE agents. 

Trump voters in Kentucky (and other red states) might ignore or dismiss the news about heavy-handed ICE practices because they don't see anything like that happening in their cities and states. We residents of red states do know what that looks like. In summer 2020, BLM and Breonna Taylor protests in Louisville definitely triggered authoritarian responses from the police and people could see the streets brimming with protesters and police with occasional violence and some vandalism. 

Should red state activists increase protests in calmer areas? I'm not calling for violence -- quite the contrary -- but perhaps some sizeable ICE protests in red states would reveal more clearly that the administration is implementing a political strategy and not a public policy. How would the administration address large protests in Louisville, Memphis, Birmingham, New Orleans, Dallas, etc.? 

At the same time, I think activists in blue cities and states should be very clear that they are committed to non-violence. Especially if a regime is itching for violence, opposition violence is ineffective and counterproductive, as well as dangerous. The inspiration provided by Gandhi and MLK should guide contemporary protesters. Gene Sharp assembled a huge array of non-violent political tactics. Have a look at his toolkit. 

More importantly, scholarly research by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan demonstrates that non-violent movements are far more likely to achieve their policy goals. They wrote a terrific book that I highly recommend, but you can look at this academic article if you want to read something shorter. 

I continue to worry about Trump's fascist instincts and he has been pushing the envelope throughout the year usurping legislative power (cutting spending authorized by Congress, declaring armed conflict on drug cartels, etc.). As Dan Nexon writes, the opposition needs to be planning -- and acting 

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