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Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion: Why Trump's Birthday Parade Risks Being a Dark Turning Point
One of the fundamental differences between democracies and dictatorships is how the military is viewed. In democracies, the armed forces are an instrument of national defense, serving the people. But in authoritarian states, the military becomes a weapon the government wields against its own citizens. This week, for the first time in our history, Americans are asking whether we have crossed a dangerous line in that regard. It is the right question to ask. As deeply disturbing and offensive as has been the deployment of troops in response to relatively small, largely peaceful protests in Los Angeles, it is very likely only the beginning. For years, since he was first elected as President, Donald Trump has sought the ability to use the United States military as a blunt instrument against those he perceives to be his domestic opponents. While I was writing my book, 'American Resistance,' former senior officials in his administration reported to me his deep frustration and visible anger whenever he was presented with constraints on his power. He wanted the military and its civilian leaders to do what he said. And virtually all of them warned that, if Trump were to be re-elected, his goal would be to sweep away such constraints. Many expressed deep concern that the result would be him becoming the authoritarian he clearly longed to be. Today, many of those former officials see their warnings being realized. In fact, when I speak to them today, as I regularly do, they are among those who are most disturbed by what is happening. This week, on the 'Words Matter' podcast that I host with political expert Norm Ornstein, our guest was one of those former officials, Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Trump's first term. Taylor, perhaps best known as the author of the 'Anonymous' op-ed in the New York Times that first expressed concerns from within Trump's orbit, was blunt in his warning. He said he believes that too many in the media are understating the dangers of Trump's incipient authoritarianism. Taylor made reference to how those closest to Trump, like current Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, have carefully studied those instances when the law gives U.S. presidents emergency powers—and how they can be exploited. Through Project 2025 and their own planning, they have sought to construct an administration where as many of the personnel and institutional guardrails limiting what a president can do would be removed. Since the inauguration this past January, we have seen plenty of evidence of these efforts. The team around Trump was picked based not on qualifications or experience but rather on the basis of whether they would do exactly as Trump has said. You saw that manifested in the swiftness with which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth deployed Marines to Los Angeles; to the degree to which Trump's immigration team—Miller, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and 'border czar' Tom Homan—have sought to use assertions of 'national emergency' or 'invasion' to justify sidestepping the rule of law in their efforts to round up 'illegal' immigrants. Indeed, in case after case, Trump and his team of enablers have sought to use the language of crisis (see the president's social media posts about 'insurrectionists' in LA and his wild lies about the extent of the damage they were doing) precisely because it provides a legal justification for him seizing additional powers and removing constraints on the use of that power. While Trump has avoided invoking 'the Insurrection Act' or declaring martial law thus far, with each week of this administration he has moved further in that direction. And this week, with the actions in Los Angeles, he took a particularly ominous stride down that path. Even if they over-reach and the courts serve as a check on their plans—which they still sometimes do despite the efforts of the Supreme Court to help transform Trump into our first monarch since George III—Trump and his team know that legal battles take a long time and often afford them the chance in the interim to bully, cancel, intimidate, arrest, deport and otherwise seek to strip away the fundamental rights and protections hitherto enjoyed by the residents of this country. They might not win every case, but the impact they have while the wheels of justice are grinding as slowly as they often do can boost the president's effective power and advance his agenda. Trump's role models are clear. His contempt for our laws is a matter of record. He and his team have been preparing for years to make his second term different from any presidency in U.S. history. He is unchallenged within his administration, by Congress or, much of the time, by the majority on our highest court. He has—through that court's immunity decision—power unlike any chief executive in our history. He also burns with the desire to impose his will both on behalf of his family and friends but also against those he perceives as his opponents. (Taylor, for example, has been accused of nothing less than 'treason' simply for expressing his views. He is not alone.) For these reasons, for those who know or who have studied Trump, the events of this week are so profoundly chilling. Whether it is boots on the ground in Los Angeles or the polished boots that will be marching a four-mile parade route through our nation's capital this weekend, we now have a president who sees the military as an extension of his own personal power—his most lavish and ostentatious acquisition yet. The unnecessary display of force in California and the D.C. parade alone are expected to cost in the neighborhood of $200 million. The juxtaposition of his turning the unparalleled resources of the world's most powerful armed forces against its own people and then presiding on his birthday over a Soviet-style show of might seems deeply intentional. As a consequence of the agenda Trump has been implementing since he re-took office, many big questions will loom over the parade in dark counterpoint to the celebratory fly-bys of military aircraft. Will we or our children ever look at a parade in the same way again? Will the salutes and fanfare be for the troops or for a would-be American dictator? And will we see the events of this past week, as do many of those who know Trump best, as a dark turning point in our history, a foreshadowing of the undoing of all that America's soldiers have fought and died for during the past 250 years?
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump is just getting started. What are climate activists supposed to do?
The movement to demand action on climate change took a new turn on October 14, 2022, the day that a pair of activists in London's National Gallery tossed tomato soup at the glass in front of Vincent van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' painting. Most people didn't like the spectacle, an attempt to grab public attention by vandalizing a celebrated work of art, but that was kind of the point. After decades of peaceful protests, climate activists hadn't gotten anything close to what they wanted. Even as people around the world had begun to experience the sobering effects of climate change firsthand — sweating through heat waves and breathing in acrid smoke from wildfires — global carbon dioxide emissions were still increasing, and elected governments were still signing off on new oil and gas projects. Activists felt like they had to try something different: What could they do to shake things up and get people's attention? That question is only becoming more pressing as President Donald Trump begins his second term in office, declaring an 'energy emergency' in his inaugural address on Monday to expand fossil fuel production. 'This moment is so incredibly far from anywhere close to even where we want to be fighting on,' said Keanu Arpels-Josiah, a 19-year-old organizer with Fridays for Future NYC, a youth-led climate activist group, in the days after the November presidential election. When Trump entered the White House for the first time in 2017, climate activism was infused with a fresh wave of energy, building on the momentum of the broader 'American Resistance' that rose up against his policies. A movement once tied to pipeline protests and university divestment started attracting widespread attention, with brand-new groups led by young people like the Sunrise Movement and Zero Hour staging marches and occupying Congressional offices. The Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg started skipping school on Fridays in 2018 to protest the lack of government action, inspiring teenagers around the world to participate in 'school strikes.' Calling for a 'Green New Deal' became a popular slogan among progressives. But when President Joe Biden took office in 2021, some of that energy fizzled out, and the climate movement fractured. Big environmental organizations like the Sierra Club tried to influence federal policy — and succeeded for once, with Congress passing the largest investment in climate action in United States history in 2022 — while radical grassroots activists from Climate Defiance demanded more, heckling the White House climate adviser, Ali Zaidi, on multiple occasions. 'We were seeing this crazy, very, very fractured climate movement, which was in abeyance, where most Americans, while they said they cared about climate change, were not willing to march in the streets for it,' said Dana Fisher, a professor at American University who has studied climate activism for more than two decades. 'That all is over.' With Trump back in the White House, she expects climate advocates will start working together again, alongside people representing other progressive causes, since they'll have a common enemy. 'Will the Resistance rise again? Yes,' Fisher said. 'Will the Resistance look the same? Absolutely not.' The first sign that progressive activists would respond to the new Trump administration by banding together came two days before the presidential inauguration, when an estimated 50,000 people participated in the People's March in Washington, D.C., on January 18, protesting for reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and racial justice, along with other causes. Of the 453 protesters that Fisher's team surveyed at the event, 70 percent named climate change as one of their top motivations for participating. 'All the different things we're fighting for really are under attack,' Arpels-Josiah said. 'I think we have no other option than to organize in a moment like this, right?' His organization, Fridays for Future NYC, is planning to hold a Youth Climate Justice Convergence on March 1 to discuss how to push for change in New York at the local and state level. Climate activists expressed an appetite to try something new, but they haven't nailed down an overall strategy for the next four years. 'There's definitely a sentiment that we've struggled to turn marches and mass mobilizations in one place into meaningful political change that changes people's lives,' said Saul Levin, the director of campaigns and politics at the Green New Deal Network, a coalition of climate, labor, and justice organizations. 'And so it's not that we're giving up on those methods, but we're testing out different things.' Levin didn't offer specifics about what the coalition will try out, but said he wouldn't rule any tactics out, since there are different approaches across the movement. In recent years, activists have blocked traffic in streets, spray-painted Stonehenge, and interrupted events to shame politicians they call 'climate criminals.' These are signs that the climate movement is growing a 'radical flank,' an offshoot that's more confrontational and more disruptive. Experts say civil disobedience, even if it alienates people, can sometimes serve to focus attention on a cause and make tamer protests appear more socially acceptable. It's not the same as establishing cause and effect, but anecdotes suggest there's something to the idea. Two weeks after activists with Just Stop Oil spent a week blocking traffic in London in November 2022, for instance, surveys found that people in the United Kingdom were more likely to support the more moderate group Friends of the Earth, according to a study last fall. 'Climate activists will absolutely be staying peaceful, but they will not be staying non-disruptive,' Fisher said. A Trump administration hostile to action could provide more fuel for groups like Climate Defiance, whose activists frequently get arrested for confronting oil executives and politicians. Of course, civil disobedience is just one tool among many, and activists are leaning into more popular forms of organizing, like rallies, in order to attract a big crowd. 'We need everyone right now, and to build real power on climate justice, we need a bigger coalition than we've ever had or ever seen,' Levin said at a mass organizing call for climate groups the day after the inauguration. 'And that starts by gathering people in communities to build power for people by people.' In February, the Climate Action Campaign, a coalition of environmental and health organizations, plans to hold 'Climate Can't Wait' rallies in Atlanta, Pittsburgh, and Detroit, hoping to 'mobilize the largest possible number of people to demand action.' Aru Shiney-Ajay, the executive director of the Sunrise Movement, has been working with organizers in Los Angeles on a number of actions in response to the devastation brought by recent wildfires. In the week before the presidential inauguration, members from the L.A. hub of Sunrise led a multi-day demonstration outside of the Phillips 66 oil facility in Carson, California, demanding that fossil fuel companies 'pay up' for their contributions to the climate crisis, which made recent fires more dangerous. 'If we are to have any hope at truly winning, at truly turning the tides of society, at moving our economy away from the most powerful industry in history, the fossil fuel industry, we must build up the organizing power that it takes to actually disrupt the people in power,' Shiney-Ajay said during the call for climate groups. Over the course of the five-day protest outside the Phillips 66 facility, neighbors stopped by to show their support — and even the oil refinery's guards told the group they agreed with them, according to Shiney-Ajay. 'Those are the moments that felt the most meaningful,' she said. In the aftermath of the wildfires, the sit-in created an opportunity to meet 'people who had never encountered the climate movement at their doorstep before finding themselves in support.' The Sunrise Movement is drawing inspiration from historical examples of people successfully agitating for change, such as the Civil Rights Movement's Montgomery bus boycotts of the 1950s, and the United Auto Workers Union strikes in Michigan in the 1930s, according to Dejah Powell, Sunrise's membership director. 'When we look at change and transformation [in society], a lot of it has come from labor: 40-hour workweek, the weekend, paid sick leave,' she said. 'It comes from disrupting or threatening capital.' Powell said the organization is looking to build on the success of the Friday school strikes that began in 2018, experimenting with sustained, month-long student strikes. The group also seems poised to expand its direct action efforts: Members of Sunrise recently interrupted the confirmation hearing for Trump's nominee to run the Energy Department, Chris Wright, the CEO of a fracking company. No politician is off-limits, said Shiney-Ajay. 'We have a saying: 'No permanent friends, no permanent enemies.'' The executive director said the organization is open to an array of tactics, though it draws the line at violent protest. Despite the peaceful nature of these kinds of demonstrations, Fisher says climate organizers should prepare for a crackdown on protests, with the potential for repression and violence. 'I think that what we're going to see is the Trump administration pushing back and pushing back hard against civil disobedience for sure, and potentially all forms of protest,' she said. 'And that is going to quickly escalate what's going to happen on the streets.' On top of that, over the past decade, more than 20 states have passed laws increasing penalties for protesting near so-called critical infrastructure such as oil and gas facilities, now sometimes punishable by years in prison. Some of the training that climate activists have been participating in over the past couple of months has focused on nonviolent direct action and defusing tense situations, according to Levin from the Green New Deal Network. 'We think that we need a new set of tools and refreshed trainings, because no one can fully predict the level of chaos and repression that's going to come from this extremist administration.' Amid that chaos, the climate movement will be looking not just for new tactics, but also an updated message. Some of the economic concerns that are credited with driving Trump into the presidency, such as inflation and the rising cost of living, are connected to climate change, Levin said. The fires in L.A. are one example of how disasters like these threaten people's livelihoods and financial security, he said. 'We've talked about these things for years, but we need to update how we're talking about them.' Shiney-Ajay sees the L.A. wildfires as an opportunity to connect the dots between the climate crisis and other pressures facing the city, like runaway rent prices and a need for more resilient infrastructure, as well as a chance to bring more people into the movement. 'People want to believe something will work or have something to believe in,' she said. Actions like the one at the Phillips 66 oil refinery help with that. 'Here is a way we can respond after disasters that is humane and kind and makes your life better and helps you believe in your government, helps you believe in a better world,' Shiney-Ajay said. The movement's task will be to 'hold that up in contrast to the vision of the world that Trump is proposing.' This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump is just getting started. What are climate activists supposed to do? on Jan 27, 2025.
