Trump is engaged in two fights against democracy. Both involve agents armed with guns. Are we a nascent police state? By Hal M. Brown

 .

This is the main page of HUFFPOST this morning:

The news about Trump defying a federal judge’s order is all over the media. There are lotsa guns in that story. In this instance it is ICE agents. There’s another story with lotsa guns. Rachel Maddow reported on it last night. You can see the 10 minute segment in the RawStory article here.

This is from The New York Times (subscription):

Musk’s Team Evicts Officials at the U.S. Institute of Peace

A bubbling dispute broke into a dramatic standoff that ended with police involvement and the Department of Government Efficiency taking up residence at the independent agency.

Excerpt:

A simmering dispute between the Department of Government Efficiency and an independent agency dedicated to promoting peace broke into an open standoff involving the police on Monday, as Elon Musk’s government cutters marched into the agency’s headquarters and evicted its officials.

The dramatic scene played out in Washington on Monday afternoon as Mr. Musk’s team was rebuffed from the U.S. Institute of Peace, an agency that President Trump has ordered dismantled, then entered it with law enforcement officers. Agency officials say that because the institute is a congressionally chartered nonprofit that is not part of the executive branch, Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk do not have the authority to gut its operations.

“DOGE just came into the building — they’re inside the building — they’re bringing the F.B.I. and brought a bunch of D.C. police,” Sophia Lin, a lawyer for the institute, said by telephone as she and other officials were being escorted out.

George Moose, who was fired as the institute’s acting president last week but is challenging his dismissal, accused Mr. Musk’s team of breaking in. “Our statute is very clear about the status of this building and this institute,” he told reporters. “So what has happened here today is an illegal takeover by elements of the executive branch of a private nonprofit corporation.”

If anyone still disputes the evidence that Trump is now a dictator who, when defied, is willing to use his own Gestapo and SS they have their head so deeply in the dirt that it may be poking into the Earth’s substrata. If they bury themselves too much deeper in denial it will get pretty damn hot for them.

How far will this go? There’s a name for the kind of country we could become. It is called a police state. At it’s extreme it looks like this.

This is the Wikipedia defintion:

A police state describes a state whose government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties. There is typically little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive, and the deployment of internal security and police forces play a heightened role in governance. A police state is a characteristic of authoritarian, totalitarian or illiberal regimes (contrary to a liberal democratic regime). Such governments are typically one-party states and dominant-party states, but police-state-level control may emerge in multi-party systems as well.

Originally, a police state was a state regulated by a civil administration, but since the beginning of the 20th century it has "taken on an emotional and derogatory meaning" by describing an undesirable state of living characterized by the overbearing presence of civil authorities. The inhabitants of a police state may experience restrictions on their mobility, or on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement. Political control may be exerted by means of a secret police force that operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state. Robert von Mohl, who first introduced the rule of law to German jurisprudence, contrasted the Rechtsstaat ("legal" or "constitutional" state) with the anti-aristocratic Polizeistaat ("police state").

Russia and other totalitarian countries have their own versions.

Some of my friends say “it can’t happen here.” Others say it can happen here. I am seeing indications it is already happening and what we have is a nascent police state. Trump is testing the limits. Trump and Musk and their lieutenants want to see how far they can go. They don’t know what will happen but I am certain they have considered the possibility that there will be massive protests. I am just as sure that they have a contingency plan for this. They will wait until there’s a protest that gives Trump an excuse to say it is a national emergency and declare martial law.

From Wikipedia:

Martial law is the replacement of civilian government by military rule and the suspension of civilian legal processes for military powers. Martial law can continue for a specified amount of time, or indefinitely, and standard civil liberties may be suspended for as long as martial law continues. Most often, martial law is declared in times of war or emergencies such as civil unrest and natural disasters. Alternatively, martial law may be declared in instances of military coups d'état.

This would put the onus for carrying out unconstitutional, illegal, and un-American presidentiall on true patriots in the military. Would they bend to Trump and Hegseth or could we actually have a military coup d'état?

Update:

This is in response to Trump. But Trump has the guns. Roberts doesn’t. He depends on the respect for the rule of law.

Read my related Substacks below.

Read all of my Substacks.

Are we becoming a police state? Look at the definition. By Hal M. Brown

 

I'd like to believe I am being an alarmist. I hope I am wrong. If I am, I'll give the biggest mea culpa of my life.

Trump’s ICE Gestapo grabbed up a Columbia University student and sent him off to a detention camp in Louisiana. Then there was this:  ICE Deploys Tear Gas into Home To Take a Migrant; 'They Kept Throwing Things At Us'

Juan Ramón Hernandez-Limon, 28, was startled when ICE agents approached him while he swept his front porch in San Antonio, Texas, on Friday, January 31. The agents did not have an arrest warrant, so Hernandez-Limon retreated into his home, where his wife, their one-year-old daughter, and two other minors were present.

The interaction was followed by a six-hour operation that involved local, state, and federal agents equipped with military-style vehicles. While waiting outside Hernandez-Limon's home, the agents obtained the arrest warrant they needed and proceeded to break windows and doors, deploying tear gas into his home, according to a new report by Univision.

Hernandez-Limon's wife spoke anonymously to a network reporter to discuss the incident. She said the family was trying to exit the household but was afraid of being struck by the objects the agents were throwing into their home.

These are just two examples. There have been others and there will be more. Consider the defintion of a police state from Wikipedia:

A police state describes a state whose government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties. There is typically little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive, and the deployment of internal security and police forces play a heightened role in governance. A police state is a characteristic of authoritarian, totalitarian or illiberal regimes (contrary to a liberal democratic regime). Such governments are typically one-party states and dominant-party states, but police-state-level control may emerge in multi-party systems as well.

Originally, a police state was a state regulated by a civil administration, but since the beginning of the 20th century it has "taken on an emotional and derogatory meaning" by describing an undesirable state of living characterized by the overbearing presence of civil authorities. The inhabitants of a police state may experience restrictions on their mobility, or on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement. Political control may be exerted by means of a secret police force that operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state. Robert von Mohl, who first introduced the rule of law to German jurisprudence, contrasted the Rechtsstaat ("legal" or "constitutional" state) with the anti-aristocratic Polizeistaat ("police state").

I subscribe to The Contrarian, the Substack started by Jennifer Rubin when she left The Washington Post and lawyer Norm Eisen who made the news yesterday. In this conversation, Rubin talked with the founder of Indivisible, Ezra Levin. They are talking as if we aren’t living in a police state. This is my comment with a link to a Substack I posted two days ago.

All this seems to me seems to be a la-de-dah happy talk and refusal to admit that we have rapidly gone beyond being a nascent police state to being a police state just gaining unstoppable momentum. Geeze, folks, read the news. The people with the guns have taken over. They just grabbed up a student in NY and sent him of to a detenton camp in Louisiana. ICE terrified a family throwing flash bang grenades into their house. What's next, declaring Indivisible an enemy of the state? Only the other group with guns can save us. This is the US military. I try to lay how this could be done here: https://halbrown.substack.com/p/thinking-the-unthinkable-about-fighting

Basically what I have been saying is that the only people who can save democracy from the people with guns in the enforcement arm of the police state is the people with more, and better, guns. This is, of course, the military.

Are the generals and admirals going to sit idly by when we turn into a police state? I addressed another issue yesterday, the seeming alignment we now have with Russia. Between these two will the top leadership of the amrmed forces do what was once unthinkable. Will they do the only thing that can end a police state which may very well be trying to reshape the world order? 

There has been a great deal written about a coup effected by Donald Trump and his minions. This doesn’t meet the defintion of a coup, i.e., “a sudden, violent, and unlawful seizure of power from a government.” If we had a military coup it could meet this defintion if it was violent. It wouldn’t have to result in bloodshed. It could be what is called a soft coup (see Wikipedia).

Whether the power of the military is actually used (picture tanks around the White House) or not, the threat that they could do this would enable them to effect a soft coup. That would certainly be far more preferable than a hard coup.

I don’t know how far Trump has to go excercising the power of the police state before the media and public start ignoring many less alarming issues, or at least putting them in perspective. For example, the effects of tarrifs, DOGE with Musk’s street gang taking over Social Security with access to all your data and being able to cut or stop benefits. Then there’s the recent DEI absolute nonsense about Georgetown Law School: 

Ed Martin ‒ appointed by Donald Trump as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, despite not having any prosecutorial experience ‒ emailed Georgetown Law School Dean William Treanor on Monday to whine about Republicans’ favorite bogeyman: diversity, equity and inclusion. Article.

Even abandoning Ukraine and the cruelty of cutting life saving USAID programs will be lead-up chapters in the book of how Trump and his enablers turned us into a police state.

I am afraid that before long we will look back at all of these matters as smoke and mirrors. We will see how they diverted attention from from how Trump made ordinary citizens live in fear having Gestapo thugs bust down our door in the middle of the night, or shoot flash bang grenades into our homes on an idyllic spring weekend.

I hope I am wrong about all of these dire predictions. 

Maybe public outcry about this will stop the excesses of the police state. Rather than a “hard police state” we’ll have what might be called a “soft police state.”

We may have to live with all the other noxious aspects of Trumpism until the midterm elections. Then, if the Democrats take over Congress, some of the policies can be thwarted. That is unless Trump dares to ignore the law. Two years after that, if we have a Democratic president, we can see a return to Democracy.

(About the photo. I took this on our cranberry farm property in Massachusetts. This was when local police departments decided they needed AR-15 rifles and needed to learn to shoot them. Previously they only had shotguns in their patrol cars.)

If you subscribe to my Substack you will receive an email every time I post. Respectful comments are always welcome. I generally reply to comments.

I post on BlueSky though the day, You can read my posts here.