Those who control the Democratic Party despise America, our Constitution, and our history. Their goal is a repressive society based on Marxist and intersectional ideologies. Their claim to be champions of democracy is hypocrisy of the highest order. Through subterfuge and force they have moved the United States to the precipice of the abyss. Their radical views, vitriol, and violence are intolerable. Only by the strongest medicine, intravenously administered, can we turn the tide.

Donald Trump’s goal is to restore individual liberties, a constitutional republic, and American exceptionalism. He is fallible, and his flaws have been exacerbated by a decade of political, legal, and financial attacks. Yet, blemishes and some dark impulses aside, there is a broad chasm between the hellscape sought by Democratic activists and leaders and the America Trump seeks.

A CNN/SSRS poll shows that the Democratic Party’s favorability has dropped to 29%, a record low. Just 63% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents report a favorable view of their party. Results are even worse for Democrats in new polls from NBC and Fox. Some Democrats are angry their party is not more radical, but the polling shows overall that many Democrats feel abandoned by a party that has jettisoned American principles and common sense.

Contrary to the goals of many Democrats, party activists are savaging their Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, for working with Republicans to avoid a government shutdown. They oppose Trump’s and Elon Musk’s efforts to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse. Progressive groups and Democratic-controlled states have launched more than 100 lawsuits in districts with Democratic-appointed judges to stop the Trump Administration’s efforts to reduce spending, end DEI, rein in fanatic transgender policies, and protect the borders. In doing so, the plaintiffs ignore both the Constitution and the polls.

Given their intellectual bent—echoes of Marx, Lenin, Engels, Mao, and Ho Chi Minh—leading radical Left Democrats have a facility for controlling acceptable language and changing terminology to shape the dialogue. Like their forerunners, they can be patient. They have spent more than 50 years embedding in academia, the media, and the Deep State. They speak and write well and maintain discipline. They are bold. While conservative judges seek to maintain the status quo, progressive judges devise legislative-like solutions, showing little restraint in substituting their judgment for that of the other branches, or claiming powers never conferred.

Combining the progressive ideology of most federal career civil servants with judicial activism has created a new, unaccountable arm of government. Radicals in the Deep State devise rules and regulations, and authorize spending on leftist causes. Utilizing the standard of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), Democratic-appointed judges then declare any push back to be “arbitrary and capricious,” and reject the authority of Republican presidents to execute their mandates.

This alliance, never countenanced by our Founders, is being used to thwart Trump’s exercise of his Article II powers. Nowhere does the Constitution give federal district court judges the right to substitute their judgments for that of the president. Congress has never passed a statute giving a judge sitting in one of the 94 districts the general right to issue nationwide injunctions that purport to bind persons not before the court, and who are in remote districts. To the contrary, with a narrow exception for the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction, Article III confers on Congress the right to organize the judiciary, including the jurisdiction and term of each judge.

Article II vests the entire executive authority of the United States government in just one individual—the President of the United States. The president alone has the right to make all decisions for the executive branch. No subordinate, nor one of more than 600 federal judges, may overrule the president’s authority on matters pertaining to the administration of the executive branch, or the conduct of foreign affairs. Last year, the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo curtailed the administrative state’s short-lived primacy created by the Court’s 1984 Chevron decision, but that message isn’t getting through to activist judges.

In the landmark 1803 Supreme Court decision Marbury v. Madison, the Court held that courts may invalidate laws that violate the Constitution. Regardless of whether Marbury was correctly decided, that principle is a far cry from district court judges using their perspectives and biases to apply the APA’s standards to supersede the president’s political, executive branch, national security, and foreign affairs findings and decisions. Under the Constitution, that is the sole prerogative of the president.

Five Supreme Court Justices have condemned the growing practice of individual district court judges issuing national injunctions. Two weeks ago, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito criticized the “unchecked power” of the district court judge who ordered USAID to release $2 billion of foreign aid. Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh joined in Alito’s dissent.

As Politico reported, three years ago during a symposium at Northwestern Law School, liberal Justice Elena Kagan took a “notably hostile and forceful stand” against individual U.S. District Court judges blocking federal government policies nationwide. “You look at something like that and you think, that can’t be right… It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through the normal process,” said Kagan.

Previously, Justice Thomas explained in a concurring opinion in Trump v. Hawaii:

Injunctions that prohibit the Executive Branch from applying a law or policy…have become increasingly common. District courts…have begun imposing universal injunctions without considering their authority to grant such sweeping relief. These injunctions are beginning to take a toll on the federal court system—preventing legal questions from percolating through the federal courts, encouraging forum shopping, and making every case a national emergency for the courts and for the Executive Branch.

I am skeptical that district courts have the authority to enter universal injunctions…. And they appear to be inconsistent with longstanding limits on equitable relief and the power of Article III courts. If their popularity continues, this Court must address their legality [emphasis added].

Numerous Republicans are already working on legislation to restrict a district court judge’s jurisdiction to enter similar orders.

A Party of Chaos

The Democratic bond with repression goes beyond forum shopping, judicial activism, and its protection of the administrative state. It includes deceit, obstruction of justice, and covert operations to interfere in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections; a corrupt Justice Department that has waged lawfare on Trump, his supporters, Christians, pro-life advocates, and others who oppose their views; and a whole-of-government effort to censor speech critical of them and their agenda.

Abetted by their allies in the media, Democratic leaders fomented the violent overthrow of government by giving a pass to radical protestors who seized part of Seattle, destroyed a federal courthouse in Portland and waged war on the brave federal marshals protecting it, torched police stations and vehicles, caused billions in property damage, and killed more than two dozen Americans. Now, they are giving the same support to leftists who are destroying Tesla dealerships, charging stations, and vehicles in opposition of government cuts.

There is no precedent in American history for the collaboration between the Biden Administration and the state prosecutors who tried to keep Trump off the ballot, indicted him, and brought civil charges intended to bankrupt him. Biden appointees at the Secret Service denied the resources requested by Trump’s protective detail. That Trump became the first presidential candidate to be shot since George Wallace in 1972 was an entirely foreseeable result.

In pursuit of their undemocratic aims, and to deflect from their anti-democratic methods, Democrats have engaged in some of the most successful scams in U.S. electoral history:

• The Russia hoax, orchestrated in 2016 and 2017 by Hillary Clinton and major Democratic law firm Perkins Coie LLP, promoted the “Steele dossier” that was filled with lies about Trump’s relationship with Russia.
• The FBI relied on the improper “unmasking” of intelligence sources by Susan Rice at the end of the Obama Administration, and a fraudulent affidavit prepared by FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith to obtain a FISA warrant permitting the surveillance of Carter Page and the Trump campaign. Then, after Trump took office, FBI agents tricked National Security Advisor Michael Flynn into participating in an interview without the advice of counsel. The interview was mischaracterized, and exculpatory evidence was hidden to coerce the administration to fire Flynn and prosecute him for lying to the FBI.
• Congress twice moved to impeach Trump, tying him up in protracted hearings and ripping apart the country with false accusations, in part to hide the Biden family influence-peddling scheme.
• The Hunter Biden laptop hoax, in which 51 former senior intelligence officials organized by Biden campaign advisors, including Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Michael Morrell, falsely claimed Hunter’s recovered laptop had all the “earmarks” of a Russian disinformation campaign. Among the signatories were active CIA contractors who knew the claim to be false. The FBI, which also knew the claim to be false, used it as a pretext to coerce Big Tech and the media to suppress the story before the 2020 election.
• Biden’s closest aides propped him up, Weekend at Bernie’s style. During his entire presidency, he appears to have signed only one executive order, as his closest aides shielded him from the rest of his staff and the public and wielded the autopen, possibly without authorization to do so.
• To buttress a false narrative about Trump’s supposed “fascist” and “Nazi” inclinations, Democrats parsed and misquoted Trump’s statements and actions, including the false assertions that he cleared demonstrators out of Lafayette Square so he could make a political statement, said there were good people on both sides of the Charlottesville demonstration, and claimed that Americans should inject bleach to cure COVID-19.
• After revamping their primary system to suppress challenges to Joe Biden, far-left Democrats forced him out and replaced him with Kamala Harris, a politician who had never received a single vote for president in any primary.

Brick by Brick

Democrats not only seek and hold power through authoritarian means, but they also exercise that power to destroy the foundational principles of American exceptionalism. The Biden Education Department rescinded guidance that accorded due process to college students accused of sexual harassment. Contrary to the 14th Amendment and 100 years of civil rights laws and Supreme Court holdings, they allocated government resources and opportunities on the basis of race. They forced young girls and female prisoners to undress in front of, and share rooms with, biological men, overrode parental rights, and ignored the Supreme Court’s holding that student loans could not be forgiven.

The Biden Administration was even more focused on its social agenda than previously known. An October 2024 report from Do No Harm listed 500 ways the administration infused DEI into the federal government. A February 2025 report from the Functioning Government Institute described 700 climate change programs across 25 federal agencies costing more than $710 billion. Acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Todd Lyons told Fox News that the Biden Administration was “cooking the books” on ICE data by categorizing illegal migrants who were processed and released as arrests. In fact, a majority of the 113,431 arrests made in FY 2024 were “pass-throughs” against whom ICE took no enforcement action.

The Biden Administration pursued a fanatic policy of placing the desires of less than 1% of Americans above First Amendment religious rights, and also the physical and emotional security of girls and women. Just two weeks ago, Democrats unanimously voted against protecting girls on the undisputedly false premise that there are too few transgenders to matter—ignoring that just one man can destroy the aspirations of hundreds of female competitors. Should we rescind rape and murder laws since there are far fewer murders and rapes combined than the number of transgender people in the United States?

Even the premise of the progressive position is wrong. A study conducted at the University of Texas and published last month by the Journal of Sexual Medicine tracked 107,583 patients aged 18 and older with gender dysphoria. Researchers found that transgender individuals who completed sex-change surgery suffered from “heightened psychological distress,” including depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation at rates up to four times higher than those who did not obtain surgery.

The Biden Administration funded far-left, anti-American ideologies through grants to K-12 schools and universities, and withheld funding from schools unwilling to comply. Concurrently, performance in math, reading, and other skills precipitously declined as the education system adopted intersectional ideology, which holds that math, timeliness, objectivity, grammar, and accuracy are relics of white supremacy, not universal virtues.

The Biden Administration refused to use military force to stop Iran and its proxies. It replaced training in the use of lethal force with lectures on Critical Race Theory and DEI, destroyed recruitment, and left the Navy and Air Force with aging and inadequate forces.

These policies were broadly supported by Democratic activists and members of Congress, who, contrary to the preferences of most Americans, including many Democrats, are now fiercely opposing the Trump Administration’s efforts to reverse course. Democratic leaders inexplicably complain that by cutting the size of government, Trump is seeking to expand his power.

Trade-Offs

To be sure, Trump is imperfect. His language is coarse. And though he has every right to fire and decline to hire federal contractors who went after him, he goes too far when he says he wants to investigate every FBI agent who was assigned to January 6, or law firms merely because they are filled with high-profile Democrats.

Trump’s talk of forced relocations in Gaza and annexing Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal Zone is destabilizing. No conservative would want Canada to be the 51st state. The public humiliation of Volodymyr Zelenskyy sullied Trump and Vance, notwithstanding their laudable objectives. Depriving patriots like Mike Pompeo, along with his chief aide Brian Hook, and John Bolton of their security details is a dark mark on Trump‘s character. I urge him to reconsider.

Trump has done a poor job explaining his tariffs. The problem with Canada, China, and the European Union is not fentanyl—it is asymmetric trading barriers, the extraterritorial imposition of E.U. restrictions on free speech, and DEI sourcing requirements on American companies. As with any war, the goals must be made clear and the plan refined before Americans are asked to make sacrifices.

The spending cuts have not been well executed. They should be implemented carefully by department secretaries and administrators, not DOGE, which should use its IT expertise instead to analyze numbers and consult on technology alternatives. While the Impoundment Control Act (ICA) might be unconstitutional, with Republicans in the majority in both houses of Congress, Trump can more efficiently achieve his spending goals by complying with the ICA, even as he creates a test case on the law’s constitutionality.

Trump has a good sense of humor. He talks about life and the most profound policies in language people understand. He has a genuine affinity for blue-collar workers, children, and the victims of violence. He believes in restoring dignity and honor to Americans. He should learn the phrase “one of” to use along with his trademark hyperbole that everything he has ever done is “the best,” and everything his opponents do is “the worst.”

To my centrist friends, I hereby advocate that Trump tone down his rhetoric, restrain his anger against those who were peripherally involved in activities he opposes, and avoid battles that do not have to be fought. However, you, my centrist friends, must balance Trump’s language and occasional missteps against the repressive, manipulative, and Marxist and intersectional goals of Democratic activists and national leaders. If you conclude that Trump’s offenses are worse, either you are not being honest with yourself about being a centrist, or you are so wrapped up in etiquette that you have lost track of what is meaningful.

With limited exceptions, Trump’s actions are a constitutionally sound means to end progressives’ mendacity, subterfuge, anger, and violence in pursuit of Marxist and intersectional ideologies. While it would be nice to have a choice that avoids Trump’s flaws, in the real world of the imperfect, selecting between the package of Democratic autocracy, violence, and radical policies or Trump’s actions, speech, and goals is the easiest decision for any proud American to make.

americanmind.org/salvo/an-easy-choice/