Knocked off my usual, gentle entry into the day, I cannot help but write out of a sense of alarm. I read an op-ed piece in the New York Times from May 5 by Thomas B. Edsall, entitled “When you Think of It, We Shouldn’t Even Have an Election,” a quote of Trump’s. Edsall outlines the peril the public faces in a presidency run amok, a president who avers he has “unlimited, unchecked power.” This is not conspiracy theory. It is dictatorship on full display. Let me connect the dots, which I will attempt in summarizing Edsall’s piece.
Trump is a sore loser. Look at the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, where he incited an attempted overthrow of Biden’s win. Not one court supported his claims of a rigged election.
Early in the current term, Trump expanded the Joint Terrorism Task Force’s mandate such that it could “investigate, arrest and prosecute” any organization he deems to be domestic terrorists, meaning anyone he disagrees with. This is currently operational through a National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-7). It’s like an executive order with less transparency.
Edsall notes that Trump “asserts national control over state-administered elections.” If he doesn’t like the results of elections, he can suspend them. In this case the federal government is the final arbiter of vote counts (it is not).
When we vote in November and if Republicans lose their majorities Edsall convincingly assumes a cascade of events. NSPM-7 is already operational. Trump will say the losses are a terrorist plot. He will declare a national emergency. He will suspend our Constitution and arrest protesters. It is assumed he’s written a Presidential Emergency Action Document (PEAD), a secret order prepared for a specific emergency. It requires a catastrophic trigger and operates when constitutional order is suspended, as in when there is an NSPM in place (it is) and he declares a national emergency.
Zooming out, Edsall points out that the detention centers for housing undocumented immigrants are larger than needed and funded in excess of their stated aim. The idea here, in plain sight, is that those centers are intended to house arrested protesters when Trump declares the 2026 November election losses as rigged and suspends the results. Before courts and Congress have time to react, if they have any inclination to do so, we will be at the mercy of emboldened federal agents who will arrest us, take over communication systems, seize our property, freeze our bank accounts.
I’d like to believe this analysis is far-fetched. I am increasingly convinced it is not. No wonder my morning cup of coffee failed to bring me my usual kind greeting to the day. I implore our elected officials to help us know how we can participate in saving our democracy.
Diane Fisher-Katz lives in Northampton.