In the eight months since Donald Trump returned to the presidency, he and his administration have methodically implemented policies that blatantly defy the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and rule of law. Using any pretext available, Trump has abused the powers of the presidency to repress free speech, employ a masked ICE secret police force to abduct noncitizens and citizens alike, denying many their due process rights, and is now prosecuting and indicting his perceived political enemies.
Over the summer, Trump appears to have begun testing the limits of a more dangerous phase in his attempt to impose authoritarian rule by deploying National Guard troops first to Los Angeles and then Washington, D.C. Now, the White House is deploying troops to Portland, Oregon; Memphis, Tennessee and soon to Chicago.
On Sept. 25, Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” The memo cites recent acts of political violence, including the murder of Charlie Kirk, as justification for the investigation and prosecution of networks and organizations labeled as domestic terrorists if they oppose the regime’s ideological position on issues such as “family,” “morality,” “race,” “gender,” “migration,” “Christianity” and “capitalism.” Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with John Whitehead, founder and president of The Rutherford Institute, who is an attorney and author who’s written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law and human rights. Here he talks about Trump’s recent actions that he believes is an attempt to instill fear in the population and to amass ever greater, unchecked dictatorial power.
JOHN WHITEHEAD: “You either do what we say or we may come get you.” And what it does, it raises fear in the population. People are getting more and more fearful that they can get picked up off the street. And with this new Department of Justice and IRS idea that if you’re an organization, now supposedly Trump’s saying in this new counter-terrorism memorandum he issued, “If you do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing, you can lose your tax-exempt status if you’re a nonprofit group.” They’re going to have the IRS coming in and meeting with you and probably pursuing you. They’re basically saying, “If you want to exercise your free speech and speak truth to power, we’re basically going to come in and do everything we can to bring you down.” And so what basically they’re saying is they’re criminalizing ideology, not criminal acts. Violent crimes are already prosecutable under existing laws.
And here’s the other thing that we have to really be careful of. With Peter Thiel, the guy that’s running the AI, artificial intelligence stuff in the federal government, in his Big Beautiful Bill, Trump’s put a 10-year delay on any kind of control of AI. So AI basically—we’re being told basically by people that I’ve worked with in the past—that AI is going to be running many of the governmental programs, and you’re an algorithm now. If you make the wrong mistake or whatever, AI can assign someone to come see you, whatever.
And you’re talking about the National Guard going into cities. I’m a former veteran. I’m just shocked by that. I just don’t understand why you’d want to use the military to go in to so-called cities to do whatever they’re doing. What they’re showing you is, “If you don’t do what we say, we’re going to come in and bang your head and control things you do.”
So that’s basically where we’re at and I’m trying to get the American people, especially some of these city mayors and governors, whatever, to get together and form committees to start fighting back against these and exercise their rights under the 10th Amendment. People forget the 10th Amendment allows local governments to push back against the federal government. I’ve been involved in many Supreme Court cases over my years. A hundred, and I am really shocked at how quiet the Supreme Court is and they seem to be patting him on the back. That just blows my mind. When you look at people like the great William O. Douglas and others that used to exist and get out and speak and say, “Wait, speak truth to power.” That’s what it’s all about. These are Supreme Court justices. You don’t hear that today.
SCOTT HARRIS: John, I wanted to ask you, in your view, what are some of the more effective forms of resistance that people who want to preserve and protect our democracy, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. What have you seen unfold in terms of the many protests we’ve had around the country? Some big ones in June, there was No Kings Day where more than 5 million people came out all across the country in almost 2,000 cities. What’s effective? What can we learn from history both here and this country and from abroad when people come out into the streets to resist authoritarianism?
JOHN WHITEHEAD: What’s effective is consistency. And that is being involved and staying involved. Another thing, and I’m telling people this, the average American, basically they’re saying now watches 150 hours of screen devices a month. I’m telling people, cut down that screen device time. Take 40 hours off of that and give that 40 hours to your local communities like I say, and enforce the 10th Amendment. Go to your governor and start protesting in front of your governor and get him involved and bring him into your local community and go up there, get out across the country and connect with other groups. That’s the only thing you can do, but you’re going to have to do it.
I mean, sitting and watching TV. They love that. That’s what they want. They want you watching the news. And I tell people, be careful watching the news. It was Carl Bernstein of Bernstein-Woodward who fought Nixon, who said he was shocked after the whole Nixon crisis when he started working for bigger newspapers and television networks—that the government was sitting in their offices, vetting their articles and helping determine what was going to be said.
James Madison, the author of our Bill of Rights, said, “We ought to mistrust all those in power.” And that’s it. If you trust the government to save your freedoms, you’re going to lose them. The only way you’re going to save your freedoms is if you fight to save them and it can start maybe with two or three people. Listen, we’ve defended people. We’re a civil liberties group. We’ve defended people where two guys will go out and sit in front of a building and project “We hate the government” on a building or something. They might get arrested when we defend them and get their rights back. OK? That’s how it’s going to be done, folks. You have to participate and watching things is not participation.
For more information, visit The Rutherford Institute at rutherford.org
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