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Trump says Iran’s economy is crashing. Americans expected to pay higher prices for gas, groceries and appliances

by

Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

HCR
Heather Cox Richardson

May 7, 2026

Today Tennessee state representative Justin Jones burned a Confederate battle flag in the rotunda of the Tennessee State Capitol in protest of the legislature’s redrawing of the state’s congressional district maps to erase the majority-Black 9th Congressional District. By cracking the city of Memphis into three pieces and joining them to white suburbs, the legislature turned all the state’s districts into Republican seats.

The actions of the Republicans in the Tennessee legislature are a direct response to the Supreme Court’s April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which found that in creating a second congressional district to enable Black voters to elect a representative of their choice, as mandated by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Louisiana legislature unconstitutionally took race into account when drawing the district lines. Although the Supreme Court’s clerk normally waits 32 days to finalize an opinion, the Supreme Court made the decision effective immediately to allow Louisiana, where the primary election was already underway, to redraw its maps.

Immediately, Republican-dominated state governments rushed to redistrict their states to eliminate majority-Black districts, thus slashing through Democratic representation in their states. As Khaya Himmelman of Talking Points Memo explained today, Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, immediately suspended a congressional primary election that was already underway in order to give Republican legislators a chance to change the maps to give at least one of the state’s two Democratic seats to Republicans.

Although a federal court injunction forbids Alabama from redrawing its maps before the 2030 census, Republican governor Kay Ivey called for the state to do so, and Republican attorney general Steve Marshall has filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court to let the state revert to a map struck down in 2023 because it was racially gerrymandered.

Trump began this gerrymandering arms race last year, pressuring Republican Texas legislators to redistrict the state to help Republicans win the midterms and protect him from investigations and possible impeachment. As of today, Patrick Marley of the Washington Post noted, Republican-dominated legislatures in Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida have redistricted to pick up Republican seats, while Tennessee, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Alabama are engaged in that process. In retaliation, Democrats have temporarily redistricted the states of California and Virginia.

Tennessee is now expected to send only Republicans to Congress. Just minutes after the Republicans cut Memphis into thirds to get rid of the voices of Black Democrats, Republican state senator Brent Taylor announced he was running for the new seat “to stand with President Trump and cement Tennessee’s conservative legacy for generations to come.”

In Tennessee, Representative Steve Cohen, who currently represents Memphis and who is the only Democrat in the Tennessee congressional delegation, posted: “And just like that, the TN GOP voted to enforce a racial gerrymander of Memphis and strip our city of effective representation for decades. Trump knows he HAS TO rig the game to keep his majority in November. And the TN GOP was willing to go along with it. It’s shameful. Next stop is the courts.”

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has already sued to block the redistricting.

Cohen is right that the Republicans recognize the only way for them to win going forward is to skew the maps so that Democrats can’t win, because right now, at least, the administration is a dumpster fire.

This morning, Warren P. Strobel, John Hudson, and Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post reported that the Central Intelligence Agency delivered a confidential analysis of conditions in Iran that suggests the administration has been badly off the mark in its public statements about the war.

Although Trump insists that the war had been an overwhelming military victory and that Iran is suffering so badly from the U.S. military blockade it will have to cave to U.S. demands quickly, the CIA report assesses that, in fact, Iran can survive for at least three or four more months before having to deal with more severe economic hardship. The report also assesses that Iran still has about 75% of the mobile missile launchers it had before the war and about 70% of its missiles.

Trump has told reporters that Iran’s economy is “crashing” and that Iran was down to 18% or 19% of its former missile stocks.

The content of the analysis is important, and so is the fact that CIA analysts are sharing it with reporters, suggesting they are disturbed by the administration’s current trajectory.

The administration insists the war has “terminated,” meaning that it does not have to honor the 1973 War Powers Act that requires the president to either withdraw troops or get congressional approval for continuing military actions. Today the U.S. and Iran exchanged fire in the Strait of Hormuz, with Iran firing on three U.S. destroyers and the U.S. firing on two ships entering the strait.

While the Iranian military called the strikes a violation of the ceasefire, a U.S. official told Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler of Axios that the exchange did not mean the war had resumed. This evening, the president told Rachel Scott of ABC News in a phone call that the ceasefire is still in effect and “the retaliatory strikes against Iranian targets are just a ‘love tap.’”

As the national average for a gallon of gas hit $4.56 today, the British energy giant Shell announced its profits were up 24% in the first three months of 2026. This amounted to almost $7 billion, more than twice what Shell made in the previous quarter.

In the Wall Street Journal, John Keilman reported today that Whirlpool, which makes refrigerators and washing machines, said the Iran war has caused a “recession-level industry decline” and that Americans should expect to pay higher prices for appliances going forward.

While experts say there were about 14 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. in 2025, Trump border advisor Tom Homan told the Fox News Channel today that there are “well over 20 million” undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and “we’re going to do everything we can to arrest as many people as we can.”

But a new Pew poll shows that 52% of Americans already think Trump is cracking down too hard on undocumented immigrants. Politico adds that that number includes about a quarter of the people who voted for him in 2024. It also includes 67% of Latino voters, who had swung toward the Republicans in 2024.

Those poll numbers came before today’s story by Lisa Song, Maya Miller, Melissa Sanchez, and Mariam Elba of ProPublica identifying 79 children injured by tear gas or pepper spray during immigration encounters. While the reporters documented federal agents throwing tear gas and shooting pepper spray into crowds, the Department of Homeland Security said the fault for the children’s injuries lies with “agitators” and parents who put their children in harm’s way. “DHS does NOT target children,” it said.

The journalists assess that their count of 79 injured children is “likely still a vast undercount.”

Americans are paying dearly for the administration’s detention of immigrants. Just today, Patricia Mazzei and Hamed Aleaziz of the New York Times reported that the administration of Florida governor Ron DeSantis is talking with the Trump administration about closing the Everglades detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz. The center has been called unsanitary and inhumane since it opened about ten months ago, yet the cost of housing its 1,400 detainees is more than $1 million a day. DeSantis has asked for $608 million to run the camp for a year.

And then there are Trump’s increasingly high profile attacks on the pope. Pope Leo XIV is the first pope from the United States, and Trump seems determined to challenge him. The pope has spoken out against inhumane treatment of migrants and has called for peace through diplomacy, an observation Trump has taken as criticism of his war on Iran. Last week, Pope Leo appointed Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala to become the new bishop of West Virginia. Menjivar-Ayala was once an undocumented immigrant himself.

Trump posted last month that Pope Leo was “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” and he has continued his attacks, saying Monday: “The pope would rather talk about the fact that it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and I don’t think that’s very good. I think he’s endangering a lot of Catholics, and a lot of people, but I guess if it’s up to the pope, he thinks it’s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

As Sarah Ewall-Wice reported in the Daily Beast, Pope Leo responded indirectly, noting that “[t]he mission of the Church is to preach the Gospel, to preach peace. If anyone wants to criticize me for proclaiming the Gospel, let them do so truthfully.” He continued: “The Church has spoken out against all nuclear weapons for years, so there is no doubt about that.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was at the Vatican today to ease tensions. The visit did not go particularly well. While Rubio gave Pope Leo a crystal football with the seal of the State Department, Pope Leo gave Rubio a pen made from the symbol of peace: olive wood. The Vatican’s statement did not suggest the men found much common ground, saying the meeting included “an exchange of views regarding the regional and international situation, with particular attention to countries marked by war, political tensions, and difficult humanitarian situations, as well as to the need to work tirelessly in support of peace.”

And finally, today the president himself is in the news…or, rather, out of it. Trump, both of whose hands have been covered in makeup lately, apparently to hide bruises, was supposed to have a meeting today with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil at 11:15 that was open to the press. The reporters waited three hours, but the event never happened. At 1:22, Trump’s social media account simply posted that “[t]he meeting went very well” and that representatives from the two countries would continue to meet.

Source: Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

Trump:”Don’t rush me. We were in Vietnam, like, for 18 years”

by

Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

HCR
Heather Cox Richardson

April 26, 2026

Today Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Department of Justice Civil Division wrote to the lawyer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation demanding that the organization drop its lawsuit against Trump’s planned ballroom on the site where the East Wing of the White House used to be.

The letter claimed that there was “another attempt on President Trump’s life” last night at the Washington Hilton, where Secret Service agents apprehended a man carrying a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives on the floor above the room where the White House Correspondents dinner was taking place last night.

The man, whom police have identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of California, sprinted through a magnetometer before authorities stopped him. Shots were fired, although it remains unclear who fired them. A Secret Service agent wearing a bulletproof vest was shot but has been released from the hospital. According to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, the government is charging Cole with two counts of using a firearm and one count of assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon.

Shumate said last night’s incident “proves, yet again, that the White House ballroom is essential for the safety and security of the President, his family, his cabinet, and his staff. When the White House ballroom is complete, President Trump and his successors will no longer need to venture beyond the safety of the White House perimeter to attend large gatherings at the Washington Hilton ballroom. The White House ballroom will ensure the safety and security of the President for decades to come.”

“Put simply,” Shumate wrote, “your lawsuit puts the lives of the President, his family, and his staff at grave risk…. Enough is enough.” He demanded the National Trust for Historic Preservation “voluntarily dismiss this frivolous lawsuit today in light of last night’s assassination attempt on President Trump. If your client does not dismiss the lawsuit by 9:00 AM on Monday, the government will move to dissolve the injunction and dismiss the case in light of last night’s extraordinary events.”

This is an odd angle to take, since, as Bluesky user Tom Shafer pointed out, the Hilton ballroom seats 2,945 people and Trump says his proposed ballroom will seat only 999. And to be clear, a judge has permitted the construction of the secure facility under the ballroom to continue despite the lawsuit; it’s just the ballroom itself that’s currently at issue.

Attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is not an official requirement; this is actually the first time Trump has chosen to go as president. As Emily Davies, Isaac Arnsdorf, Jeremy Roebuck, and Joe Heim of the Washington Post reported today, the Trump administration could have provided a higher level of security last night as it has for other gatherings of high-ranking officials, but it did not designate the dinner as a “National Special Security Event.” Even so, Secret Service agents did indeed stop Cole before he could enter the ballroom.

Yesterday, David A. Fahrenthold, Luke Broadwater, and Andrea Fuller of the New York Times reported that the Trump administration has secretly awarded the company it chose to build the ballroom a no-bid $17.4 million contract to repair two ornamental fountains in Lafayette Park near the White House. In 2022 the Biden administration estimated the cost of the work to be $3.3 million. The journalists explain that the Trump administration dramatically increased the estimated cost by adding an additional 27% for inflation and then adding another inflation estimate of 24%, then increased its estimate by another 50% because it wanted to get the fountains fixed quickly, then simply gave the contract to Maryland-based Clark Construction.

While Trump claims the ballroom will be paid for by private donations, the government will pay for the fountain repairs. This means the contract should have been open for competitive bidding. To justify awarding the contract without that process, the journalists report, the administration cited an “urgency” exception to normal procedures meant for war or natural disasters.

The focus on last night’s event has obscured this upcoming week’s big story.

Trump has justified his refusal to seek congressional approval for his attack on Iran by claiming Iran posed an “imminent threat” to the U.S. While Trump’s own intelligence agencies contradicted that claim, it enabled Republicans to argue that Trump had authority to launch the strikes under the 1973 War Powers Act, which allows the president to act to counter an “imminent” threat.

But the War Powers Act says the president must notify Congress of any such action within 48 hours of its start. Then, by 60 days after that notification, the president has to stop using the military for that action unless the Congress either declares war or authorizes the use of the military for that specific action. Democrats have fought hard against Trump’s unilateral decision to go to war, but Republicans have refused to press him to get congressional approval, apparently hoping that Trump would find a way out of the Middle East crisis before hitting the 60-day mark.

But so far he has not, and the 60-day window closes on May 1.

Trump appears to believe the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports will hurt the country so badly that Iranian leaders will have to agree to his demands. But that pressure will take time to build. “I have all the time in the World, but Iran doesn’t,” he posted Thursday. He told reporters: “Don’t rush me. Don’t rush me…. So we were in Vietnam, like, for 18 years; we were in Iraq for many, many years.… I don’t like to say World War II, because that was a biggie, but we were four and a half, almost five years in World War II. And we were in the Korean war for seven years. I’ve been doing this for six weeks.”

If Trump doesn’t find an end to the conflict, Republicans must either vote to authorize what is already a deeply unpopular war or let Trump continue his war without congressional approval, adding fuel to accusations that he is becoming a dictator. After all, Trump claimed in January, after he had attacked Venezuela without congressional approval, that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional and would “take away our Powers to fight and defend the United States of America.”

The idea that the president can use the military as he wishes without authority from Congress demolishes one of the fundamental principles of our democracy: that we have a right to a say in how our lives and treasure are spent.

Rather than enabling Trump, Republicans could reassert the authority the Framers of the Constitution put in Congress’s hands and stop his deadly blundering.

“We’ve heard a lot of talk from Republicans that they’ll give this president 60 days,” the second-ranking Democrat in the House, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, told Mike Lillis of The Hill. “And this is a failed effort. And it’s long past time that he come to Congress and explain what the strategy is and what the exit is. Republicans have been saying that is a crucial timeline for them. So put your vote up on the board.”

Source: Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

A Shiny Mausoleum on a Hill

by
Sarah Kendzior
 
 

Life, death, and the rampage of ICE.

By Sarah Kendzior | Jan 15, 2026

America is buried near a shining mausoleum on a hill.

Her grave is simple and white. She is surrounded by veterans of every war from the American Revolution to the Black Hawk Revolt to Vietnam. America lived in Illinois, which became a state when she was two. She died aged 53 in 1873, eight years after the Civil War ended. I wonder what she thought was coming.

The headstones surrounding America Myers are battered and worn. Some bear the scars of repair: patchwork tombs of broken remembrances. Others were long rendered indecipherable.

America is buried in Waterloo on a cliff overlooking the American Bottom.

It sounds like I’m making things up, but it’s real. I wasn’t in Waterloo, Illinois, seeking metaphors: I was looking for bald eagles. I didn’t see our national bird make his annual migration. Instead, I found a cemetery and wandered into an empty tomb.

I didn’t feel like writing this week, but God decided to lay it on thick, so here we are.

The American Bottom is an Illinois floodplain where one of the largest indigenous societies, the Mississippian People, lived in the 12th century. They built cities of such grandeur they outdid London in population. No one knows why they fled two centuries later. Today the region is known as Cahokia Mounds, and American Bottoms is a wastewater treatment plant.

Near the grave of America is a crescent of stone. “In Memory,” a sign says. “The stones making the patio in front of this bench, are made from the Tombstones of the many people buried here. LOST FOREVER IN TIME.” The patio was built by Columbia Boy Scout Troop 320. They did a good job.

Past America, past the heartbreaking graves of dead children, past the fallen tombs of forgotten soldiers and their wives, past the prairie grasses that grow defiantly above the poisoned soil, is the mausoleum. It was built by businessman Stephen W. Miles in 1859 for his family but now looms empty on a hill. An open doorway topped with a gargoyle invites you to enter.

I walked in and stood between rows of hollow crypts. Through the door, I watched clouds cast shadows and light burst through. I took photos, capturing crosses formed from slabs where bodies once lay. I felt safe and sad. The first feeling was novel; the second, a chronic condition of the 21st century. It was an honest place, this mausoleum on a hill. It was a hopeful place, restored with purpose, open to the sun.

When I posted a photo of the mausoleum, a man showed me a painting by a 14-year-old girl from Ukraine. She had painted a darkened doorway uncannily like the one in which I stood, down to the cracks in the floor. Her door looked out at the classic Ukraine scene: a golden field and a bright blue sky. This is what I saw in Illinois, too.

The images were so similar that I took them for an omen. I didn’t consider that the omen may have been for the US, also under invasion by a corrupt government, more than an omen of freedom for Ukraine.

I had forgotten that America was buried six feet under, surrounded by veterans who were assured that their sacrifice would prevent the tyranny under which we now live.

“People were free to select their own plot,” said a sign about the cemetery. I want to be free to select my own plot instead of living under unpunished treachery. I want my plot to be something more than a hole in the ground or a hole in the head.

* * *

In 2025, I saw the Mississippi River in Minnesota for the first time. That meant I had seen it in every state through which it flows, a feat I celebrated with unease. The goal of the Trump administration is to strip the US for parts. The Mississippi River is one part, and the Great Lakes are another.

I have seen the Mississippi River in every major city from its New Orleans basin to my St. Louis home to Minneapolis, which means I’ve seen it roll by police brutality and white mob violence in multiple places, as people have for as long as this country has existed, and well before.

Waterloo is near East St. Louis, Illinois, where a white mob slaughtered Black residents in 1917. Across the river in Missouri is Ferguson, where I ran from tear gas and police batons in 2014. Ferguson, which rid me of any illusion of how far the police would go, and how little most people would care after the initial outcry.

The Mississippi River is a migratory flyway, and not only for birds. Pundits and politicians fly in and out too. Minneapolis, where the George Floyd protests invigorated a mass movement for racial justice only to later be demonized, is familiar with fair-weather friends.

In December 1811, a record earthquake in Missouri made the Mississippi River flow backward. I thought of it in 2020 as Minneapolis rose up under police siege. I think of it now, as residents try to oust ICE and Minnesota mom Renee Nicole Good was shot dead by an ICE agent who called her a “fucking bitch.” Ferguson had rolled upstream.

People try to distinguish between ICE and police, but they operate as a tandem force. ICE is a new and unnecessary creation, formed in 2003, that wages a war of terror on civilians. ICE obeys the wishes of elites who seek to break the law. For everyone else, ICE promises only fear. Good’s crime was that she was not fearful enough.

Minnesota residents, determined to protect each other from ICE, are afraid — and brave. The two are not mutually exclusive. To fight on behalf of others in the midst of abandonment from officials, derision from the press, and the threat of fatal force: that’s not Minnesota Nice, that’s Minnesota Noble.

Minnesota police should be protecting residents from an invading federal force. But that is not what police do. Police have been trained to attack those whom they are tasked to serve and protect. They are told to back ICE — armed agents abusing and kidnapping their neighbors — and to fear punishment if they refuse.

This is not a civil war. This is a federal invasion by a mafia state.

The mafia state wants to strip the US and sell it for parts. The Great Lakes region, in the climate change era, is a valuable part. Minnesota, a Midwest Democratic stronghold, is an inconvenient part. Minneapolis, with its diverse immigrant population and history of police violence, is a strategic part.

ICE has been battering Americans and aspiring American citizens for two decades. It was rewarded for its brutality with an enormous boost in funding by Joe Biden. ICE funding was further increased by Trump, who also granted them explicit impunity.

It does not matter, in practical terms, whether ICE’s actions are legal. In mafia states, legal is a malleable notion. What matters is that they are wrong. What matters is how they can be stopped.

The gulf between law and justice is wide, but public understanding bends like the Mississippi River, the river where Dred Scott’s daughter was born stateless, the river that divided the enslaved from the free. Americans have been misled by pundits who proclaim the US a “nation of laws”. It makes no difference if the US is a nation of laws when courts are selective in their application. Autocracies are nations of laws, too.

The US is a nation of targets. A felon is the president and random civilians can be kidnapped without recourse. State-sanctioned violence was the inevitable result of the Biden administration countenancing sedition and refusing to prosecute Trump and other elites for crimes, no matter how brazenly they confessed them.

* * *

They say you are defined by the company you keep. These days I am defined by ghosts. Since 2025, I’ve been roaming cemeteries to the point that their residents feel like friends. My worst fears can’t be realized here: you can’t kill what’s already dead.

But the mausoleum on a hill is alive. When I looked it up after returning home, I was horrified to see old photos of its white marble covered in graffiti, its cemetery a mess of overturned stones. The recent repair is more than aesthetic. Volunteers put the puzzle pieces of American history back together. Every cemetery is a road map of American life, a bulwark against the annihilation of memory.

I spent my childhood listening to Ronald Reagan call America “a shining city on a hill, teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace” while his friends planned our country’s demise in a scheme later christened Project 2025. The “city on a hill” ideal of freedom for all has been recited from the Puritan era to the present by politicians who refuse to honor its principles in practice.

I’ve abandoned the shining city on the hill. But the shining mausoleum on a hill: that I can embrace. The shining mausoleum on a hill is real. I’ve seen its decay and its revival. I’ve born witness to its recreation and redemption. I’ve studied its dead: the names, the dates. My fellow Americans fallen in Waterloo.

We go to cemeteries to grieve. I grieve for strangers because I don’t want the part of me that mourns tragedy and spurns injustice to die. In a country where officials act like death no longer matters, here lies a grand rebuttal.

* * *

Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

 
     

Trump’s pardoning of the January 6 rioters became an endorsement of violence

by

Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

Heather Cox Richardson

June 15, 2025

Yesterday began with the horrific news that a gunman had shot two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses in what Minnesota governor Tim Walz said appeared to be a “politically motivated assassination.” State representative Melissa Hortman, who was the top Democrat in the Minnesota House, and her husband, Mark, both died in the attack at their home in Brooklyn Park, a city near Minneapolis. The gunman also shot Democratic Minnesota state senator John Hoffman nine times and his wife, Yvette, eight at their home in Champlin. The hospital reports they are in stable condition after surgery.

Law enforcement officers encountered the suspected gunman, 57-year-old Vance Boelter, coming out of Hortman’s house. He was dressed as a police officer. Officers exchanged gunfire with him before he fled, leaving behind his vehicle, which looked much like a police car. In it was a list of dozens of people he wanted to kill. They were mostly Democrats or people connected to abortion rights efforts. Law enforcement officers captured Boelter tonight.

MAGA Republicans are working hard to identify Boelter with what Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) called “Marxism” and Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) called “the extreme left,” but as investigative journalist Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 Nashville notes, public databases show Boelter was in the past a registered Republican. His evangelical religion and his anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion stances reflect MAGA positions. Boelter’s roommate told reporters that Boelter was a “strong” supporter of President Trump.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) noted that MAGA has been “bathed in political violence” for the last five years. Trump’s pardoning of the January 6 rioters, including those convicted of extreme violence, “became a clear endorsement of violence committed in his name.” Trump has encouraged violence and cozied up to brutal dictators, while MAGA has fetishized guns. When he celebrates violence, unhinged people listen. Murphy points out that while people of all political persuasions commit violence, no Democratic leader encourages violence as a political norm the way Trump and MAGA have done, citing “a straight line from Jan 6 to the pardons to the assault on Sen[ator] Padilla to Minnesota.”

After the shootings, Andrew Solender of Axios reported that lawmakers of both parties are concerned about their own safety as political violence increases. The Minnesota attacks happened just days after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s security guard shoved Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) to the ground and handcuffed him after he asked a question. This assault sparked apparent fury among the Democrats on Capitol Hill as they challenged their Republican colleagues—largely unsuccessfully—to speak up against the assault on a senator.

The entire Minnesota delegation to the U.S. Congress issued a joint statement on politically motivated shootings. Democrats and Republicans together wrote: “Today we speak with one voice to express our outrage, grief, and condemnation of this horrible attack on public servants. There is no place in our democracy for politically-motivated violence. We are praying for John and Yvette’s recovery and we grieve the loss of Melissa and Mark with their family, colleagues, and Minnesotans across the state. We are grateful for law enforcement’s swift response to the situation and continued efforts.”

After that start to the day, the country turned to the “No Kings” protests. In a dramatic rejection of Trump’s consolidation of power, at least five million Americans turned out for peaceful protests across the country. Cities turned out huge numbers of protesters at more than 2,000 planned events, and small towns, including those in Republican-dominated states, also boasted rallies. The mood was festive as people held signs with anti-Trump and pro-American images and slogans and sang Woody Guthrie’s famous American anthem, “This Land Is Your Land.” American flags were everywhere.

In contrast to the huge turnout for the protests, the military parade in Washington, D.C., was a bust. Although Trump had claimed it would be a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the American Army, it was also his 79th birthday and was widely interpreted primarily as a celebration of that occasion. Trump has wanted a parade since 2017, when he viewed the traditional Bastille Day military parade in Paris. At the time, he told reporters: “It was one of the greatest parades I’ve ever seen…. We’re going to have to try to top it.”

But organizers had had only two months to arrange for the parade, and the result was badly organized, with relatively few people turning out, especially after forecasts of storms that evening. Far from the crisp marching of the military parades that Trump seemed to want to top, the U.S. soldiers appeared to shuffle, leading to a social media debate over whether they had been ordered to march in an “at ease march” instead of a more rigorous step, or whether they were silently protesting. Photographers recorded empty bleachers and thin crowds. Few Republican lawmakers attended, but cameras caught Trump looking miserable and Secretary of State Marco Rubio yawning.

The contrast between the protests and the military parade suggested an important shift in political culture. The momentum and the joy, as well as the American flags, were on the side of those protesting Trump’s growing authoritarianism. Trump looked weak and discouraged, and the crowds were clearly on the side of the protesters. Today, social media, including a Russian account, got into the act of making fun of Trump’s military parade.

At the Philadelphia Inquirer, Will Bunch noted that “the flag is mightier than the tank.”

The rejection Trump faced yesterday, podcaster Jack Hopkins noted, “was a big tub of rock salt poured on his wounds of lifelong insecurity.” That profound injury to Trump’s sense of self braced observers for a lashing out of epic proportions as he tries to demonstrate that he is, in fact, powerful.

We got that anger and fear in a social media post at 8:43 p.m. tonight. In a post almost certainly not written by Trump, his account backed off on Trump’s recent retreat from mass deportations. Instead, the account said “ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”

The account then declared war on Democrats. The day after a gunman shot two Democratic lawmakers and their spouses in their homes, Trump’s account posted:

“[W]e must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens. These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities—And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them. That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports—And that is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role. You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!”

The post promised ICE that “REAL Americans are cheering you on every day” and urged them to “reverse the tide of Mass Destruction Migration that has turned once Idyllic Towns into scenes of Third World Dystopia.” It doubled down on the neo-Nazi idea of “REMIGRATION” and concluded: “To ICE, FBI, DEA, ATF, the Patriots at Pentagon and the State Department, you have my unwavering support. Now go, GET THE JOB DONE! DJT”

Will Trump’s demands swing people behind him? Americans have already turned against Trump’s handling of immigration and deportations by significant margins. G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers summarized the polls from June 9–13. Answering the question “Do you approve of the way the president is handling…immigration?” respondents for YouGov/Economist were the only ones to produce a majority—of just four points—saying yes. For AP-NORC, Quinnipiac, and Washington Post/GMU, the answer was no by as much as 15 points. On every other question dealing with immigration, more people opposed Trump’s policies than supported them by as much as 16 points.

Trump’s other policies are underwater—meaning more people oppose them than approve of them—as well. Only 27% of registered voters support the Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill, while 53% oppose it. As for Trump himself, a Quinnipiac Poll from June 11 showed that 38% of registered voters approve of the way he is handling the job of the presidency, while 54% disapprove. Only 30% of registered voters approved “strongly” of the way he is handling the job, while 49% strongly disapprove.

While Trump and his loyalists are trying to project an image of invincibility, their actual power seems to be faltering.

Ten years ago tomorrow, on June 16, 2015, Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower to a lobby filled with extras, to announce he was running for president. One reporter called his speech, in which he claimed that Mexico was sending criminals and rapists to the United States, “eccentric.”