Most Americans are like the proverbial frogs, noticing that the water is heating up but not realizing that by the time it gets to a boil, they’ll be cooked.

Each of the following bullet points represents potentially fatal shots targeting the core institutions of our Democracy. Together, they will be fatal unless We the People strenuously oppose them. Fatalistic acceptance would indeed be fatal.

•We see Musk and DOGE vivisecting our government with a brutality that is destructive and arbitrary. It withholds money appropriated by Congress. It attacks their constitutional obligation over the nation’s purse strings and effectively neutralizes congressional power. This coup against the legislature began before the inauguration, with Trump demanding that the Senate confirm all his nominees immediately or go into recess and let him make recess appointments. They rolled and confirmed everyone except Matt Gaetz. This is a coup!

• We saw him take over the Department of Justice. It’s his DOJ, his Attorney General, his White House Council and his lawyer. He tells them whom to investigate and orders them to go after his old enemies and former friends by whom he feels betrayed. This is a coup!

• We see Trump’s administration ignoring court orders and lying about what they say, e.g., the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that everyone is entitled to due process before being expelled. The administration mischaracterized this as a great victory by citing their right to expel illegals without referencing their duty to grant hearings first. They claim to be powerless in correcting an admitted mistake. A judge has found them to be acting with contempt and cites them laughing at the court order not to expel people without a hearing. El Salvador’s president says “Whoopsie.” Marco Rubio retweets it, proving his personal contempt. They seem to be saying, “Court orders? We don’t gotta show you no stinking court orders.” This is a coup!

• We watch them attack our academic institutions by withholding funds and demanding the power to change admissions policies, curriculum and hiring. They do this in the name of fighting Anti-Semitism. As a Jew, I’m in favor of fighting Anti-Semitism, but I don’t believe for a moment that they are motivated by a deep hatred of Anti-Semitism. This is a cynical Trojan Horse to gain entry and influence in Academia. This is a coup!

• They are using government grants to control education at all levels, including demands to rid libraries of bad books that they consider anti-American because they might make White people feel bad. Off the shelves at our military academies are MAUS, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and To Kill a Mockingbird. The remaining is Hitler’s Mein Kampf. No bonfires yet but… This is a coup!

• They challenge the right of the court to judge by hiding behind the catchall of national security, and they claim that courts have no power to intervene in foreign policy. Arrests and deportations are clearly domestic. This is a challenge to the fundamental power of the Supreme Court under Marbury v Madison, which created their right to decide what is Constitutional. If this goes, we are gone as a Democracy. They intimidate the courts by calling judges whom they don’t like “Lunatics” and “Far left haters of America.” They threaten them with impeachment. Even Chief Justice Roberts is moved to observe that “Impeachment isn’t appropriate when you don’t like a ruling.” For Roberts, this is what passes for courage in these dark times. This is a coup!

• We know that they are intentionally breaking our healthcare system by appointing RFK Jr to dismember it, push anti-vax ideas, and propose quick responses to disease outbreaks. This is putting a rabid fox in charge of the henhouse. And who better to help him than Dr. Oz? This is both a takeover and a perversion of science and medicine. This is a coup!

• We seem to tolerate thugs showing up at schools and lying in an effort to obtain access to kids in order to get to their parents. We see thugs grabbing people off the streets without warrants and pushing them into cars to hustle them off to Texas or Louisiana, where they can’t have meaningful counsel or contact with their families before being sent into exile. Getting a warrant is treated as an unreasonable demand that can be ignored. The 5th Amendment no longer protects us, our privacy or our person. This is a coup!

• In less than 100 days, he has taken over the Executive branch, gotten the Republican-controlled Legislative branch to surrender, attacked Academia with threats and monetary coercion, and taken over both Defense and Intelligence This is not a slow-moving coup. This is a coup!

• Forget the chaos of tariffs or the actual corruption of shorting an unstable market or profiting from insider information. Forget the change in foreign policy from multi-national alliances to bilateral. Chaos, intentional chaos, is a means to manipulate the public into craving order. This is how you get the public to support a coup. This is a coup!

• Who will stop it? Will the military refuse “unlawful orders” from this President? I say with both regret and certainty, No! Already, armed thugs with badges are entering governmental buildings without warrants and herding employees out the door. ICE agents are making warrantless arrests and using threats and violence to intimidate the wider public.
If protests turn violent, either on their own or because of government provocateurs, does anyone doubt that Trump will declare an Insurrection and deploy our, I mean “his,” troops? Do you believe, with many seasoned military forcibly retired, Sec Hegseth will have trouble finding generals who fear that they must obey or lose their jobs, rank and pensions, all the while knowing that if they refuse, Trump will find some willing accomplices who will obey?

• This is a coup! It’s moving at lightning speed, and we are wondering when it might begin. The water is not at full boil, but it is simmering. Are we still able to escape and fight? I don’t know, but I do know that everything depends on it.
Everything depends on us.