Everything you care about is under attack but you still need to function

“How are you doing?”

These days, what used to be a casual greeting can seem like an existential question -- something more like: “So, how are you personally handling the extraordinary cognitive dissonance of the moment?”

Because on the one hand, Donald Trump is doing catastrophic damage to our country and our democracy and the world every single day. It’s awful.

But on the other hand, life goes on -- for most of us, pretty much the same as usual. The job still needs to get done. The errands still need to get run.

I was quite taken by an essay in the Guardian the other day, by writer Adrienne Matei, in which she uses the word “hypernormalization” to describe “the weird, dire atmosphere of the US in 2025.” She explains:

First articulated in 2005 by scholar Alexei Yurchak to describe the civilian experience in Soviet Russia, hypernormalization describes life in a society where two main things are happening.

The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation.

One possible response is to just shut down:

Confronting systemic collapse can be so disorienting, overwhelming and even humiliating, that many tune it out or find themselves in a state of freeze.

But here’s the little bit of good news:

Experts say action can break the spell. “Being active politically, in whatever way, I think helps reduce apocalyptic gloom,” says Betsy Hartmann, an activist, scholar and author of The America Syndrome, which explores the importance of resisting apocalyptic thinking.

And just doing it online doesn’t count, apparently:

“It’s easy to feel like: ‘Oh, I’m in community because I’m on TikTok,’” she says. But genuine community is about “getting outside and talking to your neighbor and knowing that there’s someone out there that can help you if something really bad goes down,” she says.

“You’re actually out there talking to people, working with people and realizing there are so many good people in the world, too, and maybe feeling less isolated than before,” says Hartmann.

Now, I can reasonably assume you care about democracy because you’re reading this newsletter. But what happens when you get outside and talk to your neighbors and they don’t seem to share your concerns?

As Ben Raderstorf, a policy advocate at Protect Democracy, writes in his group’s “If you can keep it” newsletter, the fact is that “a huge portion of the country is unalarmed, apathetic, indifferent, or even generally supportive of what’s happening.”

How is that possible? Raderstorf writes:

I think part of the problem is a lack of a common understanding of “democracy.” I’m not sure we all know or agree on what that word means. Too often we see it as an empty label; we take it for granted. After all, the United States has a constitution, congress, elections, laws, and courts. Few experts expect those things to disappear altogether (the worry, to be clear, is they might simply stop being a constraint on those in power).

Raderstorf’s suggestion is to explain democracy “through its benefits” – specifically “three massive and intertwined advantages”:

Rule of law: Predictable outcomes based on fair processes, not the whims of the powerful.

Individual rights: The basic protections and assurances that keep us safe from harm and abuse.

Electoral freedom: Our ability to choose our leaders – and to vote them out.

Nat Kendall-Taylor, the chief executive of the nonprofit FrameWorks Institute, makes a similar argument in the Bulwark.

Many of us use terms like “civil society,” “competitive authoritarianism,” and “executive overreach”, but people in Kendall-Taylor’s focus groups “speak about their daily experiences,” he writes. “They talk about how things are moving too fast, voice a deep sense of uncertainty, and express a palpable apprehension about how this whiplash could affect their wallets.” His advice:

Mirror these concerns. Affirm and acknowledge those feelings of chaos and uncertainty. We all feel them.

Link the chaos people are feeling to decisions being made and the way they are being made. We need to make it clear that the fear people are experiencing is the direct result of arbitrary and unilateral executive decisions. The effects of executive overreach are not theoretical, so why make them sound that way? Connect action with outcomes. And repeat.

Connect feelings of financial precarity to the erosion of the rule of law. For example, when discussing the effect of tariffs on how much things cost, we need to be clear that tariffs aren’t some force of nature but rather the result of decisions the president made.

Then Take Action

At least four significant protests are scheduled for the next two and a half weeks.

First, join Bishop William Barber in his second monthly “Moral Monday” event on Capitol Hill on June 2. You can register here to attend or get the livestream link to watch where you are. The organizers write:

As the cries of the poor grow louder and the policies of the powerful grow colder, we must rise. Across lines of faith, race, and region, moral witnesses will converge at the very steps where justice has been delayed, where truth has been trampled, and where budgets have become weapons against the vulnerable.

On the 81-year anniversary of D-Day, Friday, June 6, United for Veterans and 50501 are joining forces to hold a major rally in Washington, as well as supporting rallies in the 50 states.

“Veterans and military family members are being fired by the thousands from federal jobs. Our healthcare is being gutted. Our benefits are under siege,” says United for Veterans. The rally aims to:

• Defend veteran and military family member employment in the federal workforce

• Stop the privatization and weakening of the Department of Veterans Affairs

• Hold political leaders accountable for policies that harm veterans and their families

As part of WorldPride 2025 events being held in Washington, there will be a rally and march on Sunday, June 8 . The organizers say:

Decades of progress in protecting human rights are under a coordinated, systematic attack. Today the targets are gender, sexual orientation and race—but it won’t stop there. It’s happened before. It’s happening now. Our fundamental freedoms—and our very democracy—are at risk. And if we fail to recognize the urgency of this moment, we’ll only have ourselves to blame. Resist the marginalization and persecution of people just for being who they are.

And June 14 is No Kings Day, with events all over the country but NOT in Washington DC, as counterprogramming to Trump’s birthday military parade in the Capital. The organizers explain:

Instead of allowing this birthday parade to be the center of gravity, we will make action everywhere else the story of America that day: people coming together in communities across the country to reject strongman politics and corruption.

NPR Joins the Resistance

National Public Radio and three Colorado public radio stations filed suit Tuesday in federal court over Trump’s executive order that purports to ban the use of Congressionally appropriated funds for NPR and PBS.

"It is not always obvious when the government has acted with a retaliatory purpose in violation of the First Amendment. 'But this wolf comes as a wolf,'" NPR’s lawyers argue in their complaint. They explain:

The Order’s objectives could not be clearer: the Order aims to punish NPR for the content of news and other programming the President dislikes and chill the free exercise of First Amendment rights by NPR and individual public radio stations across the country. The Order is textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the First Amendment, and it interferes with NPR’s and the Local Member Stations’ freedom of expressive association and editorial discretion.

And when I say NPR is joining the resistance, I am in no way suggesting that it is becoming a partisan, rather than independent, voice. Rather, I agree with NPR chief executive Katherine Maher.

“I fundamentally reject the idea that defending the Constitution is partisan,” Maher told newsletter author Oliver Darcy. “We are taking this action on behalf of the First Amendment. We’re taking this action on behalf of the free press. Regardless of your political beliefs, we all benefit from that.”

In Other Lawsuit News

• Stanford political science professor Adam Bonica calculates that “In May 2025, federal district courts ruled against the Trump administration in 26 of 27 cases—a stunning 96% loss rate.” That, he writes, “suggests a potential inflection point in the judiciary's engagement with an executive that has consistently tested constitutional boundaries.”

• A judge in Washington on Tuesday issued a rousing decision striking down Trump’s executive order punishing the WilmerHale law firm. Judge Richard Leon’s decision marks the third time a judge has struck down a Trump order targeting a law firm. “The cornerstone of the American system of justice is an independent judiciary and an independent bar willing to tackle unpopular cases, however daunting,” Leon wrote. “The Founding Fathers knew this!”

• A federal judge last week extended her freeze on Trump’s plan for mass layoffs and reorganizations at 22 federal agencies. Judge Susan Illston wrote in her order granting a preliminary injunction: “Presidents may set policy priorities for the executive branch, and agency heads may implement them. This much is undisputed. But Congress creates federal agencies, funds them, and gives them duties that—by statute—they must carry out. Agencies may not conduct large-scale reorganizations and reductions in force in blatant disregard of Congress’s mandates, and a President may not initiate large-scale executive branch reorganization without partnering with Congress.”

• A federal judge in Massachusetts last week blocked Trump’s executive order aimed at dismantling the Education Department, ordering the reinstatement of thousands of fired employees. “The record abundantly reveals that Defendants’ true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department without an authorizing statute,” Judge Myong Joun wrote.

• A federal judge last week ruled that Trump broke the law when he fired members of the independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board without cause in January, ordering the reinstatement of the Democratic-selected members.

• A federal judge in California last week blocked the Trump regime from terminating the legal statuses of international students at universities across the U.S. “[T]he relief the Court grants provides Plaintiffs with a measure of stability and certainty that they will be able to continue their studies or their employment without the threat of re-termination hanging over their heads,” wrote Judge Jeffrey S. White.

Who’s With LaMonica McIver?

Back on May 9, a gathering of people including three members of Congress outside an ICE facility in Newark turned into a chaotic scrum when federal agents closed in to arrest Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark on a clearly bogus trespassing charge.

That charge was soon dropped, but last week, Trump’s Justice Department charged one of the members of Congress, Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), with two counts of assaulting, impeding or interfering with a Homeland Security officer.

The lawmakers have all said that the agents were the aggressors. The Washington Post examined videos of the scene and found a lot of jostling, including some negligible contact between McIver and two agents.

MoveOn has decried the charges as “a terrifying abuse of power” that illustrates “the dangerous lengths Republicans are willing to go to silence and intimidate those who disagree with the MAGA agenda.”

Now two major Black media figures are calling for sustained outrage. Nation columnist Elie Mystal and MSNBC host Symone D. Sanders-Townsend are both casting support for McIver as a litmus test for the resistance.

Here’s Mystal:

The charges against McIver are a form of political intimidation, meant to discourage people from standing up to Trump’s government. That intimidation will only work if the people don’t have McIver’s back. Nobody is going to be willing to be a political martyr for the resistance if the resistance doesn’t give a damn when they are persecuted. If people cannot see their way clear to lock arms around McIver and go to the mattresses in her defense, then, well, that says a lot about whether this country, or even just the base of the Democratic Party, really wants people to “fight” ICE and stand up to Trump.

If you are one of those people who has been wondering when the elected Democrats will fight back against Trump, then your job is to make LaMonica McIver a righteous superstar

Here’s Sanders-Townsend:

Let’s get something straight: what’s happening to McIver is not about law and order. It’s not about whether she assaulted a federal agent or obstructed justice. It’s about the federal government weaponizing its power to intimidate those who dare to push back — and, in this instance, against Black women in positions of authority…

McIver is facing federal charges. Not because of what she did, but because of what she represents. This is a test case. A message. If they can do this to a sitting congresswoman with constitutional oversight power, then they can certainly do it to anyone. A mayor. A whistleblower. A student protester. A visa holder. A former government employee. This is not about lawbreaking; this is about silencing dissent….

So I ask: Who’s going to stand with Congresswoman McIver? Who will put their voice, their vote, and their own political capital on the line for her?

Memorial Day Weekend put a damper on a lot of political activity, but will Democrats and key resistance figures rally behind McIver? It’s not at all clear that they will.

Protest Watch

• Public Citizen organized a spirited protest outside Trump’s meme coin gala at his Virginia golf club on Thursday, “to protest the president’s unprecedented ethics violations and corruption techniques.” Here’s a compilation video and a photo gallery. Bloomberg’s story was headlined “Protesters Yell ‘Shame’ at Guests of Trump’s Memecoin Dinner”. The New York Times article prominently featured a photo of protesters.

• Protesters also gathered on Saturday outside Wet Point, where Trump spoke at graduation ceremonies. “GO ARMY BEAT FASCISM” was a popular poster. Here’s a photo gallery.

Here’s To Those Pushing Back

• Read this New York Times article about how “several Nashville residents and immigration advocacy groups are now acting as unofficial chroniclers of immigration activity.” One group “set up a hotline for community members to call in and report any sign of immigration enforcement.” Volunteers “circulate warnings about where the Tennessee Highway Patrol and ICE agents have been spotted together. State troopers can make routine traffic stops. Immigration officers legally cannot without probable cause or a warrant, but together, it meant traffic stops could end in immigration arrests.”

• And read this Associated Press article about how United Way Worldwide and other foundations have launched a new award for “civic bravery,” which includes grants of up to $50,000. Among the honorees: a Colorado nonprofit that mobilizes evangelical women to advocate for asylum seekers and immigrants drawing on their faith; and educators from upstate New York whose efforts freed three students and their mother who were arrested by ICE in March.