From big cities to small towns, citizens will declare “no” to authoritarianism on Donald Trump’s birthday
“Nah, he wouldn’t really do that.”
I’ve lived in the Upper Delaware Valley for five years, first in Pike County, Pennsylvania, and now in Sullivan County, New York. My county went 58% for Trump last November, and several of my pro-Trump neighbors made remarks like that in the lead-up to the election. Deep down, they know Trump is a liar and con artist, even if they find him entertaining and thrillingly transgressive.
They didn’t take his bombast and grandiose promises seriously. Like establishing high tariffs. Abolishing the Department of Education. Arresting diverse “enemies,” including a federal judge, a congressional representative, a mayor and a student journalist. Or slashing funding for Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) and the National Institutes of Health. Or demolishing federal government agencies, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Board, Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, National Weather Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Federal Drug Administration, Occupational Safety and Health Administration or Environmental Protection Agency. Who’s going to warn you if a wildfire, tornado or hurricane is headed our way? Who will bring emergency relief if you’re unlucky enough to be in its path?
It wasn’t only my upstate neighbors or people like them elsewhere—small business owners, farmers, service sector employees, teachers and retired workers—who declared, “Nah, he wouldn’t really do that.” Sophisticated Wall Street titans wanting tax cuts and deregulation muttered the same thing and then freaked out when Trump imposed tariffs that tanked the stock market. Republican members of Congress have stood idly by and let Trump run roughshod over the limits of executive power, insisting that he is “only joking” when floating ideas like running for a third term. This may be a way to “flood the zone with shit,” as Steve Bannon once put it, but such jokes often have serious consequences.
“I don’t know.” That’s what Trump responded when NBC reporter Kristen Welker asked him whether he was obliged to uphold the U.S. Constitution. They were talking about due process for migrants, but Trump’s ignorance of and contempt for the Constitution go way beyond that. Accepting the Emir of Qatar’s gift of a $400 million jet plane, for example, violates Article 1, Section 9, of the Constitution, which states that “no Person holding any Office … shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” The Emir of Qatar, formerly a prince, is now a king, and is the personification of a foreign state.
Since his inauguration Trump has issued nearly 200 executive orders. Some are brutally cruel, like invoking an “invasion” to remove migrants with no criminal record to prisons in third countries, or dangerously shortsighted, like withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement. Others are peevishly petty like promoting plastic drinking straws, discontinuing minting pennies or demanding higher water pressure in showerheads. As of May 23, 177 court rulings had at least temporarily paused some of these initiatives.
It’s not just that Trump is reveling in Qatar’s gift of the opulently appointed Boeing 747 (which will have to be torn to pieces if it is to be brought up to Air Force One’s security standards). It’s that Trump too aspires to be like the emir, a king with all the dictatorial powers that absolute monarchy implies. In December 2023, when Trump remarked to Sean Hannity that he would only be a dictator on “day one,” his aides dismissed the comment as a joke. Fast forward to February of this year, the White House posted a mock TIME magazine cover that showed Trump wearing a golden crown. In place of the magazine’s name was “TRUMP” and below the words, “Long live the king.”
Many of those people who used to say, “Nah, he wouldn’t really do that” will continue to insist, “C’mon, he’s just joking.” But is he?
“Make America Think Again” is what I hoped for in the days before the 2024 election. What I’d say to my neighbors today is: If you’re having trouble finding affordable housing, low-income immigrants doubling up in substandard apartments aren’t screwing you as much as those private equity firms that snapped up so many foreclosed properties following the 2008 crisis and jacked up rents and sales prices.
Like most rural counties, Sullivan County, in the western Catskills where I live, receives far more in federal funds than we pay in taxes. In our county, 37.2% of the population is on Medicaid, the third highest proportion of any county in New York State. Federal cuts to Medicaid affect not just Medicaid beneficiaries, who lose medical insurance, but also the solvency of local clinics and hospitals. When nurses and physician assistants are laid off, or health care facilities close because of falling reimbursements, the diners where employees bought their meals will also suffer.
Effects like these cascade through entire regional economies. Farmers are already complaining that the USDA’s cancellation of contracts they signed for reimbursement of infrastructure and conservation improvements on their properties has saddled them with massive debt, having spent money for planting or infrastructure and conservation improvements expecting reimbursement from the government. USDA also halted procurement programs that sourced fresh, local foods for school cafeterias. Together with the cuts to SNAP and dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), both programs that purchased huge amounts of food, farmers are reeling—and will be spending less at our region’s businesses. The kids in school will be eating less nutritious food. It’s hardly Making America Healthy Again.
At the same time that the administration is abandoning rural America, it is fighting tooth and nail to get Congress to pass enormous tax cuts for the rich, and promoting influence-buying scandals like the $TRUMP meme coin and its gala gazillionaires’ dinner. Meanwhile, Elon Musk and the DOGE boys have eviscerated entire federal agencies with impunity. Do people remember that Trump and his cronies once yapped incessantly about “Drain the Swamp”?
Two-hundred-and-fifty years ago the American colonists revolted against George III, the “mad king” who governed them. This year, a new mad king plans to celebrate his birthday on Flag Day with an expensive, over-the-top military parade, paid for by you the taxpayer.
On June 14, citizens throughout the land will take to the streets in large cities and small towns to celebrate “No Kings Day.” We will remind the Trump administration that no one is above the rule of law and declare: no thrones, no crowns, no kings.
Click here to find a No Kings Day event near you.
Marc Edelman lives in the western Catskills, in New York State. He has worked for more than three decades on rural development issues, agrarian history and peasant and farmer movements.
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