 So I want you all to just take a moment and really reflect on what is happening around us currently. On the spectrum between democracy and authoritarianism, we are rapidly shifting towards authoritarianism. We are effectively becoming an authoritarian police state before our very eyes. We're moving away from proto-fascism and devolving into an outright fascistic regime. And the police are upholding this fascism. They are complicit now. And I don't want to sound hyperbolic because I don't want to give you the impression that this is some sort of new phenomenon. We have been gradually moving closer and closer towards authoritarianism ever since 9-11 when we saw things like the Patriot Act. And never ending war and later and later stages of capitalism. But now, with everything that's transpired over the last couple of months, we are really seeing the death of the American Empire. And it is really overwhelming. And part of the reason why we're witnessing this acceleration of our slide into authoritarianism is because Donald Trump is hungry for power and he is trying to consolidate the power of the executive. Now it's not like Donald Trump is the only president to expand the power of the executive branch, but he's making really large leaps to make sure that the president can essentially do what he wants. So when I tell you that we are devolving into an authoritarian regime, I'm not trying to make it seem as if we're going to turn into North Korea by next Tuesday. But what I do want to emphasize here is that our constitutional rights, our civil liberties, are being attacked by the United States government openly. And there's various examples that point to that. So let's just look at what Donald Trump has done over the course of the last week. Put aside, you know, the complete failed response to COVID-19, but look at what he's done just last week. So first, he says that the United States government will now designate ANTIFA as a terrorist organization. And if you don't know why that's troubling, well, as journalist Ben Norton points out, ANTIFA is not an actual organization. It's a decentralized group. There are no quote-unquote ANTIFA leaders. So now the US government will have the quote-unquote right to imprison anyone for quote-unquote terrorism if it just claims they're part of ANTIFA. Designating ANTIFA as a terrorist organization would be like designating environmentalists or socialists or anti-racists as terrorists. ANTIFA just means anti-fascist. ANTIFA isn't an organization, party, or gang. You can't be an official member, but the US police state knows that. So by designating ANTIFA as a terrorist organization, this is giving the US government permission, or more specifically a justification, to indefinitely detain United States citizens. You can just say they're doing terrorist activity if they are anti-fascist at all and lock them up. So this gives the US government a blank check effectively to lock up anyone. Because aren't most Americans technically anti-fascist? I mean, I'd hope so, right? Because that's all that ANTIFA is. But on top of that, he wants to stifle criticism of the United States government. Because he called on the Supreme Court to reverse their landmark Texas v. Johnson decision where the court held that flag burning unsurprisingly is in fact a protected form of free speech. So he doesn't want you to criticize the US government. And on top of that, he took to Twitter saying when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Which is exactly what the chief of police in Miami told civil rights activists back in 1967. It's a phrase with explicitly racist origins. And on top of that, if you haven't seen any footage from Washington DC currently, it looks like an authoritarian police state with military vehicles. Clearing the path for Donald Trump so he could take a quick photo op. And right before he made that embarrassing photo op, he made a speech where he threatened to use the United States military to quell the protests. Let me just take a step back here and reflect on the gravity of that. Donald Trump is trying to say that if these protests don't stop, if governments don't get these protests under control, he will unilaterally send in the United States military and put them directly at odds with United States citizens. This is functionally a declaration of war against United States citizens. I know that the US government is constantly at war, droning civilians in the Middle East and North Africa. But now it wants to go to war with its own people. And it's looking a lot like the wars that we do abroad when you consider the fact that even predator drones are now policing Minneapolis. So here is a quick look at Donald Trump's speech, where he made this very dystopian declaration that he's going to possibly turn the military against its own people. These are not acts of peaceful protests. These are acts of domestic terror. The destruction of innocent life and the spilling of innocent blood is an offense to humanity and a crime against God. America needs creation, not destruction. Cooperation, not contempt. Security, not anarchy. Healing, not hatred. Justice, not chaos. This is our mission and we will succeed. 100% we will succeed. Our country always wins. That is why I am taking immediate presidential action to stop the violence and restore security and safety in America. I am mobilizing all available federal resources, civilian and military, to stop the rioting and looting, to end the destruction and arson, and to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans, including your Second Amendment rights. Therefore, the following measures are going into effect immediately. First, we are ending the riots and lawlessness that has spread throughout our country. We will end it now. Today I have strongly recommended to every governor to deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets. Mayors and governors must establish an overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence has been quelled. If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them. I am also taking swift and decisive action to protect our great capital, Washington, D.C. What happened in this city last night was a total disgrace. As we speak, I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults, and the wanton destruction of property. So for a moment let's just put aside the fact that he is threatening to use the United States military against its own citizens, but let's dissect some of the language that he is using here because he was wording what he was saying very carefully contrary to most of his speeches. So first, he is recommending that governors deploy National Guard in an attempt to dominate the streets. He was very careful in choosing the word dominate, meaning that the people do not have the right to take to the streets. They will be under the full control of National Guard if governors actually follow through with what Donald Trump wants. On top of that, he says, quote, if a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them. Quickly solve the problem for them. Do you understand that use of the word quickly there and what it is insinuating? He's going to crush these protests violently. You can't solve this problem quickly if you don't do that. If you try to solve this problem peacefully, it's going to take time. It's going to take organization. It's going to take dialogue and conversation, but he's going to quickly solve the problem for them. And he also emphasized that the militarized presence in DC will be heavily armed. This is openly authoritarian. Now the question is, legally speaking, is he able to subvert the will of governors and actually deploy the U.S. military if they don't want the military there? As CNN's Zachary B. Wolfe explains, President Donald Trump threatened Monday night to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 law and take the unusual step of deploying active duty U.S. soldiers to police U.S. streets. While Trump claims the move would break up anti-fascists or antifa who he says are organizing violent riots that have led to looting, it would also effectively squelch peaceful protests for racial justice after the death last week of a black man, George Floyd, after a police officer used lethal force during a stop. That would be a remarkable turn on the law which was most notably used in the 1950s to enforce desegregation and later in the 1960s to address riots in Detroit. According to the Congressional Research Service, it hasn't been invoked since 1992 during the riots in Los Angeles that followed the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of Rodney King. Now Attorney General William Barr was actually Attorney General back then too under former President George H.W. Bush, but there may be curbs on what Trump can do. One section of the law suggests that states must first request help, but other portions of the Insurrection Act do not require a governor or state legislatures OK, such as when the president determines the situation in the state, makes it impossible to enforce U.S. laws or when citizens' rights are abridged. Historically and practically, such request is not necessarily a prerequisite to the president using regular federal troops for domestic law enforcement, said Stephen Vladek, a University of Texas law professor and CNN contributor. There are examples of presidents using troops over the objections of governors, as Dwight Eisenhower and later John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson during the Civil Rights Era. In particular, Eisenhower invoked the Insurrection Act when he federalized the Arkansas National Guard and then sent the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock to integrate the schools. There's a lot to digest here, but let's take a little bit of time to parse out the details, as the article stated the last time that this was invoked was during the 1992 riots. Except the difference there was that the governor had requested the president send in the U.S. military. So this isn't necessarily like the previous state federal government disputes. This is U.S. citizen president dispute. This is the president of the United States sending in the military against the people. So you can try to frame this as, you know, governors don't want it. So this is technically, you know, a federal versus state issue. But this isn't, you know, a governor who is choosing to not integrate public schools after Brown versus Board of Education. This is the president who is saying, I am going to unilaterally send the United States military as commander in chief to these states, even if governors don't want that to happen because we have to crush these protests. I think this is really different. And even though legally they're going to try to make the case that this is like when Lyndon B. Johnson or John F. Kennedy did it. It's actually not. And really it doesn't matter because just because something is legal doesn't necessarily mean that it's moral or right. So let's just call this what this is. The United States government trying to crack down on U.S. citizens by deploying the military. It's what we saw during the Arab Spring in Egypt. We're seeing that here. This is astonishing. And the question is, is this basically martial law? What is this? Well, the definition of martial law is as follows. It's military government involving the suspension of ordinary law. So we're not technically to that point, but as Will Wilkinson puts it, why all the legalistic parsing of the ins and outs of the insurrection act on cable news as if there's some question here. The story is that the president is dipping his toe into declaring a martial law because abused citizens want justice. That crosses every line he's got to go. So what Wilkinson is pointing to here is how pundits on cable media is trying to legally justify his actions, possibly fighting out for him and, you know, basically nuanced role about whether or not this is permissible. But regardless if you can try to find some sort of legal exploit for it, this is an authoritarian crackdown. And it's not just any sort of authoritarian crackdown. We're not talking about the Patriot Act spying on citizens illegally without a warrant. We're talking about the United States government threatening to turn the U.S. military on the people it's supposed to protect. So this is a drastic escalation. And I should note that the response from Democrats has effectively been to write Donald Trump strongly worded letters via Twitter. So Trump is consolidating his power, cracking down on protests, possibly violently with the military. It's already a violent crackdown for sure. But he is going to possibly deploy the military and he has no opposition. There's no checks and balances. And even if let's say, you know, this is technically illegal what he's doing, which I think it is. It doesn't matter because he has the courts on his side. He's stacked the courts at every level. Federal courts are on his side. So do you understand why this is devolution into authoritarianism? The president's power is not supposed to be absolute. But after each president has expanded the power of the executive, we're finally reaching the logical conclusion of that. Now we are officially in police state territory where the president is not shy about threatening to use the military to target and attack its own citizens. Yeah, I don't know what else to say about that. This is terrifying.