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It’s a story we’ve heard many times, but it’s always worth repeating. In 1787, when Benjamin Franklin was walking out of the Constitutional Convention, a lady famously asked “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” “A republic,” Franklin replied tartly, “if you can keep it.”

Even Franklin might be surprised we did keep it for 238 years. But it’s gone now. If 1787 marked the birth of our American democracy, 2025 marked the end of it. We no longer live in a democracy. We don’t even live in a monarchy. We live in a dictatorship.

It’s no democracy when a president can send his goons onto college campuses to round up people who’ve committed no crimes, deport them and confine them to prison in another country with no due process and no opportunity to defend themselves.

It’s no democracy when a president can ban private universities from accepting foreign students, simply because he believes, with no evidence, they’re a national security threat.

It’s no democracy when a president can invent a national crisis, send Marines into the streets of Los Angeles, and threaten to deploy troops to any other city where Americans protest the gestapo-style tactics of ICE – who are only following Trump’s orders to deport at least 3,000 a day.

First, let’s be clear about one thing. Los Angeles is not burning. The City of Angels is not at risk. Take it from me. I lived in LA during the Rodney King and O.J. Simpson riots. I stood on the roof of KCOP-TV and watched a mob of looters storm up La Brea Boulevard, torching shops and restaurants. While hosting my radio talk show, I was warned by security guards to hide under my desk because snipers were firing shots at our building. I was covering the riots from First AME Church in South Central when the entire neighborhood went up in flames. A Black church member had me lie on the floor in the backseat of his car, threw a blanket over me and drove me through the violence-filled streets to my home in West Hollywood. By comparison, what’s happening today in Los Angeles is a picnic in the park.

And, by the way, the National Guard were also on the scene in both riots. But they were there the way it’s supposed to work: summoned by the governor of California, at the request of the mayor of Los Angeles, and used to guard the perimeter and enforce the curfew. Local law enforcement did a good job of dealing with the protesters, just like they’re doing again today.

The truth is, there is no national crisis. There is no Los Angeles crisis. There is no California crisis. There is only a crisis in democracy, stirred up deliberately by Donald Trump to expand his presidential power and paint Democrats as soft on crime and immigration.

Yes, there were peaceful protests against ICE, with some scattered violence, which the LAPD was more than capable of taking care of – until Trump, without consulting local or state officials, sent in the National Guard and the Marines. Donald Trump didn’t fix this “crisis.” He created it.

He's only doing this “to defend law and order,” Trump insists, adding: we won’t allow protesters “to spit on our police.” Unbelievable! This shameless boast from the protester-in-chief who gave a presidential pardon to men convicted of killing police officers on January 6.

What’s happening in LA is the same mad power play Trump tried to unleash during the George Floyd protests, when he summoned the military to Lafayette Square and threatened to send troops into every big city. The difference is, then there were Justice Department and Pentagon officials who stopped Trump in his tracks and refused to consider martial law. This time around, Pam Bondi and Pete Hegseth will let Trump do whatever he wants.

We’re seen this playbook before: sow disinformation, silence your critics, muzzle the media, condemn the courts, stoke violence and unleash the military to seize more power. It was the playbook of Stalin, Hitler and Putin yesterday. It’s Donald Trump’s playbook today.

So what can we do? Our only hope is to roadblock Trump by taking back the House and Senate in 2026. Then we can look Ben Franklin in the eye and say: “Sorry, we really messed up. We let our republic fall for two years – but we worked hard – and finally got it back.” It’s up to us.

(Bill Press is host of The BillPressPod, and author of 10 books, including: “From the Left: My Life in the Crossfire.” His email address is: bill@billpress.com. Readers may also follow him on Twitter @billpresspod and on BlueSky @BillPress.bsky.social.)

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