Sherrilyn’s Newsletter

09/01/2025

It keeps happening. Trump does something outrageous, something so unwarranted that in “the before times’ would constitute an abuse of power, and instead of solely focusing on that abuse, we follow him down the rabbit-hole of a trumped-up “emergency.” We are now four “emergencies” in during the eight months that Trump has been in office. Mainstream media sources only half-heartedly question each emergency. Instead they get right to the framing they feel more comfortable with: “Trump has a point.” “Some countries do take advantage of us on trade.” “Crime really is bad in Washington, D.C.” And the evergreen “how did the Democrats fail to get the jump on this issue when they had power?”

What is missing from media, from Democrats and even from the narratives adopted by some activists as they respond to Trump is a sustained and powerful refusal to play Trump’s power game on his terms. Trump pulls the fire alarm when there’s no fire so that he can take over the empty building. We end up talking about fire-preparedness. What are we doing? We had better sort out our ability to see the forest for the trees and to STAY ON MESSAGE about what’s really going on if we’re to challenge Trump’s excesses in the coming months.

Trump insistence on a migrant “emergency” – in which our lives were being endangered by murderers, rapists, and sociopaths (Hannibal Lechters) sent here from Latin Americans countries and the Congo, was used to justify an attempt to defy the express words of the Constitution guaranteeing birthright citizenship, and to launch a mass deportation initiative fueled by amped up ICE enforcement, and supplemented by the FBI and National Guard troops.

That fake emergency has been the cover for the most inhumane and grotesque display of state power we have seen on U.S. soil in generations, as masked men (purporting to be federal agents, but who can tell?) have been unleashed to engage in widespread racial profiling, family separation, and kidnapping. Not to arrest violent criminals – but to disappear construction workers, landscapers, meat-packing workers, nannies, and restaurant busboys. The unconstitutionality of denying these kidnapped workers due process, of sending them to facilities that fail the 8th Amendment’s ban on cruel & unusual punishment, or to foreign gulags to be disappeared, demonstrates how dangerously and consequentially the cover of “emergency” can be manipulated to destroy lives.