They Are Counting on Our Complacency
Our civil liberties endure only if we defend them.
The 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States should be an opportunity to celebrate the freedoms that define us as a nation. Instead, we find ourselves confronting a regime that appears increasingly determined to dismantle the very constitutional protections generations of Americans have fought to preserve.
The latest example is as disturbing as it is revealing.
During a recent appearance, Donald proudly declared that his administration had effectively criminalized protest.
This is what Donald said:
And we’ve made it one year penalty for inciting riots. We took the freedom of speech away...
He actually said it.
“We took the freedom of speech away.”
On the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, the President of the United States is openly boasting about stripping Americans of their First Amendment rights. If that sentence alone does not alarm every citizen, it should.
On the night of July 4, 2025, a group of people gathered outside the Prairieland ICE Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. During the protest, fireworks were set off, property was vandalized, and a police officer was shot and wounded. Thankfully, the officer survived. Nine people were prosecuted in federal court. All nine were convicted in March 2026, and on June 23 of this year, eight were sentenced by two Trump-appointed federal judges in Fort Worth, Texas.
The sentences were extraordinary. Benjamin Song, who was convicted of the attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, received one hundred years in prison. Maricela Rueda received seventy years. Cameron Arnold, Savannah Banton, Zachary Evitts, Bradford Morris, and Elizabeth Soto each received fifty years. Daniel Sanchez Estrada received thirty years.
Collectively, these defendants received four hundred and fifty years in prison.
What makes the outcome even more extraordinary is that Daniel Sanchez Estrada was not even present at the protest. He was convicted after moving a box of anti-fascist magazines once the demonstration had already ended. The judges applied terrorism enhancements to every count and ordered every sentence to run consecutively rather than concurrently, dramatically increasing the total punishment imposed.
This is what Democracy Now! reported:
Another protester, Autumn Hill, received a sentence of 50 years after being convicted of rioting, providing material support to terrorists, conspiracy to use and carry an explosive, and use and carry of an explosive device, which was fireworks.
Following the convictions, Autumn Hill’s wife, Lydia Koza, described what had taken place inside the courtroom.
Lydia Koza: Federal prosecutors in this case told a panel of Northern District of Texas residents with a straight face that lighting off fireworks on the 4th of July was terrorism, was a riot. I cannot think of anything more un-American than that and I cannot think of anything more inhumane than the horrors that ICE is inflicting through its state terror on our communities.
During the trial, federal prosecutors argued that wearing all black clothing, using the encrypted messaging application Signal, and possessing left-wing magazines constituted material support for terrorism. If using Signal is now evidence of criminal conduct, perhaps the Department of Justice should begin by interviewing Pete Hegseth and several other members of the Trump regime. As for wearing all black clothing, those of us who live in New York City are probably in trouble.
The sentencing disparity is impossible to ignore. Co-defendants who pleaded guilty to essentially the same conduct are reportedly facing sentences of roughly fifteen years. Those who exercised their constitutional right to a jury trial received sentences ranging from thirty to one hundred years. That alone should concern every American.
These cases also represent the first major sentencings under Donald’s September 2025 executive order designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. There is just one problem with that. Antifa is not actually an organization. It has no leadership structure, no membership roster, no headquarters, and no formal organizational hierarchy. There is also no federal criminal offense called domestic terrorism under existing law.
Nevertheless, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche celebrated the outcome.
Blanche: Antifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities will face swift and uncompromising justice.
If by “justice” he means proceedings overseen by federal judges who appear entirely comfortable carrying out Donald’s political agenda, then perhaps that statement is accurate.
The comparison to January 6 is impossible to avoid. The longest sentence imposed on any defendant convicted in connection with the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol was twenty-two years. That sentence was given to Enrique Tarrio following his conviction for seditious conspiracy. Stewart Rhodes received eighteen years for the same offense.
Those defendants participated in an actual attempt to overthrow the United States government and prevent the peaceful transfer of presidential power. Yet their sentences were dramatically shorter than those handed down in Texas.
Then, on January 20, 2025, Donald celebrated his second inauguration by granting clemency to nearly every January 6 defendant, including Tarrio and Rhodes.
Meanwhile, the Prairieland defendants were prosecuted under terrorism enhancements created through Donald’s September 2025 executive order.
On June 24, 2026, PBS NewsHour explained the broader policy that made these prosecutions possible.
President Trump signed the National Security Presidential Memo Seven. It’s a directive that says that the government should use its law enforcement resources to focus on domestic terrorist organizations. And he said domestic terrorist ideology could include anti-capitalist views, people who have extreme views on race and gender and immigration and even people who are opposed to what the directive described as traditional teachings on marriage and the family.
The implications of that directive should concern everyone, regardless of political affiliation.
Federal prosecutors have already begun pursuing similar cases outside Texas. On June 16, prosecutors charged fifteen people in Minneapolis with conspiracy and assault for allegedly impeding immigration enforcement operations, describing several defendants as members of Antifa groups. These prosecutions followed the same shift in federal policy that expanded the use of terrorism-related allegations in protest cases.
That is one of the greatest dangers here.
Anybody protesting this fascist regime can now be labeled part of Antifa. Why? Because, technically speaking, anybody opposed to fascism could be described that way. Since Antifa is not an actual organization, the federal government can apply that label whenever it finds it politically useful, regardless of whether there is any factual basis for doing so.
That is how authoritarian governments operate.
The First Amendment guarantees the right of the people to assemble peacefully and to petition the government for redress of grievances. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that political speech deserves, in its own words, “robust protection.” In Brandenburg v. Ohio, decided in 1969, the Court established that speech may only be prosecuted as incitement if it is both directed toward producing imminent lawless action and likely to produce it. Both conditions must be satisfied.
Wearing black clothing does not meet that standard.
Carrying political pamphlets does not meet that standard.
Using an encrypted messaging app does not meet that standard.
A joint investigation by ProPublica and Frontline published in April 2026 documented more than three hundred arrests arising from immigration enforcement protests. More than one-third of those cases were ultimately dropped or dismissed. In Chicago, charges against the group known as the Broadview Six were dismissed entirely following allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
At the same time, ICE detention has reached historic levels. As of June, ICE was holding approximately seventy-three thousand people in detention, the highest number ever recorded. More than seventy percent of those being held have no criminal record.
Yet members of the Trump regime continue insisting otherwise.
This is what Markwayne Mullin said:
And all we’re doing is we’re going after the worst of the worst. And we have Democrats that are more interested in protecting illegals and criminals because remember 70% of every illegal we arrest has either pending felony charges or have already had felony charges. So we’re not talking about just your grandmas on the side of the streets that are working at a bakery. We’re talking about true criminals. Seventy percent of them are true criminals that we’re taking off the streets and Democrats and this left movement is protesting that because they want open borders.
There certainly are criminals running rampant.
Many of them, however, appear to be serving inside the federal government.
There is no Democrat I am aware of, certainly no elected Democrat, advocating open borders or arguing that violent criminals should remain in this country. Once again, this is governance by lying. It is governance by cruelty. It is governance by encouraging people to reject their own lived experiences in favor of whatever fiction the regime happens to be selling that day.
Defense attorney Sufia Khalid summarized the danger perfectly.
Now anyone engaged in basic protests with the wrong political beliefs can be labeled a domestic terrorist when they have no intention of violence, have not engaged in any violence, and are not interested in any violence.
As we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the birth of this country, we find ourselves living under a regime that is systematically shredding the Constitution, including some of the most fundamental protections guaranteed by the First Amendment. That should send a chill down every American’s spine.
More importantly, it should galvanize us.
The Constitution is not self-enforcing. The rule of law survives only if people are willing to defend it. Our civil liberties endure only if citizens refuse to surrender them. The fascists dismantling our democracy are counting on our exhaustion and our complacency.
We cannot afford either.
Thank you for the article, Mary. They are not counting on my complacency. I threw down at my GOP Senator. I’m on a mission and know one is stopping me. When you don’t receive your medications on time it’s a dangerous move on their part infect, I have made them very afraid. I threw it back it corrupt faces.
What a horrible uncle. I am donating to Dr’s without borders thank you for all you do.