The past week has felt like a year — so much has happened and emotions have been so raw.

I wanted to share three observations, following up on my note to you earlier this week.

First, the protests are working.

The police officers responsible for the murder of George Floyd have now all been charged.

The Louisville police chief has been fired, after it turned out that officers who killed David McAtee, a protester who ran a barbeque stand, had turned off their bodycams.

Investigations are underway of the police killings of McAtee and Breonna Taylor, a woman killed in Louisville after police barged into her home at 1:00 a.m. without — according to Taylor’s boyfriend who was with her at the time — announcing themselves.

Cities across the country are quickly instituting policing reforms — including Louisville, which has suspended use of “no-knock” warrants.

In a sign of just how powerful the protests have become, cities are also beginning to move to redirect resources away from police departments to social needs.

This is a dramatic political and cultural shift. And it portends more to come.

Social change always comes from the ground up. We’re seeing that happen, yet again, before our eyes.

Second, Trump’s authoritarianism was dealt a major blow.

There have been few times when the establishment and a meaningful number of Republicans have denounced Trump for crossing democratic red lines.

But bringing out the military to patrol our streets has become one such occasion.

Trump’s maneuver to clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House — so that he could stage his cynical photo-op in front of a historic church — backfired dramatically.

Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis forcefully denounced Trump, as have other former Pentagon leaders.

Even the current Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, has tried to distance himself from Trump.

It’s impossible to exaggerate the importance of these developments, because Trump’s authoritarian instincts are not subject to self-restraint.

There’s every reason to think he believes it is a good idea to have U.S. soldiers patrolling our cities.

Third, we must remain vigilant against Trump’s proto-fascist tendencies.

With the deadly toll of the coronavirus pandemic, soaring unemployment and now mass protests, the Trump team knows it is in political trouble.

The polls confirm their worry.

Trump officials are now making clear that they — and Trump himself — see only one path to political success: run as a “law-and-order” candidate.

Trump, of course, is almost certainly the most lawless president the country has ever known, evidenced by everything from his solicitation of political favors from Ukraine, to his ownership of the Trump Hotel in property leased from the U.S. government, to his failure to enforce environmental, civil rights and consumer protection laws.

“Law-and-order” has nothing to do with the law or democratic order.

It is shorthand for Trump’s blend of racism, proto-fascism and militarism.

The rhetoric alone is toxic enough, encouraging racist violence and dividing the nation.

But a desperate Trump will not, on his own, stop with just words.

He’ll look for excuses to deploy the military.

He’ll seek to clamp down on the press and protesters.

He’ll work to undermine fair elections and the guarantee that everyone has the right to vote and that every vote will be counted.

We know Trump is capable of all these things, because he has already done each of them.

But fearful of political defeat, he’s going to unleash words and policies that reflect his most dangerous and loathsome instincts.

Together, we can stop him.

We know we can stop Trump, because for all the damage this administration has inflicted — up to and including its deadly bungling of the pandemic response — we have prevented Trump from doing even worse.

Monday night, I wrote that it felt like the country was plunging into a kind of deranged chaos. In many ways, it still feels that way.

At the same time, the burgeoning protests are offering a much more hopeful future.

Above all, they remind us of our power when we join together.

And I know that, together, we will face the immense challenges ahead.

Stay safe.

- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen

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