Flooding Trump and Musk’s zone How to deal with their tyranny Robert Reich Feb 9 Friends, Before I post my Sunday cartoon, I want to share with you some thoughts about the third hellish week of Trump II. As of Friday, Trump has signed more than 50 executive orders, covering every aspect of American life and much foreign policy. It’s not just that this number of executive orders is unprecedented in modern American politics. Many are unlawful, unconstitutional, or both. In the age of monarchs, kings issued decrees. The tsars of imperial Russia proclaimed ukases. The dictators of the 20th century made diktats. Trump issues executive orders. Average people in the age of monarchs, tsars, and dictators were largely powerless. Resistance meant almost certain death. Many people were resigned to vulnerability. They practiced passivity. They knew no life other than repression. But their deference entrenched and ensured the power of monarchs, tsars, and dictators. Arbitrary power depends on the acquiescence of everyone subjected to it. Right now, after three weeks of Trump’s “flooding the zone” (as Trumpers like to say) some of you may be feeling powerless. Trump wants you to feel powerless. He depends on your passivity in the face of his takeover of American democracy. He wants to be a strongman who can act unilaterally and arbitrarily — who can issue orders about anything that pops into his head. Purging, firing, prosecuting, or deporting anyone he wants removed. Obliterating, freezing, and pummeling any institution he wants destroyed. Unleashing the richest man in the world to do whatever the hell he wants with the government of the United States. If you are dumbfounded into inaction, if you don’t even want to hear the news, if you feel as though you’re living through a nightmare over which you have no control, I get it. Every other day I feel the same. But hear me out. You and I have no real choice but to stand up to Trump, Musk, and their lapdogs. To allow them to bully us into submission invites more bullying, more lawlessness, more gonzo executive orders. Last week I suggested a number of actions we can take. It wasn’t an exhaustive list, of course, only some possibilities. Millions of Americans — including many who have been purged from their positions of responsibility — are standing up to Trump and Musk’s tyranny. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski says the Senate phone system has been receiving around 1,600 calls each minute, compared to the 40 calls per minute it usually gets — thus disrupting the system. We are beginning to flood Trump and Musk’s zone. Let’s flood it out. This coming April 19 will mark the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord, which began the American Revolution and our war against monarchical power. Anti-royalist militia in Massachusetts refused to disperse when ordered to by British troops. A shot was fired, and the troops kept firing, killing eight of those American resisters. Later that day, the militiamen returned that fire, killing a number of British soldiers. The revolution had begun. Please don’t get me wrong. I do not advocate violence. I’m simply reminding you that this nation was founded on resistance to arbitrary authority. We built American democracy in the face of what seemed to be impossible odds. And we will never, ever give up that fight. My friend Harold Meyerson suggests that on April 19 we stage massive peaceful protests in every city and town — crowds of Americans celebrating the anti-monarchical uprising of 1775 and pledging their allegiance to that heritage by denouncing Trump’s increasingly autocratic rule: Thereby flooding Trump and Musk’s zone still further. Sounds like a good idea to me. You?