A new lawsuit accuses the Trump administration of using a secret subpoena to force Colorado officials to ignore state laws and hand over private financial information of residents sponsoring unaccompanied immigrant children. The state’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, is demanding that those state officials comply, allegedly under threat of termination, according to court documents reviewed by the Lever.

The previously undisclosed Trump administration subpoena was detailed in an explosive new whistleblower lawsuit filed in state court on Thursday. The alleged subpoena targeting information protected by state privacy laws represents a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration crackdown — and the lawsuit’s allegations also prompt new questions about Democrats’ cooperation.

The suit, spearheaded by one of Polis’s top labor officials, accuses the Democratic governor of actively aiding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and pressuring his employees to violate privacy statutes Polis himself signed into law in 2021 and in May 2025.

“The Polis directive to collaborate with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is illegal,” states the complaint written by attorneys for Scott Moss, who serves as the Polis administration’s director of the Division of Labor Standards and Statistics. “It also harms an unknown but potentially large number of state employees, by directing them to commit illegal acts, risking a wide range of professional and personal harms, including personal penalties of up to $50,000 per violation under the legislation Governor Polis himself signed into law.”

The lawsuit comes just weeks after Polis signed new legislation barring state agencies from handing over undocumented immigrants’ personal information to federal immigration officials.

“Helping our federal law enforcement partners locate and, if necessary, rescue children being abused and trafficked is not only in line with the law but also a moral imperative. We expect the courts will agree,” wrote Conor Cahill, Polis’s communications director, in an email:

We are committed to protecting Personal Identifying Information with regard to purely civil matters. After careful consideration of the subpoena and Colorado law that allows for the sharing of information to support timely criminal investigations, we do believe complying with this subpoena meets requirements set forth in law and is in the service of investigating and preventing criminal activity.

In an email to the Lever, Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency said that it does not comment on pending or ongoing litigation, and that “noncooperative jurisdictions waste taxpayer money and government resources while putting their communities at risk.”

At issue is an April 24 subpoena from President Donald Trump’s ICE agency. The complaint says the subpoena lists the names of thirty-five people defined as sponsors of unaccompanied minors, and then orders Colorado’s Department of Labor to hand over copies of their unemployment benefit filings, Family and Medical Leave Insurance records, employer information, and “any other records that show the following information for the listed sponsors: address of residence, telephone number, and email address.”

“It is important to produce records in accordance with criminal investigations to ensure the safety of Coloradans and, most importantly, to protect and ensure the safety of children. Attempts to delay or block this information could prolong criminal exploitation and abuse of children, and we are eager to assist,” Cahill wrote in an email to the Lever. “We would comply unless a court deems otherwise.”

But according to a June 3 internal memo that Moss sent to the Polis administration, “the actual request is for labor-related records of 35 adults ages 20–45 (calling into question how any ‘children’ could be ‘unaccompanied’ if the inquiry is into 35 working adults).”

“The subpoena is for purposes of finding minors to deport,” Moss wrote in the June 3 memo, explaining that the document doesn’t allege probable cause for a criminal investigation. “There’s no real argument that every civil, administrative immigration subpoena is actually ‘criminal’ just because a civil, administrative investigation could find crimes that then might trigger an actual criminal investigation.”

Moss alleges that because the administrative subpoena is not signed by a judge and does not allege criminal wrongdoing, it cannot override state law and thus illegally requires him and other Labor Department officials to ignore Colorado’s own statutes.

“The subpoena does not allege that there is an ongoing criminal investigation, nor does it cite any criminal law that has allegedly been violated or any probable cause supporting any unidentified criminal investigation,” the complaint states.

“The ICE collaboration directive thereby imposes a choice between harmful options upon Moss and other state employees,” continues the suit:

Illegally disclose [personal identifiable information] of the Impacted Population for ICE for immigration enforcement, risking financial, licensing, professional, and reputational harm to themselves, and deeper harm to the immigrants who entrusted their [personal identifiable information] to them; or decline to commit the illegal act Governor Polis ordered, risking termination or other negative professional and personal consequences.

Moss alleges he will be forced to break a 2021 law that bars state agencies from sharing nonpublic personal information with federal immigration officials unless a court orders them to do so. Moss also alleges he will be forced to violate a 2025 law, signed by Polis just two weeks ago on May 23, that extends the 2021 law by expanding the information sharing restrictions to certain court and probation employees, among other actions.

The lawsuit argues that handing over this information would furthermore jeopardize family members, coworkers, and the unaccompanied minors themselves — groups of people that Polis promised to protect. The labor records in question, specifically Family and Medical Leave Insurance records, “include a range of personnel and employment records that could list spouses, children, or other family as beneficiaries of employment benefits, [and] emergency contacts,” the complaint states.

Moss’s June 3 internal memo also claims that if state employees hand over the requested information, it would “severely damage trust in state officials and agencies, by embroiling [the agency] in ICE raids that appear to be lawless or violent, to abuse children, or to target the innocent.”

During a speech on January 9, Polis said: “We don’t support efforts to deport American citizens, to target those on pending legal status, to break up families, to create orphans of American children whose parents are alive and who come to this country to build a better life for their families.”

He also told news outlet Axios on January 28 that Colorado is committed to helping immigration officials with federal criminal cases “rather than just being an extension of the government and focused on federal immigration laws.”

The subpoena comes after the Trump administration labeled Colorado and forty-one out of its sixty-four counties as “sanctuary jurisdictions,” municipalities that do not fully cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, on May 29, as part of the president’s immigration crackdown.

Immigration officials also recently subpoenaed California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants, which provides monthly benefits to elderly and disabled immigrants in California who are ineligible for federal benefits. The California subpoenas are seeking the beneficiaries’ names, dates of birth, and copies of the applications. California officials refused to hand over the information, stating that the program is entirely state funded.

Kevin D. Williamson of The Dispatch muses about the voters’ culpability for Trump, socialism, and the “Abundance” agenda. They explore the cultural and economic decline of American civic virtue, the bipartisan slide into demagoguery, and Williamson’s disdain for both Trumpism and technocratic central planning.

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The Mona Charen Show is a weekly, one-on-one discussion that goes in depth on political and cultural topics. New shows drop Mondays. Find this show wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. Add the show to your player of choice, here.

U.S. and Chinese officials will meet today in London to give deescalation from the current trade war the old college try. This might have been more difficult before, when Trump’s saber-rattling was focused primarily on China. Now, however, the president is looking elsewhere, busy fantasizing about running over American protesters with tanks, so you never know—maybe they’ll have a breakthrough. Happy Monday.

by William Kristol

On January 1, 1863, the president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, issued a proclamation ordering

that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

This was the Emancipation Proclamation.

On Saturday evening, June 7, 2025, the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, issued a presidential memorandum addressed to the secretary of defense, the attorney general, and the secretary of homeland security. One might call it the Usurpation Proclamation. And while this weekend’s mobilization of two thousand National Guard troops in Los Angeles has alarmed many observers, I suspect we aren’t alarmed enough by this presidential order, which has implications far beyond this one action in one place.

Let’s take a look at it. It consists of only three paragraphs.

In the first paragraph, the president asserts that “numerous incidents of violence and disorder have recently occurred and threaten to continue” in response to the execution of federal immigration laws. And, “To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

This claim of “rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States” establishes the legal predicate for his action announced in the next paragraph:

In light of these incidents and credible threats of continued violence, by the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard under 10 U.S.C. 12406 to temporarily protect ICE and other United States Government personnel who are performing Federal functions, including the enforcement of Federal law, and to protect Federal property, at locations where protests against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur based on current threat assessments and planned operations.

If you look at 10 U.S.C. 12406, the authority Trump is invoking, it authorizes the president to call into federal service the National Guard when “the United States . . . is invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign nation, or when there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” The president has claimed in the first paragraph that such a rebellion exists, and so directs the secretary of defense to mobilize at least 2,000 National Guard personnel for a duration of “60 days or at the discretion of the Secretary of Defense.”

And the president, in his proclamation, goes further than the deployment of the National Guard: “The Secretary of Defense may employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary to augment and support the protection of Federal functions and property in any number determined appropriate in his discretion.”

Note that neither Los Angeles nor the state of California is mentioned in the memorandum. Trump’s mobilization order is in no way limited as to time or place. It is an open-ended authorization for the secretary of defense to mobilize as many troops as he wishes for as long as he wishes, and to deploy them anywhere he wishes within the United States. And these military personnel can be deployed not just where protests have occurred, but anywhere protests “are likely to occur based on current threat assessments and planned operations.”

The memorandum’s final paragraph states that, “To carry out this mission, the deployed military personnel may perform those military protective activities that the Secretary of Defense determines are reasonably necessary” and ensures that the secretary of defense consults with the attorney general and the secretary of homeland security “prior to withdrawing any personnel from any location to which they are sent.”

Again: “Any personnel,” “any location,” and for any length of time.

Trump understands the breadth of his order. When asked by a reporter yesterday if he planned to send troops to Los Angeles, he answered: “We’re gonna have troops everywhere.”

Everywhere.

Trump and his apparatchiks may only lead us gradually down the slippery slope on which they have launched us. The normalization of the routine and open-ended deployment of the military at home requires that the public become accustomed to this departure from historic practice. But the departure has been announced. The Rubicon has been crossed.

Trump’s project may not go smoothly. There could be some pushback from the courts. But if the courts object to Trump’s use of 10 U.S.C. 12406 to end-run the Posse Comitatus Act—the 1878 law that limits the use of the military in civilian law enforcement—Trump has the even broader Insurrection Act of 1807 in reserve, ready to be invoked.

The institution that really could constrain the president is Congress, which could act legislatively and through appropriations to clarify limitations on the use of the military. But Congress is controlled by the Republican party. Let’s see how many Republican members of Congress are interested in such legislation. For now, at least, they’re more likely to cheer Trump on.

And then there’s the people. “Here the people rule,” the newly sworn-in Gerald Ford said in his first presidential address a half century ago, after another and lesser threat to the constitutional order had passed. So the people do. But do they care enough about our democracy to stand up against this usurpation?

I don’t know. I hope so. I fear not.

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Last night, JVL offered his own set of thoughts on the happenings in LA in a must-read emergency Triad, putting Trump’s actions in the context of his apparent quick victory in his clash with Elon Musk and his forthcoming show-of-force military parade. It’s unlocked today for all readers: Don’t miss it.

The Triad

The Most Dangerous Week in American History (So Far)

I want to apologize if I sound hysterical. I do not mean to. More than that: I am trying, hard, to be measured. The problem is that this week is bringing us closer to the sum of all fears and when you simply describe what’s happening, out loud, it sounds crazy.

Bill and JVL also talked over Trump’s plot to expand executive power last night:

Bulwark+ Takes

The Crisis They Wanted

Bill Kristol and JVL discuss Trump’s latest moves to expand executive power, including deploying the National Guard, staging a military parade, and laying the groundwork for mass deportations.

THE HIGH ROAD: Over at the Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf makes a case, well worth reading, for why opponents of Trump’s lawbreaking should “do everything they can to stay within the law”:

On X, many of his supporters are gleeful about the prospect of a clash that ends in bloodied leftists wearing handcuffs and facing felonies. Even setting aside the most negatively polarized segment of the Republican base, Trump has a strong incentive to redirect public attention away from his feud with Elon Musk, his underwater approval rating on the economy, and the fight over a spending bill that divides his coalition, and toward immigration enforcement, an issue on which his approval rating is still positive. What’s more, this clash concerns deportation actions that are apparently lawful, as opposed to Trump’s unconstitutional deportations of foreigners to a Salvadoran prison. . . .

Farsighted protest leaders should do everything in their power to keep those demonstrations law-abiding. Under the Trump administration, the rule of law is among the most precious safeguards Americans possess. Appealing to it, Trump critics have repeatedly prevailed in courtrooms, where Trump is least likely to succeed with his most dangerous gambits. In contrast, street violence gives Trump the ability to fight his enemies with the law on his side and with trained, armed personnel to enforce it.

Some out on the anarchic wing of the anti-Trump coalition roll their eyes at these sorts of better-angel appeals. This is insane on the merits, but we needn’t argue that point here. It should be sufficient to say: Maybe don’t protest the guy in exactly the way he’s hoping you will?

‘VERY SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES’: Perhaps we have bigger fish to fry, with troops rolling out to quell unrest on American soil. But it’s worth briefly dwelling on a quieter but still disquieting threat Trump issued over the weekend as well. In the wake of the collapse of his relationship with Elon Musk, NBC News asked the president what would happen if Musk opted to fund Democratic challengers for Republicans who support his massive budget bill. “He’ll have to pay the consequences for that,” Trump replied. “He’ll have to pay very serious consequences.”

What might these consequences be? Trump didn’t specify; he likely doesn’t even have specifics in mind. There’s plenty of time to think about how to crush Elon should he become a true adversary. In the meantime, it’s sufficient simply to make known that vague—but no doubt terrible—miseries will befall him if he pushes it. It’s the sort of thing that, if Joe Biden had said it, you’d hear conservative media repeating endlessly for a decade or more.

Musk seems to be getting the message. The world’s richest man clamped his mouth shut on any further anti-Trump rhetoric over the weekend, and—as rioting broke out in Los Angeles—even saw fit to share a pair of Trump’s Truth Social posts on X, blessing them with American-flag emojis.

DRONE SWARM: The fighting in Ukraine is escalating quickly, per Politico:

Kyiv said Russia unleashed its largest drone attack since 2022 in the early hours of Monday morning as President Vladimir Putin shows no sign of scaling back his all-out war on Ukraine.

Kremlin forces fired almost 500 drones at Ukraine and more than a dozen missiles, in a major attack targeting cities across the country, according to Ukrainian authorities.

Ukraine said its air defenses had shot down hundreds of drones and many missiles, and claimed that injuries were minimal.

“Russia is escalating the war and has no intention of stopping it,” said Andriy Yermak, top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump has not posted about Russia or Ukraine since last Wednesday, shortly after he spoke by phone with Putin. In that post, he acknowledged that Putin would “have to respond” to Ukraine’s “recent attack on the airfields.” Some peace process this is shaping up to be.

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THERE’S NO ESCAPING the pattern in this run of recent headlines:

That was all in less than a week, and telescoped to just 48 hours for the Trump-Musk blowup-détente-never-mind cycle.

This is the bris you never wanted to attend, the circumcision you would never be able to unsee. And don’t blame me for that metaphor, blame John Oliver.

In late April, the Last Week Tonight host worked himself into a hilarious (and entirely warranted) frenzy over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s mass destruction of the Department of Health and Human Services. Asked about various program cuts on CBS, RFK Jr.’s answered with variations on “I didn’t know that, that’s something that we’ll look at.” After the fact. Because weighing programs and people on the merits beforehand “takes too long and you lose political momentum,” the nation’s top public health official said.

Oliver’s take: “The health secretary should not be learning what he just did like some guy at a bachelor party being told what happened the night before. ‘Do you not remember, bro? You spoke French well, then you pissed on a grave, fucked a bike rack, and cut $750,000 of research money for kid diabetes! You went wild!’”

A photo of a mohel about to circumcise a baby boy then shows up onscreen. “The rules for restructuring HHS should be the same as the ones for a bris!” Oliver almost shouts, his arms pumping, his voice rising, his eyes practically popping out of his head. “It is crucially important to know exactly what you are cutting! Speed is just not the most important thing!”

Or, as any seamstress or carpenter would tell you, measure twice, cut once.

EVEN BEFORE MUSK BRANDISHED a chainsaw, moved fast and broke much of the government, no one paying even an iota of attention would have expected Trump to be a model (mohel?) of careful consistency. Still, the speed and significance of the reversals has been shocking, and they appear to be standard operating procedure. In other words, we can expect them to continue until Trump exits the White House, whenever that is.

One of the first and worst moments came when the Department of Energy discovered it had fired hundreds at the agency that oversees the nuclear weapons stockpile. Oops. And then had trouble finding them to hire them back. Oops again.

Cancel foreign student visas? Require in-person Social Security visits? Fire a thousand National Park Service workers? Close more than thirty mine safety offices? Offload seven thousand Internal Revenue Service workers, hobbling its ability to collect taxes? Never mind times five.

Court orders played a role in some of these reversals, but many others arose from delusional thinking (about phone fraud running rampant at Social Security, though there was hardly any) or magical thinking (as in, who needs nuclear stockpile safety overseers, or rangers at national parks that fuel local economies, or the people who know how to make sure taxes owed are taxes paid).

The breaking point for me was an NPR story (yes, the NPR that’s currently on Trump’s chopping block) about the National Weather Service. Who knew we needed to know the weather? Not the DOGE crew. Who knew America has a hurricane season? Possibly not the nation’s disaster aid chief.

Who assumed AI would save the day, not realizing that AI can’t function without the data produced by the federal government and its actual human employees? Apparently not Musk’s tech bros. Who knew that Americans might want or need weather information outside of business hours?

And really, who could have predicted that the NWS would now be hiring to fill in gaps left when five hundred people were fired? Or that many of the applicants will probably be fired probationary employees reapplying for their old jobs? That’s what a union official told NPR.

I’ve gotten this far without mentioning TACO, the Trump Always Chickens Out acronym that Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong coined to describe investment strategy amid Trump’s constant tariff flip-flops. Trump hates the phrase, but if the flip-flop fits. . . And it does. Very well.

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TO LONGTIME POLITICAL OBSERVERS, by which I mean those of us so old we remember pre-MAGA times, it seems strange that the constant flip-flops have not ruined, scarred, or even dented Trump. Nothing has, and nothing probably will, as we’ve seen all too often. In this case, maybe it’s because everyone already knows he’s so deeply flawed, or because his decisions are so terrible that flipping in a different direction is all to the good. Especially if you’re a savvy financial player who buys low every time a Trump-made disaster strikes. Because, TACO.

My context here is the 2004 John Kerry presidential campaign, which I covered as a reporter on his bus and plane. Maybe it was a simpler time, or maybe Republicans were simply ruthless in driving home a message, but one unfortunate turn of phrase turned Kerry—a combat veteran—into a “flip-flopper” who didn’t support the troops.

It was truly a doozy of a sentence, the classic “I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” “I had one of those inarticulate moments,” Kerry said. He tried to explain. He wanted the expenditure funded at least in part by rolling back some of George W. Bush’s tax cuts. But the phrase conveyed weakness and dithering, and Team Bush made sure it stuck. They even sold Kerry flip-flops at the Republican convention that year. The National Museum of American History owns a pair as part of its collection:

It’s a safe bet that those anti-Kerry flip-flop shoes will survive the coming cultural culling as Trump tries to remake the Smithsonian museums in the image of MAGA and himself. It’s also a safe bet that the museum won’t be adding Trump flip-flops in future years. It would be too exhausting to create souvenir flip-flops for every Trump flip-flop—and you’d need an entire museum to house them all.

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It does not take policy positions. The Center conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, computational social science research and other data-driven research. Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder.

President Donald Trump is about to launch yet another assault on democracy, the Constitution, and American traditions of civil-military relations, this time in Los Angeles. Under a dubious legal rationale, he is activating 2,000 members of the National Guard to confront protests against actions by ICE, the immigration police who have used thuggish tactics against citizens and foreigners alike in the United States.

By militarizing the situation in L.A., Trump is goading Americans more generally to take him on in the streets of their own cities, thus enabling his attacks on their constitutional freedoms. As I’ve listened to him and his advisers over the past several days, they seem almost eager for public violence that would justify the use of armed force against Americans.

The president and the men and women around him are acting with great ambition in this moment, and they are likely hoping to achieve three goals in one dramatic action.

First, they will turn America’s attention away from Trump’s many failures and inane feuds, and reestablish his campaign persona as a strongman who will brush aside the law if that’s what it takes to keep order in the streets. Perhaps nothing would please Trump more than to replace weird stories about Elon Musk with video of masked protesters burning cars as lines of helmeted police and soldiers march over them and impose draconian silence in one of the nation’s largest and most diverse cities.

Second, as my colleague David Frum warned this morning, Trump is establishing that he is willing to use the military any way he pleases, perhaps as a proof of concept for suppressing free elections in 2026 or 2028. Trump sees the U.S. military as his personal honor guard and his private muscle. Those are his toy soldiers, and he’s going to get a show from his honor guard in a birthday parade next weekend. In the meantime, he’s going to flex that muscle, and prove that the officers and service members who will do whatever he orders are the real military. The rest are suckers and losers.

During the George Floyd protests in 2020, Trump was furious at what he saw as the fecklessness of military leaders determined to thwart his attempts to use deadly force against protesters. He’s learned his lesson: This time, he has installed a hapless sycophant at the Pentagon who is itching to execute the boss’s orders.

Third, Trump may be hoping to radicalize the citizen-soldiers drawn from the community who serve in the National Guard. (Seizing the California Guard is also a convenient way to humiliate California Governor Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, with the president’s often-used narrative that liberals can’t control their own cities.) Trump has the right to “federalize” Guard forces, which is how they were deployed overseas in America’s various conflicts. He has never respected the traditions of American civil-military relations, which regard the domestic deployment of the military as an extreme measure to be avoided whenever possible. Using the Guard could be a devious tactic: He may be hoping to set neighbor against neighbor, so that the people called to duty return to their home and workplace with stories of violence and injuries.

In the longer run, Trump may be trying to create a national emergency that will enable him to exercise authoritarian control. (Such an emergency was a rationalization, for example, for the tariffs that he has mostly had to abandon.) He has for years been trying to desensitize the citizens of the United States to un-American ideas and unconstitutional actions.

The American system of government was never meant to cope with a rogue president. Yet Trump is not unstoppable. Thwarting his authoritarianism will require restraint on the part of the public, some steely nerves on the part of state and local authorities, and vigilant action from national elected representatives, who should be stepping in to raise the alarm and to demand explanations about the president’s misuse of the military.

As unsatisfying as it may be for some citizens to hear, the last thing anyone should do is take to the streets of Los Angeles and try to confront the military or any of California’s law-enforcement authorities. ICE is on a rampage, but physically assaulting or obstructing its agents—and thus causing a confrontation with the cops who have to protect them, whether those police officers like it or not—will provide precisely the pretext that some of the people in Trump’s White House are trying to create. The president and his coterie want people walking around taking selfies in gas clouds, waving Mexican flags, holding up traffic, and burning cars. Judging by reactions on social media and interviews on television, a lot of people seem to think such performances are heroic—which means they’re poised to give Trump’s enforcers what they’re hoping for.

Be warned: Trump is expecting resistance. You will not be heroes. You will be the pretext.

Conor Friedersdorf: Averting the worst-case scenario in Los Angeles

Instead, the most dramatic public action the residents of Southern California could take right now would be to ensure that Trump’s forces arrive on calm streets. Imagine the reactions of the Guard members as they look around and wonder what, exactly, the commander in chief was thinking. Why are they carrying their rifles in the streets of downtown America? What does anyone expect them to do? Put another way: What if the president throws a crackdown and nobody comes?

This kind of restraint will deny Trump the political oxygen he’s trying to generate. He is resorting to the grand theater of militarism because he is losing on multiple fronts in the courts—and he knows it. The law, for most people, is dreary to hear about, but one of the most important stories of Trump’s second term is that lawyers and judges are so far holding a vital line against the administration, sometimes at great personal risk.

Trump is also losing public support, which is another reason he’s zeroing in on California. He is resolutely ignorant in many ways, but he has an excellent instinct for picking the right fights. The fact of the matter is that tens of millions of Americans believe that almost everything about immigration in the United States has long been deeply dysfunctional. (I’m one of them.) If he sends the military into L.A. and Guard members end up clashing in high-definition video with wannabe resistance gladiators in balaclavas, many people who have not been paying attention to his other ghastly antics will support him. (For the record, I am not one of them.)

So far, even the Los Angeles Police Department—not exactly a bastion of squishy suburban book-club liberals—has emphasized that the protests have been mostly peaceful. Trump is apparently trying to change that. Sending in the National Guard is meant to provoke, not pacify, and his power will only grow if he succeeds in tempting Americans to intemperate reactions that give him the authoritarian opening he’s seeking.

I want to apologize if I sound hysterical. I do not mean to. More than that: I am trying, hard, to be measured. The problem is that this week is bringing us closer to the sum of all fears and when you simply describe what’s happening, out loud, it sounds crazy.

Three seemingly unrelated things are happening this week which will combine to take us to a place our country has not seen since Reconstruction. One of these things has already happened. Another is happening right now, today. And the third will happen six days from now.

Walk with me through the latest nightmare scenario.