"This is what democracy looks like!"

April 7, 2025

We are the path forward. We always have been. The weekend protests remind us, “This is what democracy looks like!” It looks like the American people raising their voices against a mad king imposing taxes without the consent of the governed. That scenario turned out badly for the mad king last time and will do so again.

Democracy looks like millions of Americans taking to the streets in peace and determination, anger and resolve, joy and optimism, firm in our belief that we will take back the reins of government from impostors and demagogues who hijacked our democracy for profit and personal power.

Every American who values the rule of law should be heartened by the unprecedented turnout for the Hands Off! National Day of Protest on Saturday. Every crowd was larger than expected. Despite millions of Americans in the streets protesting the government, there were no arrests, no violence, no vandalism.

The protests represented democracy in its most muscular form—the people themselves, making their voices heard without interpreters and apologists, without pundits and spin doctors, without parliamentary procedure and backroom deals.

We the people. The rule of law is not imposed upon us; rather, the rule of law is how we choose to organize ourselves. We have returned to reclaim the rule of law from those who are perverting it to deny us the liberties, safety, security, peace, and happiness that are the primary objects of the rule of law.

There is so much positive commentary about the weekend protests that it feels presumptuous to attempt to add anything more to the outflowing of optimism and joy. But that has never stopped me before, so I will add a few brief observations.

Among the many important lessons from the weekend protests, the most important is this:

We must do it again.

And again.

And again.

We must strive to make each successive protest larger than the last. We must build momentum. We cannot allow April 5, 2025, to be the high water mark of the resistance.

No, April 5, 2025, must be a beginning, a hinge to something much larger and more enduring. It must be our generation’s Lexington and Concord, events that galvanized a new nation into being. We must recreate that moment of birth with a rebirth: Our generation must claim democracy for its own. We must do so in the same way as our ancestors—by the people, through the people, for the people.

If you attended a protest on Saturday, bless you and thank you! But your patriotic act will evaporate into nothingness unless you demonstrate persistence and tenacity. Trump did not retreat and surrender because of the protests on Saturday. Nor can we. Saturday, April 5, 2025, was our new beginning.

The next time you attend a protest, bring a friend, neighbor, or casual acquaintance. Be their guide and mentor. Help ensure that April 5, 2025, is a beginning, not an end.

When I opened my email on Sunday morning, it took 15 minutes for the hundreds of emails with photo attachments to load. I am not complaining; I am explaining the overwhelming response by readers who wanted to share their joy and pride at participating in a democratic moment.

Among the hundreds of photos, two stood out.

The first was sent by Sandra Dolins, who wrote:

This photo struck me as a repeat of revolutionary history - taken in Bedford Massachusetts -a town next to Concord where the battle for freedom began. We had a good crowd dominated by seniors, which is understandable since their retirement funds are being eradicated [and who] will be in deep trouble if they lose social security and/or Medicare . . . .

Here is Sandra’s simple but powerful photo:

This photo reminds us where our democracy began—and how it will be redeemed.

The second photo is one that the reader asked me not to share. So I will describe it. The reader sent a photo of herself standing in the rain with a walker and a sign that said, “No tax cuts for billionaires.” The reader’s note said, in part,

This is me, standing in the rain with my walker because I just had a hip replacement ten days ago. My first protest was of the Vietnam War in Washington DC when I was 20, and I have been active ever since. It was really important for me to be there, walker and all, and I am glad I went.

Friends, when Americans are dragging themselves from the comfort of their homes where they are recovering from recent surgery in order to protest tax cuts for billionaires, you know that something has shifted in the firmament.

The April 5 movement is just getting off the ground. As Americans were protesting the destruction of our government to pay for tax cuts for billionaires, the Senate was holding a procedural vote to advance a tax cut for billionaires.

A reader sent this note from Senator Chris Murphy, dated April 5, 2025:

Overnight, Republicans put the outline of their budget bill up for debate — the “one big, beautiful bill” Trump demanded. It puts together a massive hike on the debt ceiling that they need to get away with their tax giveaway to billionaires and corporations paid for by cuts to programs like Medicaid.

This bill is the core of Trump and Republicans’ billionaire-first agenda. They put up a bill that gives $4.6 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest corporations and people — paid for by the rest of us. They want to slash popular and necessary programs like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and SNAP.

Look, they know this **** is deeply unpopular, and they simply do not care. This is the agenda the billionaires literally paid for. In 2024, six donors each spent more than $100 million on the election. Every single one of them was a Republican.

On the very day the reader recovering from hip surgery was standing in the rain to protect her Social Security and Medicare, Senate Republicans were advancing a massive tax cut bill that is based on cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

We cannot allow Republicans to pass a bill that will deprive tens of millions of Americans from benefits they paid for over a lifetime. The billionaire tax cut will necessitate ending vaccinations for children, libraries for the general public, meals for schoolchildren, healthcare for women and veterans, and clean air and water for future generations.

If Republicans fail to read the mood of the American public and pass their tax cuts for billionaires nonetheless, then the solution is to maintain the momentum of April 5 so that we retake both chambers of Congress in 2026 and the presidency in 2028. And then we can reverse every last tax cut passed by Republicans in the dying days of their party.

Remember, the most important lesson from the weekend protests is this:

We must do it again.

And again.

And again.

The markets appear to be headed down again on Monday

Trump appears to be determined to ruin the economy. As the Asian markets began a third day of steep losses (in advance of Monday trading in the US), Trump said that tariffs are “medicine” that the markets are just going to have to accept. See Reuters, Trump compares tariffs to 'medicine' as Asian markets convulse | Reuters.

The insanity of Trump’s tariffs was compounded over the weekend by the discovery of an economic think tank that Trump’s advisers had made a fundamental error in their calculation of reciprocal tariffs. As a result of that error, Trump overstated the size of the US reciprocal tariffs by a factor of four. See Axios, Trump tariffs based on massive error, conservative think tank AEI says.

Congress can end Trump’s tariffs anytime they want by a simple majority vote in both chambers of Congress. Until they do, there is no reason to expect that the markets will recover. Why? Because Trump’s unpredictability makes it impossible to calculate the future expected earnings of stocks.

In the most simplistic terms, stock prices reflect the future expected earnings of a company. People who trade in stocks make assumptions about future economic conditions—e.g., recessions, GDP growth, unemployment—to estimate the current value of stocks.

But Trump has totally upended investors’ expectations about the future path of the global economy. After the imposition of irrational tariffs, traders are attempting to make assumptions about future earnings based on the disordered mind of a profoundly ignorant man.

How, exactly, do you adjust prices based on predictions about the future actions of a madman? You can’t. The market is thus “pricing in” Trump's unpredictability and ignorance of basic economic concepts.

Trump claims (as of Sunday evening) that he will not relent. So it is up to us to put congressional Republicans on notice that if they do not end the tariffs now, we will end their employment when they next stand for re-election. In order for that threat to be taken seriously, protests must grow each week. April 5 must be the beginning of a movement, not the end.

Concluding Thoughts.

My computer crashed three times while I was writing this newsletter, so I will have to end here.

We are likely in for a bumpy ride this week, but Trump has already lost support in the Senate (on tariffs). Let’s keep up the pressure and remind them what democracy looks like.

Talk to you tomorrow!