6. Militarization of Society
Military Parades
Imagine waking up to find that military parades are now a regular thing in your town.
Parades like that are about power, not celebration. They train people to accept soldiers everywhere.
Trump held a military parade on his birthday in 2025. He said it was for the Army's 250th anniversary. It was a dud. The crowds were way smaller than planned.
He'd wanted one since 2017, when he watched France's Bastille Day parade and decided he needed one too.
Armed Forces in Everyday Life
When the military becomes part of everyday life, people start to accept it. The line between civilian life and military control gets blurry.
Trump signed an executive order to have the military help with domestic policing.
In 2025, he sent National Guard troops into Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, the Chicago area, Memphis, and New Orleans, and had troops on standby for Portland.
Courts pushed back hard. In January 2026, the administration pulled all federalized troops out of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland.
Troops were still in Memphis and New Orleans this spring. And National Guard troops will stay on the streets of D.C. through the end of 2026.
Remember September 2025, when Trump and Pete Hegseth ordered hundreds of generals and admirals to drop everything and fly to Virginia?
Some of them came from posts on the other side of the world. They sat through Hegseth ranting about "wokeness," "fat" soldiers, women in the military, and beards. Freaking beards.
The room full of military leaders was dead silent, as they're supposed to be.
It was awkward.
Then Trump took the stage. The scariest part was when he said the real threat to our country was the "enemy within." He suggested using American cities as training grounds for the military.
No one imagined our military would be turned against Americans. Yet here we are. We've documented how Hegseth has damaged the military since then.
A War Nobody Voted For
On February 28, 2026, the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran. The U.S. side was called Operation Epic Fury. Congress never authorized it, and Republicans blocked every attempt to make Trump get permission.
On the very first day, a missile hit a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran. Many of the victims were schoolgirls. We wrote about it when we shared the United Against War petition.
Trump promised four to six weeks. On July 7, the administration announced Operation Epic Fury had "concluded." The fighting didn't.
The Intercept reported that more U.S. troops were killed and injured in the 12 weeks after it "ended" than during the 18 weeks before.
At least 19 service members have died, by the Pentagon's own count. The Pentagon even moved new casualties into a new category called "Overseas Operations", so they don't show up under Epic Fury.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's take? "There haven't been American deaths, it's really just an economic choke-out."
Tell that to the families of 19 service members.
The war has cost more than $25 billion so far. In late September, Iran sent Washington a written plan for a ceasefire, and more talks are expected. You can follow all of it in our Iran War Hub. The military is also ramping up operations in Latin America.
Troops and the Midterms
This is the part that has me worried.
Trump has said he regrets not using the National Guard to seize voting machines after the 2020 election. In May, he said he wouldn't rule out sending the Guard to voting locations in November.
Then, in a Time interview published October 1, he was asked about using the Insurrection Act around the midterms. His answer: "I don't rule anything out or in."
Here's the good news. Legal experts say a fake emergency can't give him control of elections. The federal government doesn't run elections. States do.
And most of the states likely to decide the midterms have governors who aren't about to give him control over their Guard.
