It's Not Coming. It Is Here.

We must change our mindset if we are to remain a free people.

We need to stop talking about authoritarianism in the future tense.

For years, political analysts, historians, and concerned citizens have warned about the threat of authoritarianism coming to America. We’ve debated the warning signs, compared historical precedents, and argued about whether it could happen here. That conversation is over.

It’s not coming. It’s here.

Yesterday, federal agents arrested journalist Don Lemon and other journalists for covering the ICE raids that are terrorizing communities. Read that sentence again. In the United States of America, in 2026, the government arrested members of the press for covering their denial of Constitutional rights to US citizens. This isn’t a thought experiment about what might happen if democratic norms erode. This is the reality we’re living in right now.

The arrests shouldn’t surprise anyone paying attention. They represent the logical endpoint of a pattern that’s been accelerating for weeks. Months. Years. But they matter because they cross a line that, once crossed, fundamentally changes what kind of country we are. Democracies have free press. Authoritarian regimes arrest journalists. Attack the media. Call them the enemies of the state. We just became the latter.

In Minneapolis, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are operating with a level of impunity that would have been unthinkable months ago. They’re conducting raids that disregard basic due process protections. American citizens—not undocumented immigrants, but United States citizens—are being stopped, questioned, and detained based solely on how they look or sound. No warrants. No probable cause. Just the exercise of raw power against people whose rights the Constitution supposedly guarantees.

And they’re doing it masked. Masked law enforcement agents have no place in a free society. Police accountability requires identification. When agents of the state hide their faces while wielding government power, they’re not protecting public safety—they’re shielding themselves from accountability. Masked enforcers aren’t the guardians of democracy. They’re the functionaries of a fascistic movement, operating with the anonymity that allows brutality without consequence.

This isn’t immigration enforcement. It’s the weaponization of federal law enforcement to create a climate of fear in communities deemed insufficiently loyal or politically useful. When citizens can be stopped and questioned about their status without any legal justification, you’re not living in a nation of laws. You’re living under arbitrary authority.

Then there’s Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, personally overseeing ballot records in Fulton County, Georgia. Let that sink in. The person in charge of America’s intelligence apparatus—someone with access to the nation’s most sensitive secrets and surveillance capabilities—is directly involved in breaking the chain of control over votes in a county that has been central to election conspiracy theories and political controversy.

Your government is lying to you.

This isn’t election security. This is election intimidation. When the head of national intelligence shows up to watch ballots being counted in a Democratic stronghold in a swing state, the message is clear: we’re watching, we know who you are, and we will remember how you voted. That’s not how democracies operate. That’s how authoritarian regimes maintain power.

Each of these incidents alone would be alarming. Together, they reveal a systematic pattern: the dismantling of democratic institutions and the consolidation of authoritarian control.

Arresting journalists eliminates independent accountability. Ignoring due process in immigration enforcement normalizes the arbitrary exercise of state power. Having intelligence officials oversee vote counting transforms elections from democratic exercises into loyalty tests. These aren’t disconnected events. They’re coordinated moves in a larger strategy.

The most dangerous response to authoritarianism is the belief that it can’t happen here, that our institutions are too strong, that someone will stop it. But authoritarianism doesn’t arrive announced. It creeps in through the erosion of norms, the selective enforcement of laws, and the gradual acceptance of actions that would have been unthinkable just months before.

We keep waiting for the moment when authoritarianism arrives. We’re looking for jackboots and declaration of martial law. But modern authoritarianism doesn’t work that way. It operates through existing institutions. It uses legal language to justify illegal actions. It happens gradually enough that each new violation seems like only a small step beyond the last one.

The conversation needs to change. We can’t keep warning about what’s coming when it’s already here. We can’t keep debating whether democratic norms are in danger when they’re actively being shattered. We can’t keep wondering if we’re overreacting when journalists are being arrested, citizens are being stopped without cause, and intelligence officials are counting votes.

This change of mindset dictates a change in tactics. A change in tone. Tenor. The language we use. The passion we bring to what has been lost.

Authoritarianism isn’t a future threat we need to prevent. It’s a present reality we need to confront. The question isn’t whether it can happen here. It’s whether we’re going to acknowledge what’s happening and respond accordingly, or whether we’re going to keep pretending we’re still living in the democracy we remember.

It’s not coming. It’s here. What we do next determines whether we accept it or fight it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​