Letter: Don't Sleep Well

The New Yorker's The Political Scene, “A Stark Warning About the 2026 Election,” with Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, shook me. Kagan asserted “I don't want anyone to sleep well,” a fitting conclusion to a well-reasoned review of Trump and his advisers' efforts to sustain what Kagan suggests is the nearly completed Trump dictatorship. Mentioning the architects of Trump scripts, Russell Vought and Stephen Miller, Kagan posits their plan to overturn the “founders' liberalism” with no intention of free and fair elections. He criticizes Congress and the “cowardice of the American elite” for their unwillingness to defund ICE and its blanket immunity, adding Minnesota is a dress rehearsal for the use of the Insurrection Act and more egregious misuse of power. He urges ordinary citizens to follow their instinct of outrage by steadily contacting politicians by email, mail, phone, or personal office visits. After hearing Kagan, my sleep may suffer, but I'm more intent than ever on resisting the insidious virus infecting American democracy.

Roger Shanley

East side

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Disclaimer: As submitted to the Arizona Daily Star.