My list of grievances against Trump in 2026 eerily resemble those lists in the Declaration of Independence from the KIng in 1776

 July 4 this year is not for me a celebration with joy and pride, but trepidation that we are on the verge of restoring the kind of tyranny we revolted against in 1776.  In 1776, the reasons for the Declaration were laid out in a list of grievances against the King in that historic document.  Many of those reasons are similar to the deeds and actions of President Trump, who has amassed  such power and wealth even our founders could never have envisioned.  I wrote the following exactly one year ago: I could have written it today.    

July 4, 2025

My Declaration of Independence from King Trump and a List of Grievances.

As we celebrate the Declaration of Independence from a king in 1776, we also decry the re-establishment of one who thinks and acts like one in 2025. In the Declaration of Independence of 1776, a list of grievances against the King (a bill of particulars) was presented as the reasons for declaring independence.

Here are mine (in no particular order of importance.

• He claims his executive orders are the law of the land and acts accordingly.
• He accumulates vast wealth from enterprises that include customers who are foreigners..
• He uses "his" active army to repress protestors and put fear into the hearts of those who would show their anger toward his policies
• He forces by threat and fear his parliament to pass legislation that does not reflect the will of each member's own constituents
• He sets up prisons to contain those who have no chance to protest and builds concentration camps which deprive persons of their rights or send them to foreign, harsh prisons, without any evidence that they committed crimes other than having documents of status violations.
• His masked, unmarked, street-clothed federal agents snatch those off the street to arrest targets or those who look like they are from south of our border without warrants, sometimes using excessive force...
• He threatens to delist media that do not toe his line and calls all media that criticize him liars
• He threatens to remove federal funding from education that does not reflect his ideology or the ideology of his core supporters in his political party, while his legislative initiatives are approved by around 30% of those polled who know what is in it, the contents about which he lies on the favored media outlets he owns or approves.
• He abuses his power by using "his" Department of Justice to investigate opponents without any probable cause as a tool to threaten opponents to his reign or make examples of them to frighten others into silence.
• He reverses the rights of minorities, religious or love preferences, and non-whites by removing all references to diversity, equity, and inclusion in any federal documents he controls... reinstating the ability of the federal government to discriminate against them again. He wants to imprison those he plans to expel from this country without the right of habeas corpus.
• He adopts all policies of white Christian nationalists written in a document as a blueprint for the takeover of the federal government and institutes them by installing their authors in key positions
• He refuses to confirm whether he would honor treaties or come to the defense of allies who are attacked and have signed such a treaty...NATO
• He ignores court orders of any court lower than the Supreme Court if he does not like the ruling..
• He tries to sell off public lands, institutes tariffs, deprives the poor of health care and nutrition programs to compensate for the loss of income to the treasury due to tax favors and reductions granted to the very rich. 
• He pardons criminals who were found guilty by jury trial or had already confessed to crimes because they were his supporters, contributors, or friends of his. In so doing, he encourages those to commit crimes on his behalf in the future, believing they, too, would be pardoned..

Declaration of Independence: A Transcription | National Archives

4th of July and the Arab spring

My column appearing in both the on line, e, and print editions to day in the Sky Hi Daily News...

 

No one meeting in the Continental Congress in 1776 could have imagined that their Declaration of Independence from Britain would inspire popular revolts and uprisings 235 years later in lands very different and far away.

The young people leading the Arab Spring used the words of the Declaration and the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights to rally supporters and to couch their goals as rights to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.

Principles so eloquently put to quill pen in 1776 by Thomas Jefferson were fleshed out and codified in the first 10 amendments of the Constitution (the Bill of Rights) later during its ratification process. Both documents have become the ideals and aspirations of many young leaders in the Middle East and North Africa, which they extolled in text messages, Facebook, Twitter, and oratory.

Elections this fall in Egypt and Tunisia will tell whether the meaning of those words will be fully understood and applied by those going to the polls. There is always the possibility that some non-democratic force will win out, but a semblance of a Jeffersonian democracy is possible in those countries.

The transition from oppressed subject of a monarchy to revolution to democratic self-governance was relatively easy for the newly minted 13 not yet fully united states of America. The colonialists had experience in decades with the practice of self-government through their colonial legislative bodies. They used the English parliamentary procedures as a model, a structure that translated to order of debate, compromise, and law-making. For that reason John Adams and Thomas Jefferson worked effectively in a familiar process, though they were temperamentally and culturally very different.

Colonialists also could draw on a legal system based upon English law. In short, they spoke a common language of governance.

Independence in that hot summer of 1776 was not a revolt against the form of democracy. The patriots were in revolt against a monarchy and parliament that would not let them use the tools of democracy to pass their own laws they themselves could enforce, levy their own taxes, control their own militias or even have representation in the British parliament.

When the colonies attempted to boycott British goods and refused to pay taxes levied on them, the British parliament set about to punish and penalize them, closing their colonial assemblies and dictating their governance. By July 4, 1776, the patriots had already fought at Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill and had come to the conclusion that any change in British policies would not happen. Independence was the only option.

Unlike American patriots, those in North Africa who successfully overthrew dictators and monarchies do not have much of a democratic platform on which to build, though Egypt does have a structure in place. Unlike a tribally fragmented Afghanistan where loyalty to a national government is at best secondary and Jeffersonian democracy is not even a dream, Egypt and Tunisia have loyalty to a national identity and a group of activists willing to die for their rights .

Knowledge of the form of democratic government is no guarantee that democracy will take root. I recall a conversation with a Ugandan diplomat attending his first United Nations session on the eve of his country becoming independent. I expressed concern that they would be able to govern themselves. The diplomat assured me that as a former British colony, Uganda would be successful.

Instead, Uganda devolved into 25 years of tribal bloodshed, revolution, ethnic and tribal cleansing. President Idi Amin became the icon of bloody dictatorships that would haunt the rest of the former colonies of sub Sahara Africa for many decades.

We can hope countries throwing off oppression can develop their own democratic institutions and traditions. It will be particularly difficult for those divided by ethnic, tribal, religious differences with a citizenry that puts loyalty to their nation secondary. They can succeed if their citizens unify and do not abandon goals to protect inalienable human rights which our own patriots and founders pioneered.

For more commentary, go to http://www.mufticforum.com/