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One of the few advantages of being as conspicuous as I am is that many people come up to me whom I don’t know, to talk about what’s happening in America. It’s like a free-floating focus group.
On Monday morning, I was at a restaurant counter finishing my breakfast when a middle-aged man sat down next to me and said he didn’t want to intrude. (He just had, so I put down my knife and fork, wiped my mouth with my napkin, and turned toward him.) He wanted me to know that although he’d been a life-long Republican, the events of the past weeks had caused him to leave the Republican party.
“I’m happy to hear that,” I said with a smile, and turned to finish my breakfast.
“I’m from New Hampshire and many of my Republican friends are leaving the party, too,” he said. “Minneapolis was the last straw.”
I put down my fork and turned toward him again. “I assume you’re talking about the behavior of ICE and border patrol agents there, and the killings?”
“All terrible, of course,” he said, shaking his head. “But what really finished me were the lies – Noem. Miller, Bovino, Vance, Trump.” He frowned. “They lied through their teeth. I saw the videos! Can’t trust them ever again. None of them. Pack of liars.”
I agreed and then excused myself, explaining I had to finish my breakfast and get to an appointment.
But his words stuck with me.
There are two ways to look at what’s happened in Minneapolis – two different tipping points for America.
The first is to see the nation tipping more deeply into Trump’s fascist police state. ICE and the border patrol have become vehicles of state terror. They’re engaged in extrajudicial killings with apparent impunity.
The tipping began with Trump’s purging of federal prosecutors who tried to hold him accountable for his attempted coup. It continued with his pardons of the January 6 rioters, pardons of his allies and wealthy friends, his criminal prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James and the criminal investigation of Jerome Powell.
Now, we’re full tilt with the Trump regime’s occupation of Minneapolis by inadequately trained, trigger-happy goons with rifles and in riot gear – who have bullied, beaten and killed residents. And the regime’s impeding of a state investigation into the killings, its wildly false accusations about the victims, and its claim, since walked back, that federal agents responsible for the killings have total immunity from prosecution.
But there’s a second way to see what’s happened in Minnesota – a tipping point of a different kind. The fellow from New Hampshire who sat next to me at breakfast typifies it.
It’s a tipping point toward mass revulsion over Trump and the people around him.
To be sure, the Republican party in America has been in a death spiral since Trump emerged in 2016; it’s held together chiefly by Trump’s lies.
But his latest lies – and those of his surrounding sycophants – are so blatant and disgusting that some, like my breakfast companion, are abandoning the GOP altogether.
It’s also a tipping point toward Americans coming together to defeat Trump’s fascism. Coming together as they’ve come together in Minneapolis – across race, class and ethnicity.
I hear from friends and former students in Minneapolis about the extraordinary outpouring there of cooperation and mutual aid. Residents participating in neighborhood watches. Messaging about where agents are lurking. Taking videos of ICE’s atrocities and sharing them widely.
They’re organizing deliveries of food and other necessities to families afraid to leave their homes. Picking up groceries for immigrant families. Standing guard outside a local mosque during Friday prayers. Driving vulnerable families to doctor’s appointments. Driving immigrant kids to school.
One friend tells me he’s lived in Minneapolis for 40 years and has never felt the city as closely bound together. “I think we’ve discovered the real meaning of community,” he wrote.
A former student says that despite the sub-zero weather, he and everyone he knows have been involved in organizing against ICE and for one another. “This goes far deeper than a protest,” he says. “It’s a new way to live here.”
This isn’t limited to Minneapolis. I’m hearing from friends and former students across America who are seeing something similar where they live.
“You wouldn’t believe how this community has come together,” writes an old friend from Portland, Maine. “I’ve lived here for more than 20 years and don’t recall a time when we felt as united.”
Both tipping points may be true. We’re tipping into Trump’s fascist police state at the same time as we’re tipping into a new era of solidarity. The second may be the consequence of the first.
All I can say with any confidence is that the events of the last weeks are changing America profoundly.
What comes next?
I don’t buy the predictions of a second civil war. I think Americans are better than that. If polls are to be believed, most oppose the way Trump has been implementing his immigration policies. Most don’t accept his fascist police state.
America may be tipping into that police state, nonetheless.
But we’re also tipping into unity against it. We’re moving into a solidarity that could give new meaning to the ideal of self-government – a system of, by, and for the people.
I’d like to believe the second tipping point will outlast the first.
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Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now
