Kathleen McQuillan

Our nation is at a crossroads. Political concerns grow with each passing day. We are witnessing what many analysts call a massive attack on the American Experiment. Never have I experienced as persistent a state of anxiety, fear, and anger over the state of our democracy as I have in 2025. And I am not alone.
Political tension isn’t a new phenomenon in this country. Regardless of party affiliation, no president in my lifetime has controlled the national narrative and exerted a stranglehold on the American psyche as has Donald J. Trump. First elected in 2016 in a surprise win, Mr. T. entered the White House with a bombastic lust for attention. Chaos characterized his first term as we watched his cabinet members and advisors move quickly onto and then off the national stage as, one by one, they fell out of his favor. A pattern began to emerge, one that demanded complete and total fealty to his policies, his personality, and his obsession with power and control.
The press followed his every move. With egotistical fervor, he repeatedly tested the boundaries of the Executive Branch, ignoring requirements for congressional approval and challenging other parts of the Constitution designed to preserve the balance of power between our three co-equal branches of government. He continues to do so with even greater velocity and shock value in his second term, thanks to a Supreme Court decision granting near total immunity from prosecution for actions taken while in office.
When Joe Biden won in 2020, many Americans sighed relief, believing that Mr. T’s four years in office were an anomalous blip on the screen of history. But he wasn’t done yet. Before leaving Washington, he helped incite a riot on the Capitol to block Congress from verifying the election results. When the attempt failed, he spent the next four years insisting the election was rigged. His false assertion continued to suck up massive amounts of news airtime with a noise that constantly distracted public attention from President Biden’s efforts to help the nation recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden’s first order of business was managing the crisis and getting the health of our country back on track. He and his team focused attention and resources on projects that would help reestablish people’s sense of personal security and their daily routines. He had to recreate a functioning economy by getting kids back in school, people back to work, supporting small businesses, and creating jobs with massive investment in our nation’s aging infrastructure and by meeting a growing demand for clean energy. Biden’s personal demeanor and style of leadership couldn’t have been more different than that of the previous president. While Mr. T. continued to sow chaos, Biden worked diligently to get bills passed in Congress that would fuel his vision for the future, one that many Americans are benefiting from now.
Once free of the confines of rules and traditions that governed the Oval Office, Mr. T. could continue to feed his followers false notions that challenged the validity of the 2020 election results and fueled the flames of hatred and division. The press remained enamored by his antics and outrages while the general population got scant details on Biden’s forward-thinking actions to help us recover from COVID, lift our beleaguered spirits and embrace the future.
Ever emboldened, and with the help of extremely wealthy donors, T. took to the campaign trail for reelection and won. Armed with an intricately crafted playbook called Project 2025, he wasted no time springing into action by signing hundreds of executive orders in the first weeks of his second term as president.
In his heavy-handed style, he began cutting funding and slashing staff from dozens of key departments of government. Thousands of highly skilled and experienced civil servants were laid off or fired, depriving Americans of vital information, services, and benefits. From agencies such as the IRS that collect federal revenue to run the government, to Health and Human Services in charge of medical facilities, systems and research, to the Department of Education, and multiple agencies that monitor weather and climate conditions key to our safe travel and preparedness for natural disasters. These are just a few of the agencies that became victims of Mr. T’s brainchild, the new Department of Government Efficiency, called DOGE for short. Elon Musk was appointed to lead the department, his only apparent qualification, his fortune and fame as the richest man in the world. It’s been a head-spinning, hair-raising ten-month ride since his billionaire-studded second inauguration and his swift implementation of Project 2025.
I was a child of the 1950s. My first introduction to the world of politics was the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. That too was a controversial election. JFK was our youngest president and the first Catholic to reside in the White House. Some feared that once he was in office, the Pope would be running our country.
The Cold War was heating up. The reliance on nuclear weapons to deter Russian aggression created around the globe a previously unimagined level of fear. Everyone lived with the threat of total annihilation. But the fears we feel today are very different and sometimes more pervasive than those of my childhood. Today, we lose sleep over the end to our democracy — nearly as unimaginable as that threat of “mutually assured destruction” posed by nuclear war.
Our society today suffers from skepticism and cynicism beyond compare. We’ve lost the defining lines between fact and fiction, truth and lies. When it comes to “the news,” we’re not sure who or what we can trust. Our individual and national security is under threat less by a foreign adversary than by our president who is leading us down a path toward authoritarianism. That is what motivated nearly 8 million people on Oct. 18 show up for the second “No King’s Rally,”
From the little town of Cook, Minn., population 552, where 150 people gathered in a downtown park, to places like New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, and Seattle, where hundreds of thousands gathered in cities across America to peacefully protest Mr. T’s disregard for our Constitution and the rule of law.
People chanted, “Enough!” to his blatant lies, greed, and corruption and carried signs stating emphatically, “NO!” to dictatorship.
Later in October, without expert input, public comment or even an official permit, Trump ordered the demolition of the East Wing of the White House. The scene of the gouging and then its collapse was just one of many Mr. T.s gut-wrenching orders. The symbolism was much too obvious. The man was taking his thrill with chaos, suffering and the systematic dismantling of our government to new heights.
Historians spoke out in defense of the White House, one of America’s most cherished monuments to our democracy, imploring the president to stop the destruction immediately and obtain required permits and public comment as is customary before going further. Mr. T. didn’t heed.
Spaces like The East Wing and Rose Garden belong to “the people” as do our institutions and agencies of government. These are not his to do with whatever he wishes for his own petty delight. These actions are serious, more than mere impulses. They’re something deeper. A malicious thumbing of his nose at all Americans. A flexing of his power. A show of force. The people be damned.
No president is without flaws. But sadistic pleasure can become a pathology. Enormous power rests in his hands. These most recent actions, combined with all the many of his other concerning behaviors, beg the question: Is Donald Trump a dangerous man, unfit for office?”