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The Warning America Can’t Afford to Ignore

Former House majority leader Richard Gephardt and former senator Timothy Wirth argue that a “rolling coup” is already underway—and that the greatest danger may lie ahead.

President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, UFC CEO Dana White, and others pose for a photo inside the octagon at the UFC Freedom 250 on the South Lawn of the White House on June 14, 2026, in Washington, DC.

Last week, Trump and his inner circle hosted bloody, Roman Empire–styled cage fights on the White House lawn. It was a crass, coarse, and uncultured demonstration of Trumpian America.

Trump’s vision of the country, it seems, is as a place of human cockfights—a place where eye-gougers and bare-knuckle brawlers grapple in front of crowds that would torment people placed into the pillory. It is a vision of a society where a spectacle-addicted populace would be ready to laugh, gawk, and picnic as lynch mobs do their foul deeds. It is, in short, a United States where all of the very worst, most violent instincts and practices bubble up to the surface.

The UFC makeover of the White House, backed up by plentiful displays of military hardware and personnel, as part of the America-at-250 celebrations, was an embrace of brute force as a guiding principle of Americanness. “We have the muscle. We have the brawn,” Trump’s spectacle suggested. “So don’t fuck with us.”

As the blood-and-gore festivities got underway, former House majority leader and presidential candidate Richard Gephardt and former Colorado senator Timothy Wirth were writing a warning statement. The Wirth-Gephardt memo laid out their fears that the United States is facing a “rolling coup” over the coming months—and that too many Americans, distracted as they are by all of the vulgarities and tackiness of the Trump oligarchy, are sleepwalking toward a disaster.

Their memo explains how the Trump administration is corroding basic democratic protections, eviscerating the rule of law, and expanding presidential power through use of a National Presidential Security Memorandum (NPSM-7) titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” The memo is published in full today in The Nation. It should serve as a call to all Americans who are worried at the extreme, authoritarian direction in which Trump is taking the country.

The Wirth-Gephardt document is a sobering exploration of just how much damage can be inflicted—is already being inflicted—on the polity by a president who is willing to deploy the Justice Department, the military, ICE, and other powerful tools of the state against domestic political opponents. The retired politicians argue that a politically damaged Trump facing the possibility of a GOP electoral wipeout in the midterms is capable of declaring a national emergency and attempting to activate expansive emergency presidential powers—detailed in top secret President’s Emergency Action Documents (PEADs)—that would render........

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