Democracy – Susan Feathers

Letter to Congressional Republicans

January 26, 2026

Letter to All Republicans

US Congress 2026

Dear Senators and Representatives of the Republican Party,

This moment requires members of the Republican House and Senate to act decisively to protect the civil rights of citizens and adhere to Constitutional laws. Under your watch, the nation has never been more at risk of becoming another form of government: autocracy.

We the People have patiently waited for you to stand up for democracy. There is no more recent and brazen example as the persecution of Minnesota leaders and citizens. Pam Bondi’s request for voter roles is a clear violation of state’s sovereignty under law. Other cities have endured violations of civil rights by ICE but in Minnesota the worst of the far right ideologues of your once great old party are persecuting people it labels with a host of unamerican labels from elected officials right up to the White House.

We are not dealing with a “strong executive” but with people in key positions of power who have publicly stated their hatred of immigrants and their hatred of Democrats. Whatever happened to a nation in which both Republican and Democratic administrations were adhered to by citizens of all political views because all our leaders followed the rule of law and Constitutional laws.

My view is that we learned who DJT was in his first administration in which he pushed against the laws of our nation but was held in place by our guardrails against a despot: Supreme Court and Legislature. Now we have a stacked court of right leaning judges who have given immunity to a leader who is exactly the kind of person our founders wrote about who if he got into power would destroy the Republic. That is what we are witnessing, and, I have to say, is doing so with a lot of facilitation by you and your colleagues.

I am 80 years old, and I have never seen anything like we have in Donald Trump: an erratic, unstable human being; a person ignorant of our country and the world al large; a man whose mental health is deteriorating in plain view. We have never been more at risk in national security.

The killing of two Minnesota citizens by ICE who were protesting (their civil right) and the cowardly way in which Homeland Security reacted by calling them both insurrectionists is how dictatorships operate. Each family has a right to a full investigation. Life is not cheap in America under normal conditions.

I am begging you and your colleagues to stand up for the Republic! Protect our 250 years of striving together to make the best country we can. My God, the world is turning away from us. But do you know what I hold each of you most responsible for? Breaking the trust of the American people in such ways that you have weakened and endangered us. STAND UP!! Think about your legacy.

Sincerely,

Susan Lee Feathers

Devoted Patriot of American Democracy

Teacher, Writer, Active Citizen

Freedom, Nation’s Capitol. Photo by Susan L Feathers, 2013

New World Order

Witness: from America’s ashes a global reorganization without US…

Mark Carney is the wise leadership America lacks. Americans at home are under attack from a vicious police force created by a rogue regime purportedly of the Republican Party. THIS cabal of small minded, unelected ideologues, has nothing to do with our Republic’s governance or American history. The man in the seat behind the Resolution Desk is a despot, a tyrant, and an ignorant and psychologically damaged man.

Kudos to Mark Carney and all the men and women who lead democratic governments across the world and who live in reality.

Americans enter a new world where we are a danger to the world and a minor player in world affairs. We can thank the MAGA party and the cowardly republican reps supporting and in lock step with a fascist movement tearing up our democracy in plain sight.

Americans, we must recover what we can, and then elect sober, intelligent leadership which can recover our values and come to terms with how this tragedy has happened to us. I suggest we study how Germany recovered after they, too, tried to destroy other nations and create a white male hegemony.

As an American, as daughter of a decorated WWII veteran, my heart is on the ground. In spite of that, I am actively working with my fellow Americans to recover the guardrails of our democracy, and then work to repair the damage to our collective belief in our country’s ethos.

The Courage of Our Convictions

America and Americans are riding a rising wave, a tsunami caused by tyrants in our body politic. The winds of ill will call us to ride the powerful wave to its resolution in the renewal of this Republic in its 250^th year.

Truth bubbles up whenever forces seek to push it down, down from our sight and the light of facts. Our founder reminds us, “Facts are stubborn things.”[1]

Therefore, we take the courage of our convictions and we go out. Out we go to the streets with friends; we pick up a pen, and we write from experience and the assurance of our laws; we write from our shared wisdom; we text and email our Representatives, and we stand above the fray and call upon our fellow Americans to stop the madness:

A powerful Executive is not synonymous with abuse of power;
The powerful and lasting alliances through NATO and the United Nations have kept the world from worldwide war for 80 years; wholesale destruction of those alliances imperil American lives and those of our allies for coming generations;
Hatred of immigrants affronts the entire history of this Republic which has stood as a refuge for the repressed and made up our population over its entire history; no nation and its people are “garbage”;
Oil is a bygone energy source; nations around the world are converting to clean, renewable, cheap energy and should the tyrant stay in office, America will decline.
No intelligent leadership declares climate change a hoax.
The current president is not fit for office: mental and physical incapacity; vicious, revengeful and dangerous to our Republic, citizens and nations worldwide.
The cabal of unqualified ideologues who surround the president are re-writing American history in their image and imaginations. Hundreds of years and millions of citizens’ labor to faithfully and accurately record our history and culture is being defaced, altered or all together destroyed.
Declaration of the United States of America as a Christian country defies the Constitution’s basic tenet of separation of church and state. We honor citizens’ personal choice of faith including the right to choose none.

History and Justice are watching, and they are recording on their stone tablets the ugly record of your assaults against humanity, your sloppy footprints on the Capitol. If it is Sorcery that abides now, watch out for falling catapults and hurling marble thrown by the straight aim of monuments surrounding your little stick and mud manifestations.

Now we see you, then, we don’t.

History and Justice are watching.

[1] John Adams

Any Grown-ups in the Room?

The hourly dismantling of the American Republic demands that grown-ups stand and exert their authority as citizens. Afterall, this is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Since 2015, Donald J. Trump has intended to rid us of the rule of law. His principal tool has been obfuscation of fact, otherwise known as lies. The Heritage Foundation, which brought billions of dollars to elect Trump and crafted Project 2025, engaged Russell Vought as its principal writer. Later installed by Trump as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Vought is orchestrating the takeover and destruction of democracy at an unrelenting pace.

Because Trump doesn’t read or investigate, he is a stooge for powerful ideologues. A barrage of Executive Orders signed in the first quarter of his term were lifted directly from Project 2025. This plan cloaks itself in the language of patriotism and democratic values, while the intent is its opposite: the wholesale destruction of the guardrails in the Constitution to check executive power. Now that Trump et al have functionally dismantled or made ineffective federal agencies and branches of government, the intent is clear: empower the Executive to Install a new form of governance: authoritarian. All of it is unconstitutional. A raft of lawsuits in pursuit of these thieves has made some progress in holding back full scale implementation. However, a Supreme Court dominated by Trump nominees, is preventing just outcomes that are within the scope of a true Republic as shown in our history.

Onerous still is the outright rewriting of our history. This is accomplished on a large scale while the American public watches in shock. So preposterous in scope, the dismantling of historic buildings, art and information in our museums, National Archives, federal buildings, and even the architecture of the White House, has temporarily stunned Americans. Some make jokes about it, but Trump is dead serious. I imagine closets filled with cans of white paint and gold leaf off the Oval Office and a meandering president doing touch ups late at night. Its about image with Trump. But the people who made him president intend to take what is ours.

The most recent outrage is the announcement that there will be no national holiday commemorating the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. who advanced civil rights through faith and leadership, and built a powerful nonviolent movement that resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Instead, we will celebrate the birthday of Donald the Trump.

One of the most tragic periods in recollection, history will not forget the mean intent and childish actions of a mentally dysfunctional leader installed by a party and minority electorate intent on imposing their warped, racist ideology on all the rest of us. We must resist! Citizens and courts are the last bastions of the Republic. Recall the warning of John Adams when asked the outcome of the Constitutional Congress. “You have a Republic, if you can keep it.”

To me this is the strongest statement of our shared responsibility to be ever vigilant and willing to defend the government that emerged from our founders best ideas. Now, as the jaws of injustice aim to rip asunder both the physical and ideological bulwarks of Freedom and Justice, we must stand up as adults and resist these forces that fool an unwary citizenry through lies and the theft of democratic language to mean its opposite.

Wherever each of us resides, we must be willing to speak truth to power, to correct lies and misleading language. Pick your battles, friends, for such is the multi-pronged attack on American laws, customs and values that there is plenty of room for everyone to choose their cause.

Make no mistake. These are dangerous people running our Republic. Free and fair elections are their next target. If we lose that battle, I fear it will harken the end of our democratic society.

Tolerate no fools. We must be the adults in the room. We must restore our liberties and place our trust in each other to do so justly.

https://open.substack.com/pub/anntelnaes/p/trump-dusting-off-the-old-playbook?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Update: Today’s Substack post from Heather Cox Richardson pay tribute to Rob Reiner and his wife by quoting from the film by Reiner, The American President.

In this clip, the American President speaks to an opponent about character and the requirement of the Office of President which depends of good character. In our current situation, this should be said to the current occupant of the White House Office of the President whose name I shall not utter for he has violated every aspect of character Americans have come to value in their President.

America at 250

“The Declaration was just the beginning.”

“The revolutionary ideas of 1776 and the national framework established in 1787 laid the foundation for America’s story—chapters that continue to shape our nation today. This toolkit gives you everything you need to explore the founding documents and the enduring vision they set in motion.” ~ The National Constitution Center

At the National Constitution Center located in Philadelphia you will find an entire curriculum for 2026 that you can use to explore the history of and the ongoing shaping of our self-government. We the people at every decade have been the force and the protector or our self governing experiment.

Several years ago, I discovered the National Constitution Center and have been an active participant in their programs through the podcasts, the archival papers, and the lively discussions free of politics. Conservative and liberal voices and scholars debate our history, the meaning of our founders’ documents, the functioning of our three branches of government: the checks and balances.

Reader and friends, this is a place of refuge for all the fraught and worried public no matter your political persuasion. Here, we carry on the processes and scholarship that not only defines American but also charges all of us to read and study and debate our current governance.

I’m looking forward to dipping into this curriculum. and I plan a year of focus and study about the American path and promise.

Mutual Flourishing

No person living today makes as much sense as Robin Wall Kimmerer.

In her beautiful Potowatomi ways of knowing, so brilliantly written in her latest book – a small treasure to be carried in your pocket to remind us about other ways of knowing the world than the Western, extractive view of the Earth’s living community as “resources” – The Serviceberry is a way out of madness.

Early this morning I found myself torn apart by concerns for the nation, the planet, for my health as I age, for my children’s future…and no where could I find a direction and wisdom that seemed to point toward truth and sustenance.

Then, on YouTube, I found a brilliant interview by a young scientist at the Museum of Science who interviewed Dr. Kimmerer about the little book of wisdom, The Serviceberry. I post it here for you, my friends online from countries all over the world. I pray you find solace, wisdom, and direction for this day and tomorrow for truly, Robin has gifted the world a jewel of hope.

Americans Under Assault

Well-fed people can enhance their dignity, their health and their learning capacity. Putting resources into social programs is not expenditure. It is investment. ~ Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

Tonight I opened a notice from the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia and the Eastern Shore. This organization serves hundreds of thousands of people living in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Right now, 152,720 people in Southeastern Virginia are having trouble accessing fresh and nutritious food… ~ Christopher Tan, President and CEO of the Foodbank.

Today, I talked to a nonprofit customer of mine whose organization assists people experiencing homelessness or near eviction. She said the need was rising sharply as households are unable to pay the rising rental or mortgage payments. Families who never dreamed they’d be on the street are facing that possibility as the cost and availability of affordable housing rises out of reach.

Then I opened a letter from the Southern Environmental Law Center which has worked on behalf of a healthy environment for 40 years.

The streams and rivers that provide our drinking water. The air we breathe. The wild places and wildlife we love. The communities we call home, from the coast to the mountains. …Right now, they are all at risk. And amidst it all, we face a changing climate-one that’s intensifying our storms, eroding our beaches, and supercharging summers. ~ Southern Environmental Law Center

The current administration has cut back social and environmental programs intended for the betterment of the people, and ended policies all legally and constitutionally passed by the Congress of the USA. Legally, the Republicans have impounded funds delegated for the American people. By doing so, deaths have already occurred and suffering is growing among citizens in what was once a prosperous, strong democratic governing body which adhered to the principle that a democracy is rule by consent of the governed. But Trump and his despicable helpmates have damaged and intend to destroy democratic governance in our country.

Friends we are only in the first year of this destruction. Forces are being amassed in major cities and along borders to control the people, but its all in the name of cleaning up crime or getting rid of dangerous criminals. It is not.

Project 2025, conceived by the likes of Steve Miller and Russell Vought and the Heritage Foundation – supported by far right conservatives – intends to destroy democracy and replace it with autocratic rule.

It’s almost all in place. The only thing left to do is rise up en mass and break down the barriers and take back the country. That would be the start. Then the long but potentially powerful remaking of our democracy. This will be the project of generations.

Look around. The signs of suffering are everywhere.

A formula for national chaos…

At the White House 2 + 2 = 0. ~ Anonymous

Republicans justifying cuts to programs through the One Big Beautiful Bill (Rescissions Act of 2025) assert that the States and private sector will make up for cuts to federal funding in the Congressional budget.

Alice Ruhnke, President of GrantStation, lists the ways the bill is disabling the Nonprofit Sector which provides a big swath of the Social Safety Net in America.

Read her work here. Interesting to see the progression month by month. Pay attention to proposed changes to the Johnson Amendment (1954). If passed, it would drag churches and charitable organizations into the maelstrom of partisanship politics.

Standing Up: Be a Citizen

For the first American citizens of a new democracy, people who had been “subjects of a monarchy” had to learn how to be a citizen. What did that mean? Require? In early American homes, taverns and gatherings, this was the topic. All agreed it meant something important. Something was required. Acting in another way meant being involved, and contributing to maintain the rights the democracy asserts belong to all of us. It is active, not reactionary.

A recent conversation between Heather Cox Richardson, American historian and author of Letters from An American Substack publication, and Joanne Freeman, Yale Professor of early American history, discussed the behavior of our current legislators. Richardson posed that their current behavior, with exceptions, overall is not about principles of democracy but rather about keeping their seat and about a consumer economy.

Listen here to their 20 minute discussion.

Questions: 1. Have we forgotten how to be a citizen and what is required? 2. Have our representatives forgotten what their role is in representing us and defending a democracy?

Richardson points out that around the 1980s our discourse and our representatives no longer shared a common understanding of what a democracy is and does. The original consensus shared by the majority of Americans regardless of party?

Richardson continues to conjecture that being a good citizen has changed from defending principles to defending political parties and a form of economic policy, to the point that the majority of us, including leaders, have lost sight of our responsibility as citizens.

Joanne Freeman believes we assumed that as we are going about our lives that the democracy would just hum along without our oversight, without our participation. Making money, following economic indicators, obtaining power through how much money you make have taken over our sense of the country to which we belong.

Richardson and Freeman both believe that we must regain self-empowerment in order to empower a government to protect and nourish the democracy.

Self-empowerment (self-actualization) leads to democracy empowerment when we come together to act for decency, right and wrong and stand together against oligarchy.

Self-actualization comes from values of behavior and action in a democratic society, self-improvement (hard work, education, and engagement with fellow citizens) to keep the conditions of freedom healthy and alive through collective action: stand up for principles whenever they are challenged.

What do you think?

How Much Is Enough?

This blog post below was posted in 2022 after moving to Virginia to be closer to my family. It is a short essay but contains the key sources on my own exploration of this question: How much is enough? Inspired by the great ethicists of my formative adult years, these writers were each examining what Albert Schweitzer called an ethical basis for life. I encourage you to read the post for its links to sources and collective direction these great thinkers still offer Americans and people everywhere on how to live together in peace and prosperity.