By Lily N. Kassis
As court rulings begin to roll in against the Trump administration, as thousands of troops arrive on massive warships in the waters off Venezuela, as immigrants continue to be detained and deported without trial, as masked federal agents kidnap our innocent neighbors and friends, as wild and illegal tariffs are imposed and withdrawn, and as the president personally collects millions in bribes, let us call it what it is: a coup.
“Coup: noun; a sudden, violent, and unlawful seizure of power from a government.” – Oxford Languages
The president and his handpicked posse of white supremacist “yes” people have violently and unlawfully seized power over the government. I hesitate to call these actions sudden, yet it does seem to be the case for many. We have all heard the “I voted for Trump, but I didn’t vote for this” narrative. Mere months into his new term, his approval has plummeted and protests opposing him have broken records.
And the coup has been cruel. Consider the innocent people, deported to violent foreign prisons because of their tattoos. Consider the military troops deployed across the country.
To quote the character “Captain Adama” from Battlestar Galactica: “There’s a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state. The other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”
In this “against the people” spirit, recent federal actions and executive orders have been explicitly violent – as have the actions of federal appointees. Take Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, for example. Miller’s rhetoric is intentionally violent, and actions taken under his leadership have been horrific. Immigration policy has changed enormously, and enforcement even more. The recent targeting of outspoken students has particularly disgusted me. This is all violent and fundamentally goes against the very core of our nation.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The last part of the coup (as defined above) is its unlawfulness. A huge number of this administration’s key actions and policies have been ruled illegal. Many immigration policies, as well as individual immigration deportation cases, have been ruled illegal in court. Military deployments have also been ruled illegal but “the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals halted the ruling until it resolves the administration’s appeal, allowing the deployment to remain.” And recent tariffs that have been ruled illegal remain in place. Various other similarly lost and appealed cases exist, and various corresponding actions continue to continue. It is a coup.
The corruption is blatant, and we, the people, are not blind.
Lily Noelani Kassis was born and raised in Waimea, Hawaiʻi Island. She graduated from Hawaiʻi Preparatory Academy and is currently pursuing a bachelor of science degree in ecological determinants of health.
