Why Are Tyrant Trump’s Institutional Critics Remaining Silent?
By Ralph Nader
June 13, 2025
By now Tyrant Trump and his fascist wrecking crew have made abundantly clear their objectives of police state control, corporatist rule, and corrupt self-enrichment resulting in the destruction of our constitutional freedoms and its rule of law. (See the New York Times article by Ben Rhodes from June 8, 2025, titled, The American System Is Not Designed to Resist Corruption). You don’t need to read the mass media documentation of the Trumpsters’ madness in the mass media; they openly boast about what is a betrayal of the American people as they unleash the darkest bigotries and cruelties within our society.
This brazenness comes from a realization by Trump and his cronies that their simmering institutional opposition has been largely cowed by threats and intimidation and remains in the shadows—silenced by self-inflicted censorship.
True, the street protests are becoming larger, more widespread, and focused on the Trump Dump that is sinking our country. Until they arouse the following institutional forces, street protests, no matter how peaceful, become vulnerable to malicious infiltration and set-ups for lawless Trump to call out the military.
Let’s review the terrain of simmering oppositional institutions and see how they can come out tall and courageous to, in Benjamin Franklin’s words, “Save our Republic” —literally—from deep despotism.
1. Start with the Democrats in Congress. They need to move beyond scattered rebuttals and organize a “war room” to help them exercise their constitutional obligations. A daily action plan augmented by strong clear arguments is key. The offices of even the most progressive members (Al Green, Delia Ramirez, Jamie Raskin, etc.)  need to tap and use the valuable practical civic input for their own, defined pursuits.
The Congressional Democrats are finally conducting some informal, public “shadow hearings” in Committee rooms with witnesses and eager media.  Ranking Members of every House and Senate Committee need to regularly hold such hearings to focus the demands of their supporters jamming Town Meetings back home and demanding, in their words, aggressive and comprehensive challenges to the GOP.  Lawmakers at the state and local levels need to heed their angry, anxious voters as well.
Outside of government, the silent or barely whimpering groups need to recover their nerve and use their inherent muscle.
2. The Bar Associations, from the large national American Bar Association (ABA) to the 50 state bars should be the “First Responders” to Tyranny. Lawyers certainly know how to exert their muscle for their paying clients. They must do likewise, as “officers of the court,” to use their muscle to defend the Constitution and our Republic. The ABA has squeaked a little but seems to be waiting for a clear open defiance of a major court order by Trump before beginning to speak out. This will be too little, too late.
3. The small business community is getting hammered by Trump tariffs, Trump cancellation of government contracts, public investments, and kidnapping raids on their workers in key sectors like food processing, harvesting crops, health care, construction, cleaning services, and other service sectors. (See, the June 11, 2025, Washington Post column by Catherine Rampell titled, “The secret police descending on Small Town, U.S.A.”) Small business can be a formidable lobby. If they do not pick up their cudgels it is only going to get more chaotic for them week by week, taking the first brunt of rising prices, consumer drawdowns and Trump/Musk drained social safety programs.
4. The medical, public health and scientific societies command great public attention, immersed as they are in the people’s health and safety and environmental protections. Trump’s draconian cuts here in medical/scientific research and disaster/pandemic alert programs have gone off the rails and are even worrying Wall Street, accustomed to our nation’s leadership in science.
5. The organized civic groups, already in the forefront of the struggles for consumer, labor, and environmental justice, have to get into Emergency Mode. By that I mean breaking their routines, creating collaborative “war rooms” to counter many vulnerabilities of Trumpism outside the courts, intensely focusing on Congress, (yes, laying the groundwork for impeachment), mobilizing laser-beam public opinion and urging all the silent institutional powers to stand tall. When groups stand tall and fight, their funding usually increases.
6. Former Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden are dangerously quiet or barely expressing their displeasure. They have huge constituencies which can be aroused. George W. Bush is seeing his very popular AIDS medicine program abroad shut down with thousands dying weekly in these poor countries. Doesn’t he have any pride in his prime claim to humanity during his eight imperial, plutocratic years? Sure, if he takes on Trump with prime-time news coverage, Trump will remind him of the million people Bush’s criminal invasion of Iraq caused to perish. Get some guts, George. Take some time off from your painting hobby and take a leader’s stand. It might quicken some latent defiance of Trump from long-self-suppressed traditional Republicans.
Popular Barack Obama whose major boast during 2009-2010 when he had huge majorities in Congress—Obamacare—is on the GOP Congressional chopping block. Why is he so quiet? Loyalists for retired presidents must put the heat on them to end Trump’s hateful soliloquies before a mass media hungry for high-profile ripostes and rebuttals.
7. Where are the religious denominations, the “organized Church,” as it is called? They are supposed to be the caretakers, and custodians of our moral values, and champion the golden rule. Convicted felon Trump’s goal is to shatter norm after norm, to normalize lawlessness, greed, lying, corruption, cruelty, violence, sexual abuse, and betrayals of trust. This assault undermines the creeds long advanced by Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and other East Asian faiths. Given their historic traditions and teachings, standing firm against craven commercialism, oppression, and maintaining a compassionate presence (as with the late Pope Francis), it is puzzling to witness their receding visibility as the need for their moral leadership is at a critical high.
There are explanations for this Imploding Silence and its consequential complicities: lack of courage; conflicts with their own commercial dependencies; and fear of being singled out by immediate Trumpian illegal retaliations, as with his assaults on universities and law firms.
One major strategy would resolve these perilous inhibitions enabling our country’s plunge into Despotism. All these disparate groups should pull together to save our Republic at one gigantic announcement, bonded to one another in a crucial demonstration of serious, basic Patriotism.
I suggest the FOURTH OF JULY to Declare Our Independence from the unstable, self-anointed King Donald—the embodiment of the deepest fear of our Founders—and press for the ultimate remaining remedy wisely foreshadowed by our Founders—Donald Trump’s IMPEACHMENT AND REMOVAL FROM OFFICE!