“This is a leader who is trying to transition our government from a democracy to something much closer to a totalitarian state,” the Connecticut Democrat warned.
US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) speaks during a Won’t Back Down event at the Van Buren in Phoenix, Arizona on August 3, 2025.
(Photo by John Medina/Getty Images for MoveOn)
Jessica Corbett
Oct 26, 2025
COMMON DREAM
Twenty-six days into the shutdown, US Sen. Chris Murphy argued on CNN‘s “State of the Union” Sunday that President Donald Trump “is refusing to negotiate... because he likes the fact that the government is closed, because he thinks he can exercise king-like powers, he can open up the parts of the government that he wants, he can pay the employees who are loyal to him.”
The second-longest government shutdown in US history began early this month because congressional Republicans want to maintain their funding plans, while Democrats want to help the millions of Americans facing healthcare coverage losses and surging insurance premiums by reversing the GOP’s recent Medicaid cuts and extending Affordable Care Act subsidies.
“Let’s be clear. We’re shut down right now because Republicans are refusing to even talk to Democrats about a bipartisan budget bill,” Murphy (D-Conn.) told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “Yes, we have priorities, just like they do. One of our priorities is pretty simple, making sure that premiums don’t go up by 75% on 22 million families this fall.”
“Now, the reality is, if they sat down to try to negotiate, we could probably come up with something pretty quickly,” the senator suggested, pointing to Trump’s $20-40 billion bailout for Argentina. “That’s enough money to relieve a lot of pressure of these premium increases. So, we could get this deal done in a day if the president was in DC, rather than being overseas. We could open up the government on Tuesday or Wednesday, and there wouldn’t be any crisis in the food stamp program.”
“I just don’t want to live in a world in which Donald Trump and a handful of billionaires decide which part of government works and which don’t.”
Trump arrived in Malaysia on Sunday and is set to spend the week traveling in Asia. His administration refuses to use a contingency fund to deliver food stamps—officially called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits—during the shutdown, imperiling relief for about 42 million low-income people and drawing intense criticism from Democrats in Congress.
Federal workers, contractors, and service members are also at risk of not being able to buy groceries due to missed paychecks. However, one of the president’s rich friends—billionaire banking heir and railroad magnate Timothy Mellon, according to the New York Times—donated $130 million toward paying more than 1.3 million troops, which potentially violates federal law.
Asked about the donation, Murphy accused Trump of wanting to behave like a king, adding: “This is a leader who is trying to transition our government from a democracy to something much closer to a totalitarian state. And so this is part of what happens in totalitarian states: The leader, the regime only, decides what things get funded and what don’t, often in coordination with their oligarch friends.”
“So, I just don’t want to live in a world in which Donald Trump and a handful of billionaires decide which part of government works and which don’t, which is why I would rather have him at the negotiating table tomorrow, so that we can reopen the government and it can be a democratically elected Congress that decides what things get funded, not a handful of superrich dudes,” said the senator, who spoke at the second “No Kings” protest in the nation’s capital earlier this month.
Trump has used the shutdown to try to advance his purge of the federal workforce. He’s also continued his escalating push for regime change in Venezuela, blowing up boats he claims are running drugs and on Friday deploying an aircraft carrier—all without approval from Congress, which has the sole power to declare war, according to the US Constitution. Murphy has previously condemned the boat bombings as “another sign of Trump’s growing lawlessness.”
The president has also continued pushing his sweeping tariffs, which Murphy has called “a political weapon designed to collapse our democracy.” Just days before the US Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on the legality of the administration’s global trade policy, Trump on Saturday announced a new 10% tariff on goods from Canada—which will raise prices for American consumers—in response to the Ontario government’s advertisement featuring former President Ronald Reagan’s critique of import taxes.
Asked about the announcement, Murphy told Tapper: “I think it’s just further confirmation that these tariffs have nothing to do with us. Prices are going up on everything in this country. Manufacturing jobs are leaving... These tariffs really are just a political tool that the president uses to help himself, sometimes to enrich himself.”
Murphy also connected the tariffs to the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on dissent, from recent his designation of antifa as a domestic terrorist organization and a related National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 targeting a wide range of critics, to the US Department of Justice prosecuting the president’s political enemies and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr temporarily forcing late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air.
“Whether he likes it or not, even the government of Canada or the government of Ontario has the right to criticize him,” Murphy said, “but he’s now going to use the tariffs to try to punish people overseas from speaking out against him, just like he’s using the Department of Justice or the FCC to try to punish and control people who are speaking out against him here in America.”
“So these tariffs aren’t about rebuilding our economy,” he added. “They aren’t about helping regular consumers. They’re just about giving Trump additional power to try to benefit himself politically and financially.”
How to Stop Tyrant Trump From Destroying Our Country
The institutional forces arrayed against Trump are not rising to the occasion to counter his fast-expanding fascist dictatorship.
A crowd of mainly American protestors holds signs opposing President Donald Trump outside the US Embassy in London, England during a “No Kings” protest on October 18, 2025.
(Photo by Guy Smallman/Getty Images)
Ralph Nader
Oct 26, 2025
Common Dreams
In snarling defiance of the Constitution and federal laws, Tyrant Trump’s egomaniacal drive is destroying our country. He is tearing apart the social safety net, health and safety protections, the people’s access to economic justice, worker/union rights, and electoral standards. He is undermining the critical separation of powers and pushing the cowardly GOP Congress and the six GOP Supreme Court “Injustices” to enable his outlawry, corruption, and promote police state actions.
Exempted and rewarded are the giant corporations with massive tax breaks, weak law enforcement, and corporate welfare subsidies, bailouts, and de facto immunities for their corporate crimes. After all, President Donald Trump is first and foremost a gigantic self-enrichment machine, profiting from his shameless, leveraged use of the White House.
‘Utter Moral Failure’: Critics Aghast at New Reporting That Shows US Elites ‘Scared of Crossing Trump’
‘We the People Will Rule!’: Millions Turn Out for ‘No Kings’ Protests Against Trump Tyranny
The institutional forces arrayed against Trump are not rising to the occasion to counter his fast-expanding fascist dictatorship. Trump has thrown so many devastating dictates against those who have historically protected our democracy that they have become punch-drunk.
Let’s do an inventory:
1. The first responders should be America’s lawyers and their bar associations. Do you hear much from them? The state bar associations don’t seem to be troubled by Trump’s jettisoning of the rule of law. The giant American Bar Association has filed just one lawsuit against the “US government, more than two dozen federal departments and agencies, and the heads of those departments and agencies, asking a federal court to declare unconstitutional the Trump administration’s ongoing unlawful policy of intimidation against lawyers and law firms and to enjoin the government from enforcing the policy.” Otherwise, there has been no mobilization of some of the 1 million plus practicing lawyers to act on their professional duties as “officers of the court.” Too many corporate lawyers in their firms are doing just fine and are not willing to challenge the Trump attack on the rule of law.
2. Universities/colleges, former hotbeds of action on civil rights, environmental health, and opposition to illegal wars, are on the defensive, reeling from Trump’s extortionate bullying that threatens them with illegal cancellation of federal grants if they do not become vassals to his straitjacketed demands. Fortunately, nearly a dozen universities have rejected his outrageous commands, but they have not engaged in proactive opposition to Trump’s many cuts and closures of the federal government’s long-standing education programs.
3. The American labor movement, stripped of its protections by Trump’s takeover of the National Labor Relations Board, the Labor Department, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and unilateral cancellation of the collective bargaining, union agreements with federal workers (whom he fires en masse), is not tapping its potential to fight back. Granted, the federal workers’ union has filed lawsuits, with some temporary success. But there hasn’t been an organized Day of Labor protest with millions of workers on the streets and in front of the White House and Congress saying to Trump: “You’re Fired.” The bureaucrats running the AFL-CIO, one block from the White House, and its member unions are nowhere near that stage of robust urgency these times demand. Labor leaders’ sinecures and pay are still intact, compared to their anxious and vulnerable rank and file.
4. The organized religions are supposed to be the custodians of civilized norms that undergird our laws. The scriptures call for individual and social behavior that is under direct attack by the Trump Dump in Washington, DC and his obeisant Republican governors. Religious leaders have been eerily quiet, fearful of being drawn into the Trumpsters’ cruel and vicious blasts of internet threats and slander. Their organizations, like the National Council of Churches, are also kept on the sidelines by a vociferous evangelical Christian nationalist minority in their ranks. Their courageous roles on the ramparts in the 1950s and 1960s civil rights struggles are distant, and are not motivating a robust response to Trump’s attacks on morality and justice.
5. The country’s professionals are frightened by Trump’s assault on scientific programs (climate, weather, pandemic, environment, etc.) It is ignorant, callous, and unrelenting. It is as if Trump’s goal is to envelop America inside a 21st-century DARK AGES. Professionals are shocked at the lies, delusions, fantasies, and quackeries that he blasts from his ever-foulsome mouth. They watch powerlessly his dismantling of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation. Imagine, the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific research and analysis department is being closed.
Professional organizations are protesting with statements. They, however, need to put more muscle into their resistance to the Trump onslaught. Their best argument is that Trump is weakening our country’s national security by sabotaging our preparedness against pandemics, climate violence, and uncontrolled cybersecurity attacks, not to mention uncontrolled generative artificial intelligence dangers, which knowing critics have called the ultimate approaching omnicide. Professionals know how to dramatize these arguments.
6. The mass media has been attacked mercilessly by Trump, extortionately suing them, slandering them by name, expelling them from the White House press events, threatening their TV/radio licenses, and pending mergers. It used to be political suicide for politicians to be so brazenly trashing the media.
Reporters for the original content newspapers have been exposing Trump for years, daily and vibrantly. But their editors have not been keeping up with what is being reported with powerful editorials and op-eds calling for the impeachment and removal from office of Donald J. Trump—the most impeachable president by far in American history. (See: Letter to President Trump—22 Impeachable Offenses) It doesn’t help that Democratic leaders—Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (NY) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (NY)—have told their flocks never to mention the word “impeachment.” The anemic Democratic Party is mocked inside Trump’s circle.
7. The civic community—the most fundamental bastion of democracy—is ahead of its elected politicians. This has been demonstrated by packed town meetings demanding aggressive accountability for our nation’s Chief OUTLAW. (See: my book Civic Self-Respect) Organized demonstrations have been growing and rising. On October 18, 7 million demonstrators in over 2,700 locations participated in the “No Kings” rallies.
A good guess is that nearly 5% of adults have exerted themselves upfront against the Trump/Elon Musk/Vice President JD Vance lust for total power. Remember in 2016, Vance called Trump “America’s Hitler.”
With those numbers of people power, future mass demonstrations already planned should ask their participants to pull out their cellphones and contribute to funding new, strong, full-time citizen groups at the grassroots and in Washington, DC to carry on with impressive impacts long after the protesters drift away when the rallies end.
Indivisible’s (indivisible.org) huge demonstrations could have raised $35 million with an average instant donation of just $5 per person. Such a plea needs careful planning, trustworthy transparency, and recruitment capabilities ahead of time.
There are so many other innovations ready and able to make town meetings, directly called by the people, and public rallies/marches far more effective. But they require their civic leaders to return the calls from experienced supporters who believe that “none of us are as smart as all of us.” Ezra Levin—call me—I have suggestions for you.
In snarling defiance of the Constitution and federal laws, Tyrant Trump’s egomaniacal drive is destroying our country. He is tearing apart the social safety net, health and safety protections, the people’s access to economic justice, worker/union rights, and electoral standards. He is undermining the critical separation of powers and pushing the cowardly GOP Congress and the six GOP Supreme Court “Injustices” to enable his outlawry, corruption, and promote police state actions.
Exempted and rewarded are the giant corporations with massive tax breaks, weak law enforcement, and corporate welfare subsidies, bailouts, and de facto immunities for their corporate crimes. After all, President Donald Trump is first and foremost a gigantic self-enrichment machine, profiting from his shameless, leveraged use of the White House.
‘Utter Moral Failure’: Critics Aghast at New Reporting That Shows US Elites ‘Scared of Crossing Trump’
‘We the People Will Rule!’: Millions Turn Out for ‘No Kings’ Protests Against Trump Tyranny
The institutional forces arrayed against Trump are not rising to the occasion to counter his fast-expanding fascist dictatorship. Trump has thrown so many devastating dictates against those who have historically protected our democracy that they have become punch-drunk.
Let’s do an inventory:
1. The first responders should be America’s lawyers and their bar associations. Do you hear much from them? The state bar associations don’t seem to be troubled by Trump’s jettisoning of the rule of law. The giant American Bar Association has filed just one lawsuit against the “US government, more than two dozen federal departments and agencies, and the heads of those departments and agencies, asking a federal court to declare unconstitutional the Trump administration’s ongoing unlawful policy of intimidation against lawyers and law firms and to enjoin the government from enforcing the policy.” Otherwise, there has been no mobilization of some of the 1 million plus practicing lawyers to act on their professional duties as “officers of the court.” Too many corporate lawyers in their firms are doing just fine and are not willing to challenge the Trump attack on the rule of law.
2. Universities/colleges, former hotbeds of action on civil rights, environmental health, and opposition to illegal wars, are on the defensive, reeling from Trump’s extortionate bullying that threatens them with illegal cancellation of federal grants if they do not become vassals to his straitjacketed demands. Fortunately, nearly a dozen universities have rejected his outrageous commands, but they have not engaged in proactive opposition to Trump’s many cuts and closures of the federal government’s long-standing education programs.
3. The American labor movement, stripped of its protections by Trump’s takeover of the National Labor Relations Board, the Labor Department, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and unilateral cancellation of the collective bargaining, union agreements with federal workers (whom he fires en masse), is not tapping its potential to fight back. Granted, the federal workers’ union has filed lawsuits, with some temporary success. But there hasn’t been an organized Day of Labor protest with millions of workers on the streets and in front of the White House and Congress saying to Trump: “You’re Fired.” The bureaucrats running the AFL-CIO, one block from the White House, and its member unions are nowhere near that stage of robust urgency these times demand. Labor leaders’ sinecures and pay are still intact, compared to their anxious and vulnerable rank and file.
4. The organized religions are supposed to be the custodians of civilized norms that undergird our laws. The scriptures call for individual and social behavior that is under direct attack by the Trump Dump in Washington, DC and his obeisant Republican governors. Religious leaders have been eerily quiet, fearful of being drawn into the Trumpsters’ cruel and vicious blasts of internet threats and slander. Their organizations, like the National Council of Churches, are also kept on the sidelines by a vociferous evangelical Christian nationalist minority in their ranks. Their courageous roles on the ramparts in the 1950s and 1960s civil rights struggles are distant, and are not motivating a robust response to Trump’s attacks on morality and justice.
5. The country’s professionals are frightened by Trump’s assault on scientific programs (climate, weather, pandemic, environment, etc.) It is ignorant, callous, and unrelenting. It is as if Trump’s goal is to envelop America inside a 21st-century DARK AGES. Professionals are shocked at the lies, delusions, fantasies, and quackeries that he blasts from his ever-foulsome mouth. They watch powerlessly his dismantling of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation. Imagine, the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific research and analysis department is being closed.
Professional organizations are protesting with statements. They, however, need to put more muscle into their resistance to the Trump onslaught. Their best argument is that Trump is weakening our country’s national security by sabotaging our preparedness against pandemics, climate violence, and uncontrolled cybersecurity attacks, not to mention uncontrolled generative artificial intelligence dangers, which knowing critics have called the ultimate approaching omnicide. Professionals know how to dramatize these arguments.
6. The mass media has been attacked mercilessly by Trump, extortionately suing them, slandering them by name, expelling them from the White House press events, threatening their TV/radio licenses, and pending mergers. It used to be political suicide for politicians to be so brazenly trashing the media.
Reporters for the original content newspapers have been exposing Trump for years, daily and vibrantly. But their editors have not been keeping up with what is being reported with powerful editorials and op-eds calling for the impeachment and removal from office of Donald J. Trump—the most impeachable president by far in American history. (See: Letter to President Trump—22 Impeachable Offenses) It doesn’t help that Democratic leaders—Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (NY) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (NY)—have told their flocks never to mention the word “impeachment.” The anemic Democratic Party is mocked inside Trump’s circle.
7. The civic community—the most fundamental bastion of democracy—is ahead of its elected politicians. This has been demonstrated by packed town meetings demanding aggressive accountability for our nation’s Chief OUTLAW. (See: my book Civic Self-Respect) Organized demonstrations have been growing and rising. On October 18, 7 million demonstrators in over 2,700 locations participated in the “No Kings” rallies.
A good guess is that nearly 5% of adults have exerted themselves upfront against the Trump/Elon Musk/Vice President JD Vance lust for total power. Remember in 2016, Vance called Trump “America’s Hitler.”
With those numbers of people power, future mass demonstrations already planned should ask their participants to pull out their cellphones and contribute to funding new, strong, full-time citizen groups at the grassroots and in Washington, DC to carry on with impressive impacts long after the protesters drift away when the rallies end.
Indivisible’s (indivisible.org) huge demonstrations could have raised $35 million with an average instant donation of just $5 per person. Such a plea needs careful planning, trustworthy transparency, and recruitment capabilities ahead of time.
There are so many other innovations ready and able to make town meetings, directly called by the people, and public rallies/marches far more effective. But they require their civic leaders to return the calls from experienced supporters who believe that “none of us are as smart as all of us.” Ezra Levin—call me—I have suggestions for you.
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