Congress Just Funded a Police State. What Can We Do Now?

In the Big Ugly Bill just passed by Congress, funding for the Department of Homeland Security surged a whopping ~$170 billion.

According to CBS, it includes:

• Swelling the budgets of immigration agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with $75 billion in extra funding.
• Massive funds of $45 billion for ICE’s mass detention camps, allowing ICE to hold more than 100,000 detainees at any given time, roughly doubling the current capacity.
• $30 billion for ICE’s arrest and deportation activities, enabling them to hire another 10,000 deportation officers and to conduct surveillance.
• More than $46 billion for Customs and Border Protection to build walls, barriers and related projects along the U.S.- Mexico border.
• A slush fund of $10 billion to support its "mission to safeguard the borders of the United States."

The aggressive detention we see being used on immigrants could well be used next on those who disagree with the President. The ICE agents are already being used to harass and detain even elected officials including mayors and Congressmembers. The message is clear: no one is safe.

We cannot assume that the safeguards we’ve enjoyed in the past will protect us. This is a blitzkrieg of fast action to authoritarian control by Trump, now with massive funding for federal police force and detention capability.

SO WHAT CAN WE DO?

We are fortunate to have guidance from the man who dedicated his life to bringing down authoritarians – Gene Sharp It would be good for all of us to read his groundbreaking book From Dictatorship to Democracy, which has been used successfully by many democracy movements to get rid of tyrants around the world.

Here’s the headline, until you read the book: the best way to bring down an authoritarian regime is through widespread nonviolent noncooperation. This is most effectively done through a series of strategic actions that build power to achieve a Grand Strategy (usually toppling a dictator).

WHAT IS HAPPENING ALREADY

Some of these large nonviolent actions are already happening. The national mass mobilization day in April. No Kings Day on June 14 in which over 5 million people participated, the largest mobilization in the history of the country. Good Trouble day on July 17.

All of these were successful nonviolent mobilizations of thousands of communities across the country. Surely there will be more. Lawyer-activist Kevin Johnson is proposing having another mass mobilization around Labor Day on September 1st, celebrating workers both union and non-union, local and immigrant.

That could build to an even larger mobilization on Veterans Day on November 11, celebrating the soldiers who fought for our country and who swore allegiance to our Constitution, not any president.

WHAT’S MISSING

What’s missing now are two vital elements – 1) greater unity and 2) a Grand Strategy. First, we need greater unity among those who oppose Trump’s drive for authoritarian power. The political party which should be leading the opposition, the Democratic party, is itself fractured along both ideological and personality fault lines. Trump has launched a frontal assault on many of the organizations best positioned to challenge him including universities, law firms, and unions, and some are fighting for survival (while others are capitulating). Then there are hundreds, even thousands, of groups which are organizing and speaking out as best they can, but they have limited reach.

No one group can beat this authoritarian onslaught alone. Fortunately, there is some good cooperation nationally as Indivisible, MoveOn, and over 100 organizations worked together to make No Kings Day and other actions such a big success. We can build on this foundation for even greater unity and cooperation going forward.

It’s important to recognize there are big splits among Trump’s followers as well. This can lead to us finding some unexpected allies. For example, the Republicans in Congress originally included in the big bad bill the selling of public lands. But some Republican constituents who were hunters and conservationists found out about the plan, and pressured Congressmembers to pull the selling of public lands out of the bill.(See the Washington Post, “Right-wing revolt in the West dooms GOP proposal to sell off public lands,” by Karen Brulliard, 12/10/25 page 1.)

Second, we need a Grand Strategy that the pro-democracy forces can unite behind, and a plan for strategies and tactics that move us towards success, as Gene Sharp so brilliantly describes. So far, our emerging pro-democracy movement has focused almost exclusively on tactics such as the mass mobilizations. We need a more sophisticated and comprehensive approach of strategies and tactics to deal with our current situation. We need a thoughtful and flexible strategic plan for the national pro-democracy movement. Heather Booth, Mike Lux, and Bob Creamer have done some serious thinking about this that we can build on.

I’ll write more about a Grand Strategy and national strategic plan soon.

MEANWHILE...

Meanwhile, it’s important to take action. As Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said, it’s important to take action, even if it seems small. Do everything you can think of to challenge this attempt at authoritarian control. Everything you do matters. Doing something, even if it seems small, is better than doing nothing. They want you to feel helpless. Action is an antidote for depression.

There are many actions you can take. Write letters to the editor. Talk to friends about your concerns and actions you’re taking. Talk to your elected representatives at every level – local, state, and federal. Subscribe to a newspaper to support local journalism.

Most importantly, join a group so you’re not alone. We have more power together. And we need community now. One of my favorite groups is Indivisible, which has chapters in every Congressional District. They know what’s going on nationally, and they give excellent guidance on what’s effective action on a weekly basis.

If you want other ideas of groups to join, see the handbook just published by Gary A. Lucks, You Are Not Alone: Your Roadmap to Effective Political Action. You can see my interview with him on my radio show here.

Thank you for being part of our community of resistance and renewal!

Eleanor LeCain is a member of the FMM Advisory Board.  See more of her work at her substack.