The Day the Rule of Law Collapsed

What living through the loss of freedom abroad taught me about what is happening here

On January 2, 2026, the President of the United States, with the full support of the U.S. military, declared war on a sovereign nation, invaded it causing civilian casualties, removed its leaders, and named himself the president of that country. He did this without consultation with or authorization from the United States Congress.

While Fox News wrapped this inexplicable action in red, white, and blue bunting, and other outlets, including NPR, focused on the deposed leader, Maduro, being arraigned on charges in New York, almost no one seemed interested in the fact that, within hours of that attack, our representative democracy had collapsed and the Constitution had been reduced to little more than the paper it is written on.

We now live with rights granted at the discretion of one man.

It is easy to dismiss this description as overly dramatic, but it is not. It is precise. Without getting lost in the weeds of whether Maduro was a truly bad actor, or whether this entire justification was a constructed fiction given that Trump had pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández just the month before, a man convicted in a United States court of the very offenses cited as the rationale for invading Venezuela, the facts remain unchanged. This was an illegal action under both international law and the United States Constitution.

In doing so, Trump placed himself above the Constitution and above the people of this nation. The only rebuke he received came from a kowtowing media and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries verbally ripping into him.

If the people of this country no longer have representation in government, then we are, by definition, no longer a democracy. We are a kingdom, a totalitarian regime, a fascist government. The people have been stripped of their power and, faced with the backing of the strongest military in the world, have no recourse.

This attack on a sovereign nation was supposedly carried out to execute a warrant on behalf of the Department of Justice. This is the same Department of Justice where Pam Bondi has made it her mission to crush opposition and suppress dissent against Trump, an effort that has proven disturbingly effective. With the added support of ICE and the U.S. military, there appears to be no limit to what can now be done.

I lived in Hong Kong for twenty years, on the doorstep of China. I witnessed people disappear. Some returned. Others did not. I was there when communist forces moved in and forcibly took over the city. It took me three months to escape.

My reaction to Trump’s actions is personal and informed by firsthand experience. This is not the first country I have lived in where people went from being citizens to being subjects. But I have also seen the good. I was in Indonesia after the fall of Suharto, and I reveled in the excitement people felt in newly found freedom and in their exploration of what it means to be democratic.

What can we do? Be loud. Be fearless. Never surrender. Seek out others, bond together, and build strength through collective resistance. I still believe we are the home of the brave, but to remain the land of the free we must rise and resist.