Mike Hersh

Mike’s views are his own, and do not represent PDA’s official positions

When you make plans to vote in the midterms, consider this: Can all of us vote, speak, worship, seek healthcare, or engage in peaceful protests without facing intimidation or fearing retaliation? 

The answer is no. Not if the Trump-led extremists in the Republican Party have their way. They keep attacking and suppressing our basic fundamental rights, including our right to vote. Our democratic republic is on the ballot on November 3. So is our freedom to live without being terrorized into silence. 

We must judge Trump and the Trumpist Republican Party by their statements, actions, and policies. We cannot forget how they constantly and consistently incite, enable, pardon, and protect extremists, including violent criminals and even domestic terrorists. 

Trump and his cultists engage in an ongoing campaign of extremist, violent rhetoric that constitute stochastic terrorism. They knowingly keep making statements they know have already and are likely to incite further attacks on elected officials, election workers, government employees, news reporters, physicians, and their families.

Keep in mind how eagerly Trump and his extremist movement suspends or sacrifices our basic human, civil, and other Constitutional rights whenever it benefits them politically. The Trump regime and its Republican enablers reward hate, bigotry, abuse, and political violence.

A Constitution cannot protect itself. We have to work, organize, and vote to keep our Constitution and to make its promises reality, not just ideals written on parchment.

Remember What Trump and His Regime Did and Do

The violent insurrection on January 6th directly assaulted our nation. Make no mistake, this was not just a protest featuring extreme, anti-American, but Constitutionally protected speech. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law found that Trump incited a violent mob, exorting them to keep fighting, all to stop the peaceful transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election. They filed a lawsuit and issued the following statement:

The violent insurrection on January 6th was an attack on democracy itself—an effort to silence the voices of millions of voters, including record numbers of Black and Brown voters who cast decisive ballots in the 2020 election….

Trump and his allies continue to repeat the Big Lie that fueled the attacks, which has sadly already cost lives and if not addressed will cost us more. These bad actors irresponsibly and intentionally distort reality and truth for their own gain. With each passing week, more revelations continue to demonstrate their cowardice, as well as the depths of their conspiracy and complicity.

The bipartisan House select committee concluded that Trump was the attack’s “central cause”. That is a bipartisan conclusion based on incontrovertible evidence including videos of the violence including assaults on Capitol Police and death threats against Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi and other elected officials. 

Trump exhorted violent extremists to attack the Capitol in January 2021. They injured more than 140 law enforcement officers. Trump then used his presidential pardon authority power to reward his violent insurrectionists. 

In January 2025, he issued blanket pardons and commutations for January 6 criminals, including people convicted of attacking the police, stealing public property including laptops, as well as urinating and defecating inside Capitol Hill offices and corridors. 

Trump pardoned terrorists including “Proud Boys” leader Enrique Tarrio and “Oath Keepers” founder Stewart Rhodes.  Juries convicted both of these violent extremists of seditious conspiracy, only for Trump to set aside justice and reward his followers for committing terrorism.

Trump also pardoned 23 anti- choice extremists, including bullies convicted of blockading clinic entrances. Trump ordered his Justice Department then curtailed abortion-related enforcement of the clinic-access law. 

Trump keeps clearly signaling that he will protect and defend domestic terrorists, and thereby he keeps enabling and encouraging escalating political violence and terrorism. That’s the message this unhinged, extremist president intentionally sends when he shields violent, hateful, terrorists from the consequences of their crimes.

Admonitions against protests don’t apply whenever Trump finds violently beating and killing police politically useful. Something he does quite often.

Remember what right-wing terror has already cost us

Of course this domestic terrorism began long before Trump, but he keeps fanning the flames of white supremacist and other extreme right wing violence. In so doing, he exacerbates the danger from existing violent right wing extremist terrorism that threatens lives and kills innocents.

In 1995, right wing terrorist Timothy McVeigh bombed Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people, including 19 children. Co-conspirator Terry Nichols helped assemble the plot that killed public servants and their children in daycare. They were victims of right wing political terrorism.

Right wing anti-choice extremist Eric Rudolph committed four bombing attacks including at Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Olympics, as well as at abortion clinics in the Atlanta area and Birmingham, and Atlanta’s Otherside Lounge, a lesbian nightclub. 

Rudolph’s Olympic Park bombing killed and injured more than 100 people. His Birmingham bombing killed police officer Robert Sanderson and critically injured nurse Emily Lyons. This anti-abortion and anti-gay terrorism threatened, harmed, an killed patients, workers, LGBTQ people, sports spectators, and law enforcement alike. 

White supremacy and antisemitism have their own bloody record. Dylann Roof murdered nine Black worshippers at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston. After arresting him, police took him out for a meal.

Robert Bowers killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue and injured responding officers. Patrick Crusius killed 23 people in the racist El Paso Walmart attack, targeting people he perceived to be Hispanic. 

Payton Gendron went on a racist mass murdering spree at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. “I would also try to attack a black elementary school, but I’m not sure how I would get in,” he wrote.

An anti-government militia leader was convicted in the 2017 bombing of Minnesota’s Dar al-Farooq Islamic Center. Hari was convicted on five counts, including damaging property because of its religious character and obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs. Homophobia and anti-LGBTQ hatred run rampant among the right wing/Trump cult. The Club Q gunman confessed to committing federal hate crimes after murdering five people and injuring 19. 

Some of this terrorism isn’t directly related to Trump, but sadly bigotry, hate, and violence are all too common within the Trump movement. Trump’s and his allies’ overheated rhetoric incites similar attacks from right wing extremist groups closely aligned with Trumpism.

Trump’s and Trumpism’s terrorism targets have names and families

In Minnesota on June 14, 2025, right wing extremist Vance Boelter assassinated Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark. He also shot State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, but fortunately both survived. Boelter pleaded guilty in federal court. 

David DePape, another far-right extremist, attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer while seeking Nancy Pelosi. Trump later mocked the attack at a California Republican convention. He callously used survivors as punch lines. To his unhinged followers, this is a clear and present signal to continue committing violent criminal attacks.

Election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss endured racist and sexist threats, including threats of lynching, after Trump and his allies falsely accused them of fraud. Giuliani was found civilly liable, and a jury awarded more than $148 million in 2023. These were ordinary people doing essential public work. Making them targets threatened much more than their reputations.

The Brennan Center’s 2026 survey found that 32 percent of local election officials reported threats, harassment, or abuse. That figure was down from 38 percent in 2025—not evidence of an uninterrupted increase, but still an intolerable burden. More than half worried intimidation would hurt recruitment or retention. Democracy needs people willing to administer elections, not just people willing to argue about them.

The common warning in all of these incidents is clear and horrifying. The hatred, bigotry, and violence that Trump and his close associates espouse too often incite death threats and violent attacks targeting innocent people.

Don’t let Republicans treat hate and terrorism as jokes

The “Young” Republicans scandal involved gross racism and hatred. Politico documented messages among state-level leaders praising Hitler, using racist slurs, advocating rape, and joking about the Holocaust. These were top level Republicans including elected and party officials, not some random trolls or bots on the internet.

Trump’s Vice President J.D. Vance mocked justified outrage as “pearl clutching” and defended the adult participants as “kids”. Vance continues to minimize outrageous and vile behavior by leading Republicans. Consider Vance’s recent attacks on fellow Republicans who expressed revulsion at Vivek Ramaswamy’s ad campaign traumatizing rape and sexual assault survivors by platforming Amy Acton’s estranged mother. 

Also consider, Trump’s enthusiastic support for Ramaswamy’s ads  that feature gubernatorial candidate Dr. Amy Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, who enabled the indicted alleged rapist who preyed on both of her for years, according to court records. The ads show Arthur attacking Acton, the daughter she betrayed but hasn’t seen in decades.

Unwarranted, hateful smears are noting new for Trump and Vance. They both spread racist and xenophobic false claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio. 

Consider Trump’s dinner with white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and Nazi sympathizer Kanye West. This puts Trump’s statements praising Nazi rioters as “very fine people” into sharp context. Trump’s and his supporters’ rhetoric make all of us less safe. Schools, government buildings, and officials’ homes faced more than 30 hoax bomb threats. 

Trump enacts hateful discrimination targeting vulnerable people. He imposed a punitive and unfair transgender military exclusion that a federal appeals panel ruled unlawful in June 2026. Trump’s transphobia likely incites violence and threats. A right wing woman pleaded guilty to threatening to bomb Boston Children’s Hospital, an act that blocked or delayed lifesaving health care, causing harm to innocent children and adolescents. 

Trump’s hatred and stochastic terrorism encourage terrorism and threats. Under Trump, white supremacy, sexism, homophobia,  xenophobia, Islamophobia, racism, and transphobia have become official planks of the Republican Party platform. We have no choice other than to vote against the purveyors of these attacks on America.

To my friends on the left

Your grievances are real. Democrats have disappointed us on some very important issues. Electing Democrats this cycle is not a panacea nor does it mean we’ll stop criticizing them. But it remains the only way to preserve and protect the Constitution, secure and expand civil, equal, and human rights, and guarantee our freedom to organize, protest, litigate, and demand better.

We do not have to pretend every Democrat is courageous or every Republican supports violence, but we must act decisively to defeat all Republican candidates. Every single one. This, in order to constrain an extreme, unhinged, and violence-inciting president who rewarded January 6 insurrectionists and other terrorists. 

We have to hold accountable the Republican Party whose leaders bow down to and enable him. Failing to distinguish imperfect allies from the fascist threat posed by Trump and Trumpism could cost us our constitutional republic, our freedoms, and our fundamental civil, equal, and human rights, including our right to vote.

Vote for and work to elect all Democrats and defeat all Republicans on the ballot as if your life depended on it. Because it does.

To independents and other swing voters

You do not have to agree with me or other progressives on policy to recognize the difference between losing an election and trying to overturn one through violence. You do not have to support abortion to reject bombing health clinics or physically blocking someone’s access healthcare. You do not have to share your neighbor’s religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity to defend your neighbor’s rights to life, liberty, and safety. Because if they lose their rights, you may lose yours soon thereafter.

Ask yourself this: Should anyone have to fear death threats for counting ballots, running for office, or living their lives? Should any hospital, press room, grocery store, Walmart, church, mosque, synagogue, or school face bomb threats or shooting sprees? 

If you believe in law and order, democracy, or the Constitution, you cannot reward anyone who pardons cop killers or terrorists with your vote. Vote for and work to elect all Democrats on the ballot as if your basic rights depend on it. Because they do.

Where it counts most—everywhere!

For the Senate, help elect Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, James Talarico in Texas, Troy Jackson in Maine, Josh Turek in Iowa, and Mary Peltola in Alaska. Help reelect Jon Ossoff in Georgia and elect Roy Cooper in North Carolina. These candidates could rebalance power, restraining Trump and his extremist cultists from inflicting even more damage on America.

Michigan’s razor close election makes the stakes clear. ABC News reported that Republican Senate contender Mike Rogers falsely linked Democratic candidate El-Sayed to terrorism. Trump called El-Sayed a “vicious, violent jihadist.” Maybe if he really were, Trump would endorse him? El-Sayed called out these attacks as Islamophobic, and of course they are. This is part of an alarming pattern. 

We need to see Democrats sweep to victory to secure a Senate majority. We must also work to elect Democratic House candidates, governors, attorneys general, state legislators, and local candidates, as well. Congressional oversight, confirmation of cabinet officials and federal judges, law enforcement, fair and secure election administration, and local decisions all matter. And they’re all on the ballot this election cycle. 

One national victory cannot substitute for organizing where you live. MAKE CALLS to get voters to the polls!  MAKE PLANS TO VOTE and bring other people to vote!

Make your voting plan using official state and local information. Read this blog to learn what you need to know. Check deadlines, identification rules, and where and when to vote. Volunteer through established campaigns and voter-protection organizations.

Before and After the Elections

The recent No Kings protest demonstrated widespread opposition to Trump’s anti-American extremism. That’s a great start! Now, we have to keep showing up and that includes mobilizing for these elections as well as afterward to rebuild and repair our nation.

After the November 3^rd elections, we’ll keep demanding better. Better voting-rights protections, better, more fair, and independent courts, more equality, real equity, and better people-first policies. Our answer to right wing terrorism and intimidation must be more organizing and increasing solidarity, never surrender.

We can learn from past successes. Montgomery’s bus boycott combined organizing, carpools, fundraising, and litigation. Selma demonstration combined local courage, public witness, judicial protection, and pressure for legislation. 

Those movements leveraged nonviolent resistance, economic power, and civil disobedience to compel institutional change. They built the support that made our participation possible. Let’s all use it before we lose it, perhaps forever?

Let’s all vote for and work to elect all Democrats and defeat all Republicans as if our lives and basic human, civil, and equal rights depend on it. Because they do!

More information

• MAKE CALLS to get voters to the polls! 
• MAKE PLANS TO VOTE and bring other people to vote!
• Election Protection: voting information and the 866-OUR-VOTE hotline
• ACLU: protesters’ rights
• Brennan Center: 2026 election-official survey and safety concerns
• House January 6 committee: final report