1. United States
2. Maine
3. Letter

Today, July 4th 2026, is the 250th anniversary of the courageous signing of the Declaration of Independence, people will be celebrating across the 50 states and abroad. For many of us, Ben Franklin's answer in 1787 when he exited the constitutional convention are ominously relevant today: Answering the question what kind of government had been agreed, Franklin famously said: "a republic if you can keep it." Now whether we can keep it is perilously uncertain. We now have a president doing everything the signers and framers sought to prevent: an aspiring king-like president, a convicted felon and sexual assaulter profiting off the office, using it to enrich his relatives, defying court orders, usurping powers assigned to Congress by the constitution, defying the constitution and impairing our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with every action and speech. The United States in 2026 looks ominously like Germany in 1939 with secret police kidnapping and detaining people, hatred of immigrants and people with dark skin or non-Christian religions being fomented from the highest office and appointments. Science and public health and safety being torn apart, polluters being enabled to spread disease-causing waste in our air, water and land. The rule of law itself is being undermined by vicious corrupt retaliatory abuse from the DOJ. I ask you to return from the national holiday recommitted to the oath you swore and the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Please especially take note of the following quotes from the Declaration and consider how closely Trump's abuses mirror those of King George III-- the very abuses that the spurred the colonies to revolution: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution.... For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments..." I ask you to use every means at hand to STOP Trump's assault on our laws, our constitution, our rights and institutions, our national monuments, our neighbors... Make no mistake: we are witnessing a rolling coup and future of our democracy is in peril. Please, no more business as usual.