With Trumpian chaos looming on the horizon, Americans face a fundamental challenge. As the Trump and Reynolds administrations rush to build a new authoritarian state and dismantle the foundations of constitutional order, we must answer the question: What can we do?

We must start by following the first principle outlined by historian Timothy Snyder in his small volume, “On Tyranny.” Do not “obey in advance.” As the history of Nazi Germany illustrates, in the beginning, it was not sheer brutal power that enabled Hitler’s rise to power but the small anticipatory acts of complicity and cooperation across society that smoothed the way for an authoritarian state to claim power.

We and our key institutions now face daily choices. Do we resist the government’s efforts to round up immigrant neighbors in our midst, or do we say no in all the ways we can: by “knowing our rights” and by interceding where violations of immigrants’ rights happen, by providing sanctuary, by insisting that local law enforcement not be conscripted to support ICE, by not remaining silent but speaking up.

And what about our universities that choose to cave in to pressures to close DEI programs and create new programmatic fig leaves? What about library boards and committees who must stand up against those who would suppress access to controversial literature? Or public schools that face pressures to ethnically cleanse the teaching of history and social studies? Or city councils that must fight to maintain support for programs that serve the poor and low-wage, immigrant workers in our communities and defend municipal home rule against state preemption?

In the end we must “speak truth to power” and resist the deluge of calculated misinformation designed to confuse and distract from authoritarianism’s slippery slope.

-Shelton Stromquist, Iowa City