Back when Donald Trump entered his first race as a presidential candidate, it was clear to many of us what kind of presidential administration he would have were he to inexplicably win the election. During that campaign I had begun work on my Master’s thesis which would later become my first book and in the chapter on politics I wrote that a Trump presidency conjured up images of “jack booted thugs” engaging in political violence. Some of the people who read the initial draft thought the language was a bit too intense so I rewrote that sentence to change the tone without changing the meaning. In hindsight, I should have left it as it was first written, because the jack booted thugs are running amok in the United States now as full blown fascism has hit American streets at the behest of Trump, the Heritage Foundation, and Stephen Miller.

Much of what we are seeing regarding ICE is being masterminded by Miller. It is so strange to me that any human being can harbor such levels of hatred in their bodies and still be alive, yet Miller is one such hate-filled person. He doesn’t care about a person’s legal rights, their immigration status, the laws of the land, or his Jewish heritage. From where I’m sitting, it seems that all he cares about is being as cruel a fascist as he possibly can be, hence the internet memes calling him “Pee wee German” in altered photos of him wearing a Nazi uniform. Recently, Miller was so incensed that ICE was not arresting and detaining people fast enough that he started yelling at ICE agents to increase the number of arrests to 3,000 people per week despite lower border crossings and 50,000 people having already been arrested. It doesn’t matter that much of what the Trump regime is doing is illegal, including arresting U.S. citizens and deporting people without due process, Miller wants the people he hates to be removed from the United States by any means he can devise and get away with. He is a truly sick, twisted, evil man.

So many people, including historians, tried to warn our fellow American citizens that a second Trump regime would be a fascist regime. Too many thought that our language was hyperbolic, or that it could never happen here. Others bought into the lies that Trump and his team spread about armed gangs and an invasion of violent immigrant criminals. They now say that “I didn’t vote for this.” Yes, you did, and again we tried to warn you, as did Donald Trump on January 6, 2021. Not only did Trump incite an insurrection marked by violence and death, he has pardoned those who were rightly arrested for engaging in the attempted coup. He has also pardoned drug dealers, including a violent gang leader named Larry Hoover who allegedly continued to run a criminal enterprise while in prison, and a rapper with a long rap sheet of criminal activity. So much for “law and order.” No one in the MAGA regime actually cares about the law, they care about power, and making it a criminal offense to oppose them.

Just as in authoritarian regimes elsewhere, including Nazi Germany and Putin’s Russia, Christians have inexplicably been key proponents of those regimes as their leaders either sought power or to maintain it. Farther back in Christian history, after Constantine made Christianity an empire religion, many Christians sided with imperial power to commit violence in the name of Jesus, whom we call the Prince of Peace. Jesus warned his disciples about this very thing saying that gentile leaders are “tyrants over them,” but that his way was completely different. He eschewed power and domination, he repudiated retaliatory violence, and he never, ever punched down, but rather saved his scathing critiques for the powerful and those who collaborated with them. Jesus preached against everything Trump and his powerful backers stand for.

Trump supporting Christians, particularly the white evangelicals who have provided so much support for the MAGA movement, need to repent and stand up for Jesus and those whom he called the least of these. They need to repudiate Trump, MAGA, the New Apostolic Reformation, and all other expressions of Christofascism spread by people like William Wolfe, Dusty Deevers, Doug Wilson, and Joel Webbon. Those of us who have never supported the regime and have long seen it for what it is also need to step up to meet this moment. In particular, politicians currently in office need to do literally anything they politically can to thwart the regime and restore democracy. Stop voting for Trump’s nominees. Call for impeachment every single day. Name the regimes crimes every single day. Fight for your constituents every single day. And if you are either unwilling or unable to do so, then resign so someone else can take up the fight. Innocent lives are at stake, democracy is at stake, global stability is at stake, all while climate change threatens to make our only planet uninhabitable. Now is the time to step up and speak even if your voice shakes.