The Rhetoric of Leaders: Meeting the Moment.
'In the life of the human spirit, words are action.' So said a US president during the Iron Curtain era, supporting all who spoke up for human dignity and human rights. Who is speaking up now? A list.
One year ago: The day after being sworn in a second time, Donald Trump refuses to make eye contact with Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, as she leaves the pulpit of the National Cathedral. Moments before, Budde had looked directly at Trump and said: “I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those fleeing war zones and persecution, to find compassion and welcome here.” Trump’s fury was palpable. Budde gave us a very early example of civic and moral courage. (Photo Matt McClain/Washington Post via Getty Images.)
Our times have not yet matched the 1968 level of nationwide public violence, which was the worst since the Civil War.1
But right now, today, we are living through the greatest threat to rule-of-law democracy since at least 1861.
—A Department of “Justice” that has become the political tool of a vengeance-minded and mentally disabled president.
—A State Department willing to favor America’s enemies and blow up the nation’s most crucial alliances, at the whim of this mentally disabled boss.2
—A masked army of losers and cowards, itching to incite violence rather than avert it. I am not old enough to have seen hooded troops from the Ku Klux Klan. But for the first time in my long life I see government forces afraid to show their faces or names, while shooting and beating civilians.
—A “majority” party on Capitol Hill willing to be remembered alongside the Vichy weaklings of Vichy France, the Nazi enablers in 1930s Germany, the puppet parliaments of China or North Korea. All united in not standing up to what they know is wrong.
—A Supreme Court that will get around to noticing these problems… when it gets around to noticing them. And that meanwhile averts its eyes from brutal “Kavanaugh stops” of anyone with skin darker than Meryl Streep’s.
For all the rest of us, who recognize the peril, it’s all hands on deck. As our friend Jane Goodall often put it: Do what you can, where you are, when you are able.
The purpose of this post is to note and support people who are using platforms bigger than most of us have, to speak more bravely and bluntly than many others with their privilege dare.
It’s an unscientific and only partial list, ordered chronologically. It starts at the beginning of Trump II, and so leaves out the likes of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who took brave stands during the January 6 investigative hearings. Many of these entries will link to reports I did in real time. Here we go:
1) Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, Jan. 21, 2025.
What she said: That a new president should show mercy to those who were afraid, specifically because of the enmity he had stirred up and the policies he stood for. She named people who pick crops in the field; people “who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shift in hospitals.” People who make the country go, and are afraid.
Why it mattered: She was the first. She said it on live TV. She said it directly, and to his face—a man who is physically well over twice her size, and had a million times more power to wreak vengeance upon her in our mortal world.
She set an example. Let us remember her.
2) Justin Trudeau, Feb. 1, 2025.
What he said: That Canada would not knuckle under to the wave of sweeping tariffs that Donald Trump had just announced, against America’s closest neighbors and largest trading partners (Canada and Mexico).
Why it mattered: Trudeau kicked off what has become a theme of the past year: National pride and dignity among nations that for generations had considered themselves close US allies, now united by standing up to the US.
Who had imagined that the force that would make the European Union more unified than ever, that would give NATO new resolve, was fear of the United States? Donald Trump’s predecessors had worked to build bonds among our allies. Trump has united other countries—against their former friend.
It was Trudeau who, knowing he was about to leave office, first and most clearly made the case for (reluctantly) anti-US-based national pride.
I quoted from the speech, at length, in a post at the time. A brief sample:
“I want to speak directly to Americans, our closest friends and neighbours.
“This is a choice [the punitive tariffs] that yes, will harm Canadians. But beyond that, it will have real consequences for you, the American people.
And then:
We have our own identity, our own history and our own values. Canadians are welcoming, open, and ambitious. We prefer to solve our disputes with diplomacy, but we’re ready to fight when necessary.
Jeesh.
3) Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Feb. 28, 2025.
What he said: “I’m not playing cards, Mr. President. I’m very serious.”
Why it mattered. Zelenskyy was answering Trump’s angry and soulless “you don’t have any cards!” dismissal of Ukraine and its cause. Zelenskyy was establishing: This is not just one of your deals. Or a game.
4) Mark Carney, March 9, 2025.
What he said: “I know these are dark days. Dark days brought on by a country we can no longer trust.”
Why it mattered: Carney—former head of the Bank of England and Bank of Canada, educated in the US and goalie on the Harvard hockey team, elected Canadian prime minister on a surge of anti-Trump sentiment—expressed the heartbroken realism of a neighbor that had to declare its independence from a once-loved but now abusive partner.
“We’re getting over the shock, but let us never forget the lessons: we have to look after ourselves and we have to look out for each other. We need to pull together in the tough days ahead.”
The “we” in the last sentence referred to Canadians, not Canada and the US.
5) Alan Garber, April 14, 2025.
What he said: Go to hell. This, from the previously mild-mannered and compromise-minded president of Harvard.
Why it mattered: The nation’s oldest, richest, and most influential university refusing to bow to Trump/MAGA demands. And thus setting an example and providing protection for other schools.
6) J. Harvie Wilkinson III, April 17, 2025.
What he said: That the Trump/Miller/Noem “catch and keep” immigration policies violated all basic Constitutional protections. “The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order… This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”
Why it mattered: Wilkinson, a judge now in his 80s, is a revered conservative figure, and was among the earliest prominent conservatives to call out Trump/Bondi lawlessness.
7) Gavin Newsom, June 10, 2025.
What he said: That the nation’s largest state would stand up for its people’s rights. And that it recognized the trap that Trump and his lackeys were trying to set:
We’re seeing unmarked cars in school parking lots. Kids, afraid to attend their own graduation.
Trump is pulling a military dragnet across LA, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals.
His agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses – That’s just weakness. Weakness, masquerading as strength.
Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities – they are traumatizing our communities. And that seems to be the point.
Why it mattered: Newsom was the first, and clearest, among governors to spell out the trap Trump’s gestapo was trying to set.
8) JB Pritzker, Aug. 26, 2025.
What he said: “If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law.”
Why it mattered: As governor of Illinois he laid out, plainly and in calm and copious detail, how “his people” should respond to an unjust and unwarranted federal occupation. Sample:
Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, “Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city?” Instead, I say, “Mr. President, do not come to Chicago.”
You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy.
9) Lisa Cook, Aug. 27, 2025.
What she said. “See you in court.”
Why it mattered: Trump and his shady stooge Bill Pulte tried to muscle Lisa Cook off her seat on the Fed’s board. She said: Prove it.
They haven’t. For now, she’s still there.
10) Pope Leo XIV, Nov. 19, 2025.
What he said: The US, his native country, should not be treating immigrants and refugees in an “extremely disrespectful way.”
Why it mattered: He’s the pope! The first one born in the US, and leader of more than a billion Catholics worldwide.
11) Jack Smith, Dec. 31, 2025.
What he said: That he had assembled proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Donald Trump was guilty of felony crimes in attempting to overturn the 2020 election, and in his handling of classified material at Mar-a-Lago.
Why it mattered: Republicans waited until the deadest possible news-coverage moment, late at night on New Year’s Eve, to make public Jack Smith’s eight-hour-long deposition. You can see it here.
Now we move into the New Year, and new examples.
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