It’s not unreasonable to say it’s more likely Donald Trump will die from natural causes while in office than it is that he will be removed from that office by election or otherwise. Either will be celebrated, and properly so.
He is a lying, cheating, greedy, historically and socially illiterate, unrepentant criminal who has caused irreparable harm to millions of people around the world and to our country. This King will, probably quite soon, be gone.
Then what? What do we do, to whom do we direct the anger that nudged millions of protesters into the streets shouting “No Kings” today? When the dust, and dirt, settles on Trump’s tacky gold-trimmed coffin and his sycophants are finished trying to fire everyone who failed to properly mourn his death and our fully compromised Congress has finally exhausted itself from rending their own garments in performative anguish and creating a national holiday and a coin and commemorative stamp and a monument and, and… how does our work continue?
There will be relief. The work of opposing a tyrant is collectively exhausting. But there is the danger – the near certainty – that while we are catching our breath something and someone far worse will rush into the reeking void left by Trump and his family to ensure that the hate, dishonesty, and cruelty that is Trump‘s personal brand become institutionalized so that it survives him and continues to serve the interests of the worst people in America.
This will be a new challenge. As the standard bearer for this generation’s Fascists Trump has been an obvious, clownish, bright orange target. But as many have said he’s as much a symptom as a cause.
His unique talents – useful only for running businesses meant to swindle and a political movement meant to serve swindlers – were the match that lit the rivers of hate that have coursed through our nation from the beginning. Politicians, business people, billionaires, young men, even Supreme Court justices were attracted to the flame and now bask in the warmth of its racism, its unregulated greed, its xenophobia, its illiteracy, and its misogyny. America had always favored them, but with Trump MAGA rose to the all- encompassing and suffocating level of power they now exercise over us all.
There are no “core principles” in this movement. Trump and others were elected in part on their promise of no more foreign wars. Today the United States is a warmongering international pariah, supporting and perpetrating genocide, unilaterally starting wars, and withdrawing from treaties. The domestic economy is in shambles. Masked federal goons murder and terrorize Americans in the streets. Civil rights – even the right to vote – are attacked daily in Congress and in legislatures around the country.
No Kings marches are important for many reasons. They send a message. They provide community, even hope, for many. They create valuable connections. They express a commitment to resisting Trump and his supporters. But they also beg the question “What next?” The rivers of hate lit aflame by Trump will survive him. The laws, rules, and norms broken by him will not repair themselves upon his exit. In fact, it‘s more realistic to acknowledge that the “system” isn’t broken: It‘s finally working exactly the way it was intended. And that’s the next challenge.
When the time comes there will be calls for healing. It‘s comforting, feels right, and it is. We hear this already from some of the more popular Democratic leaders, positioning themselves for election. But healing alone will not be enough. In fact, healing without consequences will simply be surrender. A surrender to the conditions that gave rise, perhaps inevitably, to Trump and MAGA and where we are now. A surrender that guarantees it will happen again. A surrender of this Republic and the possibility that it could have been something better.
The next elections – whenever and wherever they are – of course have to be won by candidates who don’t hate the poor and the different and who aren‘t beholden to made-up or even real Old Testament bible verses. Candidates who will stop the bleeding. But if that’s all they do, if that‘s all we do, we‘ve applied a Band-Aid on a wound that is only the visible evidence of an infection, even a cancer, raging through the body of this nation.
If we can stop the bleeding, if we even can win the Congress and the White House, we have to then begin the work of building a new America and that begins with recognizing that MAGA was the quite natural product of the America that exists in fact today. An America that has existed to serve the wealthy. An America that refuses to tax those who are wealthy and their corporations and so can’t afford even the most basic services truly developed countries provide their people. An America that wouldn’t exist without slavery and has never truly freed those it enslaved. An America beholden to a festering Christian Nationalism that serves its white supremacist nature. An America that accepts bankruptcy and even homelessness for its people who become sick.
A Democratic Party whose real interests and loyalty at the national and corporate levels are those of the same donor class supporting the Republican Party cannot, will not, have the will to acknowledge these things. It will also not have the will – in fact, it will run from this – to combine healing with accountability. And there must be accountability, because the absence of accountability is a pass. A pass to the people who set about to and – if we stop the bleeding – nearly did destroy our country. A pass in these circumstances would be, in many ways, a pat on the back, a handshake in the “good game good game” line at the end of regulation. We tried healing without accountability when we elected Joe Biden. They laughed at us, dug in, and broke us. We can‘t do that again. There won’t be a next time. Maybe that was the last time.
Accountability means prosecutions. Not for political differences – for crimes. There are many of them and they‘re easily spotted and proven. We’d have to remake the Department of Justice but I‘ve already taught hundreds of new lawyers who could and would do this important work. The oath they’d take would be to the Constitution, not any President or party.
It will take time. The Republicans spent 50 years peeling back the thin but resilient veneer that we pretended hid the country‘s worst tendencies. When the marches today are over, the future of the United States will depend on whether we have the same patience and commitment to work just as long to build a nation that finally fulfills the promise it has resisted from the beginning.
Marc Murphy is a Professor of Practice at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law, a former prosecutor and Army veteran. The opinions expressed here are his own.
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This article appears in April 24-May 7, 2026.
