America's Rolling Coup D'Etat Keeps on Rolling

Richard Gebhardt and Timothy Wirth again

Jul 01, 2026

In the June 22, 2026, issue of The Nation, Richard Gebhardt and Timothy Wirth warned us forcefully: unless swift and decisive action is taken immediately, the United States will succumb to a rolling coup already underway.

We believe that in the United States of America today we are in the middle of a “rolling coup.” Our democracy’s avowed commitments to social justice, the empowerment of all citizens, a more equitable economy, the rule of law, and a balance between our three branches of government are under serious threat. After decades of trying to roll back progress on these commitments, deeply conservative ideologues have finally gained effective control of all our government’s powers and are determined to use control to support [POTUS] and to ensure that he will never lose an election.

Readers seem to be just catching up with Gebhardt and Wirth. Former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich fears that we have closed our ears and our eyes to the warnings of the avalanche about to inundate us. So, more of us should be listening for the alert sirens in the weeks to come.

This suggests that I got ahead of myself last week when I posted quickly, “America’s Rolling Coup D’Etat and the Loss of Democracy.” So, in light of the rolling warning sirens sounded by Gebhardt and Wirth, let me repeat what I previously said. Here is the same portentous admonishment a second time.

America’s Rolling Coup D’Etat and the Loss of Democracy.

Is it delusional or is it realistic to fear the imminent loss of democracy in the United States? By election day, November 3, 2026, the 250 years of freedom Americans have enjoyed will have come to an end. Right? The “land of the free” will bow the knee to oligarchy, tyranny, and totalitarianism. Right? This is the most probable future. Right?

Might there be sufficient evidence to warrant forecasting such an ominous future? Yes, at least according to two prominent statesmen who are adding up the evidence. They are Richard (Dick) Gephardt, who represented Missouri in the United States House from 1977 to 2005 and served as House Democratic Leader from 1989 to 2003, along with Timothy (Tim) Wirth, who served in the U.S. House and Senate from Colorado from 1975 to 2003 and as the first U.S. Secretary of State for Global Affairs. Keep Our Republic is organizing former leaders like this for just this purpose, namely, to keep our republic free.

Let me summarize the evidence from current events that lead to this menacing forecast. Some of what follows are the very words these two august national leaders, Wirth and Gebhardt, employ. I will add some thoughts of my own. Then, we will ask: what might civic renewal require of us?

The Coup D’Etat is already rolling.

One. National Security justifies arresting Americans

On September 25, 2025, the US President signed a directive called a National Presidential Security Memorandum known as NPSM-7 (titled ‘Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence’). Beware!

A repressive government always justifies its tyranny by invoking the name of something good, such as “national security.” NPSM-7’s language designates as targets of federal counterterrorism authorities Americans whose sponsors are labeled “anti-American”, “ anti-capitalist”, “anti-Christian,” or “hostile to traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

Might some of these appellations be used against you and me?

Two. Is your name on the new list?

On May 6, 2026, the administration’s Senior Director for Counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, released a new National Counterterrorism Strategy that names “violent left-wing extremists,” “anti-fascists,” and certain religious minorities as principal threats to the United States. Any one of us could find our name on this list with a new label that justifies arrest without due process.

Three. Prison cages are being prepared for all of us.

We learned from the histories of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia that a large archipelago of incarceration camps is necessary to imprison perceived political opposition. Construction of that system is now underway in the USA on an unheard-of scale.

The administration has appropriated $45 billion for the construction of new ICE detention facilities, a 265 percent increase over previous years and more than four times the entire budget of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. 100,000 detention beds are under contract for permanent mega-centers whose scale far exceeds anything an immigration processing operation would require. These are undoubtedly prisons for political prisoners, even as the 1974 federal law prohibits the detention of American citizens without an act of Congress.

If you think this massive system of incarceration camps is only for the “worst of the worst,” please think again.

Four. The US president feels no remorse for killing people.

In the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, U.S. forces have killed more than 200 people across nearly sixty strikes on small boats designated as “narcoterrorists” without indictment, trial, or judicial review.

The commander of U.S. Northern Command has said publicly he would “definitely” execute lawful orders to apply this same authority on American soil. The White House has declined to rule out using lethal force against U.S. citizens designated as members of domestic terrorist organizations.

There will be no weeping in the White House if you or I die.

Seven. Presidential cruelty is widely accepted by Evangelical Christians within the MAGA base.

This fifth item is one I’m adding to the list prepared by Richard Gebhart and Timothy Wirth. POTUS’s contempt and cruelty toward his enemies have been an important part of the appeal to his Christian base within MAGA. Peter Whener, writing for The Atlantic, is chronicling the alliance between the White House and America’s evangelicals.

Whener tells us that many of the president’s supporters relish his dehumanization of those they despise. POTUS might be a bully, but he’s their bully. Conservative religious leaders have longed for a restoration of status, for a “fighter” who would help them regain cultural dominance.

When campaigning in 2016, the candidate made a direct appeal to power: “I will tell you, Christianity is under tremendous siege, whether we want to talk about it or we don’t want to talk about it.” Christians make up the overwhelming majority of the country, this candidate told his supporters, but “we don’t exert the power that we should have.” As president, he promised, “Christianity will have power.”

Coveting appears on almost every biblically inspired list of sins. While researching my own study of Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society, I discovered that the single thing we humans covet above all else is power. Power is the sumum bonem for the child of the dark.

The whole world now sees how US President 45/47 covets power for himself. Those who also want power, pathetically, fool themselves into believing that, like touching the hem of Jesus’ garment and feeling divine power (Matthew 9:20-21), they can plug into presidential power. The president’s power will become their own power if they but watch the Commander in Chief wield death-dealing ordinances against immigrant families, anti-ICE protestors, Ebola victims in Africa, narcoterrorists, and Iranian soldiers in speed boats. The killing is already underway.

Evangelical Schadenfreude (glee at seeing our enemies justly suffer) provides the kind of popular support a tyrant savors. The rolling coup d’etat will find widespread popular support among those who are selling their souls for the price of a delusional slice of the power pie.

Six. The tyrant wants a private army.

POTUS is seeking yet more funding for what appears to be his private army of ICE and Border Patrol agents. These will be deployed in numerous target states, at airports, and at urban polling places in the states he lost in the 2024 election, where he has now begun to seize voter rolls and ballots.

The key here is that federal forces will assume authority that exceeds state and local law enforcement.

Seven. The November 3, 2026, national election will likely be subverted, keeping the current regime in power indefinitely.

Do not assume that the election scheduled for November 3, 2026, will be fair. More than likely, this election will function to keep the current regime in power indefinitely. The plans are being laid.

Over the last year, the Justice Department has sought voter roll data from most states; sued those that have declined to comply, opened a criminal investigation into 2020 election results in Fulton County, Ga., a state the 47th president narrowly lost that year; and demanded ballots from the 2024 race from Wayne County, Michigan. Why? To establish a federal list of pre-approved voters. The White House plans to order the U.S. Postal Service to stop delivery of mail-in ballots from anyone not on its pre-approved list.

On June 29, 2026, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of state practices for receiving and counting mail-in ballots. The president plans to override the states with the SAVE Act.

The president is cajoling Congress to pass HR22: The SAVE Act, otherwise known as the “Voter Suppression Act.” Ostensibly, the SAVE Act will supervise a fair election. But, according to the Legal Defense Fund…

…“The SAVE Act is not about protecting elections — it’s about disguising voter suppression. Voter suppression is discriminatory and aims to disenfranchise Black voters, young voters, older voters, and other Americans. This legislation is an unnecessary response to solve a problem of “voter fraud” that does not exist. Any incidents of voter fraud or double registrations — which are incredibly rare — are prosecuted. This act saves no one and only makes it harder for eligible citizens to vote.”

The futurist can forecast numerous additional actions the White House is likely to take to guarantee no loss of power. Restrictions on names on voter rolls and increased police presence at voting sites are likely tactics we can expect. The election of 2024 may have been the last fair election in America’s 250-year history.

Eight. The winds of war are blowing.

Along with number five, this eighth item does not appear on the list prepared by Richard Gebhart and Timothy Wirth. Yet, I have held my wet finger to the sky to feel the winds of war blowing for a decade now. I have been asking: Are the winds of America’s next war blowing?

Early in the 45th presidential term, the now-47th president said he likes to win. Let’s retrieve his words on winning from a speech he delivered at CIA Headquarters, Langley, VA, immediately after his first inauguration on January 21, 2017.

“When I was young — and I think we’re all sort of young. When I was young, we were always winning things in this country. We’d win with trade. We’d win with wars. At a certain age, I remember hearing from one of my instructors, ‘The United States has never lost a war’. And then, after that, it’s like we haven’t won anything. We don’t win anymore. The old expression, ‘to the victor belong the spoils’ — you remember.”

POTUS treats war like a teenager treats a video game. During his successful military operation in Venezuela, he became so elated that he phoned in an interview with Fox and Friends. Here is what the world could hear him say.

“If you would have seen what happened, I mean, I watched it literally like I was watching a television show. And, uh, if you would have seen the, the speed, the violence, you know, they say that, the speed, the violence, they use that term, it’s, uh, just, it was an amazing thing, an amazing job that these people did.”

The death of actual people in real time appears as nothing more than an image on a screen for this president. Historian Timothy Snyder mimics POTUS: “Nobody can stop us. Nobody can touch us. Violence is amazing, war is divine. This is how it feels inside a utopia of violence.”

The 47th president has already threatened war with Canada, Greenland, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, and Mexico. POTUS thinks that creating an enemy through war will unite the American people at home and, of course, justify imprisoning those who do not support the war. Should we expect foreign wars against neighbors and domestic wars against friends?

White House agnotologists constantly spin the course of events to confuse the public while feigning control over complex conflicts. The Babylon Bee touts a headline that reads: POTUS “Sets New World Record By Winning War With Iran 27 Times In One Year.”

It appears we are rolling toward the final chapter in America’s 250-year-old story of democracy. Is America rolling toward an internal end to democracy in the form of a coup d’etat advanced by the current White House? Or, if America’s new role as the world’s military pariah becomes annoying enough, will we roll toward a global coalition of armies that will end American eminence by external force? Or, might we be rolling toward civic renewal?

What does Civic Renewal require?

What should we do? What does civic renewal require?

One crying need is obvious: civic renewal requires making friends instead of enemies. Tyranny feeds on division, not unity. Democracy relies on a unifying vision of a common good. Here’s how Harvard’s Danielle Allen puts it in the New York Times.

The responsibility of citizens in a constitutional democracy is to ensure that pluralism fuels creativity and cultural richness rather than division. For this, the ethic of civic friendship and civil disagreement are required.

“An ethic of civic friendship,” she says. Yes, of course. But is this realistic?

Below is a slide from my friend Paul Lange. Here, civic friendship seems to be subject to a larger pendulum cycle. Is this cycle inevitable? Even if it is, could we make the next step one of swinging back to a cooperative community that sustains justice, freedom, and equality?

Wirth and Gebhardt have advice for civic renewal. Each of us — in pulpits, in classrooms, in podcasts, in union halls, at work, and around kitchen tables — must call this by its name out loud, while there is still time and there is still room. That is, clarify public discourse by telling the truth.

Truth-telling can arise only from hearts and minds that are spiritually and morally committed to values that transcend the present moment. Peter Whener, cited above, calls the public theologian to a reaffirmation of Christian Humanism.

Christian humanism offers an urgent corrective to those who equate Christian success with the seizure of power. Instead, it takes as its model Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, which was the work of the lowliest of servants, and Jesus’s declaration that the blessed are the meek and the merciful, those who mourn and are pure in heart, who are peacemakers and hunger and thirst for righteousness.

In the form of Christian humanism, might Jesus indirectly make a contribution to our vision of civic renewal in America?

Summary

Let’s summarize Gebhardt and Wirth. Political prisons, a domestic army, control of the military’s legal apparatus, the seizure of voter rolls, and much more presage the potential declaration of a national crisis and the implementation of various of the President’s Emergency Action Documents. These are among the many individual actions and plans of the “rolling coup” which is currently underway.

Unlike what might be recognized as a coup with tanks in the streets, this is not the seizure of power on a single day but the methodical construction of an apparatus designed to identify, arrest, prosecute, and, if necessary, forcibly suppress Americans whose only offense is opposition to this administration, by an executive who has openly declared that opposition itself is the enemy.

Conclusion

For two years now, I have been tracking this path from freedom to tyranny. Each day, it seems, we get closer to the road’s end. What confuzzles me is how so many elected representatives of us ordinary Americans are walking this road. They have sold their souls to corruption, grift, and authoritarianism. A large number of lost individual souls soon add up to the loss of the nation’s soul. Without the retrieval of a cultural soul, America will cede to the bully everything that the bully demands.

All the public theologian can do, it appears to me, is offer the gift of civic renewal through the revival of a spirit of compassion that expresses itself in justice. Will America accept such a gift?

This is becoming a moment of existential choice: will America remain the “land of the free” or not?

Substack PT 4005. Is America being overrun by Sharia law? Three Sons of Perdition

Substack PT 4035. Niebuhr’s Children of Light 5. Redeeming America 35

Substack PT 3258. Has the Rolling Coup D’etat begun?

Substack PT 4041. America’s Rolling Coup D’etat and the Loss of Democracy. Redeeming America 38.

Substack PT 4042. America’s Rolling Coup D’Etat Keeps on Rolling. Redeeming America 39.

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Meet Ted Peters. For Substack and Patheos, Ted Peters posts articles and notices in the field of Public Theology. He is a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and an emeritus professor at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union. His single-volume systematic theology, God—The World’s Future, is now in the 3^rd edition. He has also authored God as Trinity plus Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society, as well as Sin Boldly: Justifying Faith for Fragile and Broken Souls. In 2023, he published. The Voice of Public Theology, with ATF Press. This year he has published an edited volume, Promise and Peril of AI and IA: New Technology Meets Religion, Theology, and Ethics (ATF 2025), and, along with Arvin Gouw, an edited collection, The CRISPR Revolution in Science, Religion, and Ethics (Bloomsbury 2025). See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com and Patheos blog site.

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