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What Protesters Know About Human Nature That Trump Doesn't
They know the real story of human evolution isn't about the strongest or most ruthless individuals surviving. Instead, our story is about cooperation and empathy.
Jun 14, 2025
In Los Angeles, protesters are standing between Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and families. In Chicago and New York, all around the country, they're refusing to let children be torn from their communities. They're risking arrest to protect their neighbors, doing what humans have always done: refusing to give up on each other.
These protesters understand something that Trump's administration, and Elon Musk, fundamentally don't: We are not monsters. When President Donald Trump releases lists of "killers, rapists, and drug dealers" to justify mass deportations and disappearances of our beloved community members, when politicians paint entire communities as threats to our survival, they're selling us an ancient lie about who we are. And everyone taking to the streets knows it's a lie.
What the Protesters Understand
The protesters know that Trump's attack on immigrants isn't just inhuman, authoritarian policy, it's also outdated and genuinely bad science that contradicts the very reason our species continues to exist. They understand that when one of us is under attack, we all are.
The lie Trump tells goes like this: Humans are fundamentally selfish, competitive creatures living in a "dog eat dog world" where survival means stepping on others. It's a story that despots have told throughout history because it makes their cruelest policies seem inevitable. If we're all potential monsters, then we need strong leaders to protect us from each other. If compassion is naive, then brutality becomes wisdom.
Every despot in history has had to first convince people that other humans aren't worthy of moral consideration.
Elon Musk made this explicit recently when he called empathy "civilizational suicidal" and claimed that empathy is "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization." The tech mogul and unelected government official described caring for others as a "bug" that's being "exploited" and "weaponized." Musk is attempting to reframe our greatest evolutionary strength as our fatal flaw.
But if this were true, you wouldn't be reading this right now and I would not be writing these words. Our species would have gone extinct long ago. The protesters know this instinctively, and science proves them right.
We Are the Descendants of Carers, Not Killers
What do the protesters understand that Trump doesn't? They know the real story of human evolution isn't about the strongest or most ruthless individuals surviving. Instead, our story is about cooperation and empathy. Early humans knew that we cannot tear ourselves apart because our strength comes from being in community with one another. The humans who shared food during famines, who cared for the sick, who worked together to solve problems, they are our ancestors. Influential early psychologist Sigmund Freud could not be more wrong when he said that we are the descendants of murderers. No, you and I, all of us, are the descendants of carers.
Our caring nature is something we have been able to gather empirical facts about, confirming this across multiple scientific disciplines. Anthropologist Kristen Hawkes has shown how grandmothers caring for offspring allowed for more descendants and drove longevity in our species. Primatologist Frans de Waal has documented empathy and fairness in our closest evolutionary relatives. Even among nonhuman species, generosity is the norm: vampire bats share blood with unrelated bats to prevent starvation, and sparrow-like pied flycatchers will risk their lives to help drive away predators from non-relative birds.
We don't have to look to the past or to other species to see the evidence of our inherent compassionate nature being our strength, not our weakness. We can look at our own children. Toddlers as young as 14 months will spontaneously help others—handing objects to people who can't reach them, picking up dropped items, sharing resources equally even when they could keep more for themselves. This happens before any cultural conditioning, before they're taught to be "good." Research shows that 18-month-olds will help unfamiliar adults regardless of parental presence or encouragement; these fascinating studies suggest that this instinct to help is intrinsic to who we are.
This is our default mode. Cooperation isn't something we have to learn, it isn't a weakness, it isn't destroying civilization. Cooperation and solidarity led to our evolution and are our greatest strengths.
When We Believe We're Monsters, Monsters Win
So why do we keep hearing a different story about our human nature from people like Trump and Elon? Because the lie serves those who hoard wealth and power. When they want to justify policies that violate our moral instincts, they first have to convince us that morality itself is naïve, that empathy is a weakness.
Trump's rhetoric about immigrants is more than dangerous white supremacy in action, it's strategically designed to make us forget who we are. By flooding the media with dehumanizing language about people "poisoning the blood" of America, by claiming immigrants are "not humans" but "animals," by deploying Marines against protesters in Los Angeles, his administration is trying to override our natural empathy and tendency toward care for one another with manufactured fear.
The protesters in Los Angeles and around the country are refusing to dehumanize themselves by allowing anyone in our community to be dehumanized.
Trump's approach is not new, and criticisms of it are not either. As labor organizer Emma Goldman wrote over a century ago, "The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature." Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are charlatans selling us a lie about people in our communities being inherently dangerous. Just like Hitler, who used similar language about "blood poisoning" to justify his atrocities. Every despot in history has had to first convince people that other humans aren't worthy of moral consideration.
The current administration's approach follows historical patterns predictably. First, criminalize an entire population with selective statistics and inflammatory rhetoric. Then, when people naturally recoil from the cruelty of family separations and mass deportations, send in troops to suppress that moral instinct. Finally, frame any resistance as evidence that society is breaking down and needs even harsher measures. Trump has been orchestrating the chaos he needs to justify martial law.
Why This Matters Now
The protesters in Los Angeles and around the country are refusing to dehumanize themselves by allowing anyone in our community to be dehumanized. They are standing up for immigrants, refusing to let children be abducted from schools, because they understand that a society that abandons empathy for some will eventually abandon empathy for all. They know that when we allow the dehumanization of any group, we weaken the very bonds that make civilization possible.
Resisting the lies Trump tells us about human nature is urgent. If we believe the lie that humans are fundamentally selfish, we may become passive in the face of policies that violate our deepest values. We accept mass deportations and disappearances because we're told those who are being removed are monsters. We support militarized responses to peaceful protests because we're convinced our neighbors are our enemies.
But those are all lies. We have to hold on to the truth of who we are. We see that policies based on fear and division make us less safe, not more. We understand that our liberation truly is bound together. We see that people protesting the disappearances of beloved community members are fighting for all of our freedoms and rights. They represent the truth of who we are.
We are not a species of monsters barely held in check. We are not doomed to destroy each other when resources get scarce or when we encounter people who look different from us. We are the species that figured out how to care for each other across genetic lines, how to cooperate with strangers, how to build civilizations based on shared values rather than shared DNA. We have 14-month-olds who instinctively help others, brains that reward us for fairness, and genes that predispose us toward generosity. Moving toward collective liberation is our true nature.
This is what our true nature looks like in action. Not Musk's "bug" to be eliminated, not Trump's weakness to be exploited, but our species' greatest strength. When we stand up for each other, refuse to dehumanize anyone in our communities, and build futures where everyone can thrive, we're not being "suicidally empathetic." We are being magnificently, dangerously, revolutionarily human.
And every act of solidarity proves what despots fear most: that true power is our commitment to one another, our refusal to dehumanize and discard anyone in our community. This is the power that topples empires. Not by denying humanity as they do, but through the simple, revolutionary act of affirming it for everyone.
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In the United States, the People Rule, Not Wannabe King Trump
The “No Kings” protests, led by Indivisible, represent no disrespect to the Army. They are all about telling President Trump, who wants to be a king, that he isn’t one and never will be.
Jun 14, 2025
This week President Donald Trump sent the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to control what he preposterously called a “violent occupation.”
Sending U.S. troops to act against citizens exercising their right to free speech is a chilling betrayal of American democracy. The rebellion Trump claims to be fighting is simply nonexistent.
In fact, reporters and on-site observers have documented that the protests in Los Angeles—and those spreading now to other cities—are, for the most part, nonviolent. The violence that has occurred was likely intensified by the arrival of the military.
This spectacle is looking less like a tribute to our military and more like a pageant to honor “Dear Leader.”
Late Thursday, a federal court ruled that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in California was illegal and unconstitutional and ordered Trump to relinquish control of the California National Guard back to Governor Gavin Newsom. That ruling has been temporarily blocked by an Appeals Court and the deployment will be allowed to continue at least into next week.
Also on Thursday, In another show of authoritarian force, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was forcibly removed and handcuffed after identifying himself and attempting to ask a question of Secretary Kristi Noem at her Homeland Security press conference in Los Angeles.
Trump’s disgraceful, authoritarian move in Los Angeles over the past few days is the first, but likely not the last, effort by Trump to use the country’s military against its own citizens.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Congress on Tuesday that Trump is already prepared to send the National Guard and Reserves into other cities as part of Trump’s effort to, in Hegseth’s words, “secure [the] homeland.”
Using a fig-leaf justification, Trump is steamrolling over the spirit, if not the letter, of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. This act restricts the military from being used in domestic law enforcement within the United States.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman got it right when she said that Trump “wants to demonstrate absolute power.”
As historian Timothy Snyder puts it: “Tyranny is terror management.”
That is what we are seeing in myriad actions by Trump and his cronies over the past four months and especially now as he works to stoke fear without regard for constitutional rights or the rule of law.
In an address given at Fort Bragg on Tuesday, Trump absurdly (and falsely) claimed that the Los Angeles protesters were part of a “foreign invasion” and that Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass “paid troublemakers, agitators, and insurrectionists [in a] willful attempt to nullify federal law and aid the occupation of the city by criminal invaders.”
(Trump’s words must always be considered in the context of the more than 30,000 false and misleading statements he reportedly made in his first term. His serial falsehoods continue to grow in his second term.)
Trump doesn’t even try to hide his desire to have the absolute powers of a king and seems to revel in being the Commander in Chief.
Trump is staging a military parade on Saturday that’s expected to cost taxpayers $45 million. The parade is ostensibly to celebrate the Army’s birthday, but Saturday also just happens to be Trump’s 79th birthday as well. This spectacle is looking less like a tribute to our military and more like a pageant to honor “Dear Leader.”
And, in true “Dear Leader” fashion, Trump has warned that protesters at his birthday party “will be met with very big force.”
Peaceful protest is a fundamental First Amendment right, a constitutional right apparently alien to the president. This threat is yet one more attempt by Trump to intimidate and spread fear.
Protesters, however, won’t be in Washington, D.C. Instead, more than 2,000 protests around the country on Saturday will bring hundreds of thousands of Americans together to stand up against Trump and his authoritarian regime.
The “No Kings” protests, led by Indivisible, represent no disrespect to the Army. They are all about telling President Trump, who wants to be a king, that he isn’t one and never will be.
Those protesters are not alone. Some 70% of U.S. veterans oppose Trump’s vainglorious use of the military to celebrate his birthday. Last week in Washington, D.C., thousands of veterans protested the drastic cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the programs that support those who served.
They have good reason to wonder why Trump can afford a $45 million birthday parade and $134 million to send the military into Los Angeles for a political stunt, when funding for the VA and other core programs that benefit veterans are on the chopping block.
The VA has indicated that department staff will be cut by 15%, comprising some 72,000 employees, many of them veterans.
Veterans will also be seriously affected by proposed cuts to Medicaid and food programs in the pending reconciliation bill. One out of four veterans, according to 2023 data, lived in a household receiving food assistance or health coverage from Medicaid.
In the United States, the people rule.
As President Lincoln reminded us in his Gettysburg Address, we are a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Trump isn’t going to change that no matter how hard he tries.
This was adapted from a piece that appeared in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a weekly Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s and recent newsletters here. And, subscribe for free here to receive your copy each week via email.
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'Fear Is the Point': Alarm as Republicans Launch Probe of 200+ Immigrant Charity Groups
"An attack on civil society is an attack on us all," said Democratic Rep. Delia Ramirez. "We must dissent."
Jun 13, 2025
Congressional Republicans this week launched an investigation into more than 200 immigrant charity organizations, a move that Democratic lawmakers and the targeted groups condemned as an egregious effort to intimidate opponents of the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda.
"Terror is the point. Cruelty is the point. Fear is the point," Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) said Friday in response to the probe, which was announced earlier this week by top Republicans on the House Committee on Homeland Security (CHS).
"The actions of Republicans on CHS unlawfully target organizations standing against their authoritarian power grab," said Ramirez. "An attack on civil society is an attack on us all. We must dissent."
On Tuesday, Reps. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) and Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) sent letters to at least 215 organizations in a purported effort to "determine whether these NGOs used taxpayer dollars to facilitate illegal activity."
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), Make the Road New York, Catholic Charities USA, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Haitian Bridge Alliance, and Global Refuge were among the organizations that received investigatory letters from the House Republicans.
"Republicans mistakenly believe they have a mandate to inflict cruelty on migrants with their anti-immigrant agenda, but Americans want migrants treated fairly. This sham investigation is the opposite of that."
The letters give the targeted groups two weeks to respond to a survey that, according to the House Republicans, includes questions on "government grants, contracts, and disbursements they have received" and "any legal service, translation service, transportation, housing, sheltering, or any other form of assistance" they have provided to undocumented immigrants since January 2021.
A link to the survey is redacted in the GOP's letter to CHIRLA, an organization that was also targeted this week by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who accused the group of providing "logistical support and financial resources to individuals engaged" in Los Angeles protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.
In a statement Wednesday, CHIRLA said that "we categorically reject any allegation that our work as an organization now and during the past 39 years providing services to immigrants and their families violates the law."
"Our mission is rooted in non-violent advocacy, community safety, and democratic values," the group continued. "We will not be intimidated for standing with immigrant communities and documenting the inhumane manner that our community is being targeted with the assault by the raids, the unconstitutional and illegal arrests, detentions, and the assault on our First Amendment rights."
A CHIRLA representative told the New York Post, a right-wing tabloid that first reported the House GOP investigation into the 215 charity groups, that the organization has "not participated, coordinated, or been part of the protests being registered in Los Angeles," apart from holding a rally last Thursday before the protests exploded.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the top Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security, issued a joint statement with Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) on Thursday condemning their Republican colleagues' investigation as "little more than a campaign to intimidate these groups so they'll stop the good work that our communities rely on."
"The fact that they sent demand letters to groups that have never received federal funding, and others that received money specifically provided by Congress to assist immigrants, shows how unserious their investigation is," Thompson and Thanedar said, adding that "most of the information they have requested is publicly available."
"More detailed records on the funding—including receipts—are owned by DHS, which their party controls. It raises the question—are they too lazy to pull this information themselves, or is the intent simply to bully groups they hate?" the Democrats continued. "Republicans mistakenly believe they have a mandate to inflict cruelty on migrants with their anti-immigrant agenda, but Americans want migrants treated fairly. This sham investigation is the opposite of that."
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