Lynn is CEO and co-founder of RepresentUs.
The Jan. 6 committee hearings are exposing the grotesque underbelly of what many of us witnessed in real time that day: the ongoing and unrelenting attacks on our democracy. Yet despite the overwhelming evidence of treasonous wrongdoing, despite tapes, emails, video and confessions, millions of Americans passionately believe in the Big Lie.
The truth is that there was a coordinated effort leading up to Jan., 6, 2021, to overturn the results of a free and fair election. Incredibly, that effort was explicitly encouraged by the outgoing president. A year and a half later, a lot of the same folks who tried to overturn the 2020 election are still at it – laying the groundwork to undermine the 2022 and 2024 elections. That’s the truth.
So why can’t we get America — all of America — to accept that truth?
The answer is clear. We not only need to tell the truth, we need to tell the whole truth. It’s time for the media, influencers, politicians and concerned citizens across America to stop harping only on the Big Lie and get comfortable with the Big Truth.
What’s the Big Truth?
The Big Truth is that American democracy is a beautiful, powerful force for good. Not just in the ideal, but in practice. Our Founders looked to democracy when crafting our republic. Democracy was at the root of America’s ascendance in global politics. It has raised more people out of poverty, brough more security to the world and helped America become the world’s richest country, Reagan’s “Shining City on a Hill.”
The Big Truth is also that our democracy is in deep trouble. It’s been backsliding for decades, and the American people know it in their gut. Time and time again, special interests and political operatives are getting ahead while everyday Americans pay the price. Some 90 percent of races for the U.S. House are so badly gerrymandered, one party wins before any votes are cast. The two-party system’s death grip on elections stifles the new ideas and fresh thinking that would move our society forward. Special interests with armies of lobbyists bundle millions in campaign “donations” to curry favor from lawmakers.
The Big Truth is that no matter which political party they’re with, members of Congress shouldn’t be trading stocks, shouldn’t be taking donations from lobbyists, shouldn’t be drawing their own congressional districts, and shouldn’t be conspiring to pick winners and losers. They should be working for us. Some do, but on the whole, they don’t.
Because of that, America’s trust in our most important institutions continues to erode. We’re at the point where those institutions are on the verge of collapse.
The Big Truth is that a sophisticated team of political operatives took advantage of the erosion in 2016 to galvanize a new anti-democracy movement here in America. In the final weeks of the 2016 presidential race, former President Donald Trump’s campaign issued its closing argument via a campaign ad that blanketed the airwaves, boasting: “Our movement is about replacing the failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American people.”
This was the message America needed to hear. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign had been playing it on repeat. Disaffected voters needed a home, and those campaigns were speaking to them.
They weren’t wrong. The system is corrupt, and the system is failing the vast majority of Americans. That’s the Big Truth. The Big Truth is also that the 2020 presidential election was won fair and square. It wasn’t stolen.
As Republican Rep. Liz Cheney said in the Jan. 6th committee’s first hearing, “President Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information – to convince huge portions of the U.S. population that fraud had stolen the election from him. This was not true.”
Those of us who love American democracy know it needs some fixing, but we also know it’s worth protecting. So we’ve got to get comfortable with the truth: The system is broken. The game is rigged. The political elite hold too much power and We the People are being silenced. And the 2020 election was not stolen. That’s all true.
It’s also true that the system can be fixed. RepresentUs and our pro-democracy allies have won more than 160 victories in cities and states across the country to fight corruption, end gerrymandering, and give voters more power in our elections.
There's a lesson here that seems to be taking America far too long to learn: Sometimes, more than one thing can be true at once. And when that’s the case, telling the whole truth is what earns us the credibility to be heard. So we need to start telling the Big Truth, and we need to start now. The good guys are losing this messaging battle right now. And right now, our democracy can’t afford the loss.
Ben Droz
Ben Droz
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.