Two kings. Really?

Last month, the King of England came to Congress and schooled us on what it means to be American. This would be hysterical if it wasn't so tragic.

To understand why, you need to understand two things happening inside our government right now.

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The first is the unitary executive theory -- the idea that the president has sole, total control over every agency, every employee, every decision in the executive branch. Not leadership. Control. For most of our history this was fringe. Congress created independent agencies -- the Federal Reserve, the FDA, the National Weather Service -- precisely so expert, nonpartisan work could be insulated from whoever happened to be in office. Madison called the concentration of all powers in one set of hands "the very definition of tyranny."

But in February 2025, Trump signed an executive order declaring all federal agencies "must be supervised and controlled" by the president. Project 2025 laid the blueprint. Then came the purge: FTC commissioners fired, a Federal Reserve governor targeted, USAID dissolved, inspectors general removed, thousands of civil servants stripped of protections.

What does this look like in your life? The National Weather Service lost roughly 600 people. Then on July 4, the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet in 45 minutes and more than 130 people died across central Texas, including 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic. The administration's 2026 budget proposes eliminating the NOAA lab that developed key flash flood prediction tools. At the NIH, about 2,300 grants totaling $3.8 billion were terminated, affecting at least 383 clinical trials. The FDA lost nearly 4,000 employees. Foreign food inspections hit historic lows.

The second thing is a strain of nationalism, championed by Israeli political theorist Yoram Hazony, that argues a nation isn't built on ideas like "all men are created equal" but on tribal bonds -- shared blood, language, religion, ancestry. Hazony's conferences feature regular speakers like JD Vance, Marco Rubio and Sen. Josh Hawley. This philosophy has entered the White House.

You can hear it when Trump calls immigrants people "poisoning the blood of our country." You can see it in ICE's transformation: at-large arrests up 600%, nearly 70,000 people in detention, two U.S. citizens shot dead by federal agents.

I know many of us have been told -- by the administration, by the news, by people we trust -- that immigrants are driving crime. I understand why that's frightening. But the data doesn't support it. Immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens. The administration's own records confirm that the majority of people arrested in these operations have no criminal record. Because throughout history, when leaders need the public to accept an extraordinary expansion of power, they first have to make people afraid enough to let them.

Which brings me to this week. Trump welcomed King Charles to the White House and spoke of settlers who "bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British," of founders whose "veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage." He rejected the idea that America is "merely an idea."

King Charles told a different story. He called Congress "this citadel of democracy created to represent the voice of all American people." He said the founders "drew strength in diversity." He cited the Magna Carta -- the charter that established no one, not even a king, is above the law. He urged America to "ignore the clarion calls to become ever more inward-looking."

He was not being polite. He was sounding an alarm.

Then, apparently without irony, the White House posted a photo of the two men with the caption: "TWO KINGS."

This country was founded because we didn't want kings. The unitary executive seizes the power. The nationalism decides who it's used against. A real king came here and reminded Congress what makes nations strong. Our president stood in the same building and spoke of bloodlines and genetic inheritance.

I know which vision I recognize as American.

Sara Sharpe LaMance of Chattanooga is a writer, communication strategist and the founder of The Letters Project and STILL/WILD.