Mark Green is a progressive activist in New York City. He was the city’s Consumer Affairs commissioner, then New York City’s first Public Advocate. He is a lawyer and author.

He writes on his Substack blog,

Trump taking over 250th celebrations of July 4, 1776 is less urgent than going to war with Venezuela over oil or deporting law-abiding immigrants without due process..but it’s maddening and obscene to allow such a Tory to lecture us Patriots about The Story of America.
Fyi, this Substack explains why and how to slow down his narcissistic nationalism.

Mark Green wrote on his Substack blog:

“It was the most consequential Revolution in history…When you control how people discuss the past, you control how they see the present and imagine the future.” – Ken Burns

It’s bad enough that a raging egomaniac wants to paste his name on physical public assets: a Peace Institute, Washington Arch, “Trump Baby Bonds,” coinage, the Commanders football stadium, the Kennedy Center, and a new White House ballroom larger than the White House itself. But it would be historically obscene for a temporary Oval Office occupant, far closer in philosophy to the Tories than the Patriots, to rewrite the very idea of 1776.

Donald Trump’s irresistible urge to imitate Ozymandias and Caesar should be opposed, mocked, and someday reversed. But until the jury of voters issue their 2026 and 2028 verdicts, that resistance should at least mean rejecting his attempts to view the Semiquincentennial (the 250th anniversary) through the lens of narcissistic nationalism. Instead, we should adhere to the radical principles of the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights: freedom, rule of law, separation of powers, free speech, and consent of the governed.

In his effort to renounce loyalty to royalty, Jefferson laid out eighteen “facts” in his July 4th Bill of Particulars involving trade, taxes, armies, and courts that justified rebellion against England. Below are eighteen parallel reasons to rebel against Trump’s contemporary power-grab and his attempt to redefine the Story of America for generations to come.

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A BILL OF PARTICULARS, July 4th, 2026

1. Sedition
January 6, 2021. Trump inspired the worst insurrection since 1861 and later pardoned hundreds of convicted rioters, including Proud Boys and others who assaulted 139 police officers, leading to five deaths. He called it a “day of love.”

2. The Department of Retribution
He publicly ordered the DOJ to indict political enemies, leading to humiliating dismissals targeting James Comey and Letitia James (“she’s very guilty of something”). This inverts equal justice by targeting people first and searching for crimes second. Reuters has tallied at least 470 names on what could be considered his vendetta list. The words “retribution” and “vendetta” do not appear in Article 2.

3. “Faithfully execute the laws”
Trump interpreted “execute” in his oath literally, engaging in unlawful conduct over 170 times in ten months, according to federal and state courts, while dismantling agency Inspectors General. Replacing the rule-of-law with the law-of-rule led numerous judges from both parties to condemn DOJ deception and hundreds of experienced lawyers to resign.

4. The First Felon President
He was found guilty of 34 felonies by a New York City judge and jury for falsifying business records and campaign finance fraud, avoiding prosecution in four other criminal cases largely due to reelection.

5. Pardon Abuse
He transformed a constitutional prerogative into a near fourth branch of government, issuing pardons to donors, corporate executives, white-collar criminals, crypto partners, and drug traffickers based not on mercy but on blandly and unspecifically repeating ‘“people have told me they were treated very unfairly. When granting clemency to twelve Members, including the clownish George Santos, he actually admitted all were “loyal Republicans.”

6. Usurpation of Congress
Acting as both president and de facto speaker, Trump routinely violates the separation of powers by, for example, governing through executive orders and ignoring Congress’s Article I power to tax. Justice Jackson condemned the “stench” of rulings based not on what’s precedent but who’s president.

7. Foreign Affairs for “America Alone”
While history shows the U.S. succeeds with allies, Trump embraces dictators and threatens to abandon NATO. Nor did he impress Western leaders by predicting Europe’s “civilizational erasure” and dispatching two realtors to negotiate about the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts with strongmen Putin and Netanyahu.

8. Speech Not Free
Calling the press “enemies of the people” and belittling journalists who ask tough questions reveals his belief that everyone’s-entitled-to…his opinion. MAGA-style McCarthyism seeks to shake down law firms, universities, news networks, and even individual targets —SNL, Jimmy Kimmel— using the immense power of federal spending and law enforcement.

9. Emolumental Self-Enrichment
Despite attacking Hunter Biden, Trump turned the presidency into a personal ATM. Family ventures in crypto, memecoins, and branded properties increased their net worth by an estimated $3.5 billion in 2025, according to The New Yorker.

10. Economic Inequality
Wealth disparity now rivals the Gilded Age due to policy choices, not natural law. Shifting trillions from the middle class to the ultra-rich reflects the priorities of Reagan-Trump-Norquist economics, as documented by Piketty, Stiglitz, and Reich.

11. Spurring Violence
He governs through menace, encouraging assaults on protesters, failing to condemn mass shootings, and using dehumanizing language repeated by actual mass murderers in, for example, the Pittsburgh synagogue and Buffalo supermarket slayings. Even the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s murder was a Trump supporter who repeated that Biden stole the 2020 election. FBI data shows roughly 80 percent of political murders originate from the Far-Right.

12. Commander-in-Chief Abuse
Renaming the Department of Defense the “Department of War” was a tell. Trump invoked fabricated emergencies to deploy troops domestically, treating soldiers as personal enforcers and flirting with war crimes to look like, in Hegseth’s favorite words, “warriors” who favor “lethality not legality.”

13. Racism
From “shithole countries” to mass deportations without due process, his rhetoric and policies reflect collective guilt and ethnic scapegoating. If “racism” is considered too strong a word to describe Trump telling all citizens of Somali descent “to go back to your country” and J.D. Vance supporting those who object to non-English speaking neighbors, what’s a better word?

14. Repeated Sexual Misconduct
He actively covering up his close ties to Jeffrey Epstein, was accused by dozens of women of sexual abuse, and was found by a civil jury to have raped E. Jean Carroll, resulting in an $80 million judgment.

15. Chronic Indecency
Trump openly declares hatred for opponents, refers to them as “scum” and “traitors,” and celebrates their humiliation. After the White House posted a cartoon of a Trump-labeled plane dropping tons of excrement on protesters, renowned Conservative columnist George Will labeled Trumpism a “moral slum.”

16. Opposing the Franchise
He supports restricting mail ballots, discarding valid votes, and eliminating the Voting Rights Act, last reauthorized unanimously in 2006 and signed into law by W43..

17. Incorrigible Lying
While past presidents lied episodically, Trump normalized deception, producing over 34,000 falsehoods in his first term alone, including claims about a stolen 2020 election. This volume sabotages an informed democracy and ought to persuade voters and judges not to give him the traditional benefit-of-the-doubt of earlier presidents that, as columnist David French put it, “others have earned.”

18. Soft on Fascism
Trumpism checks nearly every box of fascism: extreme nationalism, one-man rule, plutocracy, xenophobia, suppression of dissent, lawlessness, and normalized violence. Complaints about the label rang hollow when he told General John F. Kelly that Hitler “did some good things.”

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CONCLUSION: Yes to July 4th. But not HIS July 4th.

Individually, many of these abuses justify impeachment or invocation of the 25th Amendment. A compliant Congress and devoted MAGA base make accountability impossible…for now.

Progressive patriots can still resist symbolically by rejecting co-opted celebrations and embracing Enlightenment values of reason, science, and law. Alternatives include:

• Local and state celebrations—which utilize community groups and schools—can explicitly counter historical revisionism. As founding father Benjamin Rush said, “the Revolution never truly ends.” Democracy requires renewal, not Originalism weaponized by power.

• A national coalition, such as “No Kings Days,” should organize a July 4, 2026, alternative with mass participation and prominent public speakers.

• Blunt editorials from major media that dramatically begin on their front pages should reframe Real Patriotism and rise to the unique threat of an American Despot.

Let’s just-say-no.

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Mark Green

@markgreennywreckingamerica