Pay attention. For many, April 20, 2025 is D-Day.
Why?
Respected national media organizations and social media sleuths alike are wondering whether or not April 20 will result in the U.S. being thrown into “martial law” via a potential Donald Trump executive order invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807.
If you haven’t been paying attention to the socio-political scene in this country for the past decade and/or care nothing at all about U.S. history, the threat of “martial law” means nothing to you. But for those who keep up with American history and contemporary reality, a Trump executive order mirroring the nearly 220-year-old Insurrection Act will signal an anti-democracy line crossed that most likely won’t be reversed in a generation, much less an election cycle.
So, how does Sunday, April 20, 2025 play into this potential happening that has hundreds of thousands of people in America and throughout the world worried?
Backstory
First, “the Insurrection Act of 1807 is the U.S. federal law that empowers the president of the United States to nationally deploy the U.S. military and to federalize the National Guard units of the individual states in specific circumstances, such as the suppression of civil disorder, of insurrection, and of armed rebellion against the federal government of the U.S” (per Title 10 of the United States Code).
Second, on Jan. 20, the day Trump began his second term as president, he signed an executive order titled “Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United States.” That order demanded a report in 90 days on the status of the U.S.-Mexico border, an issue central to his campaign for re-election.
“Because of the gravity and emergency of this present danger and imminent threat, it is necessary for the Armed Forces to take all appropriate action to assist the Department of Homeland Security in obtaining full operational control of the southern border,” the executive order said.
Trump’s order, which literally cites the Insurrection Act of 1807, charged the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Homeland Security with giving him their recommendations on a situation Trump believes demands the U.S. military be deployed against people in the U.S.
Reason to care
That’s what an executive order invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 would do. Under the guise of protecting the U.S.-Mexico border, on deadline day (April 20), such a move allows the president to use military forces inside the U.S. to suppress rebellion or enforce the law, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
This essentially means creating a state of martial law, where most citizen rights are suspended and the POTUS is allowed to do whatever he wants, interpreting laws however he likes and identifying whoever he pleases as enemies of the state who need to be punished.
This spells trouble for any groups of people who fall under Trump’s definition of troublemakers and threats to his definition of the American way. In other words, such an executive order could potentially have the U.S. military used to not only handle U.S.-Mexico border issues but also confront U.S. citizens anywhere who aren’t in line with Trump’s reading of history, religion, science, politics, the arts, etc.
Just recently, Trump hosted El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, and was heard via a hot mic telling Bukele “homegrowns” (i.e. U.S. citizens who have zero to do with any border issues) are the next group of people the U.S. needs to deport (human traffic) to the El Salvadoran concentration camps where individuals like Kilmar Ábrego García now “reside.”
Religious significance
So, what’s the religious significance of this potential Trump executive order being issued on April 20? Well, first, scores of Trump’s white evangelical supporters, the supposedly most Jesus-loving folks among us, have declared him their new and improved messiah.
According to AP VoteCast, a survey of 120,000-plus voters, Trump garnered 80% of the white evangelical vote last November.
TV Evangelist Hank Kunneman put it this way during an episode of the “Christian” show “FlashPoint”: “There’s something on President Trump that the enemy fears: it’s called the anointing.”
Actor Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” called Trump “the new Moses.” Many of Trump’s most ardent Christian Right-leaning supporters have verbally referred to him as their “savior.”
Amazingly, Trump said during a 2015 interview that he’s never asked God for forgiveness. That would make Trump a better child of God than Jesus, whose resurrection is celebrated every year on Easter.
This year, Easter falls on April 20, the day many Trump supporters are awaiting that executive order instituting a new Insurrection Act. Such a move, for them, just might be viewed as a resurrection of state-sanctioned anti-Blackness that was deployed to quell post-slavery Reconstruction and the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s.
Such a 21st-century resurrection would dwarf the one Christians traditionally celebrate on that day.
Additional significance
But April 20 has a whole different level of significance for millions of other Trump backers.
In white nationalist circles, April 20 has been elevated to near-holiday status. And their celebration has nothing to do with the 420 Day hailed by cannabis enthusiasts. For whatever reason, hundreds of thousands of individuals who believe in the myth of white supremacy and who endorse taking violent measures to secure their “superior” position in society, deem April 20 a day of reverence.
Instituting an executive order on April 20 that puts Black and Brown people in the crosshairs of police and U.S. military personnel would cement Trump as the ultimate hero with these specific backers.
Trump worlds collide
Think about it. MAGA members who revere white Jesus and those who support white nationalism will each have something to cheer about via Trump’s potential April 20 power move.
Even if he doesn’t move forward with a 2025 Insurrection Act, just the fact that he’s threatened it, and that cable news networks and social media folk are talking about it, means Trump has already won over, once again, these two MAGA demographics.
So, it stands to reason that the world is currently waiting with bated breath to see if a resurrection of punitive state power, the likes of which the world has never seen since the Empire struck back against those Civil Rights and Black Power Movement folk of the 60s, will come to pass this Easter.
We’ll all find out soon enough.
