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Every Memorial Day, our nation pauses to perform a solemn ritual to honor those who fought to defend the Constitution. We place flags at cemetery grave markers, communities hang banners from telephone poles, we speak of valor, and we remember those who gave what Lincoln called the “last full measure of devotion.” For me, this day is entirely bound to the memory of my father.
The son of Italian immigrants, my father didn’t wait to be drafted during those dark days of the Second World War. He volunteered. He shipped out to face down the literal forces of global autocracy. During Operation Overlord, the D-Day invasion of Normandy, he was wounded, bled for this country, and was even listed as missing in action. He survived, but he carried the scars of that battle, and others, for the rest of his life.
My father didn’t risk everything at those French beaches for a patch of dirt, a flag, or a singular leader. He fought to defend an idea: the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, and a government by and for the people. He fought so that autocracy would never find a foothold here.
Which is why it’s with profound sorrow and anger that I look at the state of our republic on this Memorial Day.
A Perversion of Public Trust
This week, the Justice Department announced the creation of a massive, taxpayer-funded program born from a dropped lawsuit over the Trump’s personal tax records. Its name is wrapped in a deliberate layer of patriotic irony: the $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”
Trump claims this fund exists to redress the “weaponization” of law enforcement against political allies. But a federal lawsuit filed on May 20 by two men who know the true cost of defending our government exposes the fund for what it really is. Former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, men who held the line, suffered injuries, and faced down an angry mob on January 6, 2021, have sued to block it, calling the fund an illegal “corrupt sham.”
Officers Dunn and Hodges warn that this fund will effectively act as a federal slush fund, potentially routing millions of taxpayer dollars straight into the pockets of the insurrectionists, rioters, and paramilitary organizations who attacked the Capitol. Shockingly, the administration has repeatedly refused to rule out payouts to convicted January 6th defendants. Trump himself has defended the prospect, claiming the rioters have been “imprisoned wrongly” and “turned out to be right.”
Think about the moral inversion of that reality. The very machinery of the American government is being positioned to subsidize an assault on our democracy.
Rhetoric vs. Reality
We hear a lot of deafening political rhetoric these days. The self-described “radical Republicans” often scream into the void about the threat of a “radical left,” though few, if any, can actually define who or what that is. But let the historical record be completely clear: the “radical left” didn’t march on the United States Capitol. They didn’t overwhelm police barricades, shatter windows, hunt down lawmakers, or attempt to violently overthrow the constitutional order at the behest of a defeated president. Those were members of the radical right.
And they must not be financially rewarded by the state for trying to destroy the government my father shed blood to defend.
Honoring Their Memorial Day Sacrifice
The true “weaponization” of government isn’t the independent execution of the rule of law; it is the perversion of $1.776 billion in public funds to serve as a financial reward for political violence and anti-democratic grievance. If we begin paying off those who sought to dismantle our constitutional republic, we are not just coddling extremists. We are financing the tools of our own unraveling.
This Memorial Day, it’s not enough to simply thank our veterans for their service or look back at the Greatest Generation with passive nostalgia. To truly honor my father, and every soldier buried in Normandy, Arlington or thousands of other cemeteries across our nation, we must protect the democratic framework they left us. We can’t claim to honor the patriots of our past if we’re funding the insurrections of our present.
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