On the day Donald Trump celebrates his 79th birthday with a $45 million military parade, millions of Americans gather in 2,000 cities to declare ‘No Kings’—marking the most significant constitutional crisis since the Civil War as the nation confronts unprecedented monarchical claims that would horrify the Founding Fathers.

As a president embraces monarchical power, millions of Americans invoke the nation’s founding principles in a desperate defense of democracy. This is the story of a constitutional crisis 248 years in the making.

While Trump provides theatrical distraction, the same figures who wrote Project 2025’s authoritarian playbook have systematically built and deployed the surveillance and weapons technology to implement it—creating an integrated system where policy and technology converge into techno-authoritarianism.

North Carolina remains stuck in cannabis purgatory while neighboring states rake in millions. Here’s why the Tar Heel State can’t get out of its own way.