I'm Dahlia Lithwick, and this is Amicus, Slate's podcast about the courts, the law, and the Supreme Court.

When you listen to this on Saturday morning, the sun will be rising on two Americas.

In Washington, D.C., dozens of tanks will thunder through the streets in a military display that putatively marks the Army's 250th birthday, but very clearly marks dear leader Donald Trump's birthday.

Around the country, thousands upon thousands of people will be getting on buses, making signs,

and gathering friends to march in no king's protests happening at state capitals, right enshrined in the First Amendment.

Many of them worried about being arrested simply for speaking and assembling, and in that same America, millions of people will be afraid to go to their jobs or to church or the corner store

for fear of being rounded up by masked ice forces. We have no idea how this day will

end. And as I try to type these words and to record this introduction, I am quite honestly

overwhelmed by the events of the past seven days, not to mention the past five months. Mark and I are so honored that so many of you

trust us to make sense of things for you, but sometimes events just defy sensemaking.

Let's try to pick a path through all of this together. On Saturday morning, when federal agents

jumped out of an unmarked van near

Home Depot parking lot, they began grabbing people, a deliberate targeting of a heavily

Latino suburb. A similar scene played out when a clothing company was raided downtown.

In other actions, a U.S. citizen, nine months pregnant, was arrested, a four-year-old girl taken,

families separated, friends quite literally disappearing.

Last weekend, in response to unprecedented ice raids across L.A. County, protests sprung up.

Protests that in no way, shape, or form constituted a national emergency.

Between Sunday and Monday, the president of the United States pressed 4,000 California National

Guard members into his service and deployed 700 Marines to Los Angeles over the stated objections

of city and state officials.

Hundreds of National Guard troops now on the ground, deployed by President Trump, even though state leaders say they didn't ask for them and don't want them there.

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