Lisa McCormick Invokes Declaration of Independence in Scathing Indictment of Trump's Presidency

On the morning of July 4, 2025, as fireworks were being prepared and barbecues lit across America, progressive activist Lisa McCormick stood before a crowd in Lincroft and delivered a blistering polemic that cut through the usual patriotic platitudes.

Her message was simple, urgent, and deliberately incendiary: Donald Trump’s presidency, she argued, has become a modern embodiment of the very tyranny the American Revolution sought to destroy.

McCormick, a longtime Democratic insurgent known for her unsparing critiques of both parties, did not mince words.

“The Founders wrote the Declaration of Independence as a bill of indictment against a ruler who placed himself above the law,” said McCormick. “Today, we see that same despotism in the White House—not in powdered wigs and royal decrees, but in Twitter tantrums and signing statements.”

Her speech methodically drew parallels between the Declaration’s grievances and Trump’s conduct.

Where the Founders accused George III of “refusing his Assent to Laws,” McCormick pointed to Trump’s sweeping executive orders that bypassed Congress—from his unilateral imposition of tariffs to the creation of the controversial “Department of Government Efficiency,” which centralized power under tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Where the Declaration condemned the king for “obstructing the Administration of Justice,” she cited Trump’s attacks on judges, his pardons of political allies, and his threats to prosecute opponents.

Most damningly, McCormick highlighted Trump’s incitement of political violence.

“The Founders wrote of a ruler who ‘excited domestic insurrections,’” she said. “Does that not describe a president who encouraged an armed mob to storm the Capitol, then pardoned them? Who threatens to deploy the military against protesters? Who speaks of ‘retribution’ as if democracy were his personal vendetta?”

Her indictment went beyond Trump himself, aiming what she called a “complicit political class” in both parties.

She singled out Senate Democrats for their “theatrical resistance”—calling out Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's outright betrayal on a GOP stopgap spending bill and arguing that Senator Cory Booker’s marathon speech did nothing to stop Trump’s draconian agenda from moving forward.

“They’ll give you a sit-in, but not a shutdown,” she said. “They feign outrage, but they fail to be an effective opposition.”

Delivered as a direct challenge not just to Trump, but to the Democratic establishment, McCormick’s central charge was that the party had failed to meet the moment, opting for symbolic gestures over real confrontation with what she called “an authoritarian coup in slow motion.”

The response was immediate. Conservative outlets dismissed her as a “radical,” while some Democrats distanced themselves, wary of her uncompromising tone. But among progressive circles, her words resonated. “She’s saying what most of us are thinking but are too cautious to say out loud,” said one Newark organizer who attended the speech.

McCormick’s closing lines invoked Frederick Douglass’ famous question: “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?”

Her modern twist was sharper: “What, to a people under siege by their own government, is independence?”

As the fireworks burst later tonight, her question may spark a movement or fade into the holiday’s noise.

But on this July 4th, the most revolutionary speech in America didn’t come from a politician in office. It came from a woman on the outside, holding a copy of the Declaration of Independence in one hand and a list of modern grievances in the other.