On August 19, 1976, my sister and I left the Philippines.

| JFR Perseveranda

We loved our homeland—but under Ferdinand Marcos’s martial law, opportunity shrank and fear grew. My parents chose the uncertain promise of the United States over the certainty of repression back home. Nearly half a century later, on August 19, 2025, I look at America and feel a familiar unease: the slow normalization of authoritarian habits, the kind my family fled.

Joy Perseveranda, Edward Sumagui, David Dayan & J.F. Perseveranda

1976: What We Left Behind

Marcos declared Martial Law in 1972. By 1976, we lived with shuttered newsrooms, curfews, arrests without charge, and an economy sinking under cronyism and debt. Friends disappeared; student leaders were surveilled; truth became dangerous. In everyday life, it meant whispers in place of conversations, careful glances at checkpoints, and a constant calculation of risk. We learned as children what our parents never wanted to teach us: that safety could depend on silence.

For our family, the math became unavoidable. Hard work would not be enough in a system where connections outran merit and fear enforced compliance. We left not because we stopped loving the Philippines, but because we loved it too much to watch it break us. Migration was a bet on dignity: on the chance that somewhere else, the rules would be fair enough to try.

Arriving in America: Different Struggles, Real Freedom

America was not easy. We battled accent anxiety, culture shock, and the humbling math of starting over. But the air felt different. We could read newspapers that criticized the president. We could debate in classrooms. We could organize without fearing a midnight knock. For our parents, that alone justified the sacrifice: even when life was hard, freedom made it bearable, and sometimes beautiful.

August 19, 2025: The Authoritarian Drift in Trump’s America

Almost fifty years later, the old instincts return. I don’t mean tanks in the streets or a decree called “martial law.” Authoritarianism rarely arrives by headline—more often, it accumulates. A rule bent here, a norm broken there; a threat to a critic; an agency stacked with loyalists; a court narrowed in what it can do. The pattern—the feel—is what alarms those of us who remember the 1970s Philippines.

1) Immigration Enforcement as Spectacle and Signal

High-visibility raids and tough talk that deter clinic visits, school attendance, and civic participation—creating a climate of fear, even for mixed-status Filipino families.
Expanded detention and expedited processes that compress due process and rely on overwhelmed systems where mistakes multiply.
State–federal deputization (e.g., local law enforcement partnering with immigration authorities) that erodes community trust and public safety.

2) Courts, Agencies, and the Shift of Power

In 2024, the Supreme Court overruled the long-standing administrative law doctrine known as Chevron deference (the Loper Bright line of cases). Practically, that hands more interpretive power to judges and less to career experts in agencies. In 2025, the consequences show up as:

Faster litigation to freeze rules, turning courts into policy veto points.
Constrained regulatory agility on immigration, environment, labor, and health—areas where executive discretion used to be decisive.

Also in 2024, Murthy v. Missouri narrowed standing in social-media censorship claims, and Fischer v. United States tightened one of the statutes used in Jan. 6 prosecutions. The downstream 2025 reality is a more contested information environment and a narrower path to accountability—conditions that can embolden strongman rhetoric.

3) Media Pressure and Information Control

Retaliatory access decisions and selective credentialing that nudge outlets toward self-censorship.
Rhetorical attacks on journalists as “enemies” that prime audiences to distrust independent reporting.
Litigation and regulatory threats that drain newsrooms and platforms, chilling criticism without formal bans.

4) Politicizing the Civil Service

“Loyalty over expertise” hiring and firing (often described via Schedule F–style ideas) that weakens independent analysis and centralizes power.
Chilling internal dissent, where analysts self-censor to avoid retaliation, degrading the quality of government decisions.

5) Personalized Power: Prosecution, Clemency, and Intimidation

Signaling investigations of critics that blur the line between justice and vengeance—deterring whistleblowers and watchdogs.
Selective clemency or threats that communicate a simple rule: loyalty pays, dissent costs.

6) Elections, Federalism Clashes, and Rule-by-Exception

Pressure on local election officials and unrelenting claims that unfavorable results are illegitimate.
State–federal legal showdowns (especially on immigration) where chaos itself becomes the point; public exhaustion creates space for concentrated power.

Parallels: Marcos 1976 vs. Trump 2025

History doesn’t repeat exactly, but it rhymes. Authoritarian leaders often rely on the same toolkit—silencing dissent, blurring truth, stacking institutions, and punishing opponents. For Filipino-Americans whose families left during martial law, the echoes are loud:

Suppression of the Press
- Marcos 1976: Shut down independent newspapers and stations; replaced them with state-controlled outlets; criminalized criticism.
- Trump 2025: Relentless “fake news” framing, retaliatory access games, and pressure campaigns that chill critical coverage.
Consolidation of Power
- Marcos 1976: Rewrote the constitution to extend rule and neuter checks and balances.
- Trump 2025: Aggressive uses of executive power and emergency rhetoric; agency capture via loyalists; norms bent until they feel like rules.
Targeting Political Opponents
- Marcos 1976: Jailed opposition leaders; detained activists without trial; normalized fear.
- Trump 2025: Advocates investigations of rivals and critics; floats retaliation; turns prosecutorial power into a political message.
Immigration and Nationalism
- Marcos 1976: “New Society” propaganda enforced unity and punished dissent in the name of nationhood.
- Trump 2025: Harsh immigration enforcement and rhetoric that casts outsiders as threats to “real America.”
Public Fear and Control
- Marcos 1976: Curfews, checkpoints, and surveillance normalized obedience.
- Trump 2025: Immigrant neighborhoods and protest spaces face heightened enforcement and intimidation effects.
Judiciary and Rule of Law
- Marcos 1976: Courts aligned with the regime rubber-stamped policy.
- Trump 2025: A judiciary reshaped over years plus post-2024 doctrines (e.g., end of Chevron deference) shift power in ways that can entrench executive agendas.
Truth and Disinformation
- Marcos 1976: Censorship and propaganda minimized scrutiny and memory.
- Trump 2025: Flood-the-zone misinformation and delegitimizing critics corrode a shared reality.

Reflections: Then and Now

When my sister and I boarded that plane in 1976, we were not just leaving a country; we were leaving behind a future that had been stolen by dictatorship. My parents believed, with every ounce of faith they had, that America would offer us the freedom to dream, to speak, to build lives without the shadow of fear. And for decades, that belief held true. We struggled and thrived in equal measure, and we raised our children in a place where the government was not supposed to silence us.

But as I look around in 2025, I feel a deep unease. I see echoes of the Philippines we left behind—the same slow tightening of control, the same vilification of dissent, the same drumbeat of nationalism used to divide instead of unite. It is not martial law, but it feels like we are inching closer to a cliff whose edge I have seen before. The déjà vu is chilling because it awakens a muscle memory I hoped never to use again: the one that tells you to be careful what you say, who you trust, and what you post.

For my children—born and raised here in America—it is hard to imagine the fear of living under open authoritarian rule. They did not grow up with curfews enforced by soldiers or the quiet terror of neighbors disappearing overnight. Yet I worry they may inherit a nation where those fears no longer sound like stories from a faraway place, but warnings of what is to come. Freedom is not a past-tense gift; it’s a present-tense responsibility.

Leaving the Philippines was a choice my family made to protect our future. Staying in America now means fighting to protect it. If the 1976 version of me could speak to the 2025 version of me, he would say: “Don’t be silent. Don’t let history repeat itself.” Because in the end, the reason we left in 1976 is the same reason we must stay vigilant in 2025: democracy is fragile, and freedom is never guaranteed. It must be defended, again and again, by ordinary people who refuse to surrender it.

Community reflection: Did your family leave during martial law—or later—because of politics or opportunity? What echoes of the 1970s do you hear in 2025? Share your story below so we can remember together—and resist together.

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By: J.F.R. Perseveranda

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