Joe Scarborough, a former Republican Congressman and current co-host of the “Morning Joe” program on MSNBC, recently published an op-ed in the Washington Post titled “A Storm is Gathering”.

The title is borrowed from Winston Churchill’s book about the events leading up to World War II.

Scarborough takes to task the Trump presidency and Trump’s myriad attacks on American institutions. Mr. Scarborough is not some dyed in the wool liberal, but a former conservative Republican who has been driven by Trump’s autocratic execution of his office to declare himself an independent.

Of concern to Scarborough is not just the attacks by the president on the free press, his direct and indirect expressions of racism, and his caustic dealings with US allies, but also the fact that a growing segment of Republican members of Congress appear to be looking the other way as these alarming events are happening.

To quote “Morning Joe”: “Borrowing again from Churchill, America’s constitutional norms tremble in the balance as Trump unleashes furious attacks on First Amendment protections, Independent Counsels, and law enforcement officers who refuse to be bullied. While the framers of the Constitution foresaw the possibility of a tyrannical president, they never let their imaginations be darkened by the possibility of a compliant Congress.”

Those “compliant” members of Congress who are willing to ignore attacks on our democratic institutions, or actually support the erosion of those institutions, must be called out along with Trump as being un-American.

Fred Upton has gone along with Trump’s autocratic governance. That needs to stop.

The time is now for Upton to have the backbone to speak out against Trump’s wave of tyranny. If he not willing to do that, he does not deserve our votes in 2018.

Virginia Washburn

Grand Beach