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• Code Red for American Democracy

  • When
    Wednesday, July 23, 2025
  •  
    12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
  • Location
    Bellingham Yacht Club
  • Spaces left
    23

  Register

  Coming July 23:  Code Red for American Democracy

  12:00 p.m., July 23, at the Bellingham Yacht Club
  2625 S Harbor Loop Dr.

  Click here to buy your ticket(s).

  Member price is $25; non-member price is $30; youth under 25 is $10; program only tickets (no meal or table seating) are $10.
  Attendance is limited to 150.

  Registration closes at 6:00pm, Sunday, July 20.  Doors open at 11:30am.

  We remember Abraham Lincoln as a great president, but he was also a great student of history and nearly a century ago, he predicted the presidency of Donald Trump. Not by name, of course. But Lincoln knew history and human nature well enough to warn us that someday America would see the rise of a strong-man leader hungry for absolute power. Someone like Caesar or Napoleon.

  Donald Trump is the kind of threat Lincoln had in mind – stealing power from Congress, demonizing federal judges who rule against him, purging the government, arresting students, trashing leading law firms and universities, sending troops into Los Angeles, playing havoc with the Constitution.

  So how much has Trump followed the political playbook of foreign autocrats and dictators? Will he reign supreme even after 2028? Or can American democracy be rescued and repaired? Hear straight talk from Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent Hedrick Smith who covered dictators in Moscow, Cairo and Eastern Europe for The New York Times.

  Hedrick Smith is a  journalist, producer and author. He covered world capitals for the New York Times for 26 years, before he became the Time’s Washington Bureau Chief and chief correspondent from 1976-1988.  Smith shared the Pulitzer Prize for his part in the Pentagon Papers Series.

  Switching hats, Smith  became a producer of  PBS specials , where he won many awards and continued praise for the over 50 prime time programs he  created. Two of his PBS Frontline specials, The Wall Street Fix and Can You Afford to Retire?,  won Emmies.

  Smith’s  best selling books include The Russians, The Power Game: How Washington Works?, The New Russians, and Rethinking America.  In 2013, he wrote  Who Stole the American Dream? which foreshadowed some of the major problems that plague America today. 

  Caterer:  Guud Bowls

  *Tickets are nonrefundable.

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