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batboyblog · 1 year ago

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Senate Elections 2024!

At the Start of the year I made a post about the US Senate elections this year. However a lot has changed since then (not just that) So I thought I'd make a new version.

How successful a President Kamala Harris is able to be will come down to who controls congress. A Republican House or Senate could frustrate many of the important agenda items Harris wants to get done. Also the Senate is key to appointing Judges, right now many America's rights are being decided in the courts where Trump and Republican appointed Judges are consistently ruling against trans rights, voting rights, abortion rights etc. Any hope of a smooth pipe line of Harris judges depends on the Senate. Senate Control hangs by a knife's edge, there are 6 soft blue seats we have to hold onto, two swing seats Dems are defending, and two soft red seats we can pick up, you can make all the difference!

If you don't live in one of the states below but want to help, you can Donate to the DSCC or sign up to phone bank with the Democrats

Arizona

Ruben Gallego (Hold)

Winning Arizona will be key to the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election. Congressman Ruben Gallego was a leader in the effort to replace Democrat turned Independent Senator Sinema with a real Democrat. Gallego was raised by a single mother, went to Harvard, and is a Marine combat vet. First elected to the Arizona State House in 2010 he advocated for immigrant rights. He was elected to Congress in 2014. Since coming to Congress Gallego has been a progressive voice, gaining attention for blunt attacks on the Trump administration. Republicans nominated around former TV host and conspiracy theorist Kari Lake. Lake rose to become a Republican star by supporting conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and Covid. Lake ran for Arizona Governor in 2022 and after losing to Democrat Katie Hobbs she refused to concede and still maintains she won and is the rightful Governor of Arizona. Lake has called Democrats "Demonic", totally opposes abortion in all cases, and is the self proclaimed "Trump candidate". If Gallego is elected not only will he be a reliable Democratic vote and Progressive vote in the Senate, he'd be the first Hispanic to represent Arizona in the Senate, ever. If you live in Arizona please make sure you vote, but more if you have any time between now and November, volunteer to help Gallego! and if you don't live there you can still give.

VOTE VOLUNTEER DONATE SHOP

Florida

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (Flip)

Florida's current Republican senator, Rick Scott, has spent his first term in Congress being one of the most extreme Republicans. Scott has pushed to defund education, roll back Social Security and Medicare, attacked trans rights, and wants to ban Abortion in all cases. Rick Scott is the wealthiest member of Congress and also was in involved in the largest case of Medicare fraud in US history. Scott challenged Mitch McConnell for the leadership of the Senate GOP getting support from extremists like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and JD Vance, and now is running to replace McConnell. Scott won in 2018 with less than 10,000 votes. The Democrat is former Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. When she was elected to Congress in 2018 she became the first South American born immigrant and first person of Ecuadorian heritage to be elected to Congress. In Congress Mucarsel-Powell was a member of the Progressive caucus, she fought to expand medicare, and secured $200 million for Everglades restoration. After a narrow defeat in 2020 Mucarsel-Powell joined the gun control advocacy group Giffords to fight for gun control a personal issue for her. If you're in Florida please make sure you vote, and volunteer to help remove one of the most extreme Senators. Everyone else give what you can.

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Maryland

Angela Alsobrooks (Hold)

Maryland is normally an easy Democratic win but two-term Republican former Governor Larry Hogan announced he was running, turning what should be an easy race for Democrats into a real fight. Hogan is trying to sell himself as a Trump septic moderate, but he's endorsed by Trump, JD Vance, and Mitch McConnell. Hogan spent his final year as Governor frustrating Democratic efforts to protect abortion, legalize marijuana, and take serious action on climate change. In the Senate he'll be a vote in the pocket of Republican leadership. The Democrat is Angela Alsobrooks, the executive of Prince George's County. As County Executive Alsobrooks got high marks for her response to Covid. She's worked to expand pre-K to all students in the county, as well expanding health care access including mental health access. As a candidate for Senate Alsobrooks has been a strong supporter of Abortion rights, pushing for more action on gun violence, and has been a strong supporter of LGBT rights her whole political life. After Vice-President Harris left the Senate there were no black women represented in the upper house. Together with Delaware's Lisa Blunt Rochester Alsobrooks could make history, if both are elected this year it'll be the first time ever that two black women have served at the same time in the US Senate. If you're in Maryland make sure to get out to vote, to volunteer as much as you're able, and everyone give whatever you can to protect abortion rights and support progressive black women!

VOTE VOLUNTEER DONATE SHOP

Michigan

Elissa Slotkin (Hold)

Michigan is a critical 2024 swing state. Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin is running to replace retiring Senator Debbie Stabenow. Slotkin worked for the CIA, the State Department, and the Department of Defense rising to be an Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Obama. She is fluent in Arabic and Swahili. First elected to Congress in 2018 Slotkin won and has been re-elected repeatedly to represent a swing district, becoming the first Democrat elected there since 1998. In Congress Slotkin has supported gun control, and ending money in politics. Her national security experience made her an important voice pushing for the first impeachment of Trump in 2019. She gained national attention for holding open town halls on her choice to vote to impeach Trump facing down Republican protesters. In her run for Senate Slotkin has continued to stress her support for gun legislation, ending money in politics and stresses protecting the right to choose. Republicans have consolidated around former Congressman Mike Rogers. Rogers retired to Florida after his time in the House only moving back last year to run for Senate. During his time in Congress Rogers tried twice to ban the abortion pill mifepristone. Rogers is endorsed by Trump and controversial former Detroit Police Chief James Craig. If you're in Michigan vote to protect the right to choose and stop a Trump Republican, and make sure to volunteer as much as you can, and every give what you can to help win this key swing state.

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Montana

Jon Tester (Re-elect)

Normally deep red Montana represents one of the hardest Senate seats for Democrats to hang onto. Jon Tester is the only Democrat to hold statewide office or represent Montana in Congress. Elected narrowly in 2006 Tester has beaten the odds time and time again and is trying again. In his time in the Senate Tester has been a consistent voice for small farmers and local businesses against big corporations and mega companies. Tester has fought against corruption and for openness, and is one of the most effective members of Congress consistently having the most bills past into law of any member of Congress. Republicans have embraced an ultra wealthy former CEO, Tim Sheehy as their nominee to unseat Tester. Sheehy was caught lying about being shot in Afghanistan as a Navy SEAL, when he in fact accidentally shot himself at Glacier National Park in Montana. Past his embarrassing war wound story, Sheehy is an ultra rich CEO who has spent 2 million of his own money on the race so far. Sheehy has been endorsed by Trump, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Sheehy wants to ban all abortion, repeal Obamacare, and remove any limits on gun ownership, despite having shot himself. If you can only donate to two races, this and Ohio are the most important, if you can only donate to one? flip a coin. Everyone in Montana make sure you get out to vote and just as important volunteer, there will be no Presidential or Governor or any other campaign to help Tester along its all on him, and everyone give what you can.

VOTE VOLUNTEER DONATE SHOP

Nevada

Jacky Rosen (Re-elect)

Nevada is a critical swing state in the 2024 election. Jacky Rosen first came to Congress flipping a Red House seat in 2016 and then unseating a Republican Senator in 2018. Since coming to Congress Rosen has been a champion for turning Nevada into a clean energy leader. She's also has helped pass gun control legislation and is a fierce advocate the right to choose. Republicans have nominated Army veteran and conservative influencer Sam Brown to run against Rosen. Brown unsuccessfully ran in a Republican primary for the Texas State House in 2014, and for the Republican nomination for US Senate in Nevada in 2022. Now with the endorsement of Donald Trump Brown finally managed to win a primary. Sam Brown is the only Republican candidate Trump mentioned in his 92 minute convention speech at the RNC. Brown wants to roll back Nevada's Green energy progress and boost fossil fuels, he also wants to roll back any and all restrictions on guns. If you're in Nevada make sure to get out and vote, and volunteer to keep this key Senate seat out of the hands of a Trump Republican. Everyone else give what you can.

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Ohio

Sherrod Brown (Re-elect)

Ohio is one of the hardest senate seats for Democrats to defend this year. Senator Sherrod Brown has been the only statewide elected Democrat in Ohio since 2011. First elected to Congress in 1992 and to the Senate in 2006 Brown has defied the odds by being a popular Progressive in an ever more Red state. Brown consistently ranks along side Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as one of the most left wing Senators. From his first days in Congress Brown refused the Congressional health plan, repeatedly introducing single payer health care bills going back to the 1990s. Brown has been a proud and consistent ally of Unions, particularly the UAW, and tough on banks and big business. Republicans have nominated used car salesman and crypto enthusiast Bernie Moreno. Moreno is a weirdo, he accused LGBT activists of a "radical agenda of indoctrination" and then got caught looking for "men for 1-on-1 sex" on AdultFriendFinder. Moreno supports a federal abortion ban, has been sued by former employees for wage thief and discrimination, and wants to end birth right citizenship. Moreno has been endorsed by Turning Point USA, Donald Trump Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy, Kari Lake, Ted Cruz, JD Vance, and of course Donald Trump. If you're in Ohio make sure you get out to vote, and volunteer to support a great Senator. Everyone outside of Ohio give what you can, if you can only donate to two campaigns this and Montana need it the most, if you can only give to one, flip a coin.

VOTE VOLUNTEER DONATE SHOP

Pennsylvania

Bob Casey (Re-elect)

Pennsylvania is a key swing state in the 2024 Presidential election. Bob Casey was first elected to the Senate in 2006 defeating right wing extremist Rick Santorum by the largest margin in state history. Starting his career as a moderate to conservative Democrat Casey has become a strong advocate for gun control since 2012 voting for every gun control measure to reach the Senate. Casey also made strong opposition to the Trump administration a cornerstone of time in office. While personally pro-life, Casey has endorsed the right to choose and voted codify abortion rights. Casey has been a leading critic of corporate greed during the inflation and authored a bill to ban shrinkflation. Republicans have nominated multi-millionaire former CEO and Bush administration official David McCormick. McCormick served in the Treasury under George W. Bush, his wife worked at the NSC under Trump. He lived in Westport, Connecticut as the CEO of an investment management firm, till he decided he wanted to be a US Senator in 2022 and he moved to Pennsylvania. He lost the 2022 GOP primary to Dr. Oz and is giving another go in 2024. McCormick is endorsed by George W. Bush, Mitch McConnell, Rick Santorum, Karl Rove, Doug Mastriano, Jim Jordan, and of course Donald Trump. If you're in Pennsylvania make sure you get out to vote, and to volunteer to keep Pennsylvania blue. Everyone else give what you can.

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Texas

Colin Allred (Flip)

Texas Senator Ted Cruz might be the most hated man in politics. Since his election in 2012 Cruz has been on a single minded mission to be totally unlikeable. Shutting down the government under President Obama, endorsing Trump after Trump insulted his wife, supporting Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, fleeing his state to go on vacation in Mexico after an ice storm and power outage (and abandoning his dog), blaming the Uvalde school shooting on video games, yes Ted Cruz really has done it all. Cruz is one of the most right wing members of the Senate and a loud Trump supporter. Last election in 2018 Cruz barely hung onto his seat and Democrats are hoping with 6 more years of radicalism Texans are ready for change. Democrats have nominated Congressman Colin Allred. Allred is a former professional footballer, played Linebacker for the Tennessee Titans. After football Allred went to law school, and got a job with the Obama Administration. In 2018 he won an upset victory unseating an 11 term Republican in a district that had been Republican since 1968. In Congress Allred fought for gun reform, to keep down the price of proscription drugs, and invest in American infrastructure. In his run for Senate he's standing up for the right to choose against one of the most radically anti-abortion Republicans in the country. If you're in Texas make sure you vote and volunteer to give Ted Cruz the boot, and everyone give what you can to get Blue Texas.

VOTE VOLUNTEER DONATE SHOP

Wisconsin

Tammy Baldwin (Re-elect)

Wisconsin is a critical swing state in the 2024 Presidential election. Senator Tammy Baldwin is a historic trailblazer, when she was first elected to Congress in 1998 she was the first woman to ever represent Wisconsin in Congress, the first open Lesbian elected to Congress, and the first openly gay non-incumbent to be elected to Congress. She co-founded the Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus. When she was elected to the US Senate in 2012 she was the first and is still the only openly gay person ever elected to the Senate. Past her advocacy for LGBT rights Baldwin has been a progressive her whole time in Congress endorsing single-payer health care, and being a strong voice for abortion rights. Republicans are supporting a California bank owner and weirdo named Eric Hovde. Strange mustache owner Hovde has attacked trans kids, flip flopped on abortion (totally against, now open to some abortion), and insulted farmers as "not hardworking" and thats why the retirement age should be 72. If you're in Wisconsin make sure to vote and volunteer to protect a progressive trailblazer and stop a California weirdo banker. Everyone else give what you can.

VOTE VOLUNTEER DONATE SHOP

Where ever you live in the US there is a critical race happening, so please check out ways to Volunteer and where ever you live there are options to phone bank text bank write letters or postcards to voters (postcards 2) but like I said wherever you are there are local candidates who need your help, and if you live in any of these critical states please give your time and energy.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 5 months ago

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Former President of Poland Lech Wałęsa wrote the following letter to Trump.

Your Excellency, Mr. President,

We watched your conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky with fear and distaste. It is insulting that you expect Ukraine to show gratitude for U.S. material aid in its fight against russia. Gratitude is owed to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who have been shedding their blood for over 11 years to defend the free world’s values and their homeland, attacked by Putin’s russia.

How can the leader of a country symbolizing the free world fail to recognize this?

The Oval Office atmosphere during this conversation reminded us of interrogations by the Security Services and Communist court debates. Back then, prosecutors and judges, acting on behalf of the communist political police, told us they held all the power while we had none. They demanded we stop our activities, arguing that innocent people suffered because of us. They stripped us of our freedoms for refusing to cooperate or express gratitude for our oppression. We are shocked that President Zelensky was treated similarly.

History shows that when the U.S. distanced itself from democratic values and its European allies, it ultimately endangered itself. President Wilson understood this in 1917 when the U.S. joined World War I. President Roosevelt knew it after Pearl Harbor in 1941, realizing that defending America meant fighting in both the Pacific and Europe alongside nations attacked by the Third Reich.

Without President Reagan and U.S. financial support, the Soviet empire’s collapse would not have been possible. Reagan recognized the suffering of millions in Soviet russia and its conquered nations, including thousands of political prisoners. His greatness lay in his unwavering stance, calling the USSR an “Empire of Evil” and confronting it decisively. We won, and today, his statue stands in Warsaw, facing the U.S. Embassy.

Mr. President, military and financial aid cannot be equated with the blood shed for Ukraine’s independence and the freedom of Europe and the world. Human life is priceless. Gratitude is due to those who sacrifice their blood and freedom—something self-evident to us, former political prisoners of the communist regime under Soviet russia.

We urge the U.S. to uphold the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which established a direct obligation to defend Ukraine’s borders in exchange for giving up nuclear weapons. These guarantees are unconditional—nowhere do they suggest such aid is a mere economic transaction.

Signed,

Lech Wałęsa, former political prisoner, President of Poland

#Lech Wałęsa #Poland #letters #Budapest memorandum #Ukraine #U.S. Support #Soviet Union

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f1ghtsoftly · 2 months ago

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AllThe Women’s News You Missed This Week

4/28/25-5/5/25

The future of the Women’s Health Initiative remains uncertain. Gaga has a record-breaking concert in Brazil. Activists and survivors question the legacy of the late Pope Francis. Jill Soboule dies in a mysterious house fire. Thousands of Islamists organized in Bangladesh against women’s rights. Indigenous women mark 5/5 as a day of remembrance for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women around the US.

Want this in your inbox instead? Subscribe here

Top Stories For The Week:

Kamala Harris hits out at Trump in first major speech since losing election

Indigenous people raise awareness about their missing and murdered

How many more women and girls have to be attacked before we class misogyny as terrorism?

Emel Mathlouthi: From revolution to global stages, this Tunisian icon is creating feminist anthems that inspire change

A CASE OF CONSCIENCE: THE CHRISTIAN FEMINISTS FIGHTING BRAZIL'S ANTI-ABORTION LAWS

Midwifery Is as Old as Birth Itself. Why Are We Still Fighting for It?

Financing the fight: Why redistribution, not charity, matters for feminism

A Deeper Look:

Inside the Gen Z housewife wars: can you ever be a feminist and house proud?

Why ‘Girl’s Girl’ Culture Still Centers Around Male Approval

The Avenging Woman: The Politics and Aesthetics of Female Rage in Rape-Revenge Cinema

Financing the fight: Why redistribution, not charity, matters for feminism

Book Review: Sophie Gilbert, “Girl On Girl: How Pop Culture Turned A Generation Of Women Against Themselves”

Tooling Up Against Misogyny in Schools Is More Important Than Ever

Updates on the Trump Administration:

The Women’s Health Initiative has shaped women’s health for over 30 years, but its future is uncertain

Key reports addressing violence against Indigenous women are gone from federal sites

Women’s Rights:

'Unacceptable' to question Supreme Court gender ruling, says minister

Bring a mahram or die: The Taliban threat to expectant mothers

UNAMA: Taliban systemically erasing women’s public life and freedom of movement

Towards an Inclusive Gender Just Code in India: Women’s Rights are Non-Negotiable

Women in the News:

What to know about Karen Read's second murder trial

Kamala Harris hits out at Trump in first major speech since losing election

Lydia Mugambe: UN judge who forced woman to work as slave jailed for more than six years

Michigan's governor gambles on Trump - and her chances at a presidential run

Reproductive Rights:

Olivia Rodrigo Wins Planned Parenthood Award for Repro Rights Activism

Midwifery Is as Old as Birth Itself. Why Are We Still Fighting for It?

A CASE OF CONSCIENCE: THE CHRISTIAN FEMINISTS FIGHTING BRAZIL'S ANTI-ABORTION LAWS

From Montana to Florida—How Past Pro-Abortion Ballot Measures Are Helping Fuel a Movement

Josh Hawley Calls on FDA to Restrict Abortion Pill Based on Bogus ‘Study’ from Right-Wing Org

Women resist:

Profiles in Courage: Michelle King Refused to Hand Over Your Data to DOGE. Then She Lost Her Job.

Why the Khachaturyan Sisters' Case Fired Up Russian Feminists

Ugandan women unveil 2026–2030 manifesto, demand action on rights

Ketanji Brown Jackson sharply condemns Trump’s attacks on judges

Profiles in Courage: Danielle Sassoon, a Prosecutor of Principle, Quits After Rejecting Trump-Appointed AG’s Order to Shield Eric Adams

Mexico’s president says she rejected Trump’s plan to send US troops across the border

Diary of a Feminist: Dr. Amal Al-Malki’s Journey from Academia to Activism

Abuse victims question if Pope Francis did enough to stop predators

Men Retaliate:

Thousands of Islamists rally in Bangladesh against proposed changes to women’s rights

Women Getting Justice?

Iranian Father Who Killed Daughter Released After Three Months

Excavation at former mother-and-baby institution to begin this year

Women’s Legacy and History:

‘Unwavering friendship’: The true story of nine women who escaped a Nazi death march

‘I Kissed A Girl’ Singer Jill Sobule’s Body Found After Mysterious House Fire

‘She changed the face of London’: statue to be unveiled of suffragist gardener

Uplifting News:

First Jewish woman minister in German cabinet since Holocaust

90-year-old Who Has Saved Over 10,000 Animals at Sanctuary Has No Plans to Retire

‘I do what I like’: British woman, 115, claims world’s oldest living person title

Uncategorized:

How the IMF can help increase women’s labour force participation in Egypt

Violence Against Women:

South African woman guilty of kidnapping and trafficking daughter aged 6

Woman killed in France was lovely person, says husband

Rape 'accepted way of life' say ex-forces women

Syria��s stolen daughters: The HTS campaign to enslave Alawite women

Gender Trolling: Digital Manosphere and Misogyny in China

Women on Vinted are being sexually exploited and no one is stopping it

An Israeli woman taken hostage by Hamas on October 7 has alleged she was drugged and raped by a well-known personal trainer after returning to Israel.

Sexually harassed while job hunting in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan

Young woman's strip search at festival akin to 'sexual assault', court told

Arts and Culture:

Two million people attend free Lady Gaga concert in Brazil

How Katy Perry became the Hot and Cold popstar

Book of the Week: Ani O’Brien on Ali Mau

Flick’s Rough and Tough Feminism Fits Pittsburgh

Far East Film Festival: Yihui Shao’s Feminist Drama ‘Her Story’ Wins Top Prize

‘Wolf Siren’ by Beth O’Brien: Feminist retelling of a classic children’s tale

Iris Knobloch, Cannes Film Festival president: 'For most of my career, I was the only woman at the table'

These Mormon wives are TV’s Most Unlikely Feminists

Emel Mathlouthi: From revolution to global stages, this Tunisian icon is creating feminist anthems that inspire change

As always, this is global and domestic news from a US perspective, covering feminist issues and women in the news more generally. As of right now, I do not cover Women’s Sports. Published each Tuesday.

#global news #lgbt #feminism #news

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victusinveritas · 5 months ago

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WARSAW, March 3 (Reuters) - Lech Walesa, the former Polish president and Solidarity trade union leader who played a leading role in the fall of Communism, signed a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump expressing "horror" at his argument with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winner posted the text of the letter, which was signed by 39 Polish former political prisoners, on Facebook on Monday:

"Your Excellency, Mr. President,

We watched the report of your conversation with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, with fear and distaste. We find it insulting that you expect Ukraine to show respect and gratitude for the material assistance provided by the United States in its fight against russia. Gratitude is owed to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood in defense of the values of the free world. They have been dying on the front lines for more than 11 years in the name of these values and the independence of their homeland, which was attacked by Putin’s russia.

We do not understand how the leader of a country that symbolizes the free world cannot recognize this.

Our alarm was also heightened by the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation, which reminded us of the interrogations we endured at the hands of the Security Services and the debates in Communist courts. Prosecutors and judges, acting on behalf of the all-powerful communist political police, would explain to us that they held all the power while we held none. They demanded that we cease our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people suffered because of us. They stripped us of our freedoms and civil rights because we refused to cooperate with the government or express gratitude for our oppression. We are shocked that President Volodymyr Zelensky was treated in the same manner.

The history of the 20th century shows that whenever the United States sought to distance itself from democratic values and its European allies, it ultimately became a threat to itself. President Woodrow Wilson understood this when he decided in 1917 that the United States must join World War I. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood this when, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he resolved that the war to defend America must be fought not only in the Pacific but also in Europe, in alliance with the nations under attack by the Third Reich.

We remember that without President Ronald Reagan and America’s financial commitment, the collapse of the Soviet empire would not have been possible. President Reagan recognized that millions of enslaved people suffered in Soviet russia and the countries it had subjugated, including thousands of political prisoners who paid for their defense of democratic values with their freedom. His greatness lay, among other things, in his unwavering decision to call the USSR an “Empire of Evil” and to fight it decisively. We won, and today, the statue of President Ronald Reagan stands in Warsaw, facing the U.S. Embassy.

Mr. President, material aid—military and financial—can never be equated with the blood shed in the name of Ukraine’s independence and the freedom of Europe and the entire free world. Human life is priceless; its value cannot be measured in money. Gratitude is due to those who sacrifice their blood and their freedom. This is self-evident to us, the people of Solidarity, former political prisoners of the communist regime under Soviet russia.

We call on the United States to uphold the guarantees made alongside Great Britain in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which established a direct obligation to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for its relinquishment of nuclear weapons. These guarantees are unconditional—there is no mention of treating such assistance as an economic transaction.

Signed,

Lech Wałęsa, former political prisoner, President of Poland"

#poland #russo ukrainian war #ukraine #trump zelensky meeting #Lech Walesa #european defense #nato allies #us politics #solidarity

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route22ny · 2 months ago

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Parks, libraries, museums: here’s why Trump is attacking America’s best-loved institutions

by Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian

The president’s funding cuts and bullying are about dividing Americans and tightening his grip on power

Mon 2 Jun 2025 08.00 EDT

The author and environmentalist Wallace Stegner called our national parks “America’s best idea”.

Certainly, these jewels – 85m acres of parkland throughout all the 50 states – are beloved by the public. So are America’s public libraries, arts organizations and museums.

But that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from threatening or harming them.

These institutions are under siege. They are hurt by deep funding cuts, the loss or bullying of public employees and, in some cases, by threats of extinction.

Why would any politician – especially one as hungry for adulation as Donald Trump – go after such cherished parts of America?

It seems counterintuitive, but this is all a part of a broad plan that the great 20th century political thinker Hannah Arendt would have understood all too well.

Take away natural beauty, free access to books and support for the arts, and you end up with a less enlightened, more ignorant and less engaged public. That’s a public much more easily manipulated.

“A people that can no longer believe in anything cannot make up its mind,” said Arendt, a student of authoritarianism, in 1973. Eventually, such a public “is deprived … of its ability to think and judge”, and with people like that, “you can then do what you please”.

That’s what Trump and company are counting on.

It’s also part of the effort to divide Americans into two tribes – the elites and the regular folks, the blue and the red, the drivers of dorky hybrid sedans and the drivers of oversized pick-up trucks.

The arts and nature, by contrast, serve to unite us. When you’re admiring a redwood or gazing at the Grand Canyon, you’re neither Republican nor Democrat. The same goes for listening to a beautiful piece of new music or choosing library books to read with your children.

But division and grievance serve Trump better. And so, we have the attacks on marginalized people, on university research, and the performing arts, often in the guise of eliminating waste or discriminatory hiring practices.

“The Trump administration has launched a comprehensive attack on knowledge itself, a war against culture, history and science,” Adam Serwer wrote in the Atlantic recently in a much-discussed piece describing “the attack on knowledge”, putting in broad context Trump’s defunding of universities and attempts to discourage international scholarship.

What’s really going on is a longterm power grab.

In crippling learning, beauty and culture Trump and his helpers “seek to make the country more amenable to their political domination”.

When it comes to the parks, as the Guardian’s Annette McGivney reported recently, the harm is well under way.

Thousands of staffing cuts mean that many parks lack adequate supervision, that campgrounds are closed and that the care of precious natural resources is neglected.

Again, it’s by design, as the former national parks director Jonathan Jarvis told McGivney.

“There are ideologues who want to dismantle the federal government,” Jarvis said. “And the last thing they need is a highly popular federal agency that undermines their argument about how the government is dysfunctional.”

Mark Nebel, a longtime manager of a program at the Grand Canyon, and a true believer in the value of national parks, spoke about the personal toll.

“The Trump administration says this is all about efficiency, but it is nothing of the sort,” said Nebel, who became demoralized at the harm being done and abruptly resigned.

Reducing government waste may sound good but it looks more like willful destruction.

Among the many agencies that are under attack are the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. These organizations provide crucial support for public libraries and museums, grants to artists and writers, and much more.

They make us better as a people. They uplift us. Like the parks, they can bring beauty into our lives. And as the poet John Keats wrote, beauty and truth are inseparable.

But truth is only trouble for the would-be autocrat.

And truth itself is under attack, as Trump – a prolific liar – tries to control the message to the public by controlling the reality-based press. That’s how successful propaganda works.

Toward that end, his administration is trying to defund public media, including NPR and PBS, and – partly through lawsuits against media organizations including CBS News and ABC News – to intimidate journalists and their corporate bosses.

A more ignorant, less enlightened, more divided electorate is far easier to manipulate. And the power grab, after all, is the larger aim.

Once that power is fully secured, there is no one left to challenge the endless grift and self-dealing that is a hallmark of this administration – the sale of meme coins, the pay-to-play pardons of criminals and the cultivation of rich guys and their fat wallets.

The diminishment of truth and beauty is part of a long game, but one that doesn’t have to prevail.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/02/national-parks-libraries-museums-trump

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

#american dystopia #national park #public media #mind control #resist

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mariacallous · 9 months ago

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A famous parable revolves around the troubled relationship between a scorpion and a frog. A scorpion needs to cross a river. Unable to swim, the scorpion asks a frog to carry him on his back. Listening to the request, the frog responds that he is hesitant because he fears that the scorpion will sting and kill him. After the scorpion assures his new friend that he would never do that, the frog agrees. Halfway through the journey, the scorpion stings the frog. Slowly dying, the frog asks, “Why did you do this?” The scorpion responds, “I’m sorry, but it’s in my nature.”

The story is a classic lesson about how dangerous people don’t usually change. Even when promising that they will act differently, the likelihood is that they won’t. It is also a tale about taking warning signs seriously. The frog understood the risks that he faced, yet he chose to ignore them.

U.S. presidential elections frequently involve warnings signs. Over the course of a campaign, voters learn a great deal about the candidates running and the potential costs of putting someone in office. Sometimes, a majority of voters decide to heed those warnings, yet there are other times in U.S. history when voters end up the frog.

In 2024, there are more warnings signs than usual about one of the major candidates: the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. There are big red flags from both his first term in office and his post-presidential years waving over and over about what Trump 2.0 would bring. Another one came on Wednesday, when the Washington, D.C., district judge handling the federal election conspiracy case against Trump unsealed a 165-page document with the fullest picture of what special counsel Jack Smith had found.

To understand how voters have the capacity to cover their ears to avoid hearing alarm bells, look back to 1972, when President Richard Nixon won reelection in a landslide victory against Democratic Sen. George McGovern. Too often, the story of Nixon’s reelection in 1972 and Watergate are treated separately. The thing is, there were, in fact, many people warning of who Nixon was as a politician and what he would likely do when freed from the restraints imposed by having to worry about reelection.

The familiar narrative on the 1972 election is that, riding high on diplomatic breakthroughs with the Soviet Union and China, Nixon defeated McGovern in a stunning victory that rivaled President Franklin Roosevelt’s coalition-building reelection win in 1936. There were many Americans who didn’t like Nixon or his policies, but it wasn’t until investigations in 1973 that his severe abuses of presidential power were revealed. Had the country only known more, so the story goes, the electorate could have averted the disaster they collectively faced on Aug. 9, 1974, when Nixon stepped onto a helicopter, leaving the White House in the middle of his second term.

In fact, numerous representatives and senators had been trying to expose Nixon’s nature even before that election. After Nixon announced on April 30, 1970, that he had secretly deployed troops to Cambodia and conducted a massive bombing campaign, there was a fierce outcry from Democrats about how he had lied and threatened the balance of power to accelerate a disastrous war. Idaho Sen. Frank Church and Kentucky Sen. John Sherman Cooper began drafting a bill to prohibit the president from using congressional funds for operations in Cambodia. Congressional critics railed against Nixon’s turn to impounding funds that they had appropriated and which he failed to veto. Soon after the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate building in June 1972, Democratic Rep. Wright Patman, a Texas populist, attempted to launch an investigation into the connections he suspected between the burglars and Nixon’s reelection campaign. The effort, covered by the press, was undercut by Nixon and his allies on Capitol Hill.

Journalists and public intellectuals were on Nixon’s case long before most voters cast their ballot. In 1971, the administration’s efforts to prevent the press from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a secret Defense Department study exposing the lies told to justify the war in Vietnam, required the Supreme Court to intervene, culminating in the 6-3 decision in New York Times Company v. United States, which allowed publication. The media praised the decision as a blow to a president who was intent on stifling the press. In March 1972, Life published a story based on a nine-month investigation that accused the Nixon administration of having “seriously tampered with justice” to insulate supporters in San Diego from criminal prosecutions involving illegal campaign contributions. “The administration has in several instances taken steps to neutralize and frustrate its own law enforcement officials,” the magazine noted.

By mid-October 1972, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Time were publishing stories about an FBI investigation into whether Nixon’s reelection team was involved in sabotage operations, including the break-in at the Watergate building, against the Democratic campaign. On Oct. 16, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein published a blockbuster story about how Nixon’s personal lawyer, Herbert Kalmbach, revealed that he “was one of five persons authorized to approve payments from the Nixon campaign’s secret intelligence gathering and espionage fund.” Nixon campaign manager Clark McGregor was so frustrated with reporters that he accused the press of acting politically, stating, “the Post has maliciously sought to give the appearance of a direct connection between the White House and the Watergate, a charge the Post knows—and a half dozen investigations have found—to be false.”

And then there was McGovern, who made Nixon’s corruption a major theme in his final months on the campaign trail. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, McGovern said, “From secrecy and corruption in high places, come home, America.” In late September, during visits to three states on the East Coast, McGovern called Nixon “scandal-ridden” and “corrupt.” Speaking to labor leaders in Atlantic City, he warned that “If we let this Nixon-Agnew administration have another four years, I think they’ll make Warren G. Harding look like a Sunday school teacher.” McGovern called the Nixon administration the “trickiest, most deceitful” in U.S. history. On Oct. 17, he told a rally in Fort Worth, Texas, that Nixon was attempting to “escape responsibility” for the break-in and, in the process, “polluting the faith of the American people in government itself.”

McGovern’s emphasis on corruption intensified in the final weeks of his campaign. “As the net of truth closes tighter and tighter around the president himself,” he said, “they try to persuade us that the spying, and lying, and burglary, and sabotage will not affect the election because people expect these things of politicians.” If voters chose Nixon, he said, they would be selecting four years of “Watergate corruption.”

The problem was that McGovern was running against the wind. In mid-October, Gallup found that a minute percentage of Americans ranked corruption as a top issue; only 52 percent had even heard of the Watergate affair. The public concluded that both parties were equally corrupt, so it didn’t matter who was in office.

Nixon defeated McGovern by winning 49 states, including a sweep of the South, and 60.7 percent of the vote.

Today, the warning signs about Trump are all in broad daylight.

The first threat is Trump’s embrace of election denialism. The former president demonstrated that he is willing to destabilize the democratic system when election results don’t go his way. Multiple investigations have unpacked the systematic campaign by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in the violence of Jan. 6, 2020. Since the insurrection, Trump has continued to deny the outcome—as did Sen. J.D. Vance during his debate against Gov. Tim Walz, when he refused to acknowledge that Joe Biden won. Moreover, the Trump campaign has made several strategic moves, such as supporting a change of rules by Trump-allied members of the Georgia State Election Board that will make it easier for local officials to question and delay the counting of ballots; this could easily create a certification crisis.

During his time in office, Trump refused to accept that there were limitations on what a president could do. Surrounded by advisors who believed in the unitary executive theory, Trump did what he wanted to do until someone was able to stop him. Formal or informal guardrails were not his thing. Trump’s expansive, and dangerous, views of presidential power were clear during the first impeachment trial when the United States learned how he had threatened congressionally appropriated aid to Ukraine if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not agree to help dig up dirt on Biden and his son. Trump and his supporters were very clear that he will flex even more of that muscle should he be given another chance to do so. He has often spoken in public about collapsing the firewall that has separated the president from the Justice Department since Nixon’s downfall, and he has threatened to use that prosecutorial power to go after his opponents. In one Truth Social post about Smith’s investigation, Trump said that there would be “repercussions far greater than anything that Biden or his Thugs could understand.” Written by many high-level officials in Trump’s operation, including Stephen Miller, Project 2025 is a 900-page road map to a massive expansion of executive power.

Finally, Trump poses a serious risk to human rights. Between 2017 and 2021, undocumented immigrants were subject to intense and inhumane punitive measures, such as the separation of families, in an effort to disincentivize border crossings. In response to #BlackLivesMatter, Trump asked former Defense Secretary Mark Esper about shooting civil rights protesters in 2020. He famously had peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park cleared out with tear gas all so that he could get a photo-op. Finally, he was the instrumental force behind the creation of the 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade.

The United States paid a high price for its decision in 1972. Nixon’s second term was consumed by the Watergate scandal, which rocked U.S. politics, traumatized and divided the nation, and resulted in decades of deep distrust of government. In 2024, will voters heed the warning signs?

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klbmsw · 5 months ago

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Former President of Poland Lech Walesa wrote the following letter to Trump.

Your Excellency, Mr. President,

We do not understand how the leader of a country that symbolizes the free world cannot recognize this.

Signed,

Lech Wałęsa, former political prisoner, President of Poland

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justinspoliticalcorner · 3 months ago

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Austin Weatherford at Bright America:

Let’s get something out of the way: This isn’t normal. A sitting president of the United States — whose oath is to protect the Constitution — just signed executive orders directing the federal government to investigate two private citizens, by name, because they criticized him. Let that sink in. Chris Krebs, the former top cybersecurity official who defended our elections from foreign interference, and Miles Taylor, the former DHS official who blew the whistle on presidential misconduct in Trump 1.0, are now targets of official retaliation. Not because they broke the law. Not because there’s any credible allegation against them. But because they spoke out. This is not a drill. This is not a disagreement. This is presidential power being weaponized to punish dissent. It’s retribution—plain and simple. And if it goes unchecked, it’s the beginning of something darker.

This is the stuff of despots.

Think about the kind of country where a leader uses state power to settle personal scores. Now imagine that country is America. Because that’s where we are — unless we say no. Authoritarianism doesn’t arrive in one fell swoop. It creeps in. One line crossed. One norm broken. One enemy targeted. And if the public doesn’t push back, it becomes precedent. Remember Nixon’s enemies list? J. Edgar Hoover’s surveillance of civil rights leaders? These moments are now taught in classrooms as cautionary tales. What we’re witnessing today may be worse: a president publicly directing federal agencies to go after named individuals in full view of the American people. It’s not covert. It’s not subtle. It’s brazen.

The stakes are bigger than Krebs and Taylor.

This isn't just about two people. It's about whether we still live in a country where criticizing your government doesn’t put a target on your back. When dissent becomes dangerous, democracy becomes endangered. That’s why more than 200 national leaders — Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike — signed a powerful open letter last week calling this out for what it is: “an appalling rejection of bedrock democratic values.” The signers include governors, judges, national security officials, public servants, and civic leaders from both parties. Some served in Republican administrations. Others served in Democratic ones. Many have never agreed on a single issue — until now. They are united by one belief: that no president — no matter how aggrieved or self-interested — can use federal law enforcement as a tool of political vengeance.

This is the moment to draw the line.

We can’t look away. Because if this becomes the new normal, it won’t stop here. The next critics will be journalists. Then activists. Then everyday Americans who post the wrong thing on social media or attend the wrong rally. We’ve seen this movie before — in other countries. Let’s not let it run here. If you believe in the rule of law, in the First Amendment, in basic decency — now is the time to speak out. Share this story on your social media. Add your name to the open letter. Call your elected officials and demand they publicly oppose these abuses of power. History doesn’t look kindly on silence. And it’s watching right now.

Real American patriots oppose the destruction of our country by a power-mad tyrant, such as Tyrant 47.

#Trumpism #Donald Trump #Tyrant 47 #Chris Krebs #Miles Taylor

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sjerzgirl · 2 months ago

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Former President of Poland Lech Walesa wrote the following letter to Trump.

Your Excellency, Mr. President,

We do not understand how the leader of a country that symbolizes the free world cannot recognize this.

Signed,

Lech Wałęsa, former political prisoner, President of Poland

#lech walesa #letter #to trump #trump

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seymour-butz-stuff · 1 year ago

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President Biden has not had a lot of fun perusing polls lately. He has a lower approval rating than every president going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower at this stage of their tenures, and he trails former President Donald J. Trump in a fall rematch. But Mr. Biden can take solace from one survey in which he is way out in front of Mr. Trump. A new poll of historians coming out on Presidents’ Day weekend ranks Mr. Biden as the 14th-best president in American history, just ahead of Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan and Ulysses S. Grant. While that may not get Mr. Biden a spot on Mount Rushmore, it certainly puts him well ahead of Mr. Trump, who places dead last as the worst president ever. Indeed, Mr. Biden may owe his place in the top third in part to Mr. Trump. Although he has claims to a historical legacy by managing the end of the Covid pandemic; rebuilding the nation’s roads, bridges and other infrastructure; and leading an international coalition against Russian aggression, Mr. Biden’s signature accomplishment, according to the historians, was evicting Mr. Trump from the Oval Office. “Biden’s most important achievements may be that he rescued the presidency from Trump, resumed a more traditional style of presidential leadership and is gearing up to keep the office out of his predecessor’s hands this fall,” wrote Justin Vaughn and Brandon Rottinghaus, the college professors who conducted the survey and announced the results in The Los Angeles Times. Mr. Trump might not care much what a bunch of academics think, but for what it’s worth he fares badly even among the self-identified Republican historians. Finishing 45th overall, Mr. Trump trails even the mid-19th-century failures who blundered the country into a civil war or botched its aftermath like James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce and Andrew Johnson. Judging modern-day presidents, of course, is a hazardous exercise, one shaped by the politics of the moment and not necessarily reflective of how history will look a century from now. Even long-ago presidents can move up or down such polls depending on the changing cultural mores of the times the surveys are conducted.

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beardedmrbean · 2 months ago

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Germany's conservative new Chancellor Friedrich Merz has pledged to end months of political paralysis and rebuild Berlin's international standing, but got off to a bruising start on Tuesday.

Having vowed to hit the ground running, the 69-year-old instead stumbled when he lost an initial parliamentary vote to elevate him to the chancellor's office, a first in post-war German history.

After a long day of high political drama and a tense second vote in the Bundestag, Merz scraped through, visibly relieved to achieve his decades-old goal to lead Europe's top economy.

Merz will be hoping the episode was just a bump in the road as he sets out to build a "Germany we can be proud of again", his motto in the campaign leading up to February's election.

He has vowed to reboot Germany's ailing economy, strengthen the threadbare armed forces and curb irregular immigration, signalling a rightward shift in the way the country is governed.

Six months since the collapse of ex-chancellor Olaf Scholz's government, Merz has also pledged to swiftly rebuild Berlin's role on the European and world stage.

But the first-round rejection by MPs dealt an early blow to Merz as he seeks to get to grips with myriad challenges facing Germany in a world upended by US President Donald Trump.

"Merz is now considered damaged, a chancellor without a stable alliance -- and his popularity ratings are already not good," judged news weekly Der Spiegel.

- Business background -

It was a humiliation for the former BlackRock board member, who has a strong business background but has never held a government leadership post.

Still, Merz has previously shown his will to overcome setbacks.

He made a political comeback after being sidelined from power in the early 2000s by long-time party rival Angela Merkel, who went on to rule for 16 years.

Merz has vowed a return to the old-school conservative roots of their Christian Democrats (CDU) and overturn much of her legacy, especially her open-door policy to migrants.

In a political gamble, he pushed a non-binding parliamentary motion demanding an immigration crackdown earlier this year with the support of the AfD -- a move widely condemned as breaking a long-standing taboo against co-operating with the far right.

Merz has also vowed a "zero tolerance" law-and-order drive and to limit "woke" policies.

- Hobby pilot -

A millionaire and amateur pilot who owns a private jet, Merz has faced criticism for being aloof and out of touch.

He sought to soften his image on the campaign trail, sometimes showing up with a beer in hand at campaign events.

His approach paid off and his CDU/CSU alliance went on to come first in the February elections. To win a majority, it then forged a coalition government with the centre-left SPD.

But he shocked many Germans by swiftly moving to push changes to the "debt brake", which limits how much the government can borrow, laying the ground for vast extra outlays in defence and infrastructure.

During the election campaign, Merz had pledged not to touch the debt rules, and the move him an easy target for criticism from the AfD, which came second in the February election.

Merz, a Catholic, lives among the hills and forests of the Sauerland region of North Rhine-Westphalia state.

At 198 centimetres (six foot six), Merz stands out in a crowd.

He has been married for more than 40 years to Charlotte Merz, a judge, with whom he has three adult children.

A trained lawyer, he was elected to the European Parliament in 1989 and soon after to the Bundestag, where his mentor was the late CDU powerbroker Wolfgang Schaeuble.

When he lost the internal battle against Merkel, Merz took a break from politics and went into the business world, serving on multiple corporate boards.

A free-market liberal who wants to slash red tape to help Germany Inc, he outlined his views in a 2008 book titled "Dare More Capitalism".

Merz has sought to turn his long stint in the business world into a key selling point, said political scientist Antonios Souris of Berlin's Free University.

"He likes to flirt a little with this role of having returned to politics as an outsider, as an experienced captain of industry, not just a career politician like Scholz," he said.

#nunyas news

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lenbryant · 9 months ago

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(Long Post/The Atlantic) How Jack Smith Outsmarted the Supreme Court

And why the special counsel’s last-ditch January 6 filing may not matter

By Sean Wilentz

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s recent filing to the D.C. District Court in the Trump v. United States presidential-immunity case both fleshes out and sharpens the evidence of Donald Trump’s sprawling criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. To understand the filing’s larger significance as well as its limitations, we must first review a bit of recent history.

In its shocking decision on July 1 to grant the presidency at least presumed immunity from criminal prosecution for all official acts, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority showed once again that it was intent on immunizing one president in particular: Donald Trump. The Court majority’s decision, delivered by Chief Justice John Roberts, was explicit. It held, for example, that Trump’s alleged efforts to pressure then–Vice President Mike Pence into voiding the 2020 election results on January 6 constituted “official conduct” from which Trump “is at least presumptively immune from prosecution.” That presumed immunity, the Court contended, would disappear only if the prosecution could convince the courts that bringing the case to trial would pose no “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.”

The Court thus remanded the case back to the D.C. District Court to decide the matter, along with the question of whether Trump is actually immune to the rest of the charges against him. How, though, could the prosecution of a president or former president over an “official act” fail to intrude on presidential authority? Seemingly, anything pertaining to Trump’s contacts with the vice president as he presided in his constitutional role as president of the Senate—as well as Trump’s contacts with the Department of Justice, which the Court also singled out and which the prosecution, significantly, felt compelled to omit from its revised indictment—deserves, as the Court sees it, virtually ironclad protection, a powerful blow against the entire January 6 indictment.

Although the sweeping outcome of Trump v. United States took most legal commentators by surprise, its protection of Trump was completely predictable given the Court’s previous conduct regarding the January 6 insurrection. The refusal of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito to recuse themselves from any matter related to the insurrection, despite their own conflicted positions—Thomas due to the direct involvement of his wife, Ginni Thomas, in the subversion; Alito because of his flag-waving support of Trump’s election denials—has received the most public attention concerning the Court majority’s partisan partiality. But another set of telltale signs becomes apparent after a closer tracking of the Court’s decision making.

Almost as soon as the case against Trump came before D.C. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, the Supreme Court played along with the Trump lawyers’ efforts to delay the trial until after the November 2024 election. First, after Chutkan ruled against Trump’s absolute-immunity claims in December 2023, Special Counsel Smith asked the Supreme Court to expedite matters by hearing the case immediately, not waiting for the U.S. Court of Appeals to rule on Trump’s appeal of Chutkan’s decision. The Supreme Court refused. Two months later, though, when the appeals court ruled against Trump and set a new trial date, the Supreme Court dragged its feet for as long as possible before announcing that it would take up the case after all. It then set the date for oral arguments as late as possible, at the end of April. This meant that even before hearing the case, the Court made it highly unlikely that Trump’s trial would proceed in a timely manner, effectively immunizing Trump until after the election.

Although radical in its long-term reconstruction of the American presidency, the ruling more immediately affirmed and extended the Court’s protection of Trump from prosecution. By remanding the case to the D.C. Circuit Court to decide what in the indictment constitutes official (and, therefore, presumably immune) conduct, the justices guaranteed that no trial would occur until after Election Day. After that, meanwhile, should Trump win the election, no trial would occur at all, because he would certainly fire Smith and shut down the proceedings.

Smith’s filing tries to slice through the Court’s security shield regarding the insurrection. Skillfully quoting from or alluding to language in the Court majority’s own opinion, the filing demolishes the notion that Trump’s activities, culminating on January 6, deserve immunity. Outwardly, Smith’s filing respects the Court’s dubious ruling about the immunity of official presidential acts. Legally, Smith had no choice but to operate within that ruling, a fact that sharply limited how far his filing could go. But even though it never challenges the conservative majority directly, the filing makes a case, incontrovertible in its logic and factual detail, that the core of Trump’s subversion involved no official actions whatsoever. It persuasively argues, with fact after fact, that Trump was the head of an entirely private criminal plot as a candidate to overthrow the election, hatched months before the election itself.

In remounting his case, Smith has taken the opportunity to release previously unknown details, some of which he says he doesn’t even plan to present at trial, that underscore the depravity as well as the extent of Trump’s criminal actions. Consider, for example, Smith’s telling of Trump’s reaction to the news from one of his staff, at the height of the violence on January 6, that his tweets attacking Pence had placed Pence’s life in extreme danger. “So what?” Trump reportedly replied. He had clearly intended for his tweets to reach the mob at the Capitol. His nonchalance about the vice president’s life epitomizes the lengths to which he would go to complete his coup d’état.

But the real force of Smith’s filing is in its tight presentation of the evidence of a criminal conspiracy in minute detail, dating back to the summer before the 2020 election, when Trump began publicly casting doubts on its legitimacy should he not be declared the winner. “The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election,” he told the Republican National Convention in his nomination-acceptance speech in August 2020.

From that point forward, Trump was at the center of every effort to keep him in power, even once he was fully aware that he had no grounds to contest Joe Biden’s victory. There were his private operatives sowing chaos at polling places and vote-counting centers, the scheming to declare victory on Election Night before the results were in, the bogus legal challenges, the fake-elector fraud, the plot to deny official certification by Congress on January 6, and finally the insurrection itself. “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election,” one witness reports Trump saying. “You still have to fight like hell.”

The crucial point to which the filing unfailingly returns is that none of Trump’s actions listed in the revised indictment, even those that the Court cited as “official,” deserves immunity. As Smith makes clear, the Framers of the Constitution deliberately precluded the executive branch from having official involvement in the conduct of presidential elections. The reason was obvious: Any involvement by a president would be an open invitation to corruption. To make the case that any such involvement falls within a president’s official duties would seem, at best, extremely difficult.

It is here that Smith turns the Court’s Trump v. United States ruling to his own advantage. Concerning specific charges that Trump’s speechmaking contributed to the insurrection, the Court allowed that “there may be contexts in which the President speaks in an unofficial capacity—perhaps as a candidate for office or party leader.” Quoting from an earlier Court decision, the ruling then states that determining these matters would require that the district court undertake “objective analysis of [the] ‘content, form, and context’” of the speeches in question, a “necessarily fact-bound analysis.” Likewise, regarding the allegations apart from Trump’s supposedly official communications and public speeches, the justices enjoined the district court, on remand, to “carefully analyze” those charges “to determine whether they too involve conduct for which the President may be immune from prosecution.”

Citing those exact phrases as the Court’s standard of inquiry and proof, Smith then offers evidence that every count in the revised indictment concerns either technically official conduct undeserving of immunity or unofficial conduct involving Trump’s private actions as a candidate and not his official duties as president. These actions include his efforts to pressure state officials, preposterously presented by Trump’s defense attorneys as official inquiries into election integrity. They include his conversations about elector slates, about which the president has no official duties. They also encompass all of his speechmaking about the allegedly crooked election, up to and including his incitement at the January 6 rally at the Ellipse, which was not an official function.

Above all, Smith nails down a matter that the Court’s opinion went out of its way to declare “official” and presumably immune: Trump’s efforts to pressure Pence into declining to certify Biden’s win. Although the filing acknowledges that the Court had held that these conversations between Trump and Pence about “their official responsibilities” qualified as “official,” it rebuts the presumption that those discussions therefore qualify as immune. The filing observes that the discussions did not concern Pence’s duties as president of the Senate “writ large,” but only his distinct duties overseeing the certification of a presidential election—a process in which a president, whether or not he is a candidate for reelection, has, by the Framers’ considered design, no official role.

Here the logic of Smith’s argument cuts to the quick. By the Court majority’s own standard, as stated in its Trump v. United States decision, the presumption of immunity for official actions would disappear only if a prosecutor could demonstrate that bringing criminal charges against a president or former president would not present “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.” Because certification of a presidential election, the subject of Trump’s “official” pressuring, involves neither the authority nor the functions of the executive branch, the immunity claims concerning that pressuring are therefore groundless—according to the Court majority’s own logic.

The rest of Trump and Pence’s interactions do not even qualify as official, Smith shows. In all of their other postelection, in-person conversations and private phone calls, Trump and Pence were acting not in their capacities as president and vice president but as running mates pondering their electoral prospects, even after Biden had been declared the winner. If, as the Court itself has stated, context is important with regard to speechmaking, so it is important with regard to communications between the top officials of the executive branch. To be sure, Smith allows, Trump and Pence “naturally may have touched upon arguably official responsibilities,” but “the overall context and content of the conversations demonstrate that they were primarily frank exchanges between two candidates on a shared ticket”—strictly unofficial conduct.

In all, by recasting the case against Trump in view of the Court’s immunity decision, Smith has drawn upon that very ruling to establish that none of Trump’s actions in connection with January 6 cited in the revised indictment is immune from prosecution. And in doing that, he has further discredited an already discredited Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, important as it is with respect to Smith’s specific case, the filing cannot come close to undoing the damage that Trump v. United States has wrought, with its authorization of an authoritarian American regime. The very fact that Smith had to omit from both his revised indictment and his filing Trump’s nefarious but official dealings with the Justice Department, including his brazen hiring and firing of top law-enforcement officials on the basis of who would do his personal bidding, shows how fearsomely the Court’s immunity decision has constrained the special counsel. There was a great deal more criminal behavior by Trump and his co-conspirators, as laid out in detail in the House January 6 committee report, that Smith could not touch because the Court has effectively immunized it as “official” activity under the executive branch’s authority.

These limitations show all over again how the Court has given the president absolute license to rule like a tyrant, against which even the ablest special counsel is virtually powerless. Nothing in Smith’s filing alleviates Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s judgment in her forthright dissent in Trump v. United States that the decision empowers the president, acting in his official capacity, to order the assassination of political rivals, to take a bribe in exchange for a pardon, to organize a military coup with impunity: “Immune, immune, immune.” That Smith managed to outsmart the Court as much as he did is a remarkable feat that could have important results—but only if Kamala Harris succeeds in winning the presidency.

On the basis of their past decisions, it is reasonable to expect that both the D.C. district court under Judge Chutkan and the U.S. Court of Appeals will rule in favor of Smith. Trump v. United States would then go once again before the Supreme Court. This will happen if Harris wins the election, because a Justice Department under her administration would almost certainly allow Smith to remain to continue prosecution of Trump. What, then, would the Court do? Would it uphold those decisions and throw Trump upon the mercy of a D.C. federal jury? Or would it strike those decisions down, thereby redoubling the disgrace it earned the first time around?

The only way the Court can avoid that dilemma is if Trump wins the election, an outcome that its conservative majority would now have all the more reason to desire. But what happens if, as seems highly possible, the election leads to litigation, much as the 2020 election did, only this time the Court is left to make the final decision? Will the Court then intervene as Trump’s enabler once again, installing him as a constitutionally tainted president, allowing him to kill the indictment against him, and to pardon those convicted of violent crimes in the attack on the Capitol whom he calls “hostages”? The Court, in Trump v. United States, claimed that it was protecting the sanctity of the presidency, but if it aids Trump in his attempt to escape justice for his January 6 insurrection, it will further seal its illegitimacy while also sealing MAGA’s triumph—and, with that, the majority of Americans, not to mention the rest of the world, will pay a crushing price.

#refrigerator magnet #jack smith #special counsel #trump insurrection #criminal #corrupt supreme court #corrupt SCOTUS #vote #kamala harris #kamala 2024 #harris walz 2024

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darkmaga-returns · 1 month ago

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Trump bans travel from 12 countries. Trump orders investigation into Biden health cover-up. Trump speaks to Putin. Khamenei dismisses US proposal. Carney supports 'decarbonized' oil.

Lioness of Judah Ministry

Jun 05, 2025

Trump bans travel from a dozen countries, including Iran, citing national security concerns

President Donald Trump banned all travel from a dozen countries to the United States, citing national security concerns.

In a Wednesday night proclamation, Trump banned travel from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. The proclamation provided a detailed breakdown of the reasoning for each. Trump said the 12 countries were selected as part of a detailed joint vetting process performed by State Secretary Marco Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

BREAKING: Biden Judge Blocks Trump From Deporting Family of Egyptian Terrorist Charged with Fire-Bombing Jews in Colorado

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked President Trump from deporting the family of the Egyptian terrorist who firebombed Jews in Boulder, Colorado.

US District Judge, Gordon Gallagher, a Biden appointee temporarily blocked the deportation of Mohamed Sabry Soliman’s wife and five children. A Colorado federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump admin. from deporting the family of the man charged with fire-bombing 12 people at an event in support of Israeli hostages — wife and children were taken into custody by immigration authorities

Trump orders vast investigation into Biden health cover-up and who ran the White House

President Donald Trump has ordered an unprecedented investigation into former President Joe Biden‘s administration amid concerns his predecessor and his aides covered up his cognitive decline.

“In recent months, it has become increasingly apparent that former President Biden’s aides abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority,” Trump wrote in a presidential memorandum signed on Wednesday. “This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history.”

Elon Musk Says to ‘Kill’ Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill After EV Tax Credit Conflict Exposed

Elon Musk has launched an all-out attack against the Republicans’ reconciliation budget, instructing his followers to lobby their representatives to “KILL the BILL” in a social media post.

In a series of posts on X, which he owns, the former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leader, who announced the end of his time as a “special government employee” of the Trump administration on May 28, has ramped up his public opposition to the “big beautiful bill” touted by the president: “Call your Senator, Call your Congressman, Bankrupting America is NOT ok! KILL the BILL,” the billionaire tech mogul wrote Wednesday.

Chuck Schumer Says if the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Passes WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE (VIDEO)

Democrat drama queen Chuck Schumer is warning that if the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ passes, we’re all going to die. Why are Democrat leaders such ridiculous and unserious people?

Remember when Net Neutrality was going to kill us all? How about when we were told that we only have a few years left before we all die from climate change? It’s always the same old story. This is why the Democrats are about as popular as pond scum at the moment, even with their own voters.

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schraubd · 4 months ago

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Justice Jackson on "Giving Up" in the Face of Tyranny

When I teach the Steel Seizure Case, the Supreme Court's seminal decision on domestic executive power during wartime, I tell my students that while Justice Black may have written the lead opinion, it's Justice Jackson's concurrence that they really need to study. I also tell them that while being a Supreme Court Justice is more than enough to earn one's Wikipedia page, Justice Jackson has another entry in the annals of history: lead prosecutor during the Nuremberg War Crimes trials following World War II. It was evident, I say, that Justice Jackson had this experience in mind when considering the question of permitting runaway executive power justified on the basis of a wartime "emergency." With that background in place, I draw my students' attention to how Justice Jackson concludes his opinion; in particular, his recognition of the potential futility of the judicial branch trying to stand alone against a truly unbounded executive claiming emergency powers, and why that potential failure should not license judges to simply accept the ascendance of a tyrant: I have no illusion that any decision by this Court can keep power in the hands of Congress if it is not wise and timely in meeting its problems.... We may say that power to legislate for emergencies belongs in the hands of Congress, but only Congress itself can prevent power from slipping through its fingers. The essence of our free Government is "leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the law"—to be governed by those impersonal forces which we call law.... The executive action we have here originates in the individual will of the President and represents an exercise of authority without law. No one, perhaps not even the President, knows the limits of the power he may seek to exert in this instance and the parties affected cannot learn the limit of their rights. We do not know today what powers over labor or property would be claimed to flow from Government possession if we should legalize it, what rights to compensation would be claimed or recognized, or on what contingency it would end. With all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations. Such institutions may be destined to pass away. But it is the duty of the Court to be last, not first, to give them up. The other day, J. Michael Luttig -- former Fourth Circuit Judge and conservative darling turned sharp Trump critic -- published an essay in the New York Times insisting that Trump's war on the judiciary "won't end well for Trump." To this, Josh Blackman unsurprisingly argued the opposite, suggesting it is the courts that will lose this battle and that they should bend the knee to Trump and spare themselves the inevitable humiliation. For my part, I don't know who will win this showdown (if a showdown there is to be). History does not inspire unalloyed confidence in either direction. But I do know that the courts must not surrender in advance. Justice Jackson was right: it may be that the institutions that undergird our democratic experiment are destined to pass away. But the courts must be the last, not the first, to give them up. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/dPNWHri

#judiciary #law #presidency #Robert Jackson #supreme court #war crimes

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sadanandaom · 5 months ago

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MUST READ

This is the text we signed:

Your Excellency Mr President,

We watched the report of your conversation with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenski with fear and distaste. We consider your expectations to show respect and gratitude for the material help provided by the United States fighting Russia to Ukraine insulting. Gratitude is due to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood in defense of the values of the free world. They have been dying on the frontline for more than 11 years in the name of these values and independence of their Homeland, which was attacked by Putin's Russia.

We do not understand how the leader of a country that is the symbol of the free world cannot see it.

Our panic was also caused by the fact that the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation reminded us of one we remember well from Security Service interrogations and from the debate rooms in Communist courts. Prosecutors and judges at the behest of the all-powerful communist political police also explained to us that they hold all the cards and we hold none. They demanded us to stop our business, arguing that thousands of innocent people suffer because of us. They deprived us of our freedoms and civil rights because we refused to cooperate with the government and our gratitude. We are shocked that Mr. President Volodymyr Zelenski treated in the same way.

The history of the 20th century shows that every time the United States wanted to keep its distance from democratic values and its European allies, it ended up being a threat to themselves. This was understood by President Woodrow Wilson, who decided to join the United States in World War I in 1917. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood this, deciding after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 that the war for the defense of America would be fought not only in the Pacific, but also in Europe, in alliance with the countries attacked by the Third Reich.

We remember that without President Ronald Reagan and American financial commitment it would not have been possible to bring the collapse of the Soviet Union empire. President Reagan was aware that millions of enslaved people were suffering in Soviet Russia and the countries it conquered, including thousands of political prisoners who paid for their sacrifice in defense of democratic values with freedom. His greatness was m. in. on the fact that he without hesitation called the USSR the "Empire of Evil" and gave it a decisive fight. We won, and the statue of President Ronald Reagan stands today in Warsaw vis a vis of the US embassy.

Mr. President, material aid - military and financial - cannot be equivalent to the blood shed in the name of independence and freedom of Ukraine, Europe, as well as the whole free world. Human life is priceless, its value cannot be measured with money. Gratitude is due to those who make the sacrifice of blood and freedom. It is obvious for us, the people of "Solidarity", former political prisoners of the communist regime serving Soviet Russia.

We are calling for the United States to withdraw from the guarantees it made with the Great Britain in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which recorded a direct obligation to defend the intact borders of Ukraine in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons resources. These guarantees are unconditional: there is no word about treating such aid as an economic exchange.

Lech Wales, b. political prisoner, Solidarity leader, president of the Republic of Poland III

#donald trump #zelensky #ukraine

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mariacallous · 4 months ago

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Since Donald Trump took office, on January 20th, his Administration has slow-walked or outright failed to comply with court orders related to a range of issues, most notably immigration and government funding. I recently spoke by phone with Samuel R. Bagenstos, a professor of law at the University of Michigan and a former general counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services in the Biden Administration. The goal was to go through some of these cases to understand why legal experts are so concerned, and whether there is a larger strategy to the Administration’s behavior. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed the problem with the phrase “constitutional crisis,” whether bureaucratic incompetence could really be the reason for some of Trump’s actions, and why the past two months have been so unprecedented in American history.

Are we living through a constitutional crisis, or do you feel like we’re still some distance away from one?

I really hate the significance that’s being put on the phrase “constitutional crisis.” We are living through a massive assault on basic premises of our constitutional system. It’s been brewing for a long time, but it’s been acute for the last two months. Call that a crisis or not, but either way we are in deep, deep trouble.

Why don’t you like the phrase?

It has so many potential meanings. A constitutional crisis could be something that is a very discrete event, where two branches of government stare each other in the face in what looks like a standoff, and then they eventually resolve it. Or a constitutional crisis could be, Wow, it looks like basic building blocks of our constitutional system are about to go away. I think we’re much more in that second mode here. The phrase suggests that once you cross a certain point, something bad is going to happen that didn’t happen before. And so everybody starts asking, Well, have we crossed it yet? If the President is winking at court orders but not really defying them, is that enough? If the President is defying district-court orders but not the Supreme Court, is that enough? And I think that’s sort of a fool’s game. I’d rather just focus on what the President is doing.

Why does this seem to you more about the basic building blocks of our constitutional system going away, as opposed to two branches—in this case the judiciary and the executive—facing off?

I think it’s more than just the President facing off against the judiciary. We have to look at what all these disputes are about. How did these cases get into court in the first place? We have a President who has made very clear that he believes he has the prerogative to pick and choose what laws passed by Congress he has to follow. And so to me that’s the first and most fundamental challenge to our constitutional order here. All of these cases are about laws Congress has passed. Congress passed laws appropriating money for particular purposes. Congress passed laws creating certain agencies. Congress passed laws creating processes for dealing with immigration. And the President just doesn’t want to follow them. That’s why he’s been brought to court.

The President and his people have been very overt about their belief that they don’t have to follow the laws Congress has passed. Now we’re getting to a point where Trump and Musk and the people in this Administration are suggesting that they might not be bound by the courts holding them to those laws. I think that compounds the problem—I don’t think that is the problem itself. I think that’s a symptom that makes it worse.

The case that’s received the most attention is about a group of Venezuelan men who were flown to El Salvador last week, in violation of a judge’s order. It appears that one of the three planes had not left when the judge ordered that the government not deport these men, at least temporarily. Have you heard anything specific from the Administration in their defense of their behavior that makes you think this was something other than defiance of a court order?

No, I have not.

They have said that they weren’t told in time. They’ve said that some of the planes were over international waters. They have said that the judge’s order that the planes be turned around was verbal, not written.

When you look at the submissions that the Department of Justice has made in defense of what happened here, you see two things. You see a series of arguments that this really wasn’t a violation of the order. And I think that’s important—that the Trump Administration has consistently acted at least under the pretense that they are trying to comply with all of these court orders. But then it’s surrounded by a whole bunch of language and rhetoric that strongly suggests that they don’t believe the courts have power to act in these cases.

They’re basically saying, Look, we have a bunch of arguments, however implausible, that we were complying, but, anyway, you don’t want to push this, judge, because we don’t really think you have the power here. It’s a way of trying to get some leverage in what really feels like a negotiation with the court. That’s one way to think about these arguments: they’re not necessarily being offered in the sense that this court or any other court would really believe them, so much as this gives them a way to say they’re complying while also telling the court that you better not push us.

Now what are the arguments they’ve made? The argument that the planes were in international waters—well, the planes have radios. Obviously, if the President or the people who the pilots answer to told them to turn the planes around, they would have turned the planes around. The people making that decision were within the United States, and within the jurisdiction of the court. The idea that the planes were outside of U.S. airspace, and therefore they couldn’t do anything about it, that’s just laughable on its face.

It also appears that these planes may have taken off during the hearing. And certainly when I was working in the government—and I worked in three Presidential Administrations, during which I worked in or very closely with the Department of Justice—we would never have come close to trying to moot a pending hearing before a judge, to take a judge’s jurisdiction away by trying to get planes in the air before the hearing started or certainly before it ended. Secondly, the fact that they’re making the argument shows a lack of respect for the judicial system and a lack of willingness to submit to judicial review of their actions.

As for the oral order and not the written order of the court, well, this was an emergency situation. It was a hearing that was called precisely because there was a real worry that the Administration would try to deprive the court of jurisdiction. And so what the judge said very clearly in the hearing was that you have to make sure those planes turn around if there are any planes in the air. That was clearly communicated to the Department of Justice, which represents the Administration here. The minute written order was just a summary of what had happened orally. That’s what so-called minute orders are. That’s the difference between a minute order and a fully fleshed out order that stands on its own. The fact that not every word the judge said in the hearing was reflected in the minute order doesn’t mean he was somehow implicitly taking back what he said.

I had asked another lawyer about this question of moving ahead with your plans before a court date, and he said that, until there’s a temporary restraining order telling you that you can’t do it, it’s relatively normal for governments to keep doing what they are doing. Is that not your understanding, though?

I think we might be having a conversation about the timing here. It’s one thing if you’re the government and you’re doing something controversial that might trigger a lawsuit or that maybe has triggered a lawsuit, but there’s no impending hearing for a temporary restraining order. Well, until there’s an order issued against you, you are legally free to continue to engage in the behavior that’s been challenged. And, to the extent that’s what your friend is saying, that makes total sense. When a hearing has been scheduled on an emergency basis and it is hours, if not minutes away, taking an action to deprive the court of its ability to decide the motion that is before it at the emergency hearing is not something that is at all normal. And that seems to be, at best, what they did here. So I don’t think the story is a good one for the Administration, and I don’t think it shows the kind of respect for the courts that the Department of Justice and the executive branch usually show.

Another case concerns a Lebanese doctor, Rasha Alawieh, who was deported last week. She had a U.S. visa, and there’s some question about whether her deportation was done in defiance of a judge’s order. The government is saying that by the time the order from the judge came through she had been deported.

I think I need to understand the facts of that one better. Certainly, the judge in that case has suggested that there may be a violation of his order. I think one of the complicating factors is that immigration law is complicated, and, you know, she had left the country and was trying to reënter. I’m not sure I have a good answer factually on what happened there, but it’s certainly very troubling in light of the court’s order and is part of the general pattern, but I wouldn’t want to litigate it yet.

During the first Trump Administration, there often was a lot of incompetence. This term seems like it will be perhaps less incompetent and even more malicious, but I am curious about the degree to which something like lawyers for the Department of Justice communicating with agents for Immigration and Customs Enforcement can take a while, as the government claims it did here, because of bureaucratic incompetence.

There are glitches in communication sometimes. I will tell you though that in my experience as the general counsel of a Cabinet agency in the previous Administration, where we were often in litigation that challenged our own actions and that was proceeding on an emergency basis, we were in very close touch with the Department of Justice attorneys and were very careful not to take action that would violate an order of the court or that would even come close to violating an order of the court, and we wanted to make sure that we would act in a way that was consistent with what the court said. I find it inconceivable that this sort of thing would have happened in our Administration, at least in the part of our Administration that I worked in, because we were in such close touch.

In an earlier case, from January, a Rhode Island judge said, basically, that the Administration had ignored his order to unfreeze federal funds that the Administration had tried to stop from being disbursed. What is the status of that case?

There was the initial funding-freeze memo that was issued by the Office of Management and Budget that was the target of the lawsuit. And O.M.B. very quickly purported to withdraw it. But then on the same day that they withdrew the memo the President’s press secretary said, We haven’t withdrawn the freeze. So the judge issued a temporary restraining order, saying, Well, you haven’t actually withdrawn the freeze, and you have to. You’re violating Congress’s power of the purse by freezing appropriated funds. Then there was a great deal of evidence presented by states and grantees that although the government had been ordered to unfreeze funds, it was not doing so. And so the judge said that the government was violating his order. He said, I’m not going to hold you in contempt, but I am going to issue an order enforcing my order. And there was still very significant evidence that the government was refusing to spend the funds that had previously been frozen. And then, in issuing a preliminary injunction, the judge again said, You violated my order. That is now on appeal.

I can tell you that some funds have been unfrozen since the initial order and the preliminary injunction. But I talk to grantees, and there are a number who still tell me they have not gotten the money that should be going to them. What you’re seeing in these cases is at best slow-walking compliance with court orders and probably some continued resistance to compliance.

We have something similar in a case involving U.S.A.I.D. grants. The government initially froze all these grants and contracts. A court issued an order saying you can’t do that. You have to unfreeze the grants. And then U.S.A.I.D. and the State Department said, O.K., well, what we’re going to do is we’re going to go through the grants one by one and decide, not based on the blanket freeze but one by one, whether it’s appropriate to continue each grant. They somehow managed to get through close to ten thousand grants and contracts that they say they individually reviewed up to the level of the Secretary of State in about six weeks. They decided to cancel more than eighty per cent of them. And then the court said, Well, I’m still enjoining you from a blanket freeze, but I don’t have the authority to enjoin you from individual decisions. The individual grantees might have to sue about that. This may reward the Administration’s conduct.

When you say “reward the Administration’s conduct,” do you think that the judge had a choice or that just the way our system is set up, there’s no way to do anything about it?

We’re in a situation where we have something that is beyond unprecedented in the executive branch in terms of its assault on basic premises of our constitutional system, and particularly of congressional supremacy in the area of spending money. And so that is a very difficult matter for courts to deal with. They don’t have a lot of experience dealing with it. Following ordinary procedural rules, as the judges are doing, may well be the right choice in the sense that it’s following legal practice. But it also is in some ways insufficient to provide a remedy to stop or unwind or rectify this assault on basic premises of our system.

I think I totally understand where the judgment’s coming from. If it’s one thing to say a blanket refusal to spend money is a violation of Congress’s power of the purse, it’s something else once the Administration says, We’re making decisions based on individual grants and based on relevant legal factors related to individual grants. Now, I think it’s implausible that they did any serious analysis of each individual grant when we’re talking about thousands of grants over the course of a six-week period, that purportedly each one individually was briefed up to the Secretary of State. But I can understand why in ordinary legal practice a judge doesn’t second-guess when a high-ranking official of the executive branch says, I engaged in this individualized analysis. So I think they’re bringing ordinary processes to a very extraordinary situation.

It does seem that this is an Administration intent on acting as if it is not bound by the law, and that the specific details of each case are worth looking into and, of course, litigating, but that doing so may miss the bigger picture. Or is that not right?

I think that’s a fair description. This is definitely a case where you’re going to have a better understanding of what’s going on if you’re looking at the over-all picture. We can have arguments about these individual cases. But although litigation has been very important in stopping the most egregious abuses, in bringing facts to light about what’s been going on, litigation is not going to ultimately be the solution here. The way litigation works is it adjudicates discrete controversies between particular parties. It’s not set up to adjudicate the basic premises of our constitutional system being attacked in a significant way. Here we have a broad assault that is made up of many discrete decisions put together. It’s really an assault on the prerogatives of Congress, which is the people’s branch.

Well, they don’t give a shit.

Right. That’s where I was going to go. One of the very depressing and dispiriting aspects of this is that Congress is not standing up for its prerogatives. Probably the greatest opinion in the history of constitutional law is Justice Robert Jackson’s opinion in the steel-seizure case. One of the things he says is that President Truman violated the Constitution in trying to seize steel mills, purportedly for war-production purposes. To me, the most important part of the opinion is when he says, Look, the courts can’t countenance this kind of violation of congressional prerogative. Because the seizure of the steel mills would both regulate commerce and constitute a taking of property that would require compensation, only Congress could authorize it. And I think what we’re seeing right now is a legislative branch that is not standing up for its prerogatives. People expect too much if they expect the courts to try to aggressively defend legislative prerogatives when Congress won’t do that.

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