#38: We Will Regain and Rediscover Our Own Country

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Now that we have drifted further into uncharted waters, it’s appropriate to examine the additional dangers of a presidency that unquestionably is unmoored, rather than one that one might think is merely but perennially misguided.

If you are unmoored, and you are in uncharted waters, you can collide with anything, often without any advance warning. The consequences of such collisions are not known in advance. And what if there are too few people watching out for hidden or even obvious obstacles and barriers?

All of this explains the dilemma of those of us who are resisting. How could we not be askew in the face of this “morally unqualified” president, where the willful lies pile up and where the bullying is relentless and where the learning is absent? This has gotten scary. The Sara Huckabees scurry to tell us Trump tweets on Syria are all consistent with each other and with foreign policy plans, but all sentient beings (even including members of Congress) know better. Who doesn’t get it that every day is a new day with its new bizarre behaviors? 

Mercifully, Donald Trump is not a part of a new and growing movement in America. With the help of the Russians, and of James Comey! (with his announcement a week before the election), and weaknesses in the Clinton campaign, racism, and sexism, he threaded the needle. He won an election he did not expect to win and would not win again. He, and we, are saddled with him having a job that he did not expect to have. Weirdly, his challenge and our challenge is nearly the same - to get through all of this without injury to himself and others. It is not just Senator Bob Corker that has called attention to the president having “minders”. There are cabinet secretaries and staff members (James Mattis and John Kelly, even in his reduced role) who serve in that role every day.

Our job now is to have even more people standing between him and the Constitution he would seek to shred, or between him and other nations he would strive to vilify. That is what we have signed up for, from now to perhaps as long as January 2020. Occasionally, we have even taken delight in other more unlikely and inconsistent intervenors. Paul Ryan, thanks for any time you talked the President down when he forget the Congress and the Constitution. Susan Collins, your swing vote has not been there as much as we would have liked, but when it has appeared, we certainly have appreciated it. You too, Lisa Murkowski, John McCain, Jeff Flake and Bob Corker. To House moderate Republicans who are deciding not to run again - now that you are unshackled, could you vote what you believe more often, eschewing your ritualistic genuflection in the direction of the White House? It has becomeembarrassing. What can Trump do to you now? To the cabinet secretaries who believe the agency they head should exist, please identify yourself! And thank you. As the New York Times said on Monday, isn’t it time for you to step forward a few steps more?

Still, you can look in the mirror for the ultimate intervenor. You are the one, with the millions of other resisters by your side. Together, you are the ones that saved the Affordable Care Act, kept the wall from being built, and got a budget passed that funded the Environmental Protection Agency and social services. You are the ones that make the rest of the world understand that America intends to be a beacon again sometime in the future.

You are the ones who are creating an enthusiasm level about winning back the House in November that has petrified Congressional Republicans and accelerated retirements. You’re obsessed by swing districts, and you are working in small groups and marching and registering voters and sending money. You are as dangerous, or even more dangerous to Donald Trump than Robert Mueller and Stormy Daniels. Donald Trump wants you to be quiet and go away. Is that sufficient motivation?

We ended up with a federal budget where almost none of the worst of the Trump/Mulvaney cuts materialized. But remember their playbook. The new tax law will be shepherding in trillion-dollar annual deficits. Then the assaults on social welfare spending will begin anew. Tax cuts for the rich will drive budget cuts for the poor. That all can be forestalled until a new Congress is seated next January. This is one more reason to take back the House. 

In the meantime, Congress is paralyzed on a DACA bill, and most everything else. The eyes are on Mueller, on Michael Cohen’s paramour payoffs, on Trump himself and on whether he will fire deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein. Let’s do three things that will help continue our resisting momentum:

1) Thoughtfully Thanking Thom Tillis
	As this missive discussed above, we need Republican elected officials to defend the Republic, for which we stand. The candidates for this all too rare stalwart behavior most often come from the ranks of Senators who don’t plan to run for reelection, such as John McCain, Jeff Flake and Bob Corker. Now comes an unlikely candidate, North Carolina conservative Senator Thom Tillis. Tillis has joined Lindsay Graham and Democrat Chris Coons in introducing the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act, which would set up additional roadblocks to Trump firing Robert Mueller. The bill isn’t going to pass, but it is a fresh and important signal to Trump. Tillis irritated a not inconsiderable number of his supporters when he went in this direction. Here is his explanation in the Rocky Mount NC newspaper. Thom Tillis has other problems, such as being mixed up with Cambridge Analytica, but nonetheless it is time to write and thank him for his efforts in upholding the role of law in the face of Trump’s threats to fire Mueller. Write Thom_Tillis@tillis.senate.gov.
2) Give Some Counsel to Swing Left
	In the darkest days after the Trump election, two organizations stepped forward to help grow a movement. The work of Indivisible (which was founded by savvy former Congressional staffers) has been indispensable. So has the work of Swing Left, which is fully focused on us taking back the House. The people who started Swing Left were relative political unknowns, and they have delivered every step of the way. They invented “district funds” which are escrow accounts you can contribute to in swing districts prior to the selection of our candidate, so she or he will get an early boost. Now comes Swing Left with an all new question posed to the resistance.  They are already targeting 70 Republican seats, all in districts where we clearly can compete.  They ask us all.   Should they expand the map of targeted races too try to generate the bluest of all blue waves?  Unfortunately, they have framed the question as if this year is like any other Congressional election year. Their worry is that helping candidate in race #77 (whose chances are a longer shot) could weaken our efforts for candidate in race #28 (whose chances are very good.) This worry pays insufficient attention to the fact that every close race we create is one Republicans will have to defend, and that expanding the map is a great way to make the blue wave the election narrative of the year. If we can do that it will fan additional voter registrations and higher turnout, and that too will help in Swing Left’s present list of targeted races. It’s time to write Swing Left at team@swingleft.org and tell them that it will not diminish current targeted races to expand the map.
3) Dare to Dream About the Senate
	There has been reluctance to dream about taking over the Senate.  This is because we are preoccupied with the re-election of several Democrats who won in 2018 and who are seeking re-election in states that Trump carried in 2016.   These include Heidi Heitkamp of North Carolina, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of MIssouri and several others. Beyond playing defense, now it appears that there are take-back opportunities, beyond winning the open seat in Arizona that Jeff Flake is vacating, and beating Dean Heller in Nevada. The wild dream is that Representative Beto O’Rourke has started so strong in Texas that he may have a chance to beat Ted Cruz. An even more promising opportunity has appeared in Tennessee. Former Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen is leading in the polls in the race to fill the seat left open by the retiring, Trump disaffected, Bob Corker. Now would be an excellent time to give Phil Bredesen a financial boost.

Every week Donald Trump unravels a little bit more. He gets a little angrier with his staff, a little more disconnected in his public statements, a little less grounded. Every week it seems even more astounding than it was the previous week that this man became president of the United States. It doesn’t work to respond to these woeful circumstances with despair. Instead each of us finds within themselves with new energy to resist, to fight back, and to regain and rediscover our own country.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#37: The Time is Coming for Donald Trump to Tell it to the Judge

Thank you for continuing to share these messages with your friends, if you are not already on our mailing list, please click here to be added to our list. You can also follow me on Facebook. The more people we can reach, the more we contribute to this growing movement. We share these posts on our blog, A Path Forward to November 3, 2020, every two weeks, which means there will be a total of 100 missives before the Presidential election of 2020, in which our country will select a whole new course.

From the first minute of the Trump presidency, we have resisted. It was not as though we wouldn’t have had some satisfaction if he had tacked toward the middle or showed the slightest interest in the obligations of the job or some desire to improve his skills. From the beginning, it was worse than we feared at least in one very notable respect- he has no commitment to democracy. All of the worst presidents from James Buchanan forward have at least recognized the nature and the wondrousness of the great democratic experiment, however they have tarnished it.

It doesn’t seem like a commitment to the self-governance of the American people is too much to ask, but it is now clear that it will not be forthcoming from this president. This is an unprecedented time, where aides fall by the wayside as soon as they aren’t fawning enough, or they vary in the slightest from his Fox-spawned world view. Donald Trump is not willing to be any kind of President, and he is proud and protective of that unwillingness.

It is extremely unlikely that he will be impeached but is not even a close question as to who would be a less dangerous president between him and the vice-president. Mike Pence would be the most politically conservative president of modern times, but nonetheless he would attend to the requirements of the job more fully in one day than Donald Trump has in any month that he has been elected. You could pick your poison, but if you did, why not reduce the danger to security and our democracy by choosing Pence, who at least recognizes there is someone in the world besides himself?

That choice is not likely to come before us. Donald Trump’s presidency will survive. We will not ever know all of his offenses, whether or not they are “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Those we know for sure will be discounted by a sufficient number of Republican Senators to protect him from being removed from office, however much they end up fleeing from him in every other way.

Even without much prospect for impeachment, the role of the courts in checking Trump’s abuses of power is growing. At least for now, the president is constrained by federal courts from walking away from DACA. The courts have forced the modification of his various travel bans, and they have slowed the Trump/Pruitt pillaging of environmental regulation.

On the personal culpability side, those who are seeking to hold Donald Trump legally responsible for doing the things he relishes doing are all making progress. What has emerged are several solid opportunities for the judicial system to be used as a check against the misuse of power.

First, Stormy Daniels, as much as she has captured the nation’s attention span, will not necessarily be a lasting problem, since evangelicals have already given Trump a get out of jail free card. Nor is he facing a big problem from former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal, who is also seeking release from her non-disclosure agreement. Donald Trump has not subjected either woman to tweet-assault, and both have stressed that their relationships with him were consensual. However, Trump still has a groping issue before the courts. A New York Supreme Court Justice thus far has refused to throw out Summer Zervos’ defamation lawsuit. If Trump’s appeal of the Court’s denial of his stay is turned down, a deposition would be next. 

Second, the resistance has been making the emoluments argument since Trump was elected, and that case is still alive in federal court. The Constitution prohibits officials from receiving “gifts, emoluments, offices or titles from foreign states.” Maryland and the District of Columbia have argued that Trump is receiving such gifts as foreign governments gravitate to the Trump International Hotel. 

Of course, the biggest personal challenge for Donald Trump is the Mueller investigation itself. Given the methodical way that Robert Mueller has proceeded so far, it is surprising how much conjecture there is in the mainstream press that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia. Why would one conclude that Roger Stone and Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn never got Trump’s consent about Russia, since it is abundantly clear that Trump was otherwise involved in every aspect of his campaign? It would be wise to wait to draw these conclusions. And while we are waiting, it would be good for us to school ourselves on the obstruction of justice by Trump and his sycophants. This includes a dozen or so separate incidents including the timing of the Sally Yates and James Comey firings. It includes the memorable statement crafted by Trump and Hope Hicks that the meeting between Russians and Donald Trump Jr and others was about the adoption of Russian orphans. And it is all laid out in two stunning podcasts on collusion and obstruction on NPR’s Embedded program.

Any or all of these three legal actions could end up being a major barrier to Trump’s worst intentions. Happily, they all have their funding sources, and no bake sales or bike-a-thons are necessary. Thus, all of us could turn to other fronts to boost the legal challenges to Trumpism, including taking these three steps:

1) Keep Fighting to Protect Public Lands
	Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke decided to “go big” in his reduction of Bears Ears National Monument by 85% from its original 1.35 million acres. This decision was all about advancing the interests of oil companies. The battle to save Bears Ears is instead about listening to the Navajo, Hopi, Ute and other tribes who fought so hard to create the monument in the first place. Your participation in this effort will not only show solidarity with the tribes, but it will send Zinke and Trump a signal that you stand behind federal land conservation protections. The tribal coalition offers you the opportunity to sign up for regular updates, contact your member of Congress, and underwrite the legal action.
2) Save the Modern Day Census
	A lot of people are confused by the dust up over the Trumpian effort to add a citizenship question to the Census in 2020. Why not change the short form (which is designed for us to complete in ten minutes) to find out who is a citizen? This citizenship question has not been asked since the 1950s, since the Census is intended to establish our total population, regardless of our citizenship. The data is then used to allocate Congressional districts among the states, and it is used in numerous federal funding distributional formulas, so that the funding can be responsive to people and communities in need. Adding the citizenship question is intended to decrease the count (and thus the relative political influence) of areas of the country with heavier immigrant presence. We do not want or need to widen the growing gulf between the government and immigrant communities. The addition of this question will generate an undercount in the census.  It’s time to see whether your city and/or state is among the several who have already joined the coalition to battle this new provision.
3) Continue the Fight Against Voter Suppression
	Previous missives have emphasized two major organizations fighting fiercely against voter suppression. It seems odd that election officials and some state legislatures would work to inhibit voters from voting, but that’s exactly what can and does happen. Both the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and the American Civil Liberties Union have been instrumental in rooting out these practices. The efforts of another long-time player are growing. The League of Women Voters has the status, the experience and the local networks that are all essential to expanding voting in America. Find out what they are doing in general, and what they are doing near you.

To stop the daily Trump assault on the American democracy, we will use every single legal tool that is at our disposal, so why not maximize the use of the legal system itself? Our fore-parents expected that it would be an inhibition to the misuse of power, and for that, there is no better time than the present, don’t you think?

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington