After publishing every two weeks for the last 3 years, we are going to skip a missive which would otherwise be sent on December 25. Instead we will “publish” #82 two weeks later, on Wednesday, January 8. That will enable essential refueling as we begin the most consequential year.
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 where you can read and share these messages. 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.
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 where you can read and share these messages. 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.
There’s no joy in Justin Trudeau making fun of Donald Trump, since the joke is on us. Joy is not what we are collectively seeking anyway. Instead, we seek nothing less than the restoration of our democracy. In its scope and what it demands of us collectively, this is a magnificent obsession. It is nothing less than starting again to protect the environment, cherish and advance human rights, and build the global alliances these times require.
The times are bad, but the news is good. In this fall’s general elections selecting Democratic governors in Kentucky and Louisiana, Trump’s rallies were self-defeating, bringing more Democratic and independent voters to the ballot box than Trump supporters. In 2020, he will be our get out the vote champion. Trump’s actions to maintain his way too small base dwell on actions that are anathema to independents.
The impeachment vote will come before the holidays. In January, Mitch McConnell will figure out something for Republican Senators to do with all this. Their defense will be more muted than the House, in deference to Susan Collins, Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski. It will be Ukraine lite, with no florid Jim Jordan and no shady Devin Nunes. They will walk away from “Trump didn’t do this” and land upon “Whether Trump did this or not it doesn’t rise to the level of an impeachable offense.” They will acquit by the end of January.
Of course, it does rise to the level of an impeachable offense. Once Schiff and his colleagues teased out the three months of maneuvering to put Trump’s election interests ahead of the nation’s security interests, Speaker Pelosi had no choice. There are those that initially feared we would pay a political price for adhering to the Constitution, but we have seen no such evidence in the polls.
The year draws to a close, the election year looms, and there is considerable Trump weariness. It’s hard to believe that we have to endure a year of him mean-spiriting and conning his way across America. But it is now clear he won’t just be the same old Trump. As discussed in a previous missive, there will surely be new events and disclosures that will capture our attention. There is no chance that the passage of a new Canada/ Mexico/ United States trade agreement will underpin a new longer-term narrative about Trump and trade policy. The dotard/rocket man exchanges are rearing again, Giuliani may be arrested any day, and you really can’t predict what other whistles will be blown. Why would you think Ukraine would be the only one?
With all that has happened, it isn’t really much of a stretch to say “anything can happen.” One big part of the world we face will be court rulings. Will former White House counsel Don McGahn be compelled to testify about obstruction of justice? Will emoluments rulings hold Trump accountable for using his position to enrich his businesses? How about legal action from women he pretends he never met?
Most critically, there are two separate federal appellate court rulings requiring Trump’s accountants to turn over his tax returns. These have the best chance of all to expose all new Trump misdeeds. As early as Friday, December 13th, the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear one or both of the two cases requiring the release of Trump’s tax records, either by the accounting firm Mazars or (in the second case) by Mazars, Capital One, and Deutsche Bank. These firms are not resisting the court orders. Trump has been able to secure a stay (ironically, from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose turn it was to hear such petitions) temporarily preventing their release.
All of this started with Michael Cohen’s testimony. In Trump v. Vance, state of New York district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. took note of the hush payments to Stormy Daniels. Among other things the grand jury that he caused to be empaneled is evaluating whether these payments were an unlawful, unreported campaign contribution.
In Trump v. Mazars, it is the House Oversight Committee that is the litigant. Their primary interest is the Michael Cohen testimony that Trump was decreasing his tax liability by misrepresenting his capital assets. Trump has argued for a level of immunity way beyond what presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton ever sought, and neither of them were successful in convincing the Court to block release of documents that Congress was seeking. It seems like too much for Trump to be asking of John Roberts, whose public statements as recently as September have argued that partisan politics have no place at the Court.
It will take four votes of the nine for the Court to decide to hear the case. Legal analysts are not expecting Trump to prevail on the merits, but some are convinced that the Court will accept one or both cases and hear oral arguments in June. If the tax documents are released only to the grand jury and not the Congress, they will not be disclosed to the public.
In the three years of our collective resistance of Trump, the federal courts have slowed his regress on numerous occasions. They have blocked Trump’s census schemes, kept even worse things from happening at the border, and protected much of the Affordable Care Act. Obviously, this is far from the whole story. The Court is going in the wrong direction of gun violence and the right to choose is imperiled. Nonetheless, we must continue to use the federal courts as a way to curb Trump’s constitution-shredding malevolence every opportunity we get, including these three:
| 1) Protecting Undocumented Children at the Border | |
 | The conditions that continue to exist for children seeking asylum are our nation’s shame. Released tapes of the recent death of a 16-year-old who had contracted the flu showed an inconceivable disregard for human life. The Trump policy has spawned dozens of squalid camps across the border. It is the intent of our government to inflict as much misery as it can. The establishment of the camps across the border where migrating families await their asylum hearings has widened and deepened the problem. The very small Los Angeles based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law has been ever present in monitoring conditions. They are a major player in the court battles for the minimum standards required in the Flores ruling. They are key, and do not have the access to resources of some of the larger organizations. |
2) Fighting the Food Stamp Rule | |
 | After a two-year battle, the Trump administration has issued its final rule altering conditions of food stamp (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) eligibility. The adjustments on when states can issue waivers of work rules were confirmed on December 4 and will go into effect on April 1. This Grinch like action follows the regular Trump administration pattern of finding people who need help and taking it away from them. 700,000 people will have the food removed from their table. There will be a final effort to block these rules in the federal courts and in the Congress. Because of the McConnell grip in the Senate, the courts are the better option. The new lawsuits are just being formulated, and there is time to make our own statement before this next phase. We need to each make one trip to our local food bank to help them stock their shelves and to demonstrate our commitment to food security. Many have shopping lists you can take to the grocery store. Feeding America, the national network of food banks, can guide you to local food banks and keep you posted on the action agenda. |
3) Securing Fair Elections | |
 | The underpinning of all good things in a democracy is elections free from misdeeds. Our vote casting and counting has gone well relatively compared to other countries. As far as we know, the Putin interference is a new thing. Setting up improved systems that resist efforts by other countries to sway our elections has gone too slowly. Trump and a shocking number of Republican members of Congress continue to deny the well proven (and prosecuted) Russian intervention. Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook persist in hosting the fake advertising that is an elixir for their balance sheet and a poison for the ballot box. Voter suppression also remains with us. Efforts have grown to prevent inappropriate purging by Republican officials of voter lists, unnecessary provisions that discourage voting, and efforts to decrease the number of polling places. The Brennan Center’s efforts to ensure that every American can vote are unsurpassed. You can increase their resources or get on their list to make certain you understand the chicanery they are resisting. |
It is indisputable that all of this is exhausting. You could let Donald Trump bring you down every day. Instead, we’ll let him be our prime motivator. The election is now less than a year away.
David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington
