The resistance becomes the rebellion
No Kings now means No Schumer either
Three top anti-Trump resistance groups are adding a new target: the feckless leadership of the Democratic party.
Indivisible, MoveOn, and 50501 have all issued demands for Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer to step down after he failed – or didn’t even really try – to keep his caucus united against a massive increase in health insurance premiums.
The 50501 group announced on social media:
Let us be incredibly, abundantly clear: We are demanding that Chuck Schumer resign for his continued betrayal of the American people. If he does not willingly step aside, we are calling on the Senators in the Dem caucus to remove him and Dick Durbin from Senate leadership.
MoveOn political action executive director Katie Bethell released the following statement:
With Donald Trump and the Republican Party doubling health care premiums, weaponizing our military against us, and ripping food away from children, MoveOn members cannot accept weak leadership at the helm of the Democratic Party.
Americans showed a growing surge of support for Democrats who fought back—both at the ballot box last week and peacefully in the streets last month. Inexplicably, some Senate Democrats, under Leader Schumer’s watch, decided to surrender. It is time for Senator Schumer to step aside as minority leader to make room for those who are willing to fight fire with fire when the basic needs of working people are on the line.
And Indivisible cofounder Ezra Levin responded to Sen. Angus King’s insistence that “Standing up to Donald Trump didn’t work” with this post on social media:
This is the message of a failed, feckless, and leaderless party. We need a party with backbone, and the only path to it is through a cleansing primary season. If your Dem is up for reelection, and you aren’t damn sure they’re fighting the fascists with everything they’ve got, primary the bastard.
Indeed, Indivisible is making a hard pivot into supporting primary challenges by combative candidates who take on incumbents they consider insufficiently fierce in their opposition to the Trump regime.
“Indivisible is ready to clean house and build a party that actually has the energy to act like an opposition,” cofounder Leah Greenberg said in a statement.
The group has two criteria for its support: A firm commitment among Senate candidates to oppose Schumer as leader; and “a clear commitment to abandon the status quo of feckless leadership, and use every tool available to fight MAGA attacks on our communities, our health, and our democracy.”
Why the particular animus toward Schumer, who himself voted against the surrender, as did most of his caucus? Because it has become an article of faith among the progressive left that Schumer didn’t really try to stop the defection – quite the opposite.
As Robert Kuttner reported in the American Prospect:
It has been widely assumed that the group of eight mostly centrist Senate Democrats, who have been looking to broker a hollow deal on Republican terms, were freelancing. In fact, they were acting with the express approval of Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and were reporting to him daily.
It’s even suspected that Schumer choreographed the cave, selecting which five Democrats would join the three who were already in favor of the Republican bill. As Paul Waldman writes in the Public Notice newsletter:
Importantly, none of them are up for reelection next year, a good sign that they either volunteered or were persuaded by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to take the incoming fire that would inevitably come from their willingness to give in to the GOP.
Waldman, assessing the fury the capitulation produced amid the Democratic base, sees cause for hope. “It may not be much comfort for those bitter about what they see as a needless surrender,” he writes. “But there’s at least a chance that we’ll look back at this moment as a key turning point, one that produced a Democratic Party less willing to live on its knees.”
Pritzker Unbowed
Speaking of Democrats who act like a real opposition, the New Yorker’s Peter Slevin conducted a long and insight-filled interview with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who, as Slevin writes, “has fashioned himself as a pugnacious spokesman for the resistance to Donald Trump and the sweeping raids by government agents who are carrying out the Administration’s mass-deportation policy.”
Pritzker’s message, in short: “I’m doing what I need to do, which is push back every single day. I hope more people will join me in that.”
Pritzker said federal officers are “clearly inciting” neighborhood residents, who are not taking it lying down:
Now, you can imagine that after days and days—indeed, it’s been three months—of people being oppressed by these ICE and C.B.P. officers, people have put themselves in a position to push back. So what are they doing? They’re buying whistles. There’s a kind of whistle that is being sold at many of the local stores, because everybody wants one. There’s a big demand for them. What are they doing with the whistles? When they see their neighbors—they might be a white suburban soccer mom, you know—but when they see somebody who is being harassed by C.B.P. and ICE, they’re coming out into the street and blowing their whistles so that everybody will know ICE is here, be careful, stay in your home, stay away. They might be throwing tear gas at you. They might tackle you.
So, this is happening all across the city of Chicago. It’s shocking to me that the rest of the country is not paying attention to what’s happening all across the neighborhoods of Chicago and the suburbs and, frankly, the rest of the state of Illinois.
Pritzker, incidentally, has an immediate fear: “I am very afraid that this is going to end up in a clash between our law enforcement and federal law enforcement because federal law enforcement is breaking the law,” he said. ”And what do you do if you’re a local law-enforcement official, local police officer, Chicago police officer? What do you do when someone right in front of you is breaking the law? You’re supposed to arrest them. So I think something really dangerous and terrible could happen.”
What a Week in the Courts!
A federal judge in Chicago blasted the Department of Homeland Security for using excessive force there – and lying about it – in a blistering ruling that banned the use of tear gas and other crowd-control weapons on protesters and journalists except in extreme cases of immediate danger. “I see little reason for the use of force that the federal agents are currently using,” Judge Sara L. Ellis said from the bench. “The use of force shocks the conscience.” And, she added, “I don’t find defendants’ version of events credible.”
Another federal judge in Chicago issued a temporary restraining order compelling the government to improve conditions in the regional ICE facility in Broadview, Ill. After hearing from former detainees, Judge Robert Gettleman concluded the conditions were “unnecessarily cruel.”
A federal judge in Rhode Island twice ordered the administration to deliver SNAP payments promptly, and the First Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. But upon request from the Trump administration, the Supreme Court blocked the order temporarily, and with the shutdown seemingly about to end, the issue will soon be moot.
A federal judge in Washington ruled that the Trump administration unlawfully compelled civil servants at the U.S. Department of Education to transmit partisan political messaging from their government email accounts during the ongoing federal shutdown. “Nonpartisanship is the bedrock of the federal civil service; it ensures that career government employees serve the public, not the politicians,” wrote Judge Christopher R. Cooper. “But by commandeering its employees’ e-mail accounts to broadcast partisan messages, the Department chisels away at that foundation. Political officials are free to blame whomever they wish for the shutdown, but they cannot use rank-and-file civil servants as their unwilling spokespeople. The First Amendment stands in their way.”
Three unions who represent government employees have filed a lawsuit challenging the inclusion of a question seeking fealty to the Trump administration on federal civil service job applications. Applicants are current asked to identify one or two Trump executive orders or policy initiatives that “are significant to you” and explain how the applicant would help advance them if hired. “One of the cornerstones of American democracy is a nonpartisan, career civil service based on merit, not political loyalty,” Democracy Forward argued in its pleading.
Resistance Inside the National Guard?
NPR reports that “a small contingent of Ohio guard members has been quietly expressing concern in an encrypted group chat”:
The Ohio guard members now say they’re alarmed at the turn the country is taking. They’re even questioning their potential role in it.
“I really went to a dark place when they sent the troops to [Los Angeles], and then eventually [Washington, D.C.], and now, Chicago. This is just not what any of us signed up for, and it’s so out of the scope of normal operations,” says J, a member of the Ohio National Guard who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity….
“I have been on two humanitarian-esque missions with the guard, which were awesome, doing the things you see on the commercial, helping these communities,” says J. “And then you want me to go pick up trash and dissuade homeless people in D.C. at gunpoint. Like, no dude. It’s so disheartening every time I see another city — and I just wonder, ‘who’s going to stand up to this?’”
NPR also notes that About Face, a group of current service members and post-9/11 veterans, serves as a resource for those who might be questioning their deployments.
Masks Off!
I’m with civil rights icon Sherrilyn Ifill on this one. She posted on social media:
I’ve come to believe that we need to gather considerable forces and a campaign to demand the removal of face masks by ICE, Border Patrol, FBI and police. It is a practice in conflict with the principles of transparency & accountability that are central to the concept of democracy.
So long as we allow masked law enforcement to terrorize people, we cannot be a democracy.
Over at the Atlantic, reporter Nick Miroff writes that the masks have become integral to Trump’s anti-immigration crusade:
As Trump’s deportation campaign escalated, the masks quickly turned officers and agents into a faceless, impersonal, undifferentiated goon squad. It’s a look that has long been associated with authoritarian regimes and secret police, and the basic visual signifiers of American law enforcement—criminals wear masks; cops show their faces—were suddenly inverted. In videos of masked officers that have gone viral since then, it’s often hard to tell who is speaking, let alone what agency they belong to. Some of the encounters are so rushed that they look like abductions, not conventional arrests, and activists have started calling the federal agents “kidnappers.”
Face coverings are now a standard accessory for federal immigration enforcement, and a symbol of the mass-deportation campaign that is Trump’s top domestic-policy initiative. Veteran ICE officials I spoke with view the use of masks as an unquestionably negative development. But most of them see an evil that is necessary.
Miroff notes that congressional Democrats have introduced legislation that would bar federal agents from using masks during immigration arrests – it’s called the “No Secret Police Act” – but he calls the effort “mostly symbolic.”
A new California law requires the same thing, and is due to take effect January 1, but as Miroff writes, “it’s unclear how state authorities expect to enforce the law against federal agents and officers.”
Back in August, a new organization called Home of the Brave launched an ad campaign around Washington proclaiming “Take off your masks!” and asking “Why are you hiding your face? Public servants should face the public.”
Buckle Up
Ben Raderstorf, a policy strategist at Protect Democracy, writes:
With every day passing, there is less time — and fewer paths — to tip the United States into autocracy.
The president has two choices: recalibrate or escalate. Chances are, if past is prologue, he will do the latter.
Expect the administration to significantly up attempts to undermine, distort, and eventually block a free and fair midterm election. Doing so will be exceedingly difficult — as we saw this week, the machinery of American elections is still well-insulated against White House interference. But expect them to now try much harder nonetheless.