Will Washington’s streets become the front line of the resistance?
So far, at least, the response has been lackluster
(I was on vacation in Ireland last week and, to be honest, the things Trump is doing to this country look even worse from a distance than they do close up. Plus, the resistance is basically invisible. So please forgive the less-positive-than-usual tone of this week’s Heads Up News.)
You might expect that Donald Trump’s takeover of law enforcement in Washington D.C. -- including a military deployment -- would turn the nation’s capital into Ground Zero for the resistance.
But the public response so far has been lackluster at best.
A few hundred people gathered near the White House on Monday to protest the takeover.
A few dozen seniors waved signs outside the vice president’s residence on Tuesday.
Free DC, a group that has taken the lead in local protest activity, is calling for people to post signs wherever they can and, every day at 8 p.m., to “step outside your door and make some noise” for five minutes.
The most notable act of rebellion as of today has been the point-blank tossing of a submarine sandwich at the chest of an FBI agent patrolling U Street, a popular nightlife destination, on Monday night.
Video of the incident went viral. As the Boston Globe reported, a man -- “white, blond, wearing a pink button-down shirt and khaki shorts” -- responded negatively to the presence of what he called “fascists, right here in our city” before confronting FBI agents verbally and eventually throwing the sandwich. Officers chased him down and arrested him.
To be clear, Trump’s military takeover of Washington is not on account of any actual emergency, it is a sheer demonstration of power based on racist fantasies about urban crime (as well as another attempted distraction from the Epstein scandal.)
But the response has been underwhelming – from the public and the media.
And don’t expect any resistance from the military, two national security experts write in a New York Times op-ed this morning. Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson had previously expressed hope that the military “would only respond to calls to action in American cities and states kicking and screaming.” But, they write, “today, general officers no longer seem to see themselves as guardians of the constitutional order.”
Noncooperation and Noncompliance
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how noncooperation is the likely next step for the resistance. In a column in the Nation, Elie Mystal calls it noncompliance.
“Resistance does indeed feel futile these days,” Mystal starts off. “But while despair is a legitimate, and even rational, response to the ongoing victory of white supremacy and bigotry over equality and decency, giving up is not. Inaction is not.
He writes that “small, individual acts of noncompliance” are “tools that can frustrate great and evil powers”:
It might be that all we can do right now is to harass and document ICE’s goons as they try to kidnap and abduct people from our block, or courthouse, or house of worship. It might be that all we can do right now is to make sure the trans kid is invited to the birthday party, and cheer for them as loudly as we’d cheer for our own children when they get a hit in the game. It might be that all we can do right now is to call our congressperson so often that their constituent manager knows our name. But doing all we can do right now to oppose this regime is, frankly, the least that should be expected of us.
Post-Trump Reforms
I’m always interested in discussion of how we fix this mess, once we are in a position to do so.
Princeton sociologist Paul Starr recently had a terrific piece in the American Prospect. He wrote:
The immediate task for the opposition to Trump is to use every available legal means of appeal and political mobilization to stop or slow him down. But there must be a long-run agenda too. Trump’s actions are not popular, and they are likely, sooner or later, to blow up and produce a reaction. As distant as a post-Trump future may now seem, we should look ahead to a time when Americans are ready to repair both the harm done by Trump and the institutions that have allowed it.
Starr outlined three models for institutional repair, “in order of escalating difficulty”: “Changing the laws, changing the Supreme Court, or amending the Constitution.”
The first is the post-Watergate model, which primarily involves codifying unwritten norms in legislation and executive branch rules. The second is the politically treacherous path of judicial reform. The third, amending the Constitution, is only a dim possibility but still useful to consider, because some of the problems highlighted by Trump lie in the Constitution itself.
It's worth a close read.
Meanwhile, political scientist Mark Schmitt, writing in the quarterly called Democracy, argues that think tanks need to start working on “reconstructing the foundations of democratic governance in the wake of several years of nihilistic destruction, of which we’ve seen only the beginning.” He writes:
We won’t be able to just roll back the clock—bring back USAID, restore federal research funding, authorize vaccines, restore progressive taxation, reenter international agreements. We’ll have to revisit foundational assumptions, such as the arcana of administrative law and the structure of the judiciary. We’ll have to ask whether it makes sense to try to prop back up the edifice of Medicaid expansion and the Affordable Care Act exchanges, built over years of incremental progress, or to start from scratch on health care. There are similar questions in other policy areas.
Global Resistance Failure
Harvard economist Dani Rodrik asks: “Where is the global resistance to Trump?” Trump’s “frontal assault on the world economy… gave Europe, China and various middle powers an opportunity to make a statement about who they are and what they stand for,” he writes. “It was an invitation to articulate a vision of a new world order that could overcome the imbalances, inequities and unsustainability of the old one, and that would not depend on the leadership – for better or worse – of a single powerful country. But few rose to the challenge.”
The exception is Brazil, Rodrik writes, “whose president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has emerged as the rare exemplary leader who refuses to grovel at Mr. Trump’s feet. Despite facing punitive 50 per cent tariffs and pointed personal attacks, he has proudly defended his country’s sovereignty, democracy and independent judiciary.”
Town Halls Continue to Go Sour for GOP
Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who represents a red district in far northeastern California, “drew taunts and jeers at two raucous town hall meetings Monday over his support for President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill,’” CNN reported. Here’s some video.
Similarly, as the New York Times reported, “Rep. Mike Flood, Republican of Nebraska, was not even 30 seconds into his prepared introduction at a town hall in Lincoln” on August 4 “when the booing and the jeering began. Then it didn’t let up for over an hour.” Here’s some video.
Recent Lawsuits News
An appellate court ruled that the Office of Management and Budget must comply with a court order requiring it to restore an online database of information about how it directs agencies to spend taxpayer money.
A federal judge granted a temporary restraining order on behalf of migrants held on the 10th floor of a federal building in Manhattan. The order requires DHS to provide the migrants with a clean and safe place to sleep, prescription medication, nutritious meals, access to counsel, and other necessities
A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funding to the National Endowment for Democracy.
A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s move to terminate temporary status for more than 60,000 migrants from Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua, finding the cancellation was likely rooted in "racial animus."
A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from cutting funding from the Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women for programs that promote “gender ideology” or “illegal DEI.”
Democracy Forward and 12 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have filed a lawsuit challenging the unlawful obstruction of congressional oversight that the members have sought to conduct at federal immigration detention facilities.
Democracy Forward is also suing for the release of records detailing the handling of the sex trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, including official communication about Epstein documents and any correspondence between him and Trump.
Labor Day Rallies Planned
Common Dreams reports:
On Labor Day this year, unions and workers' rights groups are calling on advocates to forgo the traditional barbecues and picnics known for ending the summer season, and to instead hold thousands of nationwide rallies "to expose the billionaire agenda" that's harming working families and fueling U.S. President Donald Trump's authoritarian rise.
Events organized by the AFL-CIO are listed here, others are listed here.
Look Up at an Overpass Near You
The Hartford Courant reports on the Hartford Visibility Brigade, a group of residents who “have been gathering each Thursday morning and Friday afternoon on the pedestrian overpass bridge that crosses I-91 near the I-84 entrance in Hartford. The group, part of a national movement, aims to share a simple message in a very visible way: ‘To remind you that we are in trouble’.”
Among the signs displayed this past Friday included “If you are not angry, you are not listening” and “Erase hate, not people.” Previous signs have been more specifically anti-Trump including a sign that read “Grab him by the Epstein Files” and pro-immigrant signs such as “CT Unmask Ice.” Nearly all of the gatherings have a “Join Us” and “RESIST” sign displayed.
There are over 200 Visibility Brigades throughout the country.
Other People Taking Action
Thousands of protesters attempted to form an 8-mile human chain on Saturday in Columbus, Ohio, protesting a whole bunch of things
Several hundred people gathered in Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park on Tuesday to denounce the Trump administration and immigration raids.
The Boston Globe reports that, in an effort to backfill the Trump administration’s cuts to federal funding, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey recently “introduced legislation that would inject $400 million into research and development projects, including funds to sustain positions at colleges and universities imperiled by federal actions.”
The New York Times reports on a small new law firm called the Washington Litigation Group, calling it “the latest to join a coterie of pro bono organizations that have emerged in recent months to challenge the Trump administration, which is already facing about 375 lawsuits, according to The Times’s latest count.” The group will focus on appellate work.
Jennifer Rubin writes in her column in the Contrarian about how Democratic attorney generals have “week in and week out, gone to court to stop Trump’s authoritarian power grabs.”
Good Reads
Robert Kuttner writes in the American Prospect about being inspired by Oslo’s Museum of the National Resistance: “I am imagining that someday, in America, there will be a Museum of the Resistance to Donald Trump. But while there have been some scattered acts of resistance, courage is in far too short supply. For now, it would be a very small museum.”
Amanda Carpenter writes for Protect Democracy about how Trump’s shakedowns of major institutions are like ransomware attacks, and shouldn’t be rewarded.
Newsletter author Brian Beutler writes about how disappointed resistance-minded Democrats are in the party’s leadership. “The Tea Party had the Freedom Caucus, what does No Kings have?” he asks.
One thing Dem congresscritters and senators could do during the August recess is inspect ICE facilities in their districts/states, and to sue if not allowed access. Strikes me as a good use of both taxpayer money and campaign funds.