The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the presidential immunity appeal from Donald Trump this week (coverage from Election Law Blog, Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse, CNN takeaways, CNN live coverage, and The Bulwark). The outcome is uncertain, but appears to be headed for delaying the January 6th trial past the 2024 election. In 2022, I wrote a post on the theme of “it is up to us”, and this post can be considered a refrain. Several weeks ago, I wrote that our hopes for the courts to stop Donald Trump have been dashed. It is time for us to stand up to fight for our country. I just got a copy of “A Citizen’s Guide to Beating Donald Trump” from the library today, looking to take some action soon. It is time to get started.
Trump
There are 28 posts filed in Trump (this is page 1 of 3).
Crooks and Liars.com: Four years ago yesterday, Donald Trump announced that “injecting bleach and shining light into the body would cure COVID-19” – it’s amazing we survived Trump, much less COVID-19!
Looking into protest songs
I have been looking into what protest songs/chants have been used in the past five to ten years. Researcher Noriko Manabe from Indiana University has a recent journal article and a set of posts on Medium collecting songs and chants from US protests since 2017:
Journal of Music and Politics: Chants of the Resistance: Flow, Memory, and Inclusivity
Medium: Collection of posts on chants and songs since 2017
Also, I found these links:
National Women’s History Museum: Brief overview of protest songs
The Commons Social Change Library: Listen and Watch to 40 years of Australian Blockading Songs
How to stop Donald Trump
I entered the title of this post as a search phrase in Google, and here are some of the top results:
Indivisible.org: Defeat Trump Toolkit – This resource was created in January 2023, has suggestions for organizing events, recruiting group members, and links to other content at Indivisible.org.
DefeatTrump.org: Site created by Indivisible.org. Has a way to sign up for a mailing list, and more targeted resources.
A Citizen’s Guide to Beating Donald Trump: Published in March 2020 and written by Barack Obama’s campaign manager. Quote from the Amazon page: ” A playbook for the common citizen, A Citizen’s Guide to Beating Donald Trump addresses the many things individuals can do in 2020 every day, without having to leave their jobs, move to Iowa, or spend every waking moment on the election.”
Congressman Jerry Nadler: Some specific actions listed, slanted toward stopping Trump during his term as president.
The New Yorker: Nine Ways to Oppose Donald Trump – Written in December 2016 after the election, the article lists nine specific ways to help stop Trump from being successful in office.
The Guardian: “Election season has come. Here’s what you need to do to stop Trump from winning” – Written in September 2023, Robert Reich (former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton adminstration) has some advice/suggestions for getting involved.
In early April, I posted about Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn, who wrote a column saying that he was going to continue to tell the truth about Donald Trump, even when it offends those who are paying for information. Dan Froomkin has an excellent interview on PressWatch with Chris Quinn, including more on how Quinn took a long time in writing the piece, and opinions on the national news media and how editors are afraid. It is a good read!
Democracy is not a spectator sport
Several weeks ago, I read a Substack post with this same title, as well as a Vox article titled “The courts were never going to save America from Donald Trump”. The bottom line of both articles were that the only way to defeat Donald Trump was going to be at the ballot box. But what else should we do? In my post/podcast earlier this week on “The Resistance”, I also pointed out that “doing something else” meant doing more than writing a blog post or a social media post or a podcast. I did review one of the resources I linked to in my resistance post, and it offered 3 concrete recommendations for taking action:
- Once a month, show up to either a trigger event protest with game change potential or a small, group-led action.
- Once a week, put pressure on decision makers with phone calls or at town halls.
- Vote for and do get out the vote work for movement candidates in local, state, and federal elections.
In addition, the resource gives some good guidance about finding or forming a group to take action. Let’s get out there and win this thing!
There aren’t two sides to facts
Last week, the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Chris Quinn, published a “Letter from the Editor” concerning the paper’s coverage of news concerning Donald Trump (mentioned on PressWatch). He stated that they are receiving a fair amount of mail/email on this topic criticizing the paper. I think these three paragraphs hit the main point of his response:
The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information.
The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.
The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it.
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2024/03/our-trump-reporting-upsets-some-readers-but-there-arent-two-sides-to-facts-letter-from-the-editor.html
After publishing this column, the Plain Dealer received over 2700 emails, mostly positive, thanking the editor for “…reporting as fact the threat Donald Trump presents to our democracy” (see new editor column on the response). The Plain Dealer also published a sampling of the responses. Perhaps there is hope for us yet…
Slate: Trump’s Lawyers Made Some Very Odd Strategic Choices in the Supreme Court Ballot Case – Trump or his lawyers must have calculated that a technical argument would be more appealing to the conservative majority. (by Rick Hasen, via Election Law Blog)
Lawfare Media: What Justice Scalia Thought About Whether Presidents Are “Officers of the United States” – In a 2014 concurrence and a short letter elaborating on it, Scalia indicated that the president was an “officer of the United States.”
The Big Lie continues in 2024
Kaitlan Collins presses Rep. Norman on 2021 text message calling for martial law
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) about a 2021 text message he sent to Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, pleading for the former president to declare martial law. Norman also references other alleged incidents of voter fraud, which Kaitlan Collins refutes.
Source: CNN
Additional links:
X: Kaitlan Collins post on this video
The New Republic: Republican Rep. Has No Regrets About That “Marshall Law” Text – Years later, Ralph Norman still stands by his infamous text to Mark Meadows after the 2020 election.
South Carolina Public Radio: Leaked 2021 text from SC Rep. Ralph Norman calls for martial law; Congressman says message came from ‘frustration’