The resistance is growing. We’ve seen it in the last several weeks in the anger aimed at members of Congress during their recess, in the ongoing Tesla protests, and in a membership surge at resistance organizations.
More and larger protests are surely coming in the near future, along with civil disobedience and boycotts. Civil society and state attorney generals will keep suing to prevent Trump from breaking the law and violating the constitution.
But looking further ahead, there are two questions we have to ask ourselves:
When is it time to go all-out?
What does “going all-out” mean?
Does “shutting down the country” mean massive protest rallies? Does it mean massive civil disobedience? Does it mean a general strike? How do we get from here to there?
And what else besides defiance of the Supreme Court could be a catalyst for transformative action? I can think of several other conceivable occurrences that might qualify as going “too far”
Just Security is now tracking 96 lawsuits challenging Trump administration actions. Among the past week’s highlights:
Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California ruled that the Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) had no authority to fire probationary workers at other agencies and that those firings were illegal. OPM rescinded a key memo, but the effect on fired probationary employees remains unclear. Alsup called probationary employees the “life blood of agencies.”
Washington D.C. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Saturday ordered Trump administration officials to recognize Hampton Dellinger as the head of the Office of Special Counsel, a key whistleblower agency. Trump had tried to fire him. (Dellinger, for his part, has been trying to overturn the firings of probationary employees.)
Washington D.C. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras granted a permanent injunction restoring Cathy Harris as chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board after Trump tried to fire her, too. The board’s primary function is to protect federal employment practices from partisan politics by allowing employees to appeal adverse actions.
Two legal cases are making the argument that Elon Musk’s power cannot be squared with the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. University of Pennsylvania law professor Kate Shaw explains here.
On Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s emergency request to overrule a lower court judge’ order that he must unfreeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid.
Not worried about KSA kicking down my door, so sounds good!