The last institutional barrier is falling. It’s up to us to stand.

 

The last institutional barrier between us and the presidential narcissist who would be emperor is falling. It’s going to be up to us to stand up.

Here’s your overview: the federal government has three branches that are supposed to serve as checks and balances to ensure the U.S. never has a king. Congress is supposed to make the laws, the president enforce them, and the courts rule on the constitutionality and legality of the actions of the first two branches.

Our current self-worshipping president and his awful clown car of minions have decided that they get to make the laws, and can use them to stomp on all of their declared enemies. Whatever existing laws they don't like, they ignore. Who's going to stop them?

Well, Congress is supposed to do that. But the Republicans who hold the slim majority either worship their Great Leader, or imagine they are slyly using him, or are terrified that if they don't bend to his every whim, his followers--their voters--will descend on them like sharks in a feeding frenzy and tear them to shreds. And the Congressional Democrats seem to believe all they can do is declare themselves outraged but impotent.

So, the one remaining federal body to stand in the way of the executive branch's power-grabbing and the smashing of all institutions that could temper it has been the federal court system. There have been hundreds of lawsuits filed contesting the presidential executive orders and the actions of the Trump appointees enacting them. Those orders and actions have often blatantly conflicted with existing laws, and are in some cases patently unconstitutional—as is the case of the presidential order to end birthright citizenship, a right guaranteed in plain language by the Constitution. 

Here’s the problem: the legal system moves very slowly. Cases can take many years to move from first filing to final decision—especially if the party being sued files all sort of delaying motions, and drags its feet in taking the steps it has been ordered to take by the court. By the time a decision is announced, the affected parties have already been harmed—deported, discharged from the military, defunded, deceased. So the courts issue a “temporary injunction” if they assess the plaintiffs are likely to win the case in the end. This stops the action that would harm them from taking place while the case proceeds (or at least says that action must stop—it is supposed to be the executive branch that enforces the courts’ decisions). 

There are currently more than two dozen national injunctions in place, pausing a variety of presidential executive orders and federal actions. These include orders freezing $3 trillion in funding to states, requiring states to take actions such as no longer recognizing gender transitions before the money is released. They include an executive order banning efforts to foster equity, diversity, and inclusion in public schools, rules making it harder for people to vote, and the declaration that birthright citizenship is over. 

The Supreme Court is currently ideologically unbalanced, with 6 MAGA-aligned judges and 3 liberals. The decision in this Trump vs. Casa, Inc. case was—surprise—6 to 3. The majority said they based their decision on the original intent of the founders in the 1700s, which they have been proclaiming must be the bedrock of judicial rulings. This is a stupid and futile basis for jurisprudence, because the evidence of what a bunch of centuries-dead white men intended is always at best patchy and contradictory. Further, those men could not have imagined the world of the 21st century. For example, in their day, there were no immigration laws at all! People just came here if they wanted to and settled. And finally, these men were flawed—they were champions of liberty, yet many enslaved fellow human beings and pushed indigenous peoples out of their homelands. Mind you, we are all flawed! Many of the American founders had many admirable qualities. But they were not superhuman paragons whose beliefs and actions should trump the rest of all Americans’ for all time.

What “original intent” jurisprudence in fact does, as Justice Jackson wrote in her dissent, is to provide cover for the majority to rule however it likes. “To hear the majority tell it, this suit raises a mind-numbingly technical query: Are universal injunctions ‘sufficiently “analogous” to the relief issued ‘by the High Court of Chancery in England at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the enactment of the original Judiciary Act’ to fall within the equitable authority Congress granted federal courts in the Judiciary Act of 1789? … But that legalese is a smokescreen. It obscures a far more basic question of enormous legal and practical significance: May a federal court in the United States of America order the Executive to follow the law?”

So, now only the named parties who brought a particular case are protected by an injunction, not all the other people facing the same order or action that a court has deemed likely to be illegal. The Supreme Court majority says there is no need to worry, as  people can still file class-action suits. But those suits are incredibly complicated, expensive, slow to start, and a court must “certify the class,” which is a high barrier. (This didn’t stop the reactionary grifter Justice Alioto from writing a whining concurring opinion warning courts not to make it easier to file a class-action suit.) 

It was a comfort to watch judge after judge, appointees of Republican and Democrat presidents alike, ruling against the authoritarian actions of the would-be King Trump that defied the existing laws of the land. But the Supreme Court is dominated by royalist enablers, and they have now kneecapped the thousand federal judges who were continuing to uphold the rule of law.

This just makes it clearer than ever: nobody is coming to save us. There are no adults in the room who will fix things while we get on with our lives, which are busy and stressful and demand our attentions. It is up to us, the people, however stressed we may be. Which is always ultimately the truth—the price and the privilege of democracy is that all of us must govern. We elect members of Congress and a president to represent us, and they must answer to us. 

So what are we to do? Everything! Anything. Don’t waste time arguing about which sort of action to take—just take the kind of action that you want to see. Pick something you can sustain, that feels empowering or entertaining or ennobling. Protests are what come to many people’s minds first, and the No Kings protests across the US on June 14th were among the largest in US history (though they garnered much less media attention than the smaller Tea Party Republican protests during Obama’s presidency, and were of course ignored on Fox News and mocked by the presidential press secretary). Marching in protests is a grand part of the American tradition, but there are so many other things you can do if that’s not your thing! Other classics are writing or calling your representatives and giving them a piece of your mind (you can just put that in your calendar and make it part of your weekly routine), voting (in every election, local and national!), and sharing your thoughts with others (once upon a time, by standing on a soapbox in a local park and speechifying; today here on social media).

But there are many other ways you can take part! Are you a creative sort? Write a song or a story to inspire people. A parent? Teach your children well. Have them make art expressing their love for equity and helping the marginal, and share that with media and social media before enshrining it on your fridge (protecting their anonymity, of course). Art is for adults, too, so paint a lovely No Kings mural, or chalk it all over town! If you are ordered to participate in something evil, refuse if you can, and gum up the works if you can’t. Never pre-comply. If you have the strength and access to legal counsel for it, resist publicly and dramatically. If you don't, donating to a cause is always an option!

And always try to help those facing attacks! In college? Defend your university. Use a library? Defend your librarians. Know a trans person? Have their back. Know an immigrant? Stand up for them. Know a federal employee who lost their job? Tell them how much you respect the work that they were doing. If you're a knowledge worker yourself, educate people about the value of your field of expertise. Thank every public servant you encounter: public school teachers, public health workers, park rangers. Speak up about how you value scientific research, museums that aren’t censored, truth over misinformation, Pell grants that help poor students get a college degree, Medicaid that helps poor people access medical care, kindness over hate. 

The narrative being pushed by the Trump administration, embraced on rightwing media and little-challenged in the cowed mainstream media, is that the Resistance that dominated the news during the first Trump administration is dead. But resistance is not futile--far from it!

The last institutional barrier is falling. It’s up to us to stand.