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Well, senators and representatives, this is it. You do realize that, don't you? [1]
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Date: 2025-04-18
The Trump regime is openly defying a Supreme Court order to return a person who the federal government illegally kidnapped and sent to a foreign prison. It’s precisely what Senate Democratic Leader Schumer said was his “red line” (an absurdly lax one to the point of being in violation of his oath of office, but he did explicitly articulate it) for knowing that democracy in America (the stunted, bigoted semblance of democracy that we had anyway) could fall. It’s something that, if it stands, the Trump regime can do to anyone. That’s on top of the dozens to hundreds of other heinous acts worthy of removal from office that Trump and other regime officials have committed already.
Between sabotaging federal public service, oppressing minorities and women, cowing billionaires, bringing industry to its knees, crushing academia, turning against allied countries, forming a “New Axis” internationally, and all the other moves that the Trump regime is making to consolidate its power, in terms of the forces available against fascist dictatorship, institutional leverage and the sway of public opinion diminish rapidly from here. Said dictatorship is set to get a lot more vicious and violent.
Congress already passed the “enabling act” when Senate Democratic leadership refused to filibuster the “continuing resolution,” which forfeited Congress’s rightful power to mandate spending, to control tariffs, and much more. The (prospective) November 2026 election (with inauguration of the next Congress not occurring until January 2027) will be far too late, never mind the (again prospective) 2028 presidential election.
So this is it, the point of maximum moral clarity, the last moment when the formal channels for justice and democracy are available to freedom-loving people.
Some of the courts are doing their part. Some universities are starting to do their part. People in the streets are doing their part. The light of open defiance is burning brightly now.
Will congresspeople, like California Governor Gavin Newsom appears to, have fully made their bargain with white, Christian, straight, male supremacist power and domination? It’s so easy. All they have to do is… nothing. (Or worse, pretend that they’re doing something, like how Schumer attempted [and then abandoned once found out] to stage an assured-to-fail vote on amendments a short-term CR.) Thus throwing us all, even themselves, to the wolves.
Or will congresspeople, like Rep. Al Green is doing, righteously wield legitimate official power on the public’s behalf,* and perhaps save the country and the world? Will you (in defiance of national Democratic Party history from the past two score years) strike when the iron is hot?
As the common sentiment goes, now is the point in history about which future students (if we’re lucky enough for there to be any) will ask: “Why didn’t they do something to stop it?”
* That’s the trick, isn’t it? Oligarch funders of the Democratic Party don’t want that most of all… even if it means Democrats losing to Republicans, even if it means fascist dictatorship and climate doom. People would get ideas, you know. And so far Democratic leadership has valued those funds and the associated neoliberal capitalist ideology more. Democratic leadership would have to break from those oligarchs, their money, that ideology. In this instant. Right now.
The oath of office demands it. So far, 11 representatives have. Has yours?
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