We're running out of time
We have less than two months until Trump is inaugurated. And we're thinking about all the wrong things.
We’re blowing it.
That’s Marcy Wheeler's verdict in her new piece “America Just Failed the Test of Responding to Trump’s Politicized Prosecutions.”
She deftly uses her knowledge of the weaponization of the Department of Justice against Hunter Biden, a story pretty much she alone has followed, to offer a warning about how the reaction to Biden’s pardon is foreshadowing the feigned obliviousness the press will show when Trump’s next DoJ targets MAGA’s perceived enemies:
Whatever else you think about the Hunter Biden case and the way Joe Biden pardoned him, it is crystal clear proof that the thing defenders of democracy swear they’ll do in a second Trump term — rise to the defense of those targeted for political prosecution — they already failed to do. Whatever you think about the Hunter Biden case, the vast majority of people talking about it have absolutely no clue that it is precisely what people fear in Trump’s second term, not (just) because Hunter was charged in two indictments when others would not be, but because Trump and his people repeatedly ordered up this prosecution.
Trump has tantalized the press with the “scandal” of Hunter Biden. He's done this since that brief moment during the first impeachment when they took the magnitude of Trump's high crimes—framing his political opponent using the power of the Justice Department working in cahoots with Putin-backed forces in Ukraine and beyond—seriously.
And the press has paid him back with this:
I’ll concede that the story of how Trump and Rudy Giuliani worked with Bill Barr to frame the Bidens is complex. And it has mostly been rendered unknowable because people think it ended where it was just beginning: impeachment. That’s why we put together this Ball of Thread that tells the history only Marcy has bothered to put together:
But I get it if you don’t have time to watch that. Because we’re running out of time.
But if you do have an hour, I highly recommend that you watch the first episode of Next Comes What, another podcast I’m working on, by Andrea Pitzer.
She draws on research from wiring a global history of concentration camps to offer a bit of good news:
I was trying to think of any other situation in which I've studied this kind of repression or potential repression, and I was having trouble coming up with an example where you have a date when it's going to start. It is an incredible gift that we have two-and-a-half months to think about and begin to plan for how we can keep the most vulnerable among us from being harmed, how we can keep ourselves safe, how we can keep our family safe. Much, much more often, people have a sense something is coming. They may be in danger for a time. There might be a few arrests, but it's this process when the shocking moment sort of comes unexpectedly and they don't know how much to prepare or, or what to do, but we know what we're preparing for and we know what the timetable is.
So what should we be using this time for??
Well, Joe should continue with those pardons. Pardons should be his full time job. I’m particularly interested in this unexpected suggestion the great
Jessica Valenti passed on in a list of “Ten Actions Dems Can Take to Protect Abortion Before Trump Takes Office:”
President Biden has the opportunity to add protecting abortion providers to his legacy. He needs to tap into his inner Gerald Ford and pardon all abortion providers for past present and future criminalized care.” - Pamela Merritt, Executive Director, Medical Students for Choice
Yes, please. Take wild swings like you did for your son but for as many Americans as possible.
And what should we doing? Andrea has some incredibly concrete suggestions on every episode of Next Comes What (which now has more than 200 5-star reviews on Apple Podcasts). From the episode above, which you probably don’t have time to read so here are some are some of the most personal:
Get your vaccinations. If you think your job might be in jeopardy, if If, you know, your political leanings were to come to light, get your checkups now, do procedures now, get your preventive care now, um, while you have good health insurance, while you have time, while it's not a stress situation. I am not always good at this myself, but it really is important.
And if you had to leave your apartment or your house, uh, to go somewhere else in town for time. Um, Who would you stay with? Where would you stay? If you had to leave your city for a little bit, just think about who would you stay with somewhere else in the country. How would you get there? What would you take?
And if you have the means to do it, if you had to leave the country... And I say this not so much that I think most people are going to need to do this, but I think this free floating anxiety eats up people's, uh, actual, uh, capacity to do real things. And if you just make some of these lists of like, if scary things happen, I have a plan, then your brain says, I have a plan, and it doesn't have to spin its wheels wondering, "What would I do?"
Without our personal safety and clarity, we won’t be able to fight back.
So how do we fight back? We put up every roadblock we can. We don’t surrender to cynicism, as Molly Jong Fast notes:
If pro-democracy voters expect senators to do nothing, they are effectively giving those lawmakers permission to do just that. We should expect our elected officials to protect norms and institutions; that also goes for members of the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority. If people care about democracy and the direction of the country, they should call on senators to do their jobs and subject Trump’s picks, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, and Patel, to legitimate scrutiny.
You may know that I believe defeating Hegseth is top priority. Trump will eventually get someone for Department of Defense willing to engage the military in US politics through the Insurrection Act. It's one of the most explicit themes of Project 2025. But stopping Hegseth, who has explicitly called for the military to take "sides" in a civil war, is important to me for two reasons:
- Trump probably won't find in any other nominee who has explicitly called for turning the military on Americans. That means if Hegseth is confirmed, the Senate is essentially voting to roll tanks into Chicago.
- His history of predatory behavior and his mother’s sense of his sociopathy means the only check on him will be Donald Trump, and if that doesn't terrify you, you must be an undecided voter.
How can will defeat or delay Hegseth? We need four scared Republican Senators, as Marcy has noted. Who could they be? Well, Marcy suggests that any GOP Senator who didn’t vote for Rick Scott someone we should target.
Jong-Fast notes, “Some who could be swayed against Trump include Maine’s Susan Collins, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis. I’d also keep my eye on the independent-minded(ish) doctor Bill Cassidy and Mitt Romney’s successor John Curtis.”
Personally, I see Tillis as the weather vane. He’s up for election next year in a state that’s trending Democrat while still remaining Trump.
If Thom is nervous, we’re winning.
If he’s saying, “I’m in a presumptive positive position right now. Everybody says what they want to say about him seeking retribution, or have the office of retribution set up and all that. I just don’t see it,” we’re losing.
And that’s what he said about Kash Patel yesterday despite an abundance of clips like:
Trump wants a Secretary of Defense who will drop paratroopers into your downtown and an FBI Director who goes after anyone in the media who said Trump lost the 2020 election, which is all the media. You may think he'd only go after the people you don't like. But so did Mike Pence.
So right now, we need to figure out how to get a bunch of North Carolinians to make a bunch of phone calls. And we’re running out of time.
Every fight matters, win or lose, because even the losses build will and lay markers. Plus, Trump wins every fight we don’t start.
We have an incredible gift. Let’s not be like the press. Let’s not fail this test.