Category: Trump effect

11/23/17

Unlike that ingrate Benjamin Wittes, I’m feeling very thankful this Thanksgiving.

Suddenly, complacency is replaced with activism.

Prominent conservative attorneys and legal scholars are having a mind-meld with their political opposite numbers about the importance of the Constitution’s basic features: separation of powers, an independent judiciary, religious liberty, freedom of speech, and due process of law.

Card-carrying members of the #resist movement follow and even retweet Bill Kristol with glee.

Some of us have gotten better at distinguishing mountains from molehills, notwithstanding that eerie Maya Angelou quote about believing someone the first time when they show you who they are.

We recite the Constitution to one another and know all about the two flavors of the once-obscure Emoluments Clause.

Although norms about the reach and limits of executive power used to be buried some boring old White House Counsel memo passed down through 40 years of bipartisan administrations, suddenly everyone knows it’s not cool for the White House to be in direct contact with the DOJ about a pending matter.

Even young’uns born after 1973 now know that the Saturday Night Massacre isn’t just the name of a deathcore band.

The people have discovered their Office of Government Ethics and have rallied to save it.

Ditto the independent Congressional Budget Office and its apolitical scoring of pending legislation.

People have learned their Congressmembers’ names, memorized their phone numbers, and figured out where and when to show up at thingies called Town Halls.

They’ve discovered the notice-and-comment period for proposed federal regulations under the Administrative Procedures Act.

After decades of fratricidal fighting, Blacks and Jews have finally reunited against their common enemy.

People have begun to love lawyers!

And millennials!

We’ve begun to study regimes with authoritarian tendencies! in actual foreign countries with real-live foreigners living in them, like #Hungary, #Poland, #Turkey, and #Venezuela! As if they actually mattered, as if we had something to learn from them!

State Attorney Generals are cool.  Hell, State AG’s exist!  50 of ‘em!  One of them even has a nickname from Trump!

The states provide a vertical form of checks and balances under our federalist system.  Who knew?

There’s no such thing as an “off-year” election anymore. People show up in droves.  People realize that odd-year local races for governor, mayor, state and local legislators have more impact on their day-to-day lives than that thing that happens every 4 years and gets hyped by the media for 3 years and 364 days beforehand.

If they live in cities or states with an overwhelming majority of registered voters of one party, and that state’s system requires registration in a party to vote in a primary, they now know they need to vote in a primary to have any impact on who’s actually going to run their state and local government.

People stick up for – and even pay for – real journalism. They can detect both fake news and “fake news.”  They know what to do about trolls, they know what doxing is, and if they’re really good, they can spot the difference between bots and #MAGAbots.

Yes, I am very thankful this year. I hope to be half as thankful again next year!

 

Lesley Rosenthal practices law in NYC and teaches it in Cambridge. Follow her @GoodCounselBook and @LetUSROL.

November 26, 2017

In the recurring nightmare that is current life in these United States, we awaken each day to new proof that our government is in the grip of a corrupt, narcissistic, small minded bigot, whose only consistent goal is to insult, offend and punish people of color. Although Black people are long used to government that is at best, indifferent, and at worst, actively hostile, to our interests, America has not had a president this dedicated to reversing progress for African Americans since Woodrow Wilson screened “Birth of a Nation” at The White House. Continue reading “The fight of our lives”

November 24, 2017

This week, we were disheartened to learn that Congressman John Conyers, who has represented part of the Detroit metropolitan area since 1965, entered into a 2015 confidential settlement of a wrongful termination claim from a female staffer. The staffer asserted that she was fired for rebuffing Conyers’ repeated sexual advances (Source: “She Said a Powerful Congressman Harassed Her. Here’s Why You Didn’t Hear Her Story,” by Paul McLeod, and Lissandra Villa, Buzzfeed News, 11/20/17). Buzzfeed further reported that, in early 2017, a second staffer had withdrawn a complaint that Conyers had engaged in a similar pattern of behavior with her and that the Congressman’s senior staff members retaliated against her for asserting the complaint (Source: “Another Woman Accused Rep. John Conyers of Sexual Harassment in Court Filings This Year,” by Paul McLeod and Lissandra Villa, Buzzfeed News, 11/21/17). These twin revelations were followed up by attorney, Melanie Sloan, going on the record to accuse Conyers of abuse during her tenure on his staff. Sloan alleged that Conyers berated her and criticized her appearance and that when she attempted to raise the issue with Congressional leadership, she was dismissed as “mentally unstable” (Source: “Ethics lawyer says Conyers mistreated her during her years on Capitol Hill,” by Kimberly Kindy, Steve Hendrix and Michelle Ye Hee Lee, The Washington Post, 11/22/17).

Continue reading “This is going to leave a mark”

November 21, 2017

As every day vomits up new evidence of men who are serial harassers, leaving a trail of dashed ambitions in their wake, the poisonous policies of the Trump administration continue apace.  Yesterday Charlie Rose and Glenn Thrush were the latest to be revealed to have exercised droit de seigneur in their personal fiefdoms.  As riveting as these tales of the powerful brought low by their uncontrolled lechery may be, we must not lose sight of the devastating impact of the Trump administration’s continued commitment to white supremacy as government policy.

Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it was ending the protection afforded to Haitian refugees under the 1990 Temporary Protected Status Law.  59,000 Haitian refugees, who came to the U.S. after the 2010 earthquake, have been given 18 months to leave the country.  This is despite the fact that Haiti continues to be crippled by extreme poverty (the legacy of revenge exacted by France for having successfully freed itself from colonialism and slavery).  Since their arrival in the United States, these Haitian immigrants have had 30,000 children who are American citizens.  They are part of the diaspora of Haitian refugees who send remittances back to Haiti that account for more than 25% of the country’s income (Source:  “59,000 Haitians Must Leave U.S. As White House Ends Protections,” by Miriam Jordan, The New York Times, 11/21/17). Continue reading “Droit de seigneur”

November 18, 2017    

 

     Our entire society has been buffeted by a blizzard of revelations of men who have sexually harassed and assaulted women with impunity.  We have simultaneously been buried in an avalanche of lies; victims of a President and an entire executive branch unable and unwilling to tell the truth about any issue, large or small.  Trump lies even when recordings, other people or his own words offer easy refutation.  The result is that we live our lives in a state of vertigo, profoundly disoriented by the fact that so many in government lack any moral compass and that so many we revere have been revealed to be incapable of resisting  the temptation to abuse the power we have given them. Continue reading “Vertigo”

November 16, 2017

 

Every time we think we have vanquished Republican efforts to destroy the Affordable Care Act, it returns zombie-like, to threaten us anew.  The Republicans are counting on the tawdry Roy Moore saga and the new Al Franken scandal to distract us from their repugnant policy agenda and are rushing their abhorrent, redistributive tax plan through.  The constant battle to block legislation designed to reduce most of us to lives of penury and squalor is by turns enervating and enraging. Although that may seem like shrill hyperbole, consider the likely impact of the key provisions of the Republican bills currently under consideration:

Elimination of the State and Local Tax Deduction (“SALT”).  If the tax bill passes in its current form, it will eliminate (or at a minimum sharply curtail) this critical deduction that has been in place since the passage of federal income tax legislation in 1913.  The SALT deduction prevents double taxation of income, ensures that states and localities have sufficient revenue to fund essential services, and is a key component of housing values.  30% of all American taxpayers claim the deduction, including 39% of those earning between $50,000 and $75,000 per year and 75% of those earning $75,000 to $100,000 per year (Source: The Impact of Eliminating the State and Local Tax Deduction, prepared by The Government Finance Officers Association, www.gfoa.org). Continue reading “Accounting past due”

November 14, 2017

 

As a fifth woman came forward to tearfully recount Roy Moore’s attempted rape of her when she was only sixteen, Republican Senators finally fled Moore’s toxic side like rats leaving a sinking ship.  Although it was a palpable relief to hear Mitch McConnell say flatly, “I believe the women,” his call for Moore to step aside is much more about naked political calculation than principle.  Lest we forget, Moore was a lawless homophobe before he was revealed to be a disgusting sexual predator and no Republican found that to be disqualifying.

The sudden emergence of a Republican conscience has been brought on by fear of the shrinkage of their razor thin Senate majority.  The word is that they are considering the Hail Mary pass of Jeff Sessions as a write-in candidate, since it is too late to get Moore off of the ballot.  This would have the added partisan benefit of giving Trump the chance to appoint a new Attorney General who would not be recused from the Russia investigation and could fire Bob Mueller. Continue reading “Sweet Home Alabama”

November 12, 2017

 

Tuesday’s resounding electoral victories gave us reason to feel hopeful for the first time in a year. In Virginia and New Jersey, Ralph Northam and Phil Murphy won decisively against Republican candidates who waged ugly, racist campaigns. In addition, Democrats scored victories around the country, including the first trans woman elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, the first Sikh mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey, the first African American mayor of Helena, Montana and the first African American woman mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina. While these results are truly encouraging, we must be careful not to over-interpret them. Since Tuesday, Democrats have been crowing that these wins prove that blatant appeals to bigotry are ineffective. Unfortunately, a closer look at the numbers disproves that comforting message.

Continue reading “The Path To Power”

November 7

One year ago today, Americans went to the polls and elected the most unqualified man in American history to be President of the United States.  After waging a campaign grounded in racism and bullying cruelty, Trump was rewarded with the highest office in the land.  In the immediate aftermath, puzzled prognosticators searched the ashes for clues as to the cause of this calamity.  They were unwilling to face the obvious fact that 53% of white women chose racism over feminism, or that many Trump voters had a high enough income to be untroubled by “economic anxiety.”  Journalists, academics, and some Democrats told us that if we just went to the Midwest and made a convincing case to displaced white workers who have been voting for Republicans since Ronald Reagan, we could win them back. Continue reading “VOTE!!!!”

November 5, 2017

 

On Thursday of this week, Donna Brazile detonated a bomb inside of the Democratic Party in an article in Politico, which contained explosive charges suggesting that the Joint Fundraising Agreement between the DNC and the Clinton campaign rigged the primaries in Clinton’s favor. Brazile’s evidence for her claim that the Joint Fundraising Agreement was a “cancer” was the fact that it gave Clinton’s campaign control over how money was spent prior to the nomination being secured and the fact that it gave Clinton’s campaign control over key DNC staff hires, such as Communications Director (Source: “Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC,” by Donna Brazile, Politico, 11/2/17). Closer examination reveals that the arrangement, while unusual, was not unprecedented (Source: “No, the DNC didn’t ‘rig’ the Democratic primary for Hillary Clinton, by Boris Heersink, The Washington Post, 11/4/17). While it is certainly true that those agreements are evidence of the DNC’s preference for Hillary Clinton, they do not offer any evidence that the DNC was responsible for Clinton receiving 3.7 million more votes than Bernie Sanders in the primary (Source: Heersink, The Washington Post, 11/4/17). Continue reading “Turn the page.”