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    Several people arrested at anti-Ice protest outside NYC immigration court

    Several protesters outside New York City’s 26 Federal Plaza government building were arrested on Friday for disorderly conduct, with demonstrators accusing the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency of operating a covert detention facility there, according to several reports.Protesters marched to the largest federal immigration courthouse in Manhattan on Friday morning and chanted outside the building. Demonstrators demanded access to the site, which was denied, and they later held a sit-in outside the courthouse, according to ABC7.Within a few minutes the New York City police department moved in to arrest some of the protesters for disorderly conduct, according to reports, as activists could be seen blocking the street.“No fear, no hate, no Ice in our state!” chanted demonstrators during their march to the site, where Ice agents routinely detain immigrants after immigration court proceedings, in a move that goes against previously normal practice.Demonstrators allege detainees are being held in overcrowded conditions without many basic amenities or legal access at 26 Federal Plaza’s 10th floor, where the agency denies it detains people, and are demanding unrestricted access for elected officials, journalists and faith leaders. Friday’s protest was one of several in the city this week.Last month, footage from inside 26 Federal Plaza shared by the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) showed two dozen men in bare rooms, some lying on the floor with emergency blankets and with few basic provisions.“Just to be a presence, we’re here to say that the American people are opposed to these kinds of policies. And for Ice agents, maybe that will lead some of them to reconsider their career choice,” Jeffrey Courter, the chair of the Justice Ministries Committee of the Presbytery of New York City, told ABC7.Authorities insist the facility is only a processing center.Lawmakers have been denied access to the site. In June, Brad Lander, the city’s comptroller, was arrested while escorting an immigrant from a hearing.Several groups, including the grassroots protest movement known as 50501 and NYIC, as well as faith-based groups, were present at the protest.Courthouse detentions have become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, which aims to arrest 3,000 people daily. Reports from cities including Phoenix, Los Angeles, Chicago and El Paso, Texas, describe routine court appearances devolving into tense encounters. A newly filed class-action lawsuit seeks to ban the practice of making Ice arrests at immigration courthouses. More

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    Sixty years after the Voting Rights Act, our voices are being eroded | Al Sharpton

    In a moment when we should be celebrating one of the most important pieces of legislation in American history, we are in fact at a worse place as a nation than when it was passed. Those of us fighting to protect the right to vote find ourselves against a movement that doesn’t want to take us back to 1965. They want to create an America that more closely resembles the one of 1865.Sixty years ago, in a rare and profound act of consensus, Congress passed a law to end the centuries-old rigging of American democracy. Yet today the system is as rigged as ever, with the battered Voting Rights Act on life support.The erosion of our rights is playing out before our eyes. Purged voting rolls have helped to install a regime that arrests undocumented people and American citizens alike. A loss of faith in the system led many people to stay at home on election day; now they live in fear of walking outside their door. Empowering states to create restrictive laws has yielded less access to not only the right to vote, but to healthcare, jobs and home ownership.At the center of this is Donald Trump – a man whose legacy as president is marked by rampant voter disenfranchisement. This is a man whose claim to fame is fame itself, who views voting as nothing more than a popularity contest that he’s terrified to lose. It’s why he questioned the integrity of our democratic network in 2020 instead of graciously accepting that 7 million more Americans preferred Joe Biden over him.Trump’s campaign against voting rights marches on, as he fills the courts with judges who will continue to kill civil rights through a thousand cuts. Barriers to voting and the silence of those still able to cast ballots has emboldened and empowered him to bully media conglomerates into complacency and corporations into abandoning diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Free of fear from the voters, Trump has gone full bore in desecrating the legacy of the civil rights movement – going so far as to use government files on Dr Martin Luther King Jr to distract from his own political headaches.But we cannot in this moment forget the power King saw in the right to vote. In his 1957 Give Us the Ballot speech at the Lincoln Memorial, King declared to 25,000 people that with the vote: “We will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.”Yet today that fear persists, perhaps stronger than ever. We have indeed come full circle from March 1965, when the nation was rattled by the images of a young John Lewis and dozens of peaceful protesters getting their heads cracked open and their organs bruised on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The national outrage of Bloody Sunday that sparked mobilization toward passage of the Voting Rights Act has been replaced by a numbness to Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, the arrests of elected officials and the snipping of social safety nets.The solution to it all remains the right to vote. A week after the brutal beatings in Selma, King declared voting “Civil Right No. 1” in the New York Times. He called it the “foundation stone for political action”, one we must build upon today. Within five months, Congress bravely voted to end racist literacy tests, enable federal examiners to protect voter registration, and fight the ugliest forms of voter suppression.America was stronger for a generation, until the election of her first Black president sparked a conservative backlash that is today at its peak. The opening salvo came in 2013, when the supreme court gutted the law’s core federal pre-clearance provisions in Shelby county v Holder. It chipped away more eight years later, giving states further authority to enforce stricter voter ID laws, purge voter rolls, and reverse early and absentee programs meant to expand access to the polls. In short, Shelby v Holder opened the door for a manicured version of Jim Crow.It is for these reasons that we will lead a March on Wall Street later this month. The 28 August demonstration, held on the anniversary of the March on Washington, will send a message to Trump and his Maga allies in Congress. You may restrict our ability to vote in the president, the senators and the Congress members we support. But you cannot restrict how we vote with our dollars. Black voters have a skyrocketing buying power expected to hit $1.7tn by 2030. We must use it to make sure those we support stand by us.Until we get to a day when the integrity of voting is restored, when we can finally pass the John R Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, we will use the power we have. Trump may use the bully pulpit of the White House to influence companies’ investments in Black America, but we have the ability to hit their bottom line.Celebrating this anniversary of the Voting Rights Act means honoring the sacrifices of those who shed their blood and laid down their lives for our most fundamental freedom and recommitting ourselves to the struggle by tapping into the unwavering hope and persistence that fueled the civil rights movement. To settle for anything less would be unconditional surrender to the segregationists against whom King, congressman Lewis, Fannie Lou Hamer and the other great civil rights leaders stood.

    Rev Al Sharpton is an American Baptist minister, civil rights activist and radio talkshow host More

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    US placed on rights watchlist over health of its civil society under Trump

    A group of global civil society organizations have placed the US on a watchlist for urgent concern over the health of its civic society, alongside Turkey, Serbia, El Salvador, Indonesia and Kenya.On Wednesday, a new report released by the non-profit Civicus placed the US on its watchlist following “sustained attacks on civic freedoms” across the country, according to the group.Civicus pointed to three major issues including the deployment of military to quell protests, growing restrictions placed on journalists and civil society, as well as the aggressive targeting of anti-war advocates surrounding Palestine.At Civicus, countries are assigned a rating over their civic space conditions. The ratings include “open”, “narrowed”, “obstructed”, “repressed” and “closed”. The group has declared the US’s civic space as “narrowed”.According to the group, the “narrowed” rating is for countries that still allow for individuals and civil society organizations to exercise their rights to freedom of association, peaceful assembly and expression but where violations of these rights still take place.“People can form associations to pursue a wide range of interests, but full enjoyment of this right is impeded by occasional harassment, arrest or assault of people deemed critical of those in power,” the rating description says, adding: “Protests are conducted peacefully, although authorities sometimes deny permission, citing security concerns, and excessive force, which may include tear gas and rubber bullets, are sometimes used against peaceful demonstrators.”With regard to the media, countries with a “narrowed” rating allow for media to “disseminate a wide range of information, although the state undermines complete press freedom either through strict regulation or by exerting political pressure on media owners”.“The United States appears to be sliding deeper into the quicksands of authoritarianism. Peaceful protests are confronted with military force, critics are treated as criminals, journalists are targeted, and support for civil society and international cooperation have been cut back,” Mandeep Tiwana, Civicus’s secretary general, said in a statement.“Six months into Donald Trump’s second term, a bizarre assault on fundamental freedoms and constitutional safeguards has become the new normal,” he added.Pointing to Trump’s deployment of marines and national guard troops to California in June in response to the widespread protests against immigration raids, Tiwana said: “This level of militarisation sets a dangerous precedent. It’s a line that democratically elected leaders aren’t meant to cross.”Tiwana also pointed to the Trump administration’s latest attacks against media networks, including funding restrictions on public broadcast stations including PBS and NPR.“What they’re trying to do is actually defund critical news sources and deny American people the ability to receive truthful non-partisan reporting by pulling their funding,” Tiwana told the Guardian.In its report, Civicus also warned of the growing criminalisation of peaceful advocacy, adding that “authorities have continued reprisals against activists expressing solidarity with Palestinian rights.”Citing the Trump administration’s clampdown on foreign-born student activists including Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi and Rümeysa Öztürk, as well as the sanctioning of Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, Tiwana said: “We are seeing a wide-ranging attack on civic space in the US by the federal and some state governments. Authorities in the US should reverse course from the present undemocratic path by guaranteeing everyone’s first amendment right to organise and dissent legitimately.” More

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    How do we lead moral lives in an age of bullies? | Robert Reich

    We are living in an age of bullies. Those with power are less constrained today than they have been in my lifetime, since the end of the second world war.The question is: how do we lead moral lives in this era?Vladimir Putin launches a horrendous war on Ukraine. After Hamas’s atrocity, Benjamin Netanyahu bombs Gaza to smithereens and is now starving to death its remaining occupants.Trump abducts thousands of hardworking people within the US and puts them into detention camps – splitting their families, spreading fear. His immigration agents are accused of targeting people with brown skin.He usurps the powers of Congress, defies the courts, and prosecutes his enemies.He and his Republican lackeys cut Medicaid and food stamps – lifelines for poor people, including millions of children – so the wealthy can get a tax cut.Hate-mongers on rightwing television and social media fuel bigotry against transgender people, immigrants, Muslims, people of color and LGBTQ+ people.Powerful men abuse women. Some of the abused are children.Powerful male politicians make it impossible for women to obtain safe abortions.CEOs rake in record profits and compensation while giving workers meager wages and firing them for unionizing.Billionaires make large campaign donations – legalized bribes – so lawmakers will cut their taxes and repeal regulations.Each such abuse of power encourages other abuses. Each undermines norms of civility.Every time the stronger bully the weaker, the social fabric is tested. If bullying is not contained, the fabric unwinds. Those who are bullied – who feel powerless, vulnerable, bitter and desperate – become fodder for “strongmen”, demagogues who lead them into violence, war and tyranny.This is hardly new. Throughout history, the central struggle of civilization has been against brutality by the powerful. Civilization is the opposite of brutality. A civil society doesn’t allow the strong to brutally treat the weak.Yet in my lifetime, I’ve witnessed a breakdown. I’ve seen a change occur – from support of decency and constraints on brutality, to tolerance of indecency and support for unconstrained cruelty.Trump is not the cause. He’s the culmination.So how do we lead moral lives in this age of bullies?We do everything we can to stop the brutality, to hold the powerful accountable, and to protect the vulnerable.Putin and Netanyahu are war criminals whose criminality must be stopped. Trump is a dictator who must be deposed.Rightwing politicians who encourage white Christian nationalism must be condemned and voted out of office. Pundits who amplify racism and xenophobia must lose their megaphones.Powerful men who sexually harass or abuse women or children must be prosecuted.Women must have full control over their bodies, including access to safe abortions.Police who kill innocent people of color must be brought to justice. Immigration agents must be prohibited from abducting people off the street or from their homes or court houses or places of work.CEOs who treat their employees like manure must be exposed and penalized. Billionaires who bribe lawmakers to cut their taxes or exempt them from regulations must be sanctioned, as should lawmakers who accept such bribes.This isn’t a matter of “left” or “right”. It’s a matter of what’s right.Living a moral life in an age of bullies requires collective action; it cannot be done alone. Each of us must organize and participate in a vast network of moral resistance.This is what civilization demands. It’s what the struggle for social justice requires. It’s why that struggle is so critical today, and why we all must be part of it.

    Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His next book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, will be out on 5 August More

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    We do not comply: how do we disrupt the momentum of Trump’s cruelty? | V (formerly Eve Ensler)

    The exterminating force of Project 2025 is plowing through the culture, the government and people’s hearts and bodies like a drunk on a violent tear. We wake each morning, holding our breath to bear witness to the new devastation: PBS and NPR defunded, cuts to the fight against human trafficking, Medicaid gone for millions, Ice working to surveil critics, tons of food for the poor ordered burned and wasted.The momentum of cruelty always feels inevitable. Cruelty is by definition “a callous indifference to or pleasure in causing pain”. For those of us who have suffered physical, political, racial and emotional abuse, it feels like a familiar steamroller of violence. We only have to witness the cries of parents being separated from their children, men screaming out for “libertad” from cages in Everglades detention center (AKA Alligator Alcatraz), non-violent protesters beaten for trying to stop a genocide, to be frozen in that same incapacitating dread and fear.What is the antidote to this destructive environment of mendacity possessing us now with fear, ennui and self-mutilating rage?Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, a powerhouse activist and brilliant organizer, told me: “It’s not decided where we go yet. Which is why it feels tense. What we know is that there’s no going back to an old normal because our economic system has failed us and our governmental structure is being destroyed. They’re trying to replace what was with this minority rule of disgustingly wealthy humans dictating what can happen not only in this country, but globally.“We’ve gotta block and build at the same time. That means confronting both elected officials and the corporations that are lifting them up. We need to make sure that we are gumming up their ability to successfully implement any sort of action, whether it’s policy or otherwise, that takes more power and rights and access to life-saving resources away from our communities.”So how do we gum up their momentum; how do we become refusers, artists of disruption, interrupters of their hateful and life-destroying trajectory? How do we clear the noise and fear in our heads so that we are able to hear the call of our inner morality?“The thing that I love about being non-cooperative and non-compliant with the Trump administration,” Ash-Lee told me, “is its accessibility: people have all sorts of abilities, all sorts of means, regardless of class, regardless of identity, to find a tactic that fits for them. What keeps you up at night enough to make you active? Trump says we shouldn’t ask people for warrants. We demand warrants. When a business puts a ‘No Kings’ sign up or a ‘No Ice’ sign in their window, they’re not complying. And we need more people to do that wherever they are,” she said, “whether it’s a general saying, ‘I’m not gonna command my troops to do this,’ whether it’s troops becoming conscientious objectors, whether it’s us boycotting Target and T-Mobile.”This tyrannical white supremacist landscape is erasing our sense of existence and meaning. Daily forms of rebellion birth us back into our bodies and our purpose. Non-compliance is art, as art is meant to defy the status quo, question the givens, expand the boundaries of knowing and freedom. And as you courageously make your mark of refusal, you carve a path for others to be brave. Non-compliance is praxis, stretching and transforming the muscles of our discontent into impactful and embodied action.There are a multitude of ways that we can make their lives miserable by taking small risks and huge ones. Like folks in California sitting in their cars outside the hotels where the Ice agents are and just lying on their horn for hours. Or people towing Ice vans away that are parked illegally. Or the Harlem baseball coach who knew all his kids were American-born. When Ice invaded the field, he told his kids to get inside the batting cage and stay silent. He said he was willing to die for his kids to get home.“And non-complying is also filling in the gaps of resources and care that they are taking away. They’re already closing rural hospitals where we live because our governor didn’t expand Medicaid,” Ash-Lee told me. “So residents must build an alternative like country people and Black folks across the country have been doing on their own accord for decades, if not centuries, creating community spaces where we can both line dance, do some boots-on-the-ground organizing, get your blood pressure checked, get your mammogram in the mobile unit, get your teeth cleaned, whatever. All of those things are not complying.”I think of the man who suggested we all dress in Ice suits with masks and Oakley sunglasses and enter detention centers and free immigrants. Or my white British friend who was in a store in Nevada when Ice invaded and they started harassing Latinos for their identification. He stepped up and calmly asked why they weren’t asking for his ID. He asked simply without hostility. He asked it three times. Even though they continued, he momentarily disrupted the trajectory of cruelty and forced them to bring consciousness to what they were doing. Or the Rev Mariann Budde’s staring down Trump and his billionaire cronies in the first row of a Washington church in January, calmly and fearlessly demanding compassion for immigrants, refugees and LGBTQ+ communities.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnd this is the time for artists to speak out, to disembed themselves from a fascist system, to place principles over profit and self-advancement. To be what Viet Thanh Nguyen calls “disagreeable”. Yes, of course there are risks. But at this moment, with the jackboots in the streets and at our door, when each hour another liberty is being erased, and those who speak truth to power are being removed from TV, from universities, from cultural centers, when the cultural platforms are being removed themselves, speaking out is not just an obligation, it’s survival.And there are artists beginning to organize. The poet Michael Klein is creating a new podcast calling writers “to take our language back in writing a way through the various veils of deceit–an act, which in itself, has always been a form of resistance”. Meena Jagannath, a movement lawyer, is gathering artists and activists in salons to deepen our collective investigation and imaginative co-creation. She told me: “Our charge in these times is to support each other in building protagonism – a sense that we have agency to contest fascist narratives about how the world is and should be. It needs to be a collective, creative and responsive process that takes in what’s going out there and alchemizes it into a more expansive imagination of what could and should be.”So in a nod to the late great Mary Oliver, I ask you, what is the one precious, wild creative act you are doing to impede this nightmare?

    V (formerly Eve Ensler) is a playwright and activist and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls More

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    The polls look bad for Trump – but tyrants don’t depend on approval ratings | Judith Levine

    The fracas over the Jeffrey Epstein files – and declining poll numbers on every issue that won Donald Trump the 2024 election – indicate cracks in the Maga coalition and weakening support for the president’s self-proclaimed mandate.But reports of Maga’s death are probably exaggerated.Trump has cheated death, both physical and political, many times. And while every tyrant craves the adoration of the people – and claims to have it even when he doesn’t – no tyrant worth the title counts on public support to stay in power.Last week, when the administration pulled an about-face on releasing 100,000-odd documents related to Epstein – amid conspiracy theories of deep-state pedophile rings, which Trump promoted – it looked like Trump was on the ropes. “Trump can’t stop MAGA from obsessing about the Epstein files,” reported NBC. “Trump meets toughest opponent: his own base,” declared Axios. Trump was “on the defense”, NPR said. The Guardian reported on Maga hat burnings.Even after House Republicans blocked Democrats on a resolution to force a vote on releasing the files, even after the speaker, Mike Johnson, withheld from the floor a similar resolution, the far right would not be mollified. “Dangling bits of red meat no longer satisfies,” the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X. “The People … want the whole steak dinner and will accept nothing less.”Now some of the commentariat are predicting that even if Trump survives, the damage to the GOP is done.In the Hill, Douglas Schoen and Carly Cooperman marshaled polls showing Trump’s sliding approval from before to after the Epstein affair and conjectured that it could sink the Republicans in the midterm elections.At the same time, the populace, including Republicans, is changing its mind on Trump’s master plans. Six in 10 respondents to a CNN poll oppose the federal budget bill; approval of Trump’s handling of the budget is down 11 points since March. On immigration, a Gallup poll showed a steep drop in respondents who favor more restricted admittance, from 55% in 2024 to 30% this June. The most striking change is among Republicans, from 88% who wanted fewer immigrants in 2024 to 48% in June 2025. Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans who think immigrants are good for America rose to a record 79%.The flood of TikToks showing masked men kidnapping people from the streets and manhandling elected officials has turned many people against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). Two YouGov polls showed the agency’s favorability plummeting from a net positive of 15 points in early February to a deficit of 13 in late June. During Trump’s first term, “Abolish Ice” was the chant at tiny demonstrations by fringe-left organizations. Now more than a third of respondents to a Civiqs survey want to see the agency gone, including an uptick of six points among Republicans since November, to 11% .And as David Gilbert pointed out in Wired, even before the Epstein flap, some of the president’s most prominent supporters were defying him. The former Fox News host Tucker Carlson condemned the bombing of Iran. Trump whisperer Laura Loomer dissed his acceptance of a $400m plane from Qatar. Elon Musk defected over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. And Joe Rogan deemed Ice raids targeting ordinary working migrants too much to bear.But Trump is not backing down. In fact, he’s doubling down on every policy. The deportation campaign has grown more vicious by the day. Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” is being rightly condemned as a concentration camp. A recent Human Rights Watch investigation of three Miami area Ice facilities found detainees denied food and medicine, held in solitary confinement, and shackled at the wrists and forced to kneel to eat, as one man put it, “like animals”.The president muscled his budget and rescission package through Congress without regard to the disproportionate harm they augur for red-state residents, much less the deficit, the public health, or the planet’s future. His tariffs are barreling ahead, exasperating economists, hitting crucial US economic sectors and tanking entire economies overseas. General Motors reported second-quarter profits down by a third. In the tiny, impoverished nation of Lesotho, “denim capital of the world”, Trump’s threatened 50% duties have shut down the garment factories, leaving thousands out of work, hungry and desperate.Trump may feel insulted, which he does most of the time; he may temporarily lose his footing. But he’s not relinquishing power without a fight.Tyrants don’t need high approval ratings. They intimidate voters, rig elections, or stop holding them altogether; suppress protest and jail, deport or assassinate their critics. The Nazis achieved peak support in 1932, at 37.3%. Of the 1933 plebiscite that ceded all power to Hitler, the German Jewish diarist Victor Klemperer wrote: “No one will dare not to vote, and no one will respond No in the vote of confidence. Because (1) Nobody believes in the secrecy of the ballot, and (2) A No will be taken as a Yes anyway.”Daria Blinova, of the International Association for Political Science Students, argues that autocrats cultivate approval while consolidating their own power through the “illusion of substantial improvements”, which are actually insubstantial. In 2017, for instance, nine in 10 Saudi youth supported Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman because of such reforms as allowing cinemas to reopen.The Trump administration has begun deploying some similar tactics. The justice department is pressuring state election officials to turn over their voter rolls and give it illegal access to voting machines. The Republican National Committee is training volunteers to “ensure election integrity” – AKA harassing voters and poll workers. It is trying to banish the opposition press. Homeland security is trying to deport the widely followed Salvadorian journalist Mario Guevera, who has covered Ice raids and protests. Migrants sent home or to third countries can face persecution, torture or death.Still, none of this means that Trump is invincible, even when his administration uses violence to achieve its aims and terrify its critics. First – simplest and most difficult –the resistance must show up. Get bodies into the streets. The second nationwide anti-Trump rallies were bigger than the first; the third, fourth and 10th can be bigger still.Gather bodies at the sites of injustice. Volunteers are swarming to immigration courts, where migrants who show up for mandatory hearings are being released into the clutches of waiting Ice agents. The court-watchers – experienced organizers and first-timers, retirees, students, clergy, elected officials, artists – are distributing “know your rights” leaflets in many languages, writing down names and contact information to inform families of their loved ones’ arrests or to connect arrestees to lawyers later on. Immigrants’ rights groups are holding training sessions. Spanish speakers are giving immigration-specific language lessons.This nonviolent gumming-up of the government’s criminal machine draws press and social media attention, multiplying participation, amplifying anger and mobilizing greater organization. At every step, people are bearing witness, storing it up for future accountability.The Epstein affair shows that no loyalty is unbreakable. The polls show that discomfort with Trump’s policies is growing. Discomfort can mature to rejection of injustice, rejection to resistance, resistance to action. A tyrant does not need majority support to maintain power. But neither does the opposition movement need majority participation to take power back. No tyranny lasts forever.

    Judith Levine is Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist and author of five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism More

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    To defeat Trump, the left must learn from him | Austin Sarat

    In the first six months of his second term as president, Donald Trump has dominated the national political conversation, implemented an aggressive agenda of constitutional reform, scrambled longstanding American alliances, and helped alter US political culture.Pro-democracy forces have been left with their heads spinning. They (and I) have spent too much time simply denouncing or pathologizing him and far too little time learning from him.And there is a lot to learn.Not since the middle of the twentieth century, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt led a constitutional revolution, has any president achieved so much of his agenda in so short a time. But to recognize Trump’s political genius is not to say that it has been put to good use or that he has been a good president.Like others who see “connections and possibilities in circumstances that even people who are smart in conventional ways do not see,” the president has shown himself to be adept at reading the temper of the times, exploiting weaknesses in others, and assembling a coalition of the faithful that others would have never thought possible. What PittNews’ Grace Longworth wrote last September has been confirmed since he returned to the Oval Office.“Trump is not as crazy or dumb as his opposition would like to believe he is,” Longsworth said.Trump’s genius is demonstrated by his ability to transform “calamitous errors into political gold”. In the past six months, he has continued to do what he has done since he first appeared on the national political scene. From then until now, he has convinced millions of Americans to buy into his version of events and not to believe what they see with their eyes.Insurrectionists become patriots. Law-abiding immigrants become threats to America’s way of life. Journalists become “enemies of the people”.It’s magic.Of course, the last six months have not been all smooth sailing for the president, who is now embroiled in a controversy about releasing material about the child sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein.But Trump succeeds because he is undaunted by critics and unfazed by the kinds of barriers that would throw any ordinary politician off their game. When necessary, he makes things up and repeats them until what he says seems to be real.None of this is good for democracy.Trump has done what millions of Americans want done: transform the political system. He has not been afraid to call into question constitutional verities. The greatest, and most dangerous, achievement of the president’s first six months has been reshaping the balance of power among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.The president has activated a political movement that has produced what Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman describes as “constitutional moments.” In those moments, fundamental political change happens without any formal change in the language of the Constitution itself.“Normal politics is temporarily suspended in favor of a ‘constitutional politics,’ focused on fundamental principles.” Since January, the Trump administration’s actions have indeed focused the attention of the nation on such principles.Like it or not, Donald Trump is turning the constitution on its head, changing it from a Republican to an authoritarian document. And with every passing day, we see that transformation happening.The Republican majority in Congress seems eager to let the president reshape the constitution and take on functions that it clearly assigns to the legislature. Tariffs, Congress is supposed to decide. Dissolving executive departments, Congress is supposed to decide. War powers, they belong to Congress.But you’d never know any of that from the way the president has behaved since 20 January.The supreme court has followed suit, giving its blessing to his aggressive assertions of executive authority even when they violate the clear meaning of the constitution. The court even severely limited the role of the lower courts by denying them the right to issue nationwide injunctions to stop the president from acting illegally.Beyond Congress and the court, it seems clear that pro-democracy forces did not do all they could have to prepare for this moment. Trump’s opponents have not learned from Trump how to effectively counter his “constitutional moment”.So what can we do?We can learn from Trump the importance of telling a simple, understandable story and sticking to it. Pro-democracy forces need to pick a message and repeat it again and again to drive it home. There is surely no one in America who has not heard the phrase Make America Great Again and does not associate Maga with Trump. We can learn to appeal to national pride and drive home that national greatness requires addressing the daily experiences of ordinary Americans in language of the kind they use.Make America Affordable Again. Make America Work Again for Everyone. Think X, Instagram, and what works on a podcast.Pro-democracy forces can learn to be as determined and undaunted in defense of democracy as the president has been in his assault on it. Take off the gloves. Show your teeth, take no prisoners. Trump has shown that it matters to voters not just what you stand for but also how you go about standing for it.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSmile less, swear more.We can learn from the president that political success requires building a movement and not being trapped by the norms and conventions of existing political organizations. Remember Trump has gotten to where he is not by being an acolyte of Republican orthodoxy but by being a heretic.In the age of loneliness, pro-democracy forces need to give people the sense that they are caught up in a great cause.We can learn from the president that if the pro-democracy movement is to succeed, it needs to offer its own version of constitutional reform. Stop talking about preserving the system and start talking about changing it in ways that will make government responsive and connect it to the lives that people live.The six-month mark in his second term is a good moment to dedicate or rededicate ourselves to that work.What’s giving me hope nowEvery Friday since April, I have organized a Stand Up for Democracy protest in the town where I live. People show up.They hold signs and come to bear witness, even if what they do will not convert anyone to democracy’s cause. They want to affirm their belief that democracy matters, and they want to do so publicly.Some are fearful, worried that they will somehow be punished for participating, but they show up.In addition, Harvard University’s willingness to resist the Trump administration’s demands that threatened academic freedom and institutional independence set a powerful example. Whether or not the university reaches an agreement with the administration, Harvard’s example will still matter.It is also true, as Axios reports, that protests against Trump administration policies and allies “have attracted millions in the last few months: Tesla Takedown in March, Hands Off! and 50501 in April, May Day, No Kings Day in June, and Free America on Independence Day”. Another mass event, “Good Trouble Lives On,” occurred on 17 July, “commemorating the fifth anniversary of the death of civil rights leader and former Rep John Lewis”.Those events need to happen more frequently than once a month. But they are a start.Axios cites Professor Gloria J Browne-Marshall, who reminds us that “effective protesting often starts with an emotional response to policy or an event, swiftly followed by strategy … The current movement is reaching that second stage”. In that stage, it has a chance to “‘actually make change in the government’.”I think that the seeds of that kind of opposition have been planted. But there is no time to waste if we are to prevent Trump’s political ingenuity from succeeding in permanently reshaping the institutions and practices of our constitutional republic towards authoritarianism.

    Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty More

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    Tens of thousands in US set to join ‘Good Trouble’ anti-Trump protests honoring John Lewis

    Tens of thousands of people are joining marches and rallies at more than 1,500 sites across all 50 US states on Thursday to protest against the Trump administration and honor the legacy of the late congressman John Lewis, an advocate for voting rights and civil disobedience.The “Good Trouble Lives On” day of action coincides with the fifth anniversary of Lewis’s death. Lewis was a longtime congressman from Georgia who participated in iconic civil rights actions, including the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 when police attacked Lewis and other protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.Lewis implored people to participate in “good trouble, necessary trouble” to advance their causes, and this call serves as the underpinning for the 17 July actions. Dozens of advocacy and civil rights organizations are signed on as partners for the event.“The civil rights leaders of the past have shown us the power of collective action,” the protest’s website says. “That’s why on July 17, five years since the passing of congressman John Lewis, communities across the country will take to the streets, courthouses, and community spaces to carry forward his fight for justice, voting rights, and dignity for all.”Organizers said before Thursday’s events that they expect tens of thousands of people to turn out in small towns, suburbs and cities, the latest exercise of street protests distributed across the country to show opposition to Trump in all corners of the US. The last mass day of protest, No Kings, in June drew several million people in one of the biggest single days of protest in US history. Thursday’s events will probably be smaller as it is a weekday.Chicago will host the day’s flagship event Thursday evening, with additional main sites in Atlanta, St Louis, Annapolis and Oakland. Events include rallies, marches, candlelight vigils, food drives, direct action trainings, teach-ins and voter registration drives.The protest’s demands include an end to the Trump administration’s crackdown on civil rights, including the right to protest and voting rights; targeting of Black and brown Americans, immigrants and trans people; and the slashing of social programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), known colloquially as “food stamps”.“One of the things that John Lewis would always say is that if you see something that’s wrong, you have an obligation to speak up, to say something, to do something,” Daryl Jones, co-leader of the Transformative Justice Coalition, told reporters on Thursday. “That’s what July 17 is about – seeing things across this nation, seeing things that are being impacted, that are just not right. We’ve got to stand up and say something.” More