We still need a better plan
The first step for the Left is to fully face reality
I told you so.
Adam Kinzinger had written, “We need a group of lawyers who are willing to take every lawsuit from every fired federal employee to the max. Bury this admin in lawsuits.”[1]
I responded, writing, “But even if you win the lawsuits, who do the courts rely upon to enforce judgments? The very defendant/respondent who is flagrantly violating these laws in the first place.
“Sorry, you need a better plan.”[2]
Utterly unsurprisingly, Donald Trump’s minions are increasingly talking of defying court orders to enforce blatantly unconstitutional and illegal executive orders. The answer seems entirely to rely on the courts,[3] which can’t enforce their orders themselves,[4] and on elections,[5] which Trump already has a record of violently disputing.
Some still demand a social movement of protest, letter-writing, and the rest, which even under better conditions yields incremental progress at best over many years or decades.[6] Such posturing misses the crucial points that the social movement which has prevailed is the ethnonationalist one on the right while movements on the left, from opposition to the Iraq War to Occupy to opposition to the genocide in Gaza, have all flailed. Even the successes of the social liberation movements of the 1960s and early 1970s are now being rolled back by the Trump juggernaut of unconstitutional and illegal orders in what appears now fully to be an aconstitutional broligarchy.[7]
We still need a better plan.
[1] Adam Kinzinger, “We need a group of lawyers . . . ,” Substack, February 2, 2025, https://substack.com/@adamkinzinger/note/c-90618977
[2] David Benfell, “But even if you win the lawsuits . . . ,” Substack, February 4, 2025, https://substack.com/@benfell/note/c-90906725
[3] Chris Geidner, “Don't let Donald Trump and Elon Musk talk us out of democracy,” Law Dork, February 11, 2025, https://www.lawdork.com/p/donald-trump-elon-musk-democracy; John Heilemann, “Don’t Waste a Constitutional Crisis,” Puck, February 11, 2025, https://puck.news/laurence-tribe-on-trumps-looming-constitutional-crises/; Justin Jouvenal, “Trump allies suggest defying court orders after stinging legal rebukes,” Washington Post, February 10, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/10/trump-judges-vance-musk-defy-orders/
[4] Federal Judicial Center, “Executive Enforcement of Judicial Orders,” n.d., https://www.fjc.gov/history/administration/executive-enforcement-judicial-orders
[5] Chris Geidner, “Don't let Donald Trump and Elon Musk talk us out of democracy,” Law Dork, February 11, 2025, https://www.lawdork.com/p/donald-trump-elon-musk-democracy; John Heilemann, “Don’t Waste a Constitutional Crisis,” Puck, February 11, 2025, https://puck.news/laurence-tribe-on-trumps-looming-constitutional-crises/; Justin Jouvenal, “Trump allies suggest defying court orders after stinging legal rebukes,” Washington Post, February 10, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/10/trump-judges-vance-musk-defy-orders/
[6] Bill Moyer with JoAnn McAllister, Mary Lou Finley, and Steven Soifer, Doing Democracy (Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada: New Society, 2001).
[7] Gil Duran, “How the 'Broligarchs' plan to use Trump,” Nerd Reich, November 25, 2024, https://www.thenerdreich.com/how-thebroligarchs-plan-to-use-trump/; Brooke Harrington, “What the Broligarchs Want From Trump,” Atlantic, November 24, 2024, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/broligarchy-elon-musk-trump/680788/; Lynn Parramore, “How to Disguise Racism and Oligarchy: Use Economics,” Evonomics, n.d., https://evonomics.com/how-to-disguise-racism-and-oligarchy-use-the-language-of-economics/