Hop to it, folks!
Check out if there’s a Tesla action near you this Saturday.
This evening I’m focusing on a lengthy positively pitched Vox article by senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp. The author details a four point playbook How to stop Trump’s power grab and highlights the immediacy of the need for civil resistance, for individuals to work from the inside, and the importance of collaborations between philanthropies and civil society.
While I’ll detail some key points here, it’s really worth a read.
The good news, Beauchamp notes, is that while Americans were paralyzed in the first week of the presidency, “Indivisible is reporting on protests breaking out across the country, with participation akin to the “resistance” mobilization in 2017.”
A prominent suggestion is that we realize that while our elected officials can do more, we can’t count on it.
It is really up to us.
Minority opposition parties do not have a great track record in spearheading movements against democratic backsliding. They tend to place too much faith in the system and trust that the normal rules constraining power will constrain a would-be authoritarian even as the authoritarian busts through them.
“What happens is that the demagogue’s popularity drops as the corruption mounts, and the opposition parties say, ‘Oh my god, he’s at 40 percent, there’s no way we can lose, there’s no way he can steal it.’ Then what do you know — he steals it. And they never fully planned for the day after,” the anonymous democracy expert explains.
Some key points
Beauchamp suggests that even as many of us feel powerless, we have to realize that Trump is operating out of weakness and that the more he is delayed the better our chances are.
“Democracy’s defenders need to think of their jobs as buying time for the courts — blocking and delaying everything to prevent him from doing irrevocable harm to the constitutional order before he can be ordered to stop.”
He has deputized Musk to grab power illegally because he doesn’t have the votes to win it through legislation. The illegality of Trump’s agenda means that there are lots of levers his opponents can pull to stop him. The most significant of these are lawsuits, many of which have already yielded injunctions against unlawful Trump-Musk orders.
“Philanthropists and civil society need to facilitate better and faster popular mobilization”
… “civil society groups and philanthropists work together to rapidly stand up an emergency anti-power grab umbrella group. ” Here, Beauchamp references the formation Protest HQ in 2024 Israel, a hub which worked coordinating strategy while distributing talent and resources.
“We realized that there were many, many groups, and they needed specific services. Some of them needed logistical help, some of them needed legal help. Some of them needed PR and advertising; all of them would need resources,” he says. “You don’t want to have philanthropists trying to sort out this maze of different organizations that will compete with each other for the same cause of stopping Trump.”
Federal workers need to have courage
And resist the temptation to quit!
When asked to implement unlawful or antidemocratic orders, these workers can either openly refuse or feign incompetence to throw sand in the gears. They can look for bureaucratic chokepoints and man them. If Trump is going to treat them like the deep state, they can be the deep state.
This doesn’t depend on everyone in the federal government acting in unison immediately. Just a handful of defiant civil servants can spark something bigger.
When South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law last December, his action was met with wide resistance: protestors were able to divert attention to allow legislators the opportunity to overrule him. The swiftness and magnitude of the protest was attributed to the shock of the presiden’t’s declaration.
Movements around the world, from Israel to Hong Kong, show that the judiciary can be a focal point for such a movement. But gigantic protests don’t spring up overnight. In each of the cases where protest made at least some difference, the ground had been prepared in the months and years prior.
That’s why acting now is important even if you think the courts will fail. Delaying strategies both heighten the sense that what is happening isn’t normal, and build the personal connections and organizational infrastructure necessary for effective mass resistance if and when the moment calls for it.
Since MSM is not covering any protests save for the scant coverage last week outside the Treasury building, I wouldn’t be aware of all that IS happening if it weren’t for an environmental listserv I belong to. More and more in the past week, threads have focused on informing members of “pop up demonstrations” being organized by groups like Indivisible, Moveon, Working Families, and Reddit. There is concern about holding a massive rally akin to the Women’s March because of fear that Trump might declare martial law.
Still, I can’t help but feel disempowered when ½ of America remains under the influence of the RW media with too many of us on the other side still shell shocked into learned helplessness and avoiding the news all together.
How about you? How are you resisting?
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda www.nytimes.com/…
The legal clashes over President Trump’s blizzard of executive actions are intensifying, with new lawsuits and fresh rulings emerging day and night.
As of Feb. 12, 18 of those rulings have at least temporarily paused some of the president’s initiatives. Already, the administration has asked higher courts to intervene. Some of these cases could reach the Supreme Court in the weeks and months to come.
x
Europe needs to be like Elon's son in the Oval,
was to Trump.
Tell Trump to shut his mouth.
Make the message clear that you're not interested in what he has to say.
Get across to Trump that his opinions or ideas have no value or consideration
when you are making decisions for your country.
[image or embed]
— KIM F-M (@kimf-m.bsky.social) February 13, 2025 at 9:21 AM
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