Tag Archives: We The People

Good Stuff Is Happening Too

There’s a reason “doom scrolling” has entered our vocabularies. Every day, the news is filled with incomprehensibly stupid and damaging activities of Trump and his collection of clowns, creeps, weirdos and incompetents; it’s easy to become fixated on all the chaos and destruction.

But there are encouraging signs that We the People are rapidly awakening from our civic slumber. Some examples, in no particular order: 

A Grand Jury has refused to indict two Senators (including former astronaut Mark Kelly) and four Congresspersons who’d filmed a video in which they reminded members of the armed forces that they have a legal duty to refuse illegal orders. It’s an axiom in the legal community that prosecutors can get grand juries to indict a ham sandwich, but this recent–and entirely appropriate–result follows several others in which panels of ordinary American citizens have refused to go along with bogus charges lodged against people targeted by Trumpian pique.

Despite early incidents in which institutions of higher education have “bent the knee,” universities have begun pushing back. In Red Indiana, where the current President of Indiana University has cozied up to our MAGA governor and complied with the administration’s various assaults on academic freedom, the faculty has passed a resolution urging IU to remove the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, along with its Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies, from the university’s list of approved employers who are allowed to advertise jobs on the IU Events calendar.  

The House of Representatives defied Trump for once, voting 217-214 against a rule that would have blocked members from voting on the president’s tariffs. The defeat means that members will be able to force up or down votes on the President’s insane, damaging global trade agenda. (The Senate had already voted against Trump’s tariffs with GOP senators siding with Democrats last year.)

ICE is leaving Minneapolis. Trump is steadily losing support on his signature issue of immigration. An NBC/SurveyMonkey poll found 49% of American adults strongly disapprove of the Trump administration’s handling of border security and immigration, compared with 34% who strongly disapproved in a similar poll last April.

An essay titled “Auspicious Omens and Excellent Insubordination” contains a lengthy list of other evidence that the resistance is making progress, and that an administration described as “weak, chaotic, and wildly unpopular” is continuing to do everything it can to make itself more so. 

There are also the slow-moving but inexorable revelations from the Epstein files, which–in addition to a reported million mentions of Trump–have ensnared people like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and debunked Trump’s assertions that he hadn’t known about Epstein’s sexual crimes. As the essay suggests, the continuing dribble of releases, along with the obvious efforts to suppress information about “who is being protected (powerful men) and who is not (abused children)” keeps fanning the flames.

The unhinged and increasingly overt racism that led Trump to portray the Obamas as apes has generated a backlash even among Republicans. As the author notes, Trump fails to understand “that we live in a world where causes have effects.” In this case, one effect was that thousands of people praised the Obamas as gracious, dignified, and beautiful while accurately describing Trump as gross, demented and repulsive.

J.D. Vance continues to be booed–in Vermont, at the Olympics…Trump skipped the Super Bowl because his staff warned that he too would be booed. (And despite his dissing of Bad Bunny, the Super Bowl halftime show was the most widely watched in history.)

Republicans see a bloodbath coming in the midterms, which the Trumpists are already frantically trying delegitimize–a clear sign they don’t think they can win fairly. Democrats have overperformed in every special election held in 2025. Most recently, a Democrat who was outspent by twenty to one won a state senate election in Texas by 14 points–in a district Trump had won by 17 points–a 31-point shift. (A GOP operative was quoted saying, “We watered down red districts to steal blue ones, and now the electorate hates us and our turnout is collapsing.”)

High school students across the country are staging walkouts to protest ICE–and the audience at a wrestling match shouted “Fuck ICE” before the main event.

And authentic Christians have finally been showing up to oppose the psuedo-Christian nationalists. The Catholic church is speaking out for immigrants, and so are Episcopalians, Methodists, and the United Church of Christ– along with rabbis, imams, and Buddhist monks. Across the country, churches are becoming meeting places, training grounds, and organizing networks for immigrant solidarity work.

There’s much more. MAGA has lost more than Marjorie Taylor Greene. It’s lost We the (Real American) People.

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Costco–One Of The Good Guys

I’ve previously written about the very different approaches to doing business by the big-box retailers, Costco and Sam’s Club. I shop at Costco rather than at Walmart’s Sam’s Club because Costco pays its workers well, provides health care coverage to its employees, and shows in a variety of ways that it values its members. I still recall a conversation at the Costco check-out when I said something to my husband to that effect, and the cashier weighed in with an emphatic agreement, saying she’d previously worked at a Sam’s Club and that there was no comparison–she was compensated, and treated, so much better at Costco.

My choice of retailers was confirmed, in my view, when Costco responded to Trump’s anti-DEI push by telling the administration, in effect, to pound sand–that they’d continue their DEI efforts.

And now, Costco has filed suit against the Trump administration, demanding repayment of the added amounts the retailer has paid due to Trump’s ridiculous tariffs. As The New Republic has reported, the company has filed a lawsuit arguing that the tariffs were illegal; that the law under which Trump justified the tariffs was never meant to authorize their collection, and that “the pell-mell manner by which these on-again/off-again IEEPA duties have been threatened, modified, suspended, and re-imposed” was evidence of the validity of that assertion.

As the article notes, while other companies have filed similar suits, Costco’s stands out “not only because of the size of the company involved but because it illustrates how tariffs actually work—and exposes the Trump administration’s lies about them.”

The administration has responded to these suits by insisting that it would refund American importers if the tariffs were found illegal. (This was the concession that persuaded the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals to deny issuance of a preliminary injunction, allowing the government to keep collecting them during litigation.) Costco alleges that the way the tariffs are collected (among other peculiarities of this situation explained at length in the linked article) makes that promise of refunds ephemeral absent a specific company’s lawsuit. Even if the tariffs are found to be unlawful, observers have opined that the administration is likely to stall the tariff rebate, according to academics following the debate. One expert has predicted that the repayment process will be “a political quagmire” and suggested that it’s likely Costco filed suit to protect itself.

Even some of the Supreme Court justices who have taken up residence in Trump’s pocket have signaled an unwillingness to find the tariffs lawful. Roberts has (correctly) called them a tax, and noted that taxation is a core power of Congress, not the executive branch. If Costco and the other companies that have sued win their cases, what the article calls “Trump’s scam” will collapse—and his administration may be forced to make those companies whole.

The Washington Post is also covering the litigation.

The warehouse club last week became the largest company — and the first major retailer — to sue the Trump administration, seeking a full refund for the levies it has paid this year. The Supreme Court heard arguments in November on whether President Donald Trump has legal authority to impose tariffs on goods from nearly all countries, and it is expected to rule in the coming weeks or months. If it rejects the administration’s case that tariffs are justified as an emergency, the companies could be entitled to hefty refunds.

The article also pointed out that Costco “is uniquely positioned to weather any backlash from Washington” thanks to its legions of devoted customer/members– a devotion that sets it apart from most other retailers, who are accordingly more reluctant to make waves by resisting the administration.

There’s a lesson to be learned here. Costco’s approach to the conduct of its business initially earned it the devotion of those legions of members, and now, its principled stances have generated increased support from that membership.

While the grassroots efforts to boycott Target for ending its DEI programs led to weakening foot traffic and diminished financial outlooks for consecutive quarters, Costco saw a boost. Net sales for the 2025 fiscal year (which ended Aug. 31) increased 8 percent over 2024 to $269.9 billion. Net sales for November were also up 8.1 percent over last year, reaching $23.6 billion, the company reported last week. 

It’s another reminder that We the People can punish cowardice and reward principled behavior.

 
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About That Rule Of Law…

On Tuesday, I spoke at the Zionsville Christian Church. I had been asked to define what is meant by the “rule of law,” and to explain why it is important. This is what I said. (Warning: longer than my usual posts.)

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Those of you who read my blog know that I refer a lot to the rule of law—how important it is, and how very negative the consequences are when governments ignore or violate it. What I don’t do often enough, however, is explain just what the rule of law is, and why it is the absolute bedrock of democratic governance.

Depending upon how you count them, there are seven essential elements that together make up the rule of law.

You’ve undoubtedly heard the first—the one most often cited by scholars and lawyers. That’s legal supremacy, which means that the law—the same law—applies to everyone. Another way to say that is “No one is above the law.” The importance of equal application of the law to everyone should be obvious; if elected or appointed officials weren’t restrained by the law, if We the People had to obey the laws but those in authority didn’t have to, the result would be what we lawyer types like to call “arbitrary and capricious” behavior by government officials, who would be free to use their authority in unfair and unjust ways, as monarchs used to do.

In democratic countries pledged to the rule of law, we don’t have kings who are free to ignore the rules the rest of us must live by.

The second element is really another version of the first. If the law applies to everyone, then everyone is entitled to equality before the law.  In an ideal “rule of law” system (which I’m compelled to admit we’ve never had), everyone would have equal access to—and equal treatment under– the laws of the land. Things like social status, wealth, elective office, and popular or  unpopular political beliefs wouldn’t affect access to or operation of the legal process or the way the laws are applied to individuals. The rule of law requires us to work toward a system in which laws and legal procedures are applied to all individuals equally and without favoritism.

To take an example from the headlines, under the rule of law, a government accusation that someone is a “bad actor” or a gang member, or “a threat to America” cannot relieve that government of its obligation to demonstrate the validity of such accusations in a court of law before it can punish that individual. That is what is meant by “due process of law” and due process is foundational to a fair and impartial legal system.

The third element of the rule of law is accountability. In other words, We the People are entitled to know what our government is doing, and whether it is functioning in a constitutionally appropriate manner. In the United States, a major element of accountability is built into our constitutional structure—what most of us learned in high school government classes as “checks and balances”—the division of legal authority among the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of our government.

We are now seeing what happens to accountability and the rule of law when one branch of our government fails or refuses to exercise the powers granted to it by the Constitution—when the legislative branch allows the executive to appropriate and abuse powers that have been vested in the legislature. Future historians—assuming we have them—will identify that cowardly failure as a rejection of both elective responsibility and the rule of law, and a betrayal of the Constitution and of the individual legislator’s oath of office.

The fourth element of the rule of law is its interpretation and application by a fair and independent judiciary. Federal judges have lifetime appointments because the Founders’ believed that judges should be shielded from political passions and reprisals, that they should be able to apply the law and facts as they see them, free of pressure or bias.

That judicial independence has recently come under an unprecedented attack, when the administration arrested a Wisconsin judge who failed to knuckle under to demands by ICE to turn over a defendant in her courtroom.If Judges can be arrested for disagreeing with the executive branch about their authority,–in this case, evidently because the judge found ICE had an incorrect warrant–we no longer have checks and balances or the rule of law.

The Founders’ goal of judicial independence remains important, but it’s true that in today’s America we have encountered a consequence to lifetime appointments that the Founders didn’t foresee; Americans today live much longer and there is consequently much less frequent judicial turnover –especially at the Supreme Court. That concern is heightened by evidence that at least two members of the current high court are ethically compromised.

The lower federal courts, on the other hand, have been functioning  properly; those courts have issued a number of important decisions upholding the rule of law and restraining Trump’s flood of unlawful and unconstitutional executive orders. Unfortunately, within the legal community there is substantial concern about the degree to which our compromised Supreme Court will uphold those lower court decisions. Should it fail to do so, we risk losing the rule of law.

If we do emerge from this terrifying time with our legal system largely intact, imposing 18 year term limits on Supreme Court justices—as many scholars have suggested– would achieve the Founders’ goal of insulating jurists from political pressure, while also minimizing the risks of judicial senility. (If the legislature once again operates properly, judges shown to be ethically compromised can be impeached.)

The fifth element of the rule of law is certainty. Laws must be clear and understandable in order to allow citizens to know what behaviors are expected of them. When you read that a law has been found “void for vagueness,” it’s because some legislative edict has failed to clearly explain what behavior is being banned or required. Certainty also requires continuity and predictability—meaning legislators should avoid frequent and dramatic changes in the laws that make it hard for citizens to keep abreast of their responsibilities.

The sixth element, again, is implied by others: all citizens must have access to the legal system and the means of redress. That means all are entitled to legal representation and to fair trials with impartial judges.

And finally, the seventh element echoes the protections in America’s Bill of Rights: the rule of law must protect the rights that have been found essential to human liberty—what we call “human rights.” As I used to tell my students, it’s important to recognize that the Bill of Rights does not confer rights on American citizens—it forbids the government from interfering with the inalienable rights that we possess by virtue of our humanity.

Those basic rights include freedom of speech and religion, the right to due process, the freedom to go about our business without arbitrary interference, freedom from excessive, cruel or unusual punishments, the right to trial by jury, the right to be treated equally by our government…in other words, the right to live under a regime that respects the rule of law.

Everything I’ve said so far has revolved around longstanding notions of fairness and morality, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that there are also very practical reasons for supporting the rule of law. Mountains of scholarly research have confirmed that countries where the rule of law is established and respected are more stable and have far more robust economies. As we are seeing, uncertainty and chaos are bad for business!

Attacks on the rule of law like those we are currently experiencing destroy trust in government, undermine the economy, and promote conflict and violence.

No government is perfect, and ours certainly can be improved. But  improvements have to be made with fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law—not from the willful destruction of the underlying philosophy of this country, a philosophy I call “The American Idea.” It is that Idea, that philosophical framework, that insistence on the primacy of the rule of law, that has fostered social progress and truly made America great.

It’s up to We the People to protect it.

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What We Face

On February 13th, Robert Hubbell’s daily letter included a (partial) list of what Trump/Musk had done in the first days of the administration. 

Pardoned 1,500 insurrectionists who assisted Trump in his first attempted coup.

Converted the DOJ into his political hit squad by opening investigations into members of the DOJ, FBI, Congress, and state prosecutors’ offices who attempted to hold Trump to account for his crimes.

Fired a dozen inspectors general, whose job it is to identify fraud and corruption and to serve as a check on abuses of power by the president.

Fired dozens of prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on criminal cases relating to Trump

Fired dozens of prosecutors who worked on criminal cases against January 6 insurrectionists

Opened investigations into thousands of FBI agents who worked on cases against January 6 insurrectionists

Disbanded the FBI the group of agents designed to prevent foreign election interference in the US

Disbanded the DOJ group of prosecutors targeting Russian oligarchs’ criminal activity affecting the US

Fired the chairs and members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, and the Federal Election Commission and refused to replace them, effectively shutting down those independent boards in violation of statute

Shut down and defunded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Shut down and defunded USAID by placing virtually the entire staff of the agency on leave

Impounded billions of dollars of grants appropriated by Congress to USAID, National Institutes of Health, Department of Education, and the EPA, all in violation of Article I of the Constitution, which grants Congress the power to make appropriations

Allowed a group of hackers to seize control of large swaths of the federal government’s computer network by attaching unauthorized servers, changing and creating new computer code outside of federal security protocols, creating “backdoors” in secure systems, installing unsanctioned “AI” software to scrape federal data (including personal identification information), and installing “spyware” to monitor email of federal employees

Disobeyed multiple court orders to release frozen federal funds (an ongoing violation; see the NYTimes on Wednesday)
Granted a corrupt pardon to the Mayor of New York in exchange for his promise to cooperate in Trump’s immigration crackdown

The occasional trolls who visit this site to register their approval of these illegal and unconstitutional measures discount their illegality, confirming disdain for what is a significant protection of individual liberty–the insistence that the ends cannot justify the means. The entire Bill of Rights is founded on that premise, which is central to the rule of law.

It requires a total lack of civic literacy and historic understanding to look at that list and approve of those actions–to fail to see that they are fundamentally contrary to sound policy, to the rule of law, and to America’s global interests and stature.

Members of Congress should be the first line of defense against this coup. Most of these arbitrary actions can only be properly and constitutionally taken by Congress, and the actions comprising the Trump/Musk coup send an unmistakable message that our co-Presidents find Congress irrelevant and expendable. One might expect even MAGA Senators and Representatives to object to their political castration, but–as James Baldwin once noted–in order for evil to flourish, “it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.”

Unfortunately, MAGA Senators and Representatives only come in two flavors: Christian Nationalist (in Indiana, think Jim Banks) and spineless (in Indiana, think Todd Young). The Christian Nationalists are profoundly, if ignorantly, anti-American; the spineless are interested only in retaining their positions–positions that their meek obedience has divested of any significance other than the right to retain a title and receive a paycheck.

America’s government has three branches (someone needs to explain them to Tommy Tuberville), so in the absence of a live and breathing Congress, it is falling to the courts to restrain our would-be co-Kings. However, it looks all too likely that our would-be monarchs will ignore the courts–echoing Jackson’s infamous statement that “the courts have issued their decision, now let them enforce it.” 

If that happens, it will be left up to We the People to counter this coup, and we can’t wait until the midterm elections, by which time our overlords may have put even more vote suppression laws on the books. We must participate in protests, in general strikes, in civic resistance of all kinds. Jessica Craven has posted about several:—a nationwide protest on February 17, a one-day general strike on February 28, and a “total shutdown” on March 15.

Studies have determined that participation in non-violent protest by only 3.5% of a population forces political change. We the People can do this. 

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What Is Civic Literacy?

Those of us who have spent years warning about the consequences of Americans’ low levels of civic literacy can take some comfort in the fact that Trump’s election not only proved our point, but seems to have generated an awakening among people who were previously unimpressed with the importance of the issue.

Here in Indiana, former Governor Mitch Daniels, who is now the President of Purdue University, has called for a campus-wide, mandatory civics test.

The faculty has been debating the proper approach to testing students’ civic literacy; in the meantime, they have

promised to let the president ask for a straight up-or-down vote on his baseline assumption that students should at least be able to pass the same test given to newly naturalized citizens.

Ah yes–the naturalization test.

As concerns about levels of civic ignorance have grown, a number of states have passed laws mandating the use of the naturalization test in order to graduate from high school. It’s so typical of American lawmakers, who tend to favor what I call “bumper-sticker” solutions. Civics instruction inadequate? Well, here’s a test. Give that. Problem solved.

Unfortunately, the questions on the naturalization test tend to be “civic trivia.” How many stripes on the flag? Name one branch of government? What are the first three words of the Constitution? How many U.S. Senators are there?

Now, knowing the answers to the questions on the civics test is fine. But it certainly doesn’t mean that the responder understands the way American government works. Knowing the length of a Senator’s term (another question on the test) tells you nothing about the operation of the federal government, or federalism’s division of jurisdiction–the relationships among local, state and federal levels of government.

It’s certainly nice if the test-taker can name ONE right protected by the First Amendment (another question), but that ability doesn’t translate into understanding the interaction of the religion clauses, or the purpose of free speech or a free press. Knowing that the first ten amendments are called the Bill of Rights doesn’t translate into understanding the “negative liberty” premise of the Bill of Rights– the reason that the provisions of the Bill of Rights only restrict government. (I wish I had a dollar for every student who has come into my classroom utterly unaware of that essential fact.)

What’s the difference between civil rights and civil liberties?

What is probable cause and why does it matter?

What do we mean by due process of law? The equal protection of the law?

If we really care about an informed electorate, a citizenry capable of debating the application of the actual constitution rather than a fanciful Fox-ified document, a citizenry with at least a superficial understanding of America’s history,  that isn’t going to be accomplished by a requirement that students correctly answer six questions from the citizenship test.

If I had a magic wand, I’d make every high school in the country require We the People–a curriculum that actually produces civically-literate citizens.

But that’s a solution that wouldn’t fit on a bumper-sticker.

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